NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: PROTOLITH — “DARK”

Sep 202015

Almost five years have passed since Protolith released their debut album Light, and three years since their Sunsetter EP. But this Massachusetts-based band have now completed work on their second full-length, with a title that contrasts with the name of their debut: Dark. Today we’re happy to bring you a full streaming premiere of the new album in advance of its official release.

Dark represents a rare combination of genre-spanning musical styles, including sludge, doom, death, post-metal, and progressive metal. It’s evident that Protolith are adept at writing and performing in all of these fields, but what makes Dark such a fascinating achievement is the band’s success in blending them together so naturally within each song. Even with such marked contrasts in these musical styles, the music flows. The transitions feel organic, and at its best, Dark succeeds not just in transitioning between these different approaches but in uniting them. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 3 Responses »

Sep 202015

(Austin Weber prepared this Sunday’s edition of The Rearview Mirror.)

As on every Sunday at NCS, it’s time again for us to reflect on music that’s been out for a while, including music you may never have heard before. Today’s time-machine trip into the past takes us into the strange world of California natives Spaceboy, who never really got the recognition they deserved for any of their releases.

Spaceboy played a particularly unusual and complex style of Progressive-minded sludge/death/doom. I’ve strongly argued for years that their two full-length records — 1998’s Getting Warm On The Trail Of Heat and 2002’s Searching the Stone Library for the Green Page of Illusion — are two of the greatest sludge/stoner/doom records of all time. They set a high creative benchmark that has yet to be bested by any group, in my estimation. Here is “Pink Domain” to check out while you read on: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): PRAISE THE FLAME, VENEFIXION, EÏS, MEPHORASH, SACRAMENT OV IMPURITY

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 6 Responses »

Sep 202015

I listened to a lot of metal yesterday, making a rare effort to get ahead of the game on some things I’m planning to post on Monday. That didn’t work out exactly as I’d planned, because I spent more time impulsively exploring music I’d never heard before than writing those other posts. And most of what I heard that I thought was good was either black metal or thoroughly pestilential death metal with a charred coating. So once again I’ve collected the music under the heading Shades of Black, divided into two parts because there’s a lot I want to share with you. Part 2 will come later today.

(Once again, I want to thank my Serbian friend “M” for suggesting half of what I chose to write about in this two-part collection.)

PRAISE THE FLAME

The first band is Praise the Flame from Santiago, Chile, whose ranks include members of Death Yell, Megiddo, Insorcist, and Occidens. Their debut album Manifest Rebellion will be released September 21 on CD via Memento Mori, but the album is now streaming on Bandcamp until October 12. Continue reading »

SATURDAY SEEN AND HEARD: GRAVE, DECEASE, MOLOKEN, HAIDUK, HORN

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Sep 192015

It’s a rare Saturday morning here on my metallic island. My head isn’t hammering and my stomach isn’t heaving. I managed to resist the usual Friday night temptation to celebrate the end of the work week by destroying myself. The feeling is so unusual that I decided to get my head hammered and my stomach heaved this morning with some metal instead of a night of strong drinking. Here’s what I found:

GRAVE

For me, it’s hard to think of a better way to start a weekend of listening than with a new song by Grave, especially when it comes from an album adorned with the artwork of Costin Chioreanu. The album is Out of Respect For the Dead, scheduled for release by Century Media on October 16, and the new song (presented through a lyric video) is “Mass Grave Mass”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: SOIJL — “ENDLESS ELYSIAN FIELDS”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Sep 182015

Soijl is the name of a project founded by Swedish multi-instrumentalist Mattias Svensson, whose past musical involvements have included the likes of Saturnus, Istapp, Vanmakt, and Nidrike. On Soijl’s debut album, Endless Elysian Fields, Svensson is joined by Henrik Kindvall of Skald (ex-Nidrike), who wrote the lyrics and provided the vocals. What the two of them have achieved is a powerful and moving work that’s enormously heavy, beautifully atmospheric, and emotionally devastating — and today we give you the chance to hear the entire album in advance of its September 21 release by Solitude Productions.

On the seven tracks included on the album, Svensson has crafted music that’s achingly anguished, each song built upon a bedrock of huge, moaning doom riffs from which tendrils of bereft guitar melody spiral upward like smoke from the dying embers of a funeral pyre. The songs are usually slow and majestic, spreading a heavy mantle of despair and heartache in their wake. Those calamitous bedrock riffs are dire enough to drag you bodily into a sinkhole of grief, but the lead guitar melodies are sublime, often ethereal, and even transcendent in their cold, alabaster purity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZILLAH — “THEREFORE I AM”

Premieres 1 Response »

Sep 182015

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a song from the new album by Scotland’s Zillah.)

We’ve been covering Zillah here at NCS since 2011 when Islander first shared their music with our readers and extolled their hard-to-categorize brand of death metal. Recently we were fortunate to premiere a song by them called “Made Flesh And Bone”, which will appear on their soon-to-be-released new album entitled Serpentine Halo. I was very surprised yet happy to see that as of this writing, “Made Flesh And Bone” has been played 1,986 times! Which to me says at least some of our readers must have enjoyed it. For those who liked that one, you’ll be equally pleased with the Zillah song we are premiering today: “Therefore I Am”.

While “Made Flesh And Bone” took its time building toward a blasting second-half conclusion, “Therefore I Am” is an adrenaline-fueled ride from start to finish. It’s a swirling maelstrom of venomous barks and chaotic, spidery riffing colliding with a deep bass low-end and an accomplished drum performance that drives the song forward into the demented void. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF BRITISH, PART 2: NINKHARSAG / ETHEREAL / CHRONOCIDE

Reviews 3 Responses »

Sep 182015

(Following the first part of this two-part series that we posted yesterday, Andy Synn reviews three more albums by British bands.)

So for the second part of this (extremely limited) series, let’s delve into the UK’s too-often-overlooked and underappreciated Black Metal scene, shall we?

Now, much like the Black Metal scene in any country, the real gems of the UK scene are (in my opinion at least) far too often occluded and denied the attention they deserve by the hordes of corpse-painted copycats which clutter the scene like maggots, each one somehow convinced that their particular brand of insipid Satanic bluster makes them a unique and special proposition.

Whether it’s the pasty-faced nerds (replete with appropriately “evil” pseudonyms) whose music sounds more like the soundtrack to a late 90s RPG, or the ramshackle racket put out by the trve-kvlt-elite, who equate a lack of musical talent or identity with “integrity”… there’s just as much opportunity for those without any creative vision to simply ape the sounds of their forebears as there is a chance for those with real vision to express themselves.

And perhaps that’s as it should be. It is, after all, the way of the world. Thankfully, however, there are always going to be those who are simply better than others, diamonds in the rough shining more brightly than those around them could ever hope to.

And so I’ve (hopefully) picked out three of them for you today. Continue reading »

HORRENDOUS: “ANARETA”

Album Reviews 10 Responses »

Sep 182015

(Leperkahn reviews the new album by Horrendous.)

Unlike a lot of the metal community, I didn’t come to Anareta as a particularly rabid fan of Horrendous – I had heard plenty of praise for its predecessor, Ecdysis, but I hadn’t gotten around to playing the CD copy I got on sale from 20 Buck Spin earlier this summer. Thus, I came to Anareta with an open mind. And let me say, HOT DIGGITY DAMN, this might be the best thing I’ve heard all year. These guys harken back to the time when death metal was just starting to flex its wings and go in new, progressive, melodic directions, evoking Death’s Human and At the Gates, pre-Slaughter of the Soul.

It starts much as Ecdysis did, with a slow section of doomy guitars that seem very free-form – yet this opening section of “The Nihilist” serves an important purpose, as it’s a welcome palette cleanser, a built-in intro before the band launches into the main riff. That main riff, or rather the sequence of two riffs the band alternate between after the intro, are easily the best opening-song riffs I’ve heard all year – one listen to their one-two punch will convince you that “The Nihilist” was destined to be an opener, and a hell of an opener at that. I can’t help but want to start running around like a methed-out maniac in the middle of my suburban cul-de-sac. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WINDFAERER — “THE EVERLASTING”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Sep 172015

We have an embarrassment of riches. At the end of June we had the pleasure of premiering a song named “Celestial Supremacy” from the wonderful new album by New Jersey’s Windfaerer, and now — less than a week away from the release of Tenebrosum — we get to bring you another new song: “The Everlasting”.

When our old friend Phro provided his imaginative and evocative review of Tenebrosum, he described it as “seven tracks of pure frigid despair that could be summed up with three adjectives: Melancholy, punishing, and fierce.” All three adjectives could apply equally well to “The Everlasting” alone — but that wouldn’t exhaust the sensations inspired by the song. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS, PART 3: INTRONAUT, SACRILEGE, GOLDEN VOID, CULT OF OCCULT

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Sep 172015

(We present the third part of Leperkahn’s jumbo-sized Thursday round-up of new songs an videos. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here.)

Here we have yet another collection of new premieres. They certainly run the gamut, from arguably-not-metal to the very definition of metal-to-its-core, while also mixing big names with some lesser-known groups. Have an interesting trip below, starting with a new offering from Intronaut.

INTRONAUT

I’ve never really spent much time with these dudes. For whatever reason, nothing I’ve heard from them has really grabbed me (though what I’ve heard isn’t much –- they’re just one of those bands I haven’t really gotten around to). That seems to be changing with their new album for Century Media, their fifth, out on November 13 and entitled The Direction of Last Things.

The first track from it, “Fast Worms”, premiered yesterday via MetalSucks. The track starts out pretty early on with a hell of a heavy verse, reminding of The Ocean, with some proggier vocals in the mix. Some hints of Mastodon are in there, too, as well as a heavier, almost death-metal element that comes in at times. The more ambient middle section goes all kinds of cool places, too. Check it out below, and gear up for November 13th if you dig it. Continue reading »

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