NO CLEAN SINGING

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ROTTING CHRIST, ORANSSI PAZUZU, SERPENT SPELLS

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 10 Responses »

Jan 182016

Earlier today when I posted Part One of this Shades of Black feature (here) I mentioned that I would have Part Two ready to go later today or tomorrow. Despite the title of this post, it actually isn’t the Part Two that I had planned. What you’ll find here instead are three very good new songs that I didn’t encounter until today, and I thought I’d help spread the word about them right away. And so the original Part Two will become Part Three, hopefully by tomorrow.

ROTTING CHRIST

Today another new track from Rotting Christ’s forthcoming album Rituals premiered at 11 music sites around the world (though none are based in North America). The name of the song is “זה נגמר (Ze Nigmar)” (an Aramaic phrase meaning “it’s done”), and because the premiere took the form of a YouTube stream, I’ve taken the liberty of embedding it below. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): DIVINE BLASPHEMY, NAÐRA, NOCTURNE

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 11 Responses »

Jan 182016

Some weekends are a whirlwind, a flurry of unexpected events hitting from all points of the compass. Others are a soporific quagmire of sloth and malaise. Somehow, for me this weekend was an odd combination of the two. I rejoice that I’m still alive.

I also rejoice in the music I heard. And I heard so much good metal that I’m going to share it in two posts, the first of which is this one, which combines three album reviews. The music collected in this two-parter is mainly, but not entirely, black metal, so I’m taking slight liberties to anoint the two posts with the Shades of Black banner. Part Two will appear today or tomorrow.

DIVINE BLASPHEMY

Divine Blasphemy carry on the rich tradition of Greek black metal with their debut album Beyond the Portal. I heard the first song, and I felt elevated. “Where did these people come from?”, I wondered. And then I heard the rest of the album and realized that the first song was not a fluke. This is a wonderful ride on a red-eyed black steed — it tries to buck you off, but you hang on because the chaos is so exhilarating. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EVER-FROST — “PHOENIX RISING”

Premieres 1 Response »

Jan 182016

Ever-Frost are a five-man band who make their home in Modena, Italy. Their debut album Departing of Time appeared in 2013, and just days ago they released a new EP entitled Undefined Colors. To help spread the word about this new five-track creation, we’re premiering the EP’s final song, “Phoenix Rising“.

This phoenix rises in a burst of flame — fast, furious, and frenetic. Driven by compulsive grooves and pulsing stop-start rhythms, and laced with some very catchy melodic hooks, the song will get your head nodding for sure. While Ever-Frost’s vocalist howls like a maniac, the guitarists accent the song with skittering arpeggios and a pair of divergent guitar solos, one of them an eruption of adrenalized shred and the other sinuous and mournful. Continue reading »

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE: “KING”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Jan 182016

(DGR reviews the new album by Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse.)

It starts with classical music. It always does.

Any time someone tries to trace the roots of heavy metal, we inevitably wind up at the same branching paths. We hit the ’70s and the Black Sabbath era, and that leads us to the blues and from there things get far more nebulous, but through some sort of inherited wisdom over the years we always come back to classical music. Composers like Bach and Wagner are name-dropped left and right, and we always point to the huge, bombastic symphonies and the low, bass-heavy instruments, because these are the deepest roots of our heavy metal lineage.

The tendency to make things ‘heavier’ isn’t a new one, its just the one that musicians have often seen fit to push beyond the most extreme boundaries imaginable. So, the idea of Symphonics being a part of heavy metal was an almost foregone conclusion. It’s slowly worked its way even into death metal – itself a container of the hidden flair for the dramatic – and the two have produced multiple pairings and fantastic bands.

Fleshgod Apocalypse are the natural evolution of that tendency, a group who over the course of four main releases (counting our current subject as well) and an EP have become completely intertwined with symphonic music, writing a pyrotechnic and operatic style of death metal that can’t really be matched. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 14)

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 10 Responses »

Jan 172016

Well, you may have noticed that I’ve let three days go by since posting my last installment in this evolving list. I won’t bore you with the reasons. Instead, let’s move right on to the two songs I’m adding to the list today (to see the songs added to the list previously, go HERE).

NECHOCHWEN

2015 proved to be a breakout year for this unique West Virginia band. Though Nechochwen’s first two albums (Algonkian Mythos and Azimuths To the Otherworld) and his 2012 EP (OtO) received praise from discerning listeners and critics, 2015’s Heart of Akamon has appeared on a huge number of year-end lists, including a substantial percentage of the more than 50 we posted here on our own site. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM THY DARKENED SHADE

Premieres 10 Responses »

Jan 172016

2014’s Liber Lvcifer I: Khem Sedjet was my introduction to the Greek black metal band Thy Darkened Shade, and that album, which was one of the year’s best, made me an immediate fan. Within the last hour, Thy Darkened Shade has released an excerpt from a new song for streaming on Soundcloud, and I decided not to wait to include it in our next new-music round-up tomorrow.

The name of the song hasn’t been disclosed, and the release on which it will appear is equally mysterious. Once details have been publicly divulged, I’m sure we’ll help spread the word. For now, the song sample was accompanied only by this message, which hints at the participation of others in this forthcoming release: Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (THE CHASM)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 11 Responses »

Jan 172016

In this Sunday’s look back at songs from the past, the band I’ve chosen to feature is The Chasm. Unlike most of the bands featured in this series so far, The Chasm are alive and kicking, though their history is a long one.

Metal Archives tells us that the band originated in Mexico City in 1992, “when vocalist/guitarist Daniel Corchado left his previous band (Cenotaph) to pursue his own musical vision.” The band released a demo in 1993 and a debut album (Procreation of the Inner Temple) in 1994. They would go on to release two more albums, 1995’s From the Lost Years… and 1998’s titanic Deathcult For Eternity: The Triumph, before relocating to Chicago, where they’ve been ever since. Continue reading »

BANDCAMP FAKERY

Metal News 24 Responses »

Jan 162016

THIS IS A FAKE

In recent days I’ve learned that fake band pages have been set up on Bandcamp by people whose aim is to defraud bands and labels of money that rightfully should go to them. As I looked into this a bit further, I realized this has happened before — and so some of you may already be aware of it. But for those who aren’t, here are a few examples of what’s happening.

Today one of our readers (thank you Sidney) alerted me to the fact that he was about to buy Aborted albums at https://aborted.bandcamp.com — but something about it looked fishy to him. He then contacted Aborted’s band management representative (as identified on the band’s Facebook page) and was told that the Bandcamp page was indeed a phony.

I’ve not found any links to a Bandcamp page on Aborted’s social media, and their current label Century Media does not put its releases on Bandcamp as far as I can tell. Aborted’s previous label (Listenable) does have a Bandcamp page that includes Aborted releases — but it’s a different URL (this one) than the one above.

Yesterday, the following announcement also appeared on Abbath’s official Facebook page: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015 WRAP-UP

LISTMANIA 2015 7 Responses »

Jan 152016

Andy Synn alleges that he still intends to deliver his annual list of favorite songs, but with that exception, I think our 2015 edition of LISTMANIA has finally drawn to a close. Unless I’ve forgotten something, in which case we’ll have to supplement the series with whatever I’ve forgotten. We’re not running a very well-oiled machine here.

But however rusty it may be, we’re damned sure running a list-making machine here. Our 2015 series of lists was more extensive than in any previous year — we posted more than 50 lists (!) with accompanying commentary this time.

As usual, some of these were lists that appeared at “big platform” web sites and print magazines, and others were prepared by our own cadre of writers. But once again the largest group of list posts came from NCS readers, band members, and assorted other guests, including fellow metal bloggers/writers. Plus, we’ve also received many lists in reader comments on THIS POST. Continue reading »

THE REISSUE OF OPPROBRIUM’S “SERPENT TEMPTATION”: A TRACK-BY-TRACK COMMENTARY BY THE BAND AND FULL-ALBUM STREAM

Interviews 1 Response »

Jan 152016

In the middle of 1982 two young brothers, Moyses M. Howard and Francis M. Howard — moved with their parents from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to New Orleans, Louisiana. It didn’t take long for them to be caught up in the energy of music — joining bands, playing shows… exploring. By 1986 their interests had turned to underground metal, and they formed a band named Incubus with Scott Latour as vocalist. They released a demo in 1987, and then a debut album in 1988 named Serpent Temptation.

A blistering onslaught of death/thrash, the album has been hailed as an underground classic, and it led to a deal with Nuclear Blast, who released the band’s next two albums —Beyond the Unknown (1990) and Discerning Forces (2000) — both of which were recorded by the Howard brothers as a two-piece band, with Francis as vocalist. By the time that third album was released, the band had changed their name to Opprobrium. Eight more years would pass before the band (now based in Tampa) released their fourth album (and most recent to date), Mandatory Evac.

Today, Relapse Records is re-releasing that 1988 classic, Serpent Temptation. It has been remastered for this release by Brad Boatright (Sleep, Obituary, etc.), and it includes four bonus tracks from the band’s 1987 demo, plus an extended booklet. What we’ve got for you on this release date is both a full stream of the remastered album and a track-by-track commentary by the Howard Brothers. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries