NO CLEAN SINGING

WITCH MOUNTAIN — SHOW REVIEW AND INTERVIEW (KAYLA DIXON)

Concert Reviews, Interviews 8 Responses »

Oct 192015

(Grant Skelton provides both an audio stream of his recent interview with Witch Mountain vocalist Kayla Dixon and a review of their show in Memphis on October 7.)

Witch Mountain are currently on the Blackest Of The Black Tour with Veil Of Maya, Prong, Superjoint, and Danzig. Prior to the band’s set at Minglewood Hall in Memphis on October 7, I had an opportunity to sit down with the band’s new vocalist, Kayla Dixon. We discussed vocal training, the band’s cover of Black Sabbath’s “Sleeping Village”, and progress on the band’s next album. Stream the interview here on Soundcloud, courtesy of Local X Radio (localxradio.com): Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NYX — “GOING ON”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Oct 192015

October 30 is the date set by Agonia Records for the release of Home, the debut album by a German duo (Blitz and Vinterbarn) who call themselves NYX. We’re helping introduce you to NYX through our North American premiere of a song from the album called “Going On”.

The backbone of this creative, multifaceted song is made from black metal, but it reveals other musical ingredients as well — and the overall effect of the music is dark, unsettling, and very engrossing. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (EDGE OF SANITY)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 12 Responses »

Oct 182015

I didn’t get into metal until much later in life than most of the people who are reading these words. My education came as a result of my own exploration, but equally as a result of getting schooled by commenters at this site. And I hate to tell you this, but comments never go away — my web host has a searchable database of all of them for the last 6 years. And so I can tell you precisely the date when I first saw the name Edge of Sanity: It was July 30, 2010, and it came via a comment from one of our earliest and most frequent commenters, an old friend who called himself ElvisShotJFK.

I had posted a review of Wolvhammer’s debut album Black Marketeers of World War III in which I named a few bands as reference points for the music on the album, including Entombed. After ElvisShotJFK commented that Entombed had been a gateway band into heavier music when he was younger, I replied that Entombed “must have been particularly stunning to hear when they were fresh and so different from most metal that surrounded them.” And he then wrote: Continue reading »

NEPAL DEATHFEST!

Metal News 1 Response »

Oct 172015

The small Himalayan nation of Nepal has experienced a staggering onslaught of natural disasters this year, with devastating earthquakes last spring that took more than 9,000 lives and injured many others. Yet the Nepalese are clearly a resilient people — including those in the community of metal. I’ve been fortunate to get to know some of those people via the internet, including Aabeg Gautam of Dying Out Flame, and through him I’ve learned of a metal festival in Nepal that I wanted to do my own small part to help publicize.

The festival is called Nepal Deathfest, and the third edition of the event is now scheduled to take place on January 22-23, 2016, in the capital city of Kathmandu. The second day of the festival will feature the long-running German death metal band Fleshcrawl as the headliner, and the Japanese noise/grind band Sete Star Sept will headline Day 1. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FOREFATHER, CHRIST AGONY, VELDES, THIRD REICH SATAN’S THRONE, MORODH

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 11 Responses »

Oct 172015

Here, once again, is a collection of recent musical discoveries in a blackened vein that I’ve been enjoying — and I hope you’ll enjoy them, too. As is often the case, I’ve filtered what I’ve found to provide a diverse playlist, and I’ve found so much that I’ve divided this Shades of Black installment into two parts. Part Two will arrive tomorrow. Or possibly the day after (I’m going to a late show tonight, and that tends to play havoc with the morning after.)

I’ve had to make some compromises in this two-part post. In some cases, I’m featuring full-album or full-EP streams despite the fact that in some cases I haven’t had a chance to listen carefully to every song. Ideally, I would wait and do that and then write a thorough review. But I’m able to write so few reviews while doing everything else I need to do for the site that it’s safer to feature the music this way rather than risk omitting it altogether. I’m just facing reality.

So here we go… and don’t expect this is all going to sound the same. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PANOPTICON, DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT AND GNAW THEIR TONGUES, BLOOD FOLKE, REGNVM ANIMALE, SECOND TO SUN, BLOODHUNTER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Oct 162015

As I explained in a previous round-up today, I managed to find some time to catch up on new things yesterday. The previous round-up focused on album announcements with artwork (and one very good new song), and in this one I’ve collected some new music streams plus one older one that has really gotten under my skin. Lots of music in here, but I hope you’ll give all of it at least a test drive.

PANOPTICON

I was one of the fortunate few who got an advance listen to Panopticon’s new album Autumn Eternal, and therefore I had my say about it in July (here). I won’t repeat or attempt to summarize that review, except to say that this is one of my favorite albums of the year. And today, everyone else gets to hear it, too — because it’s now available for streaming (and purchase) on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

A METAL GENDER STUDY

Mosh Pit 7 Responses »

Oct 162015

Jo Bench (Bolt Thrower)

(In March of this year we gave cultural anthropologist and dedicated metalhead David Mollica a platform for recruiting people willing to be interviewed for a research project about gender in the metal community and what it means to be a metalhead. And now we’ve got a report on his interview results and conclusions.)

I know I’m all kinds of slow with getting to writing this, but you know… excuses and stuff. Anyway I’d like to share what I found from the interviews some of you lovely readers were kind enough to sit through with me months ago. Thanks to your help I ended up interviewing 6 women and 5 men, making this the first study of its kind that I know of to have equal gender representation. Most other studies looking at gender and metal have ended up talking to a pile of dudes and next to no women.

Without getting into the fine and horrendously boring details, I do inductive research. Basically, I like to ask questions and see what I find. I’m not a mathematician and I don’t like to treat people like laboratory subjects. Instead I look for patterns and common themes that emerge from the interviews I conduct. I then take those themes and patterns and put them into categories that can be used to build a model of what I am researching. This time around, I found four common categories that help to explain why women are sometimes under-represented at metal gatherings. Some of these things are going to be obvious to you, so keep in mind that the research was intended for an audience in the social sciences who generally can’t tell Fenriz from Gaahl. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABHORRENT — “A LIGHTNESS OF MIND”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Oct 162015

Abhorrent are a death metal band whose members include bassist Erlend Caspersen from Spawn of Possession, drummer Lyle Cooper (Absurdist, ex-The Faceless), guitarist Marlon Friday (Absurdist), and vocalist Nick Brown. Their debut album Intransigence will be released by Willowtip Records on November 20th. We’ve already praised an advance track from the album named “Ifrit”, and now we bring you another: “A Lightness of Mind“.

This new song features guest vocals by Mephistopheles’ Matthew “Chalky” Chalk (ex-Psycroptic), and he’s not the only notable guest who contributes to the album: It also includes performances by Trevor Strnad (The Black Dahlia Murder), Malcolm Pugh (Inferi, A Loathing Requiem), and Antonio Ascencio (Serocs). And as you can see, it’s adorned by cover art from one of our favorite metal artists, Timo Ketola. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GENEVIEVE — “ESCAPISM”

Premieres 1 Response »

Oct 162015

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of the scathing new album by Maryland’s Genevieve.)

By definition, escapism denotes an activity or fantasy used to distract us from our daily pain and boredom. So when Maryland-based black/death act Genevieve decided to call their record Escapism, it seems to have been used here more like the opposite of what the word means — as if its use here instead actually represents an invitation of nightmares and horror into their world as opposed to hiding in positive forms of escapism. I get the sense that with music as pitch-black and haunting as Genevieve’s, this reversal of the term’s meaning was done purposefully.

For all the immense hatred and chaos on display in their music, Genevieve do take time to offer reprieves from the chaotic storm bearing down upon listeners, in the form of sparse instrumentals called “Paradise I” and “Paradise II”, which open and close the record. Both are built upon Middle Eastern-sounding melodies and played with a slow, restrained feel, although “Parasite II” reveals a more drone-influenced soundscape overall, one that that creates a sense of mystery as it closes the intense journey that Escapism has taken you on. Continue reading »

ULCERATE / BELL WITCH / AGELESS OBLIVION -– LIVE AT THE CHAMELEON, NOTTINGHAM OCT 11, 2015

Concert Reviews 4 Responses »

Oct 162015

(Andy Synn attended the performances of Ulcerate, Bell Witch, and Ageless Oblivion in Nottingham, England, on October 11 and turns in this report, with his own videos of the show.)

Though my erstwhile compatriots may have been attending the sun and shenanigans of California Deathfest without me last weekend (seriously, where was my invite? I thought we were friends!?!) that doesn’t mean that yours truly was without suitably metallic diversions of my own, as I was lucky enough to bear witness to the titanic Death Metal maelstrom known as Ulcerate rolling through my town, leaving a trail of shattered lives and lacerated ear-drums in its wake.

The story gets even better though, as the New Zealend three-piece were accompanied on their pilgrimage of pain by gloom-heavy doomsters (and perennial NCS darlings) Bell Witch and uber-riff-mongers Ageless Oblivion (whose album Penthos I picked as one of my absolute favourite releases of last year).

Not only that but the venue they played, The Chameleon, is the sort of intimate, DIY place that packs a lot of character, and a frankly massive soundsystem, into a very small space, meaning there’s nowhere to hide from the overwhelming onslaught of sonic punishment unleashed by the bands.

You know how an explosion that occurs in an enclosed space is ten times more devastating than one that occurs out in the open? Well that sums up the night quite nicely. Continue reading »

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