SHADES OF BLACK: HARDIESSE, NEO INFERNO 262, DEVOURING FAMINE

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Mar 122023
 

Guess who forgot to jump the clocks ahead one hour before bedtime last night? Yeah, that would be me. Thought I was getting a good head-start on the day when I crawled from the covers at 6:30 a.m., and then took my sweet time making coffee, catching up on all the dismal news, shaving more minutes off my life with smokes, stretching and rubbing eyes, and then suddenly realizing it was 8:30 a.m. instead of 7:30 and I hadn’t done shit on this column.

Well, who would care but me? I’m not sure, but all that really matters is that I care, and the only way to avoid feeling like a failure today was to rush ahead with a few things I had in mind, or that were messing with my mind. The hour-late clock is ticking, and other chores plus a lunch with family and friends lie ahead, so like yesterday’s roundup this one must be brief. But it’s all really good!

HARDIESSE (France)

Hard to resist checking out this first song, since Hardiesse is the project of Hyver (from Véhémence, Hanternoz, Régiment, Grylle, and more), and includes Wÿntër Ärvn (from Aorlhac) on bass and some of the vocals and Torve (from Ascète) doing the drum programming and the mix/master. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DIABLATION, SCHATTENFALL, KOSTNATĚNÍ

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Mar 052023
 


Diablation

I’m roughly 1,900 miles away from my home. I made the trip last Thursday (an excruciating journey packed with delays), something I needed to do for my job. Since then I haven’t had much time to myself, night or day. My comrade Mr. Synn suggested I just take the weekend off from NCS. As he put it, “The world will keep spinning”.

I’m not so sure about that. What if the world is an incredibly detailed simulation running on the substrate of my mind? What if Mr. Synn is, as I have always suspected, a figment of my imagination? What if music has no objective existence unless someone other than its creator hears it?

I may have become too subsumed by a new sci-fi novel I’m reading, which I shouldn’t name because the idea of a simulation is one of its many surprises.

I did take yesterday off from NCS (actually not a lot of choice in that matter). I was very tempted to take today off too, but I do have a little time to myself before beginning the trip back to Seattle, and whatever airline- and weather-related fuck-ups will plague it. So I snagged just a few new songs to recommend, so you don’t think I had a stroke or a Sunday brunch in jail. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: XALPEN, KALMANKANTAJA, EXDESTRIER, PESTIS, DEKADENS

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Feb 262023
 


Xalpen

I read an article about sleep this morning, It reinforced the idea that I’m doing the right thing sleeping 8-10 hours a night on the weekends, a fairly recent development for me. It also helped explain why I have such vivid dreams in the last phase of sleeping right before waking up, even if they’re like ghosts that tend to vanish within minutes of waking. The article may be pay-walled, but you might find it interesting too (it’s here), or maybe you already know the details.

On the downside, sleeping late makes for a slow start on my weekend NCS posts, especially when I don’t get a head start on the selections the night before. Fortunately there’s someone out there who may have a different sleep cycle, in addition to being in a different time zone, and what he finished very late last night in his time zone was waiting for me in my in-box this morning.

Is it stealing for me to just copy/paste a few things from his collection right into this post to make up for my late start? If so, I confess to theft. At least I won’t pass it off as my own. But I do have a few of my own choices to lead the way in blackening the sabbath. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MYLINGEN, PALACE OF WORMS, MORK, STRJA, ETHIR ANDUIN, TIDELESS

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Feb 192023
 

I didn’t oversleep today, so there’s a lot here. And I don’t just mean the volume of music, but the stylistic range of it too. Black metal has become a vast canvass, but I’ve often gone off the edge of the canvass too. And I’ll add that there are more variants of doom in this mix than usual.

MYLINGEN (Sweden)

To begin today, I’ve chosen At Night I See Demons, the head-spinning debut EP released last month by the Swedish black metal band Mylingen, a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist V.J. (from Apathy Noir) and vocalist G.C. According to Metal Archives, their name is based on the word “myling“, which in Scandinavian folklore was “the phantasmal incarnations of the souls of unwanted children killed by their mothers and forced to roam the Earth until they could persuade someone to bury them properly.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: RÄUM, VITRAIL, THYSIA, LUX SINE LUMINE, ORDALIE, KAIVS, MALICIOUS, LESATH

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Feb 122023
 

Obviously, I had time to pull together a lot of music for this Sunday’s column. I pushed at the usual boundaries by including bands that wouldn’t get a black metal label, but in different ways they’re close enough to blur the borders.

I ordered these seven offerings to create pendulum swings. One of them happens when you reach Lux Sine Lumine, and another happens at the end, with Lesath. In between those two are firestorms. I also thought the flow of the first three worked well, but you’ll be the judge of that.

 

RÄUM (Belgium)

Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions tell us that Räum was founded in Liege, Belgium during the first pandemic year, and perhaps they were influenced by those times. On the debut record’s Bandcamp page you’ll find this description of the music on these four tracks:

“It reveals the vacuity and the auto-destructive nature of the human soul, leading to an endless movement of rise and fall. Like a demon, it needs to burn our world to the ground to [be[ reborn again.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FVNERALS, WALLOWING, MORTE FRANCE, FAGUS, SKOGNATT, AHASVER

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Feb 052023
 

I hope this Sunday is treating you well. Or maybe you’re landing here on Monday… or Tuesday… or (heaven forfend) on Hump Day (what a lot of time those people have been wasting).

My Sunday is off to a slow start, thanks for asking. I had a riot of a Saturday night. Splattered on the couch with the cats, binge-watching a fantastic series I don’t need to name (it was Slow Horses) until way late. So I was late to rise and feeling very groggy. But there’s nothing like plunging into a lake of black and black-adjacent metal (sometimes only barely black-adjacent) to kick-start your heart. Here’s what I surfaced with today: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: TULUS, LOTAN, ARNAUT PAVLE, ANARETA, NATTSJÄL, ANHAGUAMA

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Jan 222023
 


Tulus – photo by Morten Syreng

Well I slept late again today. But unlike yesterday it wasn’t really a luxury this time. Did some partying last night and didn’t succumb to sleep until after midnight, so the sleeping late was just an effort to be barely functional today, with not a lot of hours of rest to show for it. The day is now pretty far along, and there are NFL playoff games rapidly approaching, so I’ll have to cut back on some of my own words here and there (I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth).

Prepare for a very twisty and turny trip that sometimes stretches the limits of this column’s usual focus in unusual ways.

TULUS (Norway)

From 1993 through 1999 this Norwegian group released three demos and three full-length albums, after which Tulus became dormant. Two of its members (Sarke and Blodstrup) went on to form Khold and recorded six albums under that name from 2001 through 2014 (the last of which in that period was Til endes).

When Khold temporarily went on hold in 2006, Sarke and Blodstrup revived Tulus and released Biography Obscene in 2007, as well as Olm og bitter in 2012, even after Khold itself had been resurrected. They were joined in both Khold and Tulus by bassist Crowbel. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BLAZE OF SORROW, WOTHROSCH, WICKED WEIRD

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Jan 152023
 


Blaze of Sorrow (Peter)

I forced open my sleep-crusted eyes and struggled to focus on the bed-side clock. Sluggish math told me I’d been asleep for 8 hours. Should be enough, I thought. But I couldn’t move, like someone had anesthetically severed my spine at the neck while I was out (but was instead the result of football-related alcohol poisoning). Before I could process any more thoughts I was asleep again. The next time I opened my eyes was 3 hours later, and then I didn’t have a choice. It was either climb out of the tangled covers or wet the bed.

As I begin writing this now, the clock says 9:30 a.m., and I haven’t picked a single thing for this column. The temptation to forget the whole thing is strong, but so is the inexplicable compulsion to let no day go by without making some recommendation for people who visit here. So here are just a few before my morning is completely gone. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SLEGEST, MAJESTIES, HØSTSOL, DEVISER, ONTBORG, HIVERLUCIDE, VĖLIŲ NAMAI

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Jan 082023
 


Slegest

I didn’t put together the usual Saturday roundup of new songs and videos yesterday. Partly this was because I got a late start on the day, but also because I wanted to spend more time figuring out what to include in the rollout of our 2022 Most Infectious Song list. I made good progress there, with enough choices to fill segments every day during the coming week. I think they’ll provide more reminders of what a great year for metal 2022 was.

But now on to the task at hand. The collection I assembled for today explains why I chose the name “Shades of Black” for this column too many years ago for me to remember, because most of these songs hover just on the outskirts of the black metal soundscape. They wouldn’t sound the way they do without that influence, but they’re built around other significant interests too. However, I’ve balanced those with a pair of songs near the middle that dive deep back into black metal traditions of yesteryear.

This collection is also more like the kind of “Seen and Heard” roundups that I failed to do yesterday, in that all the songs are advance tracks from forthcoming albums rather than complete new releases (even though one of those advance tracks is 20 minutes long). And I think you’ll find all the songs quite infectious — until you get to the closing pair. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK 1/1/23: LEIPA, KRINGA, BESNA, SONNEILLON, INFERNAL DIATRIBE

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Jan 012023
 

Well goddamn it’s a new year. I hope this finds you alive and well, and not in a morgue, a jail, or a hospital ward as a result of whatever you did last night.

My only new year’s resolution is to keep breathing, though that’s not really a resolution because I have no control over it, the breathing or the ceasing to breathe. Que sera, sera. However, I do have a resolution to suggest that you adopt, which is to let no day go by without coming here to have your head rattled and ruined. (Maybe committing to engage in more acts of kindness and caring toward others wouldn’t be a bad idea either, and let some of the music do the hating for us.)

It’s a fitting coincidence that the first day of 2023 falls on a Sunday, allowing me to welcome the new year at NCS by beginning to char it to a crisp, building on whatever fires were started with gunpowder last night. Fitting, because one could argue there is no realistic hope that 2023 will be better than 2022. People will continue being shitty to each other, the Earth will continue taking revenge for the pomposity, the greed, and the negligence of humankind, and the temptation to just hunker down in a bunker for self-preservation will be strong.

On the other hand, some things will still make life worth living, even if the point of existence remains obscure, and one of those is the enjoyment of art in all its forms, even the kind of art that wants to turn the world black. Examples follow. Continue reading »

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