SHADES OF BLACK: VANHELGA, WILT, YGFAN, FOREST MYSTICISM, GALLERY, VELO MISERE

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Apr 262018
 

 

To the millions who wait with bated breath for a new SHADES OF BLACK column each Sunday (okay, just the two of you sulking in the corner), I apologize for being a disappointment last Sunday. By the time I finished writing the two premieres we committed to do for that day, I had run out of time. In an effort to make amends, I decided to prepare what you’re now looking at.

The songs I’ve chosen here aren’t the ones I had planned to feature last Sunday. I’ll get to those, or at least some of them, next Sunday, the Dark Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise. What I have here are a few of the songs I’ve discovered since the past weekend. I’ll warn you, or titillate you in advance, that all of them are intense.

VANHELGA

To begin, I’ve chosen “Relationship in Pieces“, the first track to be revealed from Fredagsmys, the new album by the continually evolving, persistently interesting Swedish band Vanhelga. It has been presented through a video that displays the lyrics, in Swedish. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): CARPATHIAN FOREST, MEDIEVAL DEMON, OAK PANTHEON, NEPHOS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 152018
 

 

Well, I managed to finish the second part of today’s Shades of Black before Monday after all.  I’ll dispense with any further introduction and move directly to the music I’ve chosen, which is quite varied.

CARPATHIAN FOREST

As of yesterday, when I wrote these words, the most-played track by Carpathian Forest on YouTube was “I Am Possessed” (one of the previously unreleased tracks that appeared on the compilation album We’re Going to Hell for This), with almost 590,000 plays. That song and album were released in 2002, more than a decade after the band first took shape. A couple of new albums followed that release, but nothing new has emerged for the last 12 years — until now.

So, in the annals of Norwegian black metal, it’s fair to say this new release is an historic event. But is it more than that? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): GAEREA, WØMB, APHASIAC, TRENCHES

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Apr 152018
 

 

As you can see, I’m going to attempt a two-part Shades of Black this week, because there are so many recent discoveries I want to recommend (not including the new Ghost song and video, which I actually do enjoy, but there’s a limit on how far I’m willing to stretch the musical boundaries of this column).

The second part of this thing’s not finished yet, and the rest of my Sunday is looking kind of crowded with non-blog activities, so I can’t promise Part 2 will go up today. I also can’t promise I’ll be alive tomorrow, but hope springs eternal.

GAEREA

If you follow this column regularly, you’ll have already heard the first single (“Whispers”) from Unsettling Whispers, the debut album by the Portuguese band Gaerea. You’ll also have realized that the band’s music tends to bring out the poet in me, or at least I pretend to be one in an effort to capture sensations I have a tough time satisfactorily describing in more prosaic terms. And I’m afraid it’s about to happen again, because a second single from the album has now appeared. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LEVIATHAN, DEIPHAGO, HOTH, GRÁ, TOMUSZ

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Apr 082018
 

 

I’m deep in the heart of Texas today for my fucking day-job, and will be deep in the heart of Philadelphia tomorrow for the same reason, but in the meantime I’ve managed to cobble together some streams of new music from the black realms, and some thoughts about each selection.

LEVIATHAN

It may be my imagination, but it seems that more and more bands who have a devout following are choosing to spring their new releases without much warning or PR assistance. That’s what Leviathan did one week ago, with the release of Unfailing Fall Into Naught through Ascension Monuments Media.

This new album is a compilation of tracks previously released in other formats. It includes Leviathan’s contributions to a 2004 split CD with Xasthur (released by Profound Lore Records) and a 2006 split with Sapthuran (released by Battle Kommand Records, and then later released by Southern Lord in 2007 as a stand-alone Leviathan EP called The Blind Wound). Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GAEREA, KŁY, APOGNOSIS, PACT, GOAT DISCIPLE

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Apr 012018
 

 

As usual, I had a rough time trying to decide which songs to pick for today’s SHADES OF BLACK column; as usual, there was a lot to choose from. If I’d known when I made the selection that (as announced here) this would be the last NCS post after 8 1/2 years of effort, it would have been a whole lot rougher.

GAEREA

I thought the self-titled debut release by the Portuguese black metal band Gaerea was one of 2016’s best EPs.. We featured music from it repeatedly at our site, both before and after its release (including a post in which we named “Void of Numbness” to our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“, and our premiere of a bonus track that appeared on the vinyl edition).

Not surprisingly in light of all that, I have very high hopes for Gaerea’s follow-on release, a debut full-length named Unsettling Whispers. Based on the first single from the album, it seems likely those hopes will be fulfilled. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AT THE GATES, KATAKLYSM, LIGHT THIS CITY, WOMBBATH

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Mar 312018
 

 

A few of my NCS comrades have been nudging me to do a round-up that includes the latest songs revealed by At the Gates, Kataklysm, and Light This City. I didn’t have time to do this yesterday when I got that nudging, but decided to do it today even though Andy’s latest Waxing Lyrical post would have given me an excuse to check out from NCS writing for the day. And since I decided to pull those three songs together, I added one pick of my own.

AT THE GATES

I suppose you’d have to be living under a rock not to know that At the Gates have a new album headed our way. For you under-rock dwellers, To Drink From the Night Itself will be released by Century Media on May 18th. Yesterday brought another single from the album, packaged with a wonderful video created by Costin Chioreanu of Twilight 13 Media. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANTICOSMOS — “WATERS OF DISSOLUTION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Mar 302018
 

 

Like the vast majority of all grand estates and even medium-sized garden plots on the landscape of the internet, most sites that offer writings about metal are captives of the culture of clickbait. They are honey traps for lazy flitting bees, offering precious little intellectual sustenance of any lasting value, or even much fleeting value. They mainly just make the frenetic buzzing of their visitors grow louder, but no more coherent.

But there are exceptions. The extraordinarily ambitious essay by R.M. Temin published by Toilet Ov Hell a few days ago is one of those. For most of its considerable length, it is a history of transgressive music, mainly focused on metal. It takes Black Sabbath as its starting point (after first drawing connections to the Beat Generation and “hippie counterculture”) and charts the course straight through to the present. Its overarching theme has to do with the connections between metal and politics, and ultimately about the rise and persistence of far-right politics within certain sectors of extreme music. It’s title is: “Rock Against Anything: How Metal Became So Fucking Reactionary and What To Do About It“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): NIGHTGRAVE, GYRE OF INCANDESCENTS, TRAUTONIST, ELÄNDE, NORNAHETTA

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Mar 252018
 

 

The second part of this Sunday’s SHADES OF BLACK post, which I began here, includes a lot of music — four complete releases. The last of them isn’t as “hot off the presses” as most of what I choose for these columns. But you’ll understand why I picked it when you get there.

NIGHTGRAVE

If the name Nightgrave is familiar, it might be because I’ve written some very positive impressions in this column about both Nightgrave’s last album Echo (2017) and the one before that, Futures, (also 2017). Not one to let much grass grow under his feet, Nightgrave’s creator (Sushant Rawat, aka Nium, from New Delhi, India) has already released another album. This one, entitled Nascent, appeared on February 14. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ALTAR OF PERVERSION, NIGREDO, HÄXENZIJRKELL, MORTUUS UMBRA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Mar 252018
 

 

One benefit of Andy Synn’s new Waxing Lyrical series as a regular Saturday post at NCS is that it has freed me to do other things, since I no longer feel compelled to concoct something of my own on Saturdays. Most “normal” people might take advantage of the opportunity to indulge in slothfulness. It seems that my own “abnormality” instead leads to two-part SHADES OF BLACK posts on Sunday.

ALTAR OF PERVERSION

The most recent interview posted at the on-line edition of Bardo Methodology was an especially thought-provoking one, a discussion by proprietor Niklas Göransson with Calus, one of the two men behind the Italian black metal band Altar of Perversion. The on-line version of the interview is only an excerpt from a much longer and even more in-depth conversation in the print edition of Bardo Methodology #3, which I will be anxious to read when my copy arrives in the mail.

What I read on-line revived some of my own lines of thought about the intellectual and emotional inspirations and underpinnings of black metal, which I might finally decide to write about in the near future. But it also contains a fascinating segment on the audio frequency of 432 Hertz (referred to as “Pythagorean tuning” when applied to the tuning of musical instruments) and its connections to nature, as well as its numerical synchronicities with a host of ancient writings and esoteric teachings. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): COSMIC CHURCH, UNREQVITED, SCHRAT, VONLAUS, BOIS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Mar 182018
 

 

Continuing on from Part 1 of this Sunday’s column, I’ve chosen new music from five black metal bands. One is a recently released EP and the rest of the songs are from albums scheduled for release in the coming months. If you missed Part 1, it’s here.

COSMIC CHURCH

The Finnish one-man band Cosmic Church has released two albums and many shorter releases since the first demo in 2006, but has now decided to end its life with one final album, entitled Täyttymys. A single called “Armolahja” was digitally released on March 15th as a preview of the album, which will appear on CD and vinyl at some unknown future date via the Finnish black metal label Kuunpalvelus. Continue reading »

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