NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: REBEL WIZARD, SHRAPNEL STORM, THE BODY, OCEANS OF SLUMBER

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 13 Responses »

Dec 122015

That post title is a little misleading. I’m writing this (somewhat hurriedly) on a Friday afternoon, because the place of employment for my fucking day job is having its annual holiday party tonight, and the odds are I will get fucked up and be in a world of hurt on Saturday morning — because (obviously) I have all the self-control of a three-year-old.

So, this is a selection of new music that I heard and liked on a Friday, presented for your eyes and ears on a Saturday. As you will no doubt expect by now, no two songs sound remotely alike.

REBEL WIZARD

“Rebel Wizard” is the name of a solo project by the Australian musician Nekrasov, whose work under that name is probably better known in certain circles than Rebel Wizard (and whose most recent release I reviewed here last month). The first Rebel Wizard recording that I heard (and reviewed here) was an EP released in July named Negative Wizard Metal. Just yesterday another EP was released on Bandcamp, this one entitled Invocation of the Miserable Ones. It has many of the attributes that made me like the last EP so much. For example: Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 5)

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Dec 112015

(Here’s Part 5 of our Norwegian friend Gorger’s entertaining multi-part feature on bands we seem to have overlooked at NCS. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here; Part 4 is here. And be sure to check out Gorger’s Metal.)

Intro shmintro. Now, with those formalities out of the way, lets get to it.

KHORS – THE FLAME OF ETERNITY’S DECLINE (Re-Release)

Ukrainian Khors celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their début, and mark this occasion by releasing the album in remastered edition with new cover art. My two previous meetings with the band, their fourth and fifth albums Return to Abandoned (2010) and Wisdom of Centuries (2012), left me with a decent impression, but not much more. I haven’t forgotten the albums though. At least that’s a good sign.

Something seems to have been lost along the way, for my impressions of The Flame Of Eternity’s Decline are a good deal better. The music here eagerly grabs me and drags me along from the very beginning. Continue reading »

2015 – A YEAR IN EPs

LISTMANIA 2015, SHORT BUT SWEET 20 Responses »

Dec 112015

(So far, our year-end LISTMANIA series has mostly been devoted to year-end lists from other sites and print zines, but today we begin rolling out our own lists, and we start with the first of six that Andy Synn is preparing. Every day next week we’ll post his remaining five.)

Such is the chaos that is my life at the moment (in between trying to get my End of Year List/s done, I’ve also been putting together a PhD proposal/application, booking a photo shoot for Beyond Grace, TRYING to book shows for next year for us, and helping some good friends move house) that I almost forgot about my annual semi-traditional round-up of all the great EPs I’ve heard this year!

Yes, yes, I know there are several bloggers and/or sites out there who argue that EPs should be considered right alongside full-length albums when it comes to summing up matters at the end of the year… but I’m not one of them.

No, I think EPs deserve their own category, and their own specific focus, and so I’ve written this little round-up to give some of the year’s shortest, sharpest, releases their due. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CONAN — “REVENGEANCE”

Premieres 10 Responses »

Dec 112015

They look so friendly, don’t they? Sitting there in front of that wall of green as if they hadn’t a care in the world. But once they put their game faces on, crank the power, and begin dropping riffs and drum beats as big as meteor strikes, it’s a different story.

I’m a relative latecomer to Conan. What really sold me was their performance at last May’s Maryland Deathfest. It may have been the heaviest set I saw at the whole festival. I certainly can’t remember any other band that delivered a more pulverizing performance. By the time they finished, I think I had something like the concert-goer’s version of PTSD. My teeth vibrate just thinking about it again.

They’ve called their music “Caveman Battle Doom”, and they’re right in this sense — Conan’s music exerts a primal appeal, as if they’ve figured out how to wake up elements of our DNA that have been dormant since the last ice age. Their new album is named Revengeance, and it’s set for release on January 29 by Napalm Records. Today we bring you the premiere of a lyric video for the album’s title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MONOLITHE — “EPSILON AURIGAE”

Premieres, Reviews 5 Responses »

Dec 112015

Today is the release date of Epsilon Aurigae, the fifth album by the remarkable Parisian doom band Monolithe, and in cooperation with Debemur Morti Productions we have for you a full stream of the album.

Epsilon Aurigae is divided into three tracks — “Synoecist”, “TMA-0”, and “Everlasting Sentry” — each of them exactly 15 minutes in length. All three are massively heavy, atmospherically chilling, and ultimately spellbinding in their effect. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: STEREOGUM’S LIST OF THE 50 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 42 Responses »

Dec 102015

Of all the year-end lists we re-post from “big platform” web sites as part of our LISTMANIA extravaganza, this is the one I most look forward to seeing. It’s Stereogum’s list of “The 50 Best Metal Albums of 2015“, which was published today. I look forward to it because it’s assembled by a team of people whose opinions I respect a lot — the five guys responsible for Stereogum’s excellent Black Market column this year: Michael Nelson, Doug Moore, Ian Chainey, Aaron Lariviere, and Wyatt Marshall.

This year’s Stereogum list is preceded by a long opinion piece — prompted in part by Disma’s removal from some metal festival line-ups — that raises the thorny and always-controversial issue of whether there are lines crossed by musicians that warrant “excommunication” of their music from our lives. Regardless of what you think about that issue, this is a good and interesting list. It includes some of whom we can safely anoint as “the usual suspects” this year, but some deep cuts as well. And I’m especially happy to see the pick at the top of the list. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: ROLLING STONE’S 20 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 31 Responses »

Dec 102015

As part of our continuing effort to bring you year-end “best of” lists published by selected print zines and “big platform” web sites, today we’re re-posting Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “20 Best Metal Albums of 2015“, which has just appeared.

You may remember that not long ago we identified the lone metal album that appeared in Rolling Stone’s overall list of the 50 Best Albums of 2015. But this list is a metal-only list, and it’s obviously a much bigger collection of names. Here’s the list: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ROTTING CHRIST, RAGNAROK, CALIFORNIA DEATHFEST, DECAPITATED, CHARM DESIGNER

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Dec 102015

The end of the year is fast approaching, but the freight train of metal isn’t slowing down. Here are just a few of the things that caught my eyes and ears over the last 24 hours, sifted from my scanning of the NCS in-box and my daily dive into the interhole.

ROTTING CHRIST

I’ve probably mentioned somewhere in the dim mists of the past that Rotting Christ were the band whose music first convinced me that I needed to learn more about black metal — my first step along a musical left hand path from which I’ve never turned back. The following announcement, received yesterday, was thus an especially exciting piece of news:

On February 12, Season of Mist will release Rotting Christ’s twelfth studio album, Rituals. In addition, Stereokiller premiered the album’s first advance track, “Elthes Kyrie“, in the U.S. (it also appeared at many other sites around the world). Continue reading »

UN: “THE TOMB OF ALL THINGS”

Album Reviews 9 Responses »

Dec 102015

(We present Grant Skelton’s review of the debut album by Seattle-based Un.)

“All is vanity. What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun…All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it…”

Ecclesiastes 1:2-3, 8

Do you remember the last time you listened to an album, metal or otherwise, that you connected with? I don’t mean an album of good, or even great, music. Not something you put on as background noise. I mean music that sounds like it was written expressly for you. Have you ever heard a metal song, perhaps even without knowing the lyrics, and felt like the music was telling the story of your own life? Something so personal that you’d swear the songwriters were watching your very life and innermost thoughts? For me, Un’s debut The Tomb Of All Things is one such album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ATLANTIS CHRONICLES — “BACK TO HADATOPIA”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Dec 102015

Atlantis Chronicles may come from France, or they may come from deep beneath the waves, where they learned the stories of a lost civilization and now communicate them to us through the medium of their music. I grant you that it’s most likely they come from France, but it’s nice to imagine that the question is still an open one.

This band’s second album, Barton’s Odyssey, is still deep in the depths, surfacing slowly, projected for emergence on March 25, 2016, via Apathia Records. But we do have a glimmer of the album for you today, a song called “Back To Hadatopia” presented in the form of a lyric video. Continue reading »

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