NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: GERYON — “THE WOUND AND THE BOW”

Mar 212016

Three years on from their fascinating, self-titled debut album, New York-based Geryon have now been embraced by Profound Lore Records, which will release the band’s second full-length, The Wound And The Bow. In mid-February, Stereogum premiered the opening track (“Silent Command”), and now we bring you the second single, which is the album’s title track.

Even if I hadn’t already been primed to pounce on this record by the impact of Geryon’s debut album, I would have made the leap anyway, for three reasons. First, Geryon is composed of two very talented musicians, Nicholas McMaster and Lev Weinstein, both of whom are also members of Krallice, along with the man who produced this album, Colin Marston.

Second, I have a weakness for bass-and-drum bands, and that’s what Geryon is — though this album also includes guest electronic-music contributions from Jim Mroz (Lussuria), Nick Podgurski (New Firmament, Feast of the Epiphany), and Chris Latina (Private Archive, Article Collection), as well as Marston. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TORMENTIUM: “COILS 1 – VOID OF MUSE”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Mar 212016

On the first of February we brought you the premiere of the first single from the debut album Bound To The Depths by the veteran Oregon black metal band Tormentium, and now we bring you another — a song called “Coils 1: Void of Muse“.

As the track’s title suggests, it’s the first part of a story told in three songs that closes the album. As the band explains, it “deals with the narrative of an estranged artist who finds his only inspiration from a mysterious entity beyond the world of the living, in Lovecraftian fashion.”

The lyrics, written from the artist’s perspective, tell of “the vision that crept from the void and found me beyond the walls of sleep,” its “slithering tentacles” coiling his brain, inspiring “a composition of ravenous haste gravely depicting the doorway to death”. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 70: DYSCARNATE

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Mar 212016

Dyscarnate 2016

(In this 70th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy Synn reviews the releases to date of UK-based Dyscarnate.)

Recommended for fans of: Immolation, Hate, Misery Index

I’ll probably catch some serious flack for saying this, but sometimes it seems like the UK scene has an unfortunate tendency, consciously or otherwise, to celebrate mass-appeal and mediocrity over inspiration and artistic integrity — often mixed in with a weird strain of pseudo-nationalist sentiment that demands your unequivocal, unthinking support for “True British Heavy Metal”… and insinuates that you’re a traitor or a poser if you fail to do so.

Despite the fact that the country is currently bubbling with fantastic, unique bands (particularly in the Doom and Black Metal genres) easily the equal of anything the rest of the world can produce, there’s still a large section of the scene who seem happy to just settle for what’s comfortable and familiar, be it the next in a seemingly endless line of interchangeable, lowest-common-denominator Thrash/Groove acts, or yet another generic, domestic-brand version of whatever’s currently trendy in the good old US of A.

And yet despite this, or maybe even because of it, it still pleases me whenever I get the chance to showcase a UK band capable of going above and beyond the call of duty. A band kicking ass and taking names entirely on their own terms. A band like Dyscarnate. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALGOMA (“PHTHISIS”) AND CHRONOBOT (“RED NAILS”)

Premieres 5 Responses »

Mar 202016

AlgomA are a “despair-fueled sludge” band from Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, Canada. Chronobot are purveyors of “noisy, spaced-out stoner doom” from Regina and Prince Albert in Saskatchewan. They have joined together on a new split release that will become available on vinyl and as a digital download on April 1 — and today we bring you the premiere of one track from the split by each band.

As you’re going to discover, although there are definite differences in the approach of these two bands, this split makes a lot of sense, too — because both bands are soul-crushingly heavy.

ALGOMA

AlgomA’s debut release was the full-length album Reclaimed by the Forest in 2014. Their two tracks on the split are “Phthisis” and “Electric Fence”, and what you’re about to hear is the first of those. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 3): NABAATH, DEAFEST, AUTOKRATOR, VUKARI, NIHILISTINEN BARBAARISUUS, NEBULUS

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 2 Responses »

Mar 202016

This is the delayed completion of a three-part post I began early last week, collecting and reviewing mostly new songs, EPs, and albums in the orbit of black metal. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

One benefit of the delay is that I happened across a very recent song that’s the fourth item in this final installment, which includes music from six bands that I’ve been enjoying. Most of what I’ve collected here falls on the “atmospheric” side of the black metal spectrum.

NABAATH

In a previous edition of Shades of Black that appeared the day after Christmas 2015, I wrote about a striking video for a live performance by a band named Nabaath (who are Russian but now based in Ukraine), accompanied by dancer Mariya KarMa. The name of the song was “Iron In Your Throat”, and it’s one of nine on Nabaath’s third album, Common Graves, which was released last fall and is now available in full on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (NOOTHGRUSH)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 1 Response »

Mar 202016

My introduction to Oakland’s Noothgrush came in 2011 via Southern Lord’s The Power of the Riff tour, a limited run of west coast dates that marked the band’s return after splitting up in 2001 (and their first show in Seattle since 1997). What I wrote about that show (here) was my best effort to explain the impact of the music:

“Imagine this: You’re chained in an iron receptacle, and through vents in the bottom, hot paving tar slowly flows in. Inexorably, at a glacial pace, it covers your feet, it climbs up your legs, it reaches and passes the part of your body that does all the thinking, it covers your abdomen and your chest, your arms strain at their chains and you scream as the tar boils the flesh away until it reaches the empty cavity on top of your shoulders and pours into your ears, mouth, and nose, suffocating you in a blistering black agony. Your last sensations are the smell of your own incinerating flesh and the shrieking chants of this band’s vocalist…. Sick, sloooooow, sludgy, and ultimately irresistible.”

SEEN AND HEARD: ASHCLOUD, BABYMETAL, BAT, THE BODY AND FULL OF HELL, DARKEND, DEVILDRIVER, ENTROPIA, FALLUJAH, GLORIA MORTI, HAIL OF BULLETS, MANTAR, MODOK, MOONSORROW, OCTOBER TIDE, PURGATORY, VICTIMS

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Mar 192016

Last week was another one in which I noticed lots of new songs and videos but didn’t have time to round them up, in part because I was writing about a flood of new songs that we were premiering ourselves. So now I’m doing what I failed to do earlier — but because I waited, the round-up has become jumbo-sized. Consequently, I’ve kept my introductions to the music brief and haven’t taken the time to consistently add album art or links as I usually do. When I did something like this last weekend (except with even fewer words), I said I didn’t intend to make a habit of it. I still don’t.

For those who pay attention to such things, I also failed to post Part 3 of the Shades of Black series I began at the start of the week. But I will do that tomorrow. Now, presented in alphabetical order, here are new songs and videos from 17 bands.

ASHCLOUD

On May 1, Xtreem Music will release the new album by Sweden’s Ashcloud. The album’s title tells you a lot of what you need to know about the music: Children of the Chainsaw. Here’s the title track — smoking, tree-felling, crusty Swedish death metal that’s awfully damned sweet. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: YLIASTER — “SOLILOQUY”

Premieres, Reviews 6 Responses »

Mar 182016

Yliaster is the name of a project formed by musician/vocalist Marcel Polit in partnership with drummer Dariusz ‘Daray’ Brzozowski (Vesania, Dimmu Borgir, ex-Vader). Later this month, Yliaster will release their debut album, Soliloquy. Previously we premiered the album’s title track, and now we bring you a stream of the entire record.

I was hooked by Yliaster‘s music as soon as I heard the album’s first single, the opening track “Nox”, and the rest of the songs have proven to be just as good. I’ve resisted the urge to nail a genre label onto this edifice, because it doesn’t fit cleanly into any one box. It’s probably enough to say that it’s heavy as hell. But of course I’ll say a few more things…. Continue reading »

LIKE RATS: “II”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Mar 182016

(Allen Griffin reviews the new album by Chicago’s Like Rats.)

Chicago-based Death Metal Quintet Like Rats are set to release their new album II on Southern Lord Records on March 25th. Composed of several members of Grindcore unit Weekend Nachos, Like Rats is a darker and more groove-oriented prospect, and II sees them making waves with their unique take on Old School Death Metal.

The band’s promotional material for this album draws comparisons between the unit and various well-known entities, particularly Obituary and Celtic Frost, and it’s certainly hard to argue with such assertions. Yet, to seasoned ears, Like Rats also seem to have tapped an obscure vein of early ’90s Midwestern Death Metal. Back then, groups such as Green Bay’s Bleed, Toledo, Ohio’s Gutted, and San Francisco’s Epidemic on their final full-length Exit Paradise (not Midwestern obviously, but the sound is there nonetheless) produced awesome, mid-paced Death Metal before the rise of Metalcore made such an approach so blasphemous in the eyes of True Metal fans. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WORMWITCH — “COFFIN BIRTH”

Premieres 6 Responses »

Mar 182016

Wormwitch are a trio from Vancouver, BC, consisting of vocalist/bassist Robin Harris, guitarist Colby Hink, and drummer Max Vüst — all of them former members of a local hardcore band named Dead Hand who have taken a sharp turn into the realms of European-influenced black metal. Last year they released their first EP, The Long Defeat, and are now at work on a second one. But in the meantime they discharged a stand-alone single in January named “Coffin Birth“, and today we bring you the premiere for an official video for the song.

Lyrically, “Coffin Birth” tells the tale of “nature taking charge and sacrificing and renewing itself, all in an effort to destroy the blight of man”. But the video isn’t one of those that sets the band’s performance in snow-dusted woods, where you wonder how they plugged in their amps. Instead, this video (which is really well-filmed and edited) attempts to confine this explosion of sound in a cramped practice room — and you really feel the band’s energy when watching it. Continue reading »

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