AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: MANES — “BE ALL END ALL”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 102014
 

 

Prepare yourselves for a big departure from our normal fare as we present a full-album stream of Be All End All, the new release by Norway’s Manes.

You would be hard-pressed to find a band who have led as many diverse musical lives at Manes. At the time of the band’s genesis in about 1992, and through the release of their 1999 debut album Under Ein Blodraud Maane, they were a black metal band. And then there was a hiatus — until the second album Vilosophe was released in 2003. It sounded nothing like what the band had been creating prior to the break, and it defied categorization. More releases followed, including a third album (2007’s How the World Came To An End), and then another hiatus followed.

Now the band have, in effect, begun a third life with Be All End All, which will soon be released by Debemur Morti. This follows a two-song single named Vntrve released at the end of the summer (reviewed here), and it’s the first full-length from the band in seven years. Continue reading »

MATT HARVEY (EXHUMED): THOUGHTS AFTER READING “EXTREMITY RETAINED”

 Mosh Pit  31 Responses »
Oct 092014
 

EDITOR’S PREFACE:  Thanks to a recommendation from my friend MaxR at Metal Bandcamp, I discovered an article written by veteran musician Matt Harvey of California’s Exhumed that he posted at the Exhumed blog (here) in late August. It consists of reflections about the evolution of death metal, as he has witnessed it, over the more than two decades he has spent in the scene.

I thought the article was really well-written and very thought-provoking, and it occurred to me (and to Max) that it was something more people ought to see. I also suspected that it would generate some interesting discussion among readers of our site. So, I contacted Matt Harvey and asked for his permission to re-publish his article here, and he graciously agreed.

I’ve re-posted the article exactly as it appeared on the Exhumed blog, with the same graphics, links, and music clips. Perhaps needless to say, I hope people will make the time to read this in its entirety and to add your thoughts in the Comments. I don’t expect everyone will agree with all of Matt’s observations and opinions, but I think you’ll find it informative and interesting, regardless. Here you go: Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II, INSTALLMENT 5

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Oct 092014
 

(In this 5th installment of a multi-part piece, Austin Weber continues rolling out recommended releases from his latest exploratory  forays through the underground. The first installment is here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.)

KATAPLEXIS

Let’s start today’s edition with a bang, the kind of loud and ear-shattering ruckus you might associate with a mortar shelling or rapid machine-gun fire flying out of an unnecessarily huge extended clip. The time has come for the death-grind fun-free happy hour, cue Kataplexis.

This Canadian wrecking crew are relentlessly crushing, suffocating, and pummeling in approach. They offer a fair bit of contrast not readily present in most deathgrind, vacillating between short, purely grind-blasted death bursts and longer grindcore-fed chaotic death metal numbers. All of which pairs nicely with the occasional black metal poisonous riffs in their veins, coursing a darker shade of rot into the proceedings. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SHAPE OF DESPAIR — “CLOUDS IN A SHAPE OF DESPAIR”

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 082014
 

 

(Comrade Aleks returns to our site with this interview of Jarno Salomaa, guitarist and keyboardist for the Finnish band Shape of Despair.)

Shape of Despair is an example of solid, quiet, perfect funeral doom. They have a sense of taste and a sense of proportion, but the band’s last full-length release saw the light of day ten years ago. It’s true – since 2004, Shape Of Despair have only one EP and a split-EP, but now the time has come and they’re ready to return and crush our spirit with a new dirge.

As for me… there’s one more reason to do this interview, for the band will play in Moscow in January 2015, and that’s why we got in touch with Jarno Salomaa (guitars, keyboards). He’s here to tell us about the future release of Shape Of Despair, his international all-star doom-project Clouds, and a few more things. Continue reading »

1349: “MASSIVE CAULDRON OF CHAOS”

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Oct 082014
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Norway’s 1349.)

Something that I’m more than willing to admit to is the fact that, when writing a review for NCS, I’ll take time to peruse other sites and see how the opinions I’ve formed stack up against those of other writers, and how well (or not) they fit with the common consensus.

I don’t see much of a problem with it personally, although I know several other writers who like to review in a vacuum, without the potential confounding influence of other people’s opinions. Often it means I stumble upon interesting factoids that I might otherwise have missed, which add context to my own work, or interesting interpretations that make me revisit what I’ve written in a different light.

Of course, occasionally you cross paths with the sort of completely biased review written by an oblivious fanboy, or an ignorantly negative attack written by someone with an obvious agenda, but mostly I find the opinions of other writers (particularly the ones whose opinions I really respect, regardless of whether I share them) to be a great help to me in my own work.

Why am I saying all this at the start of what’s meant to be a review of the (awesome) new album by 1349? Continue reading »

BLUT AUS NORD: “MEMORIA VETUSTA III — SATURNIAN POETRY”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 082014
 

(This is the completion of a review that, in effect, began when I premiered the first advance track from the album.)

Two years ago Blut Aus Nord produced its last full-length album, Cosmosophy, which brought to a resounding close the 777 trilogy. Every album in the trilogy drew praise from critics and fans alike, despite the fact that no one of them sounded quite like any of the others. Cosmosophy left wide open the intriguing question of where Vindsval would go next — though in fairness, with a band as inventive, idiosyncratic, and contrarian as this one, that’s always a question.

Where Blut Aus Nord has gone next is Memoria Vetusta III — Saturnian Poetry. Having completed the very personal 777 project, in which Vindsval chose to work alone, the new album features a new drummer, a superb human one named Thorns, as well as stellar cover art by Kristian “Necrolord” Wahlin. But what about the music?.

The reappearance of the Memoria Vetusta title will no doubt have fans thinking about the first two albums bearing that same name, despite the fact that Dialogue With the Stars followed Fathers of the Icy Age by roughly 13 years and Saturnian Poetry comes more than five years after the release of Dialogue. In short, this is no trilogy; unlike 777, these are not three parts of a single massive piece of music. But at the same time the resurrection of that title, which refers to memories of what is long past, was not done carelessly — the new album makes a fitting companion for the first two. Standing alone, Saturnian Poetry is a superb achievement. Continue reading »

STUFF LEPERKAHN DONE FOUND AND DONE LIKED, PART 5: SHORES OF NULL, OLD MAN GLOOM, INTER ARMA, WORMWOOD, WHORLS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 082014
 

 

(Leperkahn soldiers on with the round-ups while I’m AWOL from round-up duty. Here’s his latest collection of new things.)

Hello all. This version’s gonna be a bit short on the descriptions, since I have a boatload of Adam Smith to read, and a paper on the The Iliad that won’t write itself. That said, I figured I needed a break from that, and you all needed some wonderful metal in your lives.

SHORES OF NULL

I know I remember seeing some good press behind Shores Of Null’s recent Candlelight-released album Quiescence, and probably even watched one of the earlier music videos they made for one of the tracks. Yet, dunce that I am, I never actually checked out the album, and the just-released video for “Ruins Alive” is proving that was a mistake.

It mixes some doom-y/death-y instrumental work not unlike Insomnium, or something doomier than Insomnium, with Davide Straccione’s absolutely stunning vocals, both his cleans, used heavily and tonally in the vein of Enslaved’s Herbrand Larsen, Extol’s Ole Børud, and Black Crown Initiate’s Andy Thomas (therefore at once stunningly melodic and entrancingly proggy), and his cavernous, funeral doom-y growls. Listening to some of their other music videos, the quality put forth on “Ruins Alive” seems to carry throughout Quiescence. Add that to the long and growing list of albums I need to check out

https://www.facebook.com/shoresofnull Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETERNAL KHAN — “RAGING HOST”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 072014
 

Eternal Khan came to life in Providence, Rhode Island, about five years ago. By 2012 they had released a two-song demo and then followed that in 2013 with an EP entitled A Primitive History, which appeared on several year-end lists posted on our site, including this one from our friend SurgicalBrute (and another one of our contributors, KevinP, wrote about it for Metal Bandcamp here).

After these auspicious beginnings Eternal Khan have now finished a full-length album, A Poisoned Psalm, and have scheduled it for release on October 21. In this post we bring you the premiere of one of the new songs — “Raging Host” — as well as a stream of a second one that is now up at Bandcamp.

As they’ve done before, Eternal Khan bring an interesting mix of styles to bear in “Raging Host”, and the result is a powerful and engrossing piece of very dark music. Continue reading »

SCAR SYMMETRY: THE SINGULARITY (PHASE ONE: NEOHUMANITY)”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  9 Responses »
Oct 072014
 

 

(DGR reviews the new Scar Symmetry album.)

Heavy metal’s fascination with space is a long and storied one, especially in recent years as the mass media has become engrossed in science, with a half-million shows that all seem to boil down to, “Check out how awesome this shit is!”, as voiced by Morgan Freeman or breathlessly delivered by popular physicists.

Few bands, however, have tackled these subjects with the consistency and exploratory excitement of Scar Symmetry, having now released six albums covering a variety of subjects dealing not only with space in its physical form but also the philosophies of the universe, the science fiction aspects, and even a healthy dose of futurism — as recently provided by the group’s newly released sixth disc The Singularity (Phase One: Neohumanity), which will henceforth be referred to as Singularity. Continue reading »

SÓLSTAFIR PREMIERE THE VIDEO FOR “LÁGNÆTTI”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 072014
 

 

Sólstafir’s “Fjara” from Svartir Sandar is one of my all-time favorite songs in any genre of music. It has been the subject of numerous videos, most of which have been live recordings. My favorite is still this one (in part because it’s the first Sólstafir video I ever saw), but a close second is the official video (here) made by directors Bowen Staines and Gunnar B. Guðbjörnsson, which follows a young woman in a thin wedding dress dragging a timber coffin across a stretch of Icelandic wilderness and encountering spirits along the way, culminating in a memorable scene at the Skógafoss waterfall.

The team that produced that striking video for “Fjara” has returned with a video that premiered within the last hour for the song “Lágnætti” off the band’s latest album, the remarkable Ótta. It is every bit as striking as the “Fjara” video, and is a beautiful match for the song. Continue reading »

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