SHORT BUT SWEET: IN THE COMPANY OF SERPENTS — “MERGING IN LIGHT”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Nov 152014
 

 

After two albums in 2012 and 2103, Denver’s In the Company of Serpents have blessed this year with a new EP, set for release on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It’s stupefyingly heavy and viciously catchy, and although its title is Merging Into Light, the merger seems to be happening in the last brief instant before the glimmer is extinguished and everything goes dark.

The music is tank-like in the roll of its mechanics, the guitar and bass chords so distorted and sludgy that it seems like an experiment in the most efficient means of sonic spinal compression, the drum strikes so powerful that they come down like a pile-driver on concrete. The effect is near-cataclysmic. But oh man, the groove is so dominant — these are neck-grabbing songs that will bend your head up and down to their will. Continue reading »

THERE WILL BE A DELAY (SO HERE’S A NEW BLOODBATH VIDEO — “CHURCH OF VASTITAS”)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Nov 142014
 

 

I’ve been on vacation for the last week, got home after a lot of traveling early last night, and then had to turn around a couple hours later to go back to the airport to pick up someone, and didn’t get to bed until very late — without having written any NCS thing for today. And all of my NCS writer comrades have been doing other things besides writing NCS things. So basically, I got nuthin’. And I need to go to work today, so I probably won’t have much for today, period. Whatever I do get ready will be late.

So anyway, I thought I might at least do a quick scan of the interhole for something new, because I hate to post anything on the site that doesn’t have some metal in it. And voila, I came across a link on FB to a just-released music video by Bloodbath for a song named “Church of Vastitas” off their new album Grand Morbid Funeral. I like the song — it’s a slow, brooding, grim, morbid piece of pestilential death/doom with good vocal vomit. The video is pretty simple, but doesn’t detract from the music. Here it is. I’ll be back… at some point… later today. Continue reading »

BASALTE: “VESTIGE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 132014
 

 

This is a prime example of an album that came out of nowhere, one that I easily could have overlooked, but that turns out to be one of the most surprising and enjoyable things I’ve heard in months. The album’s name is Vestige and it’s the debut work of a three-person Montréal black metal band name Basalte.

Vestige consists of three long songs (from 9 minutes to almost 17), “Mirage”, “Luminaire”, and “Obtuse”. They are guitar manifestos, strange journeys across distortion-shrouded alien soundscapes that sometimes seem like the eruption of volcanos on a Saturnian moon and then at other times shine like the Saturnian rings themselves, shimmering with the glint of sunlight on ice crystals. The drumming is just as unpredictable and just as transfixing, like a comet with a mind of its own that moves around and through the cosmic lightshow, heedless of the pull of gravity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LOTUS THIEF — “MISERAS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 132014
 

 

When someone describes an album by telling you that you’ve never heard anything like it before, you may greet such a claim with skepticism. So I’ll just say that I’ve never heard anything quite like Rervm before. It’s the debut album of a San Francisco band named Lotus Thief, and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s second track, “Miseras”.

Lotus Thief consists of two members, Bezaelith (Botanist, Mina Loy, The Night Falls) and Otrebor (Botanist, Ordo Obsidium). The fact that both have been involved in the unique music of Botanist may suggest certain musical associations, but Lotus Thief follows a different musical path, albeit one just as unusual. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ZOM, SELVANS, XII BOAR, KVILE I KAOS, BITCH WITCH, PARASITIC EXTIRPATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

I’ve amassed a sufficiently large number of recommended new songs and videos over the last couple of days that I’m mainly going to just toss them your way in this post and hold my own commentary about the music to a minimum. I realize that this comes as a crushing blow to all of you, but somehow the music will just have to speak for itself today.

As you’ll discover, I’ve intentionally provided a broad array of musical styles to keep you off-balance.

ZOM

This makes the fourth time we’ve written about Dublin-based ZOM this year. Their debut album Flesh Assimilation is coming on November 24 via Dark Descent, with artwork by Zbyszek Bielak. Yesterday, DECIBEL premiered another advance track from the album, “Conquest”. It sure as fuck conquered me. Continue reading »

ANOTHER EISTNAFLUG UPDATE

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

 

We’ve been tracking pretty closely the announcements by the organizers of Iceland’s Eistnaflug festival about the bands who will be appearing there next July. Even before today, the line-up was ridiculously good — but today Eistnaflug made it even more ridiculous by naming ten more bands to the festival schedule — including the mighty Enslaved, joining Behemoth and Godflesh as a co-headliner. This will be Enslaved’s first appearance in Iceland.

With today’s announcement, the line-up now includes nine Icelandic bands including the Icelandic band of the hour, Sólstafir, as well as the legendary Icelandic institution HAM (whose surprise appearance at the recently completed Iceland Airwaves festival was featured in another post on our site today). The other seven bands announced today are Börn, Dimma, Grísalappalísa, Lights on the Highway, Momentum, Muck, Saktmóðigur, and Severed. Continue reading »

A DISPATCH FROM ICELAND AIRWAVES

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 122014
 

 

(We welcome our guest Jeff from the Life In the Vinyl Lane blog, who sent us this report on the Iceland Airwaves festival plus a few of his photos.)

“We are going to play a few songs about friendship and love… and hate! And the first song is about trucking.”

So began the set of Iceland’s heavy metal grandfathers, HAM. We are HAM!

It’s hard to believe that just yesterday I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, still in the afterglow of Iceland Airwaves 2014, and today I’m back in Seattle. Doing laundry and paying the bills that piled up while we were gone. How quickly things change.

If you’re not familiar with Airwaves, it’s a five-day music festival held in Reykjavik, a festival that covers just about the entire gamut of musical styles and genres, all seemingly, except country and jazz. It started in 1999 with a handful of bands playing in an airplane hanger and has morphed into a sprawling celebration of music spread out throughout downtown Reykjavik, featuring over 200 bands playing in every conceivable location – dedicated music venues, bars, clothing stores, hair salons, and a tent located outside a hot dog stand. You can’t walk a block without hearing live music. And it’s awesome. Continue reading »

BUCKSHOT FACELIFT: “LIVING GHOSTS OF THE NORTH SHORE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by NY’s Buckshot Facelift.)

When I was fortunate enough to see (and cover here at NCS) the Artificial Brain, Pyrrhon, and Gigan tour in Covington, Ky, a few weeks back, I also had the honor of speaking with Artificial Brain swamp monster/wookie/vocalist Will Smith. He even gave me a copy of his old band Biolich’s material, a group I adored long before Artificial Brain or Buckshot Facelift came into existence. I’ll embed a song by them at the end of this review for those interested. (The band started out as a Demilich worship act, but evolved into something much more eclectic later on. Biolich even had the superbly talented guitarist Andrew Hock (Castavet) in their ranks, but not many know that either.)

But to get back on topic, in the course of our conversation Will let me know that his other band, Buckshot Facelift, had a new EP coming out soon. He graciously gave me a physical copy in order to check it out — under one condition: He told me to be honest with how I felt about it. And honestly, its fucking awesome, hence this review. Continue reading »

NCS YEAR-END TRADITIONS ON THE WAY

 Uncategorized  38 Responses »
Nov 112014
 

 

Every November here at NCS we renew a few year-end traditions that have been a part of our site since the early days, and I thought now would be a good time for a reminder, since we depend on our readers for help in rolling them out.

First of all, we’re approaching another birthday for our putrid site. We made our first post on November 21, 2009, and by resorting to higher math with the aid of a calculator, I’ve determined that in 10 days we will be five years old! We won’t need your help with that celebration when the blessed day arrives — we’re capable of patting ourselves on the back all by ourselves. We do accept presents; cash is preferred.

Second, we will soon be starting our year-end LISTMANIA series. There are three parts to that endeavor:  We publish year-end lists of metal’s best albums that we find on certain “big platform” websites and zines; we publish year-end lists by our own staff writers and by special guests; and we provide a platform for our readers to post their own lists of favorite releases from the year that’s nearing an end.

We’ll need your help on that last part, so put your thinking caps on and start winnowing down what you’ve heard into the best of the best — we’ll invite you to start sharing your lists in about 2 weeks. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ANICON AND BELUS (A SPLIT)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 112014
 

 

Anicon and Belus are two New York bands whose names I’ve been hearing for a while, but whose music I’ve begun exploring only recently. Together they produced a split this past June, which was co-released on 12″ vinyl by Fragile Branch (U.S.) and Dead Section Records (Denmark), with each band contributing two tracks. The songs of each band are also now available on their respective Bandcamp pages, with one bonus track (linked below) — and they’re all really impressive.

ANICON

Anicon’s ranks include members of Trenchgrinder (vocalist/guitarist Owen Rundquist) and Krallice (drummer Lev Weinstein), as well as guitarist/vocalist Nolan Voss and bass player Alexander DeMaria (ex-Alrunes). They have two long songs on the vinyl split, “A Crown On Every Head” and “Blood and Stone”, and a third song (“Current of Ash and White”) comes as a bonus on the digital download. Continue reading »

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