NO CLEAN SINGING

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 75: WOMAN IS THE EARTH

Jul 212016

(In the glorious 75th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy reviews the discography to date of South Dakota’s Woman Is the Earth.)

Recommended for fans of: Agalloch, Wildernessking, Wolves In The Throne Room

Hailing from Black Hills, South Dakota, Woman Is The Earth deal in a brand of Black Metal that’s as heavy in atmosphere as it is in aggression, with songs that meld writhing riffage and rolling drums with passages of acoustic contemplation and ambient meditation, all without falling prey (in my opinion at least) to the more generic tropes and clichés of the over-saturated “Post Black Metal” scene.

They do this by never forgetting that – unlike some of their more populist peers — they’re definitely, even defiantly, a Metal band at heart… and a Black Metal band at that… so their music is never in danger of pandering to the notions of bland accessibility or pretentious artistry which undermine so many other acts of this type.

Having released their latest (and greatest) album earlier this year, and with the recent demise of Agalloch still weighing heavy upon so many of our hearts, now seemed like an opportune time to expose our readers to the band’s particular blend of grim grandeur and metallic majesty! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DÉPARTE — “VESSEL”

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Jul 212016

Like the grime clinging to those gnarled, grasping hands on the cover of the debut album Failure, Subside by Australia’s Départe, dark emotions hold all of us in their grip from time to time, and sometimes perpetually. In the band’s words, those “feelings of guilt, loss, anxiety, fear, and defeat… are intimate, almost claustrophobic, clinging to us like dirt – we hold them close, swallow them, hide them away like scars for fear of the shame that comes from the exposure of weakness”. Départe plumb the depths of those emotions on Failure, Subside, yet as you’re about to discover, they do not drown in them.

The album won’t be released until October 14 of this year, but to begin introducing you to it, we are working with Season of Mist to bring you the premiere of a song called “Vessel“. At the risk of giving away something surprising and significant about the song, we introduce it through this comment by vocalist/guitarist Sam Dishington: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UROBILINEMIA — “WRIGGLING CHRYSALIS OF METAPHYSICAL GRUDGE”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 202016

You’re about to hear the new EP of a monstrous Japanese band named Urobilinemia, which will be released by Gore House Productions on July 22. It’s a bit outside our usual wheelhouse(s). In fact, as I began listening to it, I wondered whether it was too far outside. And then I lost my mind.

When most people say they lost their mind, they just mean they temporarily misplaced it, or it escaped briefly but will come home again soon, happily wagging its tail. In my case, I fear that Urobilinemia have pulverised, pureed, and poisoned the contents of my skull so ruthlessly that reassembly may be impossible. How do you reassemble something that has been reduced to a quivering mass of goo? Continue reading »

REVOCATION: “GREAT IS OUR SIN”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Jul 202016

(We present TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Boston’s Revocation.)

Sometimes regression is evolution. While I haven’t kept up with the press surrounding this album, my friends who have tell me that this is supposed to be Revocation’s most progressive record. It certainly, in my estimation, isn’t that at all in the conventional sense you’d suspect. “Progressive” is also a word that’s been pretty butchered in the world of metal. When we live in a world where TesseracT is considered progressive, that shows how much water the label holds.

Revocation’s Great Is Our Sin is interesting, in that it indeed contains elements that might be considered progressive (extreme amounts of stylistic inclusion/blending and nuance brought about by that inclusion), but the music itself isn’t really what I’d call progressive. It’s fantastic technical, thrash-driven death metal that switches gears among just about every variation on the style, and Davidson’s guitar playing in and of itself is certainly progressive in ways that perhaps could only be explained to other musicians or the super-musically-inclined.

Revocation’s music, especially on this record that follows Deathless, which was also played it very straight, is largely devoid of any sort of meandering, exploration, or head-turning twists. It’s all pure, unrestrained brutality and darkness with eccentricities sprinkled throughout. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): HEAVEN SHALL BURN, ALLEGAEON, SEPUTUS, ORPHALIS, CENTENARY, ORTHOSTAT, OLDD WVRMS

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 202016

In yesterday’s Part 1 of this large round-up, I said I would post Part 2 later the same day. Someday I will learn that part-time metal bloggers who have actual paying jobs and/or families who occasionally need their attention should not make forecasts of what they plan to do on the blog. Not even what they think they will accomplish later the same day, or even in the next hour. That’s just laying the groundwork for stepping on your own crank, so to speak.

Anyway, here’s Part 2, which unlike yesterday focuses on new or newish music that I wanted to recommend rather than simply announcements. One silver lining to the delay is that it enabled me to add the first item in this collection, which appeared late yesterday.

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

Our small band of beleaguered writers at NCS includes some ardent (perhaps even slavish) fans of Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn. I count my own self on the slavish end of the spectrum. And so yesterday was a banner day, because… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARNAL TOMB — “BENEATH THE COFFINS”

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Jul 202016

Greetings, sickos. I see that the stench of rotten, festering death has led you to our humble morgue. That fetid scent in your nostrils, which has drawn you here like an alluring perfume, emanates from the foul reanimated corpse of Carnal Tomb, and more precisely from a song named “Beneath the Coffins” that it’s our pleasure to unveil for you today. It comes from this German band’s debut album Rotten Remains, which will be spread before you like a maggot-infested banquet on July 25 by Spain’s Memento Mori label.

This full-length offering follow’s the band’s 2014 demo, Ascend, and last year’s Inevitable Decomposition EP. It includes nine tracks of monstrous death metal horror delivered with a ravenous spirit and skull-splitting power, remaining true to ancient traditions while reviving them with vibrant, unholy energy. And how about that delicious cover art? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THY CATAFALQUE — “MEZOLIT”

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Jul 192016

How does Thy Catafalque follow up an album as remarkable as 2015’s Sgùrr, especially only one year later? That’s the first question that popped into my head when I learned the surprising news just yesterday that Season of Mist would be releasing a new Thy Catafalque album later this year; the name of the album is Meta, and it’s now set for release on September 16, 2016.

I don’t yet have a complete answer to the question I asked myself, but I do have a partial one because I’ve now heard the first advance track from Meta — and you can too. Today we bring you the premiere of “Mezolit“.

The existence of Meta really did come as a shock. There’s been very little in the way of hints about its existence, or at least none that reached my greedy ears. But when I wondered how Thy Catafalque’s brilliant alter ego Tamás Kátai would choose to follow the music on Sgùrr, it wasn’t because I thought he had reached a pinnacle on the album that he could not surpass, or necessarily a reflection of doubt that he could produce an album of great quality so soon after the release of the last one. It was more a question born of sheer curiosity about what direction he would choose to follow. Continue reading »

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY: “III: TRAUMA”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Jul 192016

(Andy Synn reviews the great new album by Austria’s Harakiri For the Sky.)

A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet. Or so they say. But when it comes to musical genres… is that really the case?

Now I’m sure some of you are already sharpening your claws ready to declaim that all genres are bullshit, and that you’re above such petty concerns… but for the rest of us who live in the real world, genre terms remain a useful way of tagging and identifying music – though I’m more than happy to admit that once we start getting bogged down in arguing about sub-sub-sub genres things start to get a little silly.

I’d contend that tagging a band with the right term remains important though, particularly when you’re introducing them to a potential new fan. Because, like it or not, using the wrong genre when talking about a band can give a new listener a false impression of what to expect, and sometimes it can be a real uphill battle to overcome this and and get them to judge it for what it is, not for what it isn’t.

Such is the case with Austrian angst-merchants Harakiri for the Sky. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): MARYLAND DEATHFEST XV, ASPHYX, OPETH, MEGADETH, AMON AMARTH, MESHUGGAH, HIGH ON FIRE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 22 Responses »

Jul 192016

Ten days have passed since the last time I put together a round-up of news and recommended new music, which is an unusually long gap. Perhaps needless to say, trying to catch up is out of the question. What I’m going to do instead is just pull together some big news announcements from the last 24 hours in this post (plus one related recent song), and then collect a few more recent music streams in a second part that I’ll post a bit later today.

MARYLAND DEATHFEST ANNOUNCES SECOND ROUND OF CONFIRMED BANDS FOR 2017

On June 30, as we dutifully reported, the organizers of Maryland Deathfest announced the first round of confirmed bands for the XVth edition of the festival, scheduled to take place on May 25-28, 2017, in Baltimore. Just minutes ago, MDF announced a second round of confirmed bands — plus some surprising news about where the festival will, and won’t, take place next year. Here are the new confirmed names: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SURGEON — “BURN”

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Jul 182016

Beast of Light, the new album by Philadelphia’s Surgeon, is remarkable. It blazes with creative exuberance, in both its compositional approach and in the high-caliber performances of the band, delivering one intense (and intensely interesting) listening experience after another. The dynamic music also masterfully crosses genre boundaries, combining elements of black metal, death metal, and progressive metal in scintillating and powerful ways.

Two songs from the album have already debuted in advance of its August 30 release by Anthropic Records, and today we’re privileged to bring you a third — a song appropriately called “Burn“. Continue reading »

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