SEEN AND HEARD: ABYSS, COLD CELL, INFERNAL WAR, KURHAN, SABERTOOTH ZOMBIE, VELUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 202015
 

 

What’s that they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men? I had collected a great volume of new songs since Monday and began displaying the ones I wanted to recommend yesterday, in alphabetical order. I made it through “L” and had intended to finish the back half of the alphabet today. But in the meantime I came across still more worthy new song premieres by bands whose names didn’t conveniently fit in the “M” – “Z” category. So much for that idea.

Anyway, here are a few more things I discovered since yesterday and a few (but not all) of the tracks I originally intended to provide today. I guess that means I have more round-ups to prepare for the weekend…

ABYSS

20 Buck Spin is set to release the debut album by a Toronto band named Abyss — the album’s title is Heretical Anatomy — and yesterday DECIBEL premiered a track named “The Atonement”. It’s a searing blast of thrashing, lashing death metal that punctuates its fury with forceful hammer blows and a breakdown that will provoke sore-neck syndrome. Gruesome, morbid vocal vomit, too. Continue reading »

PORTA NIGRA: “KAISERSCHNITT”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 202015
 

 

(Andy Synn penned this review of the new album by Germany’s Porta Nigra.)

Inspiration is an unpredictable mistress. You can never be sure when, or how, she’s going to strike.

I hadn’t planned on reviewing Kaiserschnitt, not consciously anyway. Even though I still have a lot of sick love for Fin de Siècle, Porta Nigra’s devilish debut, I initially intended to listen to their latest release merely to satisfy my curiosity. After all, I had other, more important things to be focussing on.

Or so I thought.

As I said, inspiration strikes at the oddest times and in the strangest of ways, and from my first listen to the album I found myself making up the disconnected mental notes and disordered comparisons which, ultimately, have come together to make up this review. I couldn’t have predicted it, I certainly hadn’t planned on it, but here we are anyway. Continue reading »

THEMADISRAELI’S TOP TEN THRASH METAL ALBUMS OF ALL TIME (PART 2)

 Listmania  13 Responses »
Feb 202015
 

 

(NCS writer TheMadIsraeli completes his list of thrash metal’s Top 10 albums of all time. The first five picks, along with an introduction, appear in this post.)

VI: Sepultura – Arise

It takes a lot of restraint for me not to declare this the greatest thrash album ever created.  Sepultura’s Arise is THE epitome of everything I love, need, and want in thrash metal and it’s so immaculate in its execution that attempting to quantify it is nearly impossible.  It’s brutal, it’s fast (so fucking fast), it has dynamics in the songwriting. Andreas Kisser knew how to write some of the most unique solos in the entirety of thrash metal, and Max and Andreas wrote some of the most intense, drama-filled riffage while keeping things savage and merciless.  Whenever Sepultura breaks into frantic, demon-slaying speed from a mid-paced stomp, as in “Desperate Cry”, provides me an adrenaline rush that knows no equal.  It would be fair to say I’ve listened to Arise more than 10,000 times and I’m still not sick of it.

Seriously, this album is the very definition of savagery. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE RITUAL AURA — “TIME-LOST UTOPIA”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Feb 202015
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new song by The Ritual Aura.)

Lately we have witnessed an off-shoot within the technical death metal sound, one more progressively focused than dedicated to sheer mind-numbing bouts of hitting listeners with hammers and bolts of sonic lightning. Acts such as Obscura, Fallujah, and most recently Beyond Creation, have exemplified this trend and taken tech-death in a new and higher-minded direction.

Joining these high-level acts are a group of Australian upstarts named The Ritual Aura who decimate with a focus and skill similar to that of the aforementioned bands. We at NCS are proud to showcase the considerable talents of this band with a premiere of their new song “Time-Lost Utopia”, which will appear on their upcoming full-length, Laniakea. Continue reading »

THE DEVIL AND THE ALMIGHTY BLUES: SELF-TITLED

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 202015
 

 

(Grant Skelton reviews the new album by a Norwegian band named The Devil and the Almighty Blues.)

Even a cursory listen to metal will reveal elements of two of its parent genres, blues and jazz. But metal’s kinship with these genres does not end with musical derivation and composition. Metal, blues, and jazz also share similar folklore. Long before parents were blaming Dee Snider and Rob Halford for their little hellions’ (see what I did there?) adolescent tyranny, jazz was called “the devil’s music.”

One might trace this attribution to the decadence of the “Roaring 20’s.” Alcohol was outlawed, and that meant no sales taxes. On the black market, anyone who could provide alcohol could make a pretty penny from a customer who wanted his choice poison. As it happened, the establishments that provided the booze provided the music. Jazz itself had nothing to do with the alcohol, cocaine, and hedonistic sexuality of this era. But in the minds of many, jazz was guilty by association. Sin sells. And in the 20’s, jazz was its soundtrack. Continue reading »

THEMADISRAELI’S TOP TEN THRASH METAL RECORDS OF ALL TIME (PART 1)

 Listmania  9 Responses »
Feb 192015
 

Agostino Arrivabene – “Vanitas In Refraction”

 

(NCS writer TheMadIsraeli presents his list of thrash metal’s Top 10 albums of all time. The first five picks appear in this post, and the remaining five will appear in Part 2 tomorrow [here].)

This particular list is something that’s going to piss some people off and perhaps spark some sarcastic comments.  It would probably do that regardless of the contents. When you don’t include anything by The Big Four, of course you don’t understand the roots of the genre and are dissing genre-defining classics.  But if you do pick anything from The Big Four, you’re unoriginal, have no underground cred, etc., etc.

Thrash is a style of metal that gets taken pretty fucking seriously, as opposed to others where there definitely seems to be a more “you like what you like” mentality.  In my observation, It’s also the sub-genre of metal where the recognition and respect of the eldership are most likely to make or break your credibility as a fan of the music.  The thrash community is almost zealot-like in the way it can ostracize you because you don’t think Metallica and Megadeth were the pinnacles of the style.

I’m gonna be one of those guys who has nothing from The Big Four on his list, so I’ll be expecting the hipster comments for sure.  My list, as per usual, is not numbered in any kind of order that denotes anything. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BINARY CREED, CRYPT SERMON, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, GOST, GRUESOME, HACAVITZ, HOLOTROPIC, INCULTER, LLOTH, LVXCAELIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 192015
 

 

Greetings sistren and brethren. I have a bountiful collection of new songs and album streams to recommend. One of the reasons the collection is so bountiful is that I haven’t had time to pounce upon them with my usual catlike reflexes this week. I am instead moving at the speed of the loris horde in the NCS compound, which is to say, slower than the oozing of maple sap in a Vermont winter. In other words, there’s a backlog — and now the dam bursts.

Don’t be daunted by the volume of music in this collection. Just sip it slowly, a little bit at a time, as you would that jug of 100 proof rot-gut moonshine you keep under the sink next to the dry-aged head of the last person who pissed you off.

I’m presenting the music in alphabetical order by band name — and in this post I’ve only made it up to “L”. I actually have still more new music from bands whose names come later in the alphabet. I hope to package those up for tomorrow. Continue reading »

SARPANITUM: “BLESSED BE MY BROTHERS”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 182015
 

 

(Here we have Austin Weber’s review of the new album by Sarpanitum, from the UK and Japan.)

I often follow new or lesser-known metal bands after hearing flashes of brilliance that hint at possible future growth and evolution. This is exactly the reason I began following Sarpanitum after hearing their 2011 EP Fidelium. It was an interesting effort, but now they’ve moved from hinting at brilliance in spots to displaying brilliance in spades on their second full-length, Blessed Be My Brothers.

If you want a sonic snapshot of what Sarpanitum seem to execute, song after song with ease, imagine a merger between Hate Eternal and Nile that then gets a heavy melodic boost and focus, while surrounded by blackened infusions and enhanced by atmosphere-building moments that add a dual epic/triumphant feel to Blessed Be My Brothers. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: A RELAPSE RECORDS SAMPLER, BEYOND CREATION, TENGGER CAVALRY, DEIVOS

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Feb 182015
 

 

A lot of exciting things have happened in the world of metal over the last 48 hours, despite the fact that I haven’t had time to write about them. Yes, amazingly, it’s true: When trees fall in this forest, they make a sound even if you don’t hear them (or read about them) on this putrid blog. I will mention a few of the occurrences in this post, and then collect more for a post tomorrow.

RELAPSE RECORDS: 25 YEARS OF CONTAMINATION

Yesterday Relapse Records released a digital sampler that, at least in my memory, is the most humongous collection of songs yet released in a digital format. And on top of that, it’s a “pay what you want” offering.

It’s part of the label’s celebration of its 25th year in business, and it includes more than 180 tracks, one from almost every band that has released an album or EP on Relapse since 1990. The sampler can be streamed and downloaded via Bandcamp at this location: Continue reading »

THE ORDER OF APOLLYON: “THE SWORD AND THE DAGGER”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 182015
 

 

In the five years since The Order of Apollyon released their debut album (The Flesh), the band’s former multinational line-up has undergone a near-complete makeover. Only the founder, guitarist/vocalist BST (Aosoth, ex-Balrog, ex-Aborted), remains, now joined by three other experienced musicians who are all members of the French extreme metal scene. Their new album, just released in Europe by Listenable Records, is The Sword and the Dagger.

The band’s debut album seasoned death metal with elements of black metal, and the new album again displays a blending of those styles, though I’d go so far as to say that the new record is more black than death.

Much of the music storms with intensity, driven hard by superheated blast-beat assaults and double-bass thunder, pulsating bass lines, and fleet-fingered riffs that swarm, writhe, and jab. But the rampaging aggressiveness is tempered with contrasting instrumental interludes and passages of sweeping, majestic melody. Continue reading »

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