SEEN AND HEARD: SANNHET, CRYPT SERMON, THE BANNER, ABOMINATOR, GALAR

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 162015
 

My memory of what happened a year ago is hazy (my memory of what happened yesterday is hazy, too, but more like partly cloudy instead of overcast with dense fog). But this January seems to have brought an unprecedented tide of new music. Wholly apart from all the new album promos we’ve received since the first of the year, every day has bought new song or video premieres that are worth hearing. It’s as if labels and bands were just waiting for the holidays to end and then opened the floodgates.

I’ve got a list of new music to check out that’s grown absurdly long, and since I haven’t managed to write a round-up in five days, it’s unrealistic to catch up in a single post. So even more so than usual, I chose this collection of songs on a truly random basis. I have a lot more I’d like to throw your way — with luck I can do that this weekend.

SANNHET

Sannhet are from Brooklyn. Their second album, Revisionist, is coming from The Flenser on March 3. Yesterday Stereogum premiered the album’s first advance track, a song named “Lost Crown”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEIRESS — “DISMALIST”

 Premieres  13 Responses »
Jan 162015
 

At the bottom of this post you’ll find the premiere of a fantastic new song by Seattle’s Heiress. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you just skipped to the end and started listening. But whether you do that or plod through the words I feel compelled to write, by all means — listen to the song!

Nowadays, I try to stay on top of new metal, without letting grass grow under my feet. It wasn’t always that way. I moved to Seattle from Texas in 1995. I barely listened to metal back then; grunge was the rage in my new hometown, and I got caught up in that. Himsa didn’t come out with their debut album until four years later, and I still didn’t discover them until years after that. But when I did, it made an enormous impact on me as a fledgling metal fan. I still mourn the passing of that band.

Even though I now try to stay on top of things in a more timely way, I still didn’t completely tumble to Heiress until I saw them perform live last year. I don’t know why it took me so fucking long, especially since Himsa’s ex-vocalist (and a fixture in Seattle’s heavy music scene) John Pettibone fronts Heiress. Continue reading »

LEVIATHAN: “ALL TONGUES TOWARD”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 152015
 

 

“Eagerly awaited” is an overused and often mis-used term. How can something be eagerly awaited if you don’t know you’re waiting? But in the case of Leviathan’s new album Scar Sighted — which is due for a March 3 release by Profound Lore — it’s genuinely eagerly awaited, and also long-awaited.

And it’s long-awaited not simply because four years have passed since True Traitor, True Whore, but because it seems that Wrest (Jef Whitehead) has been through a lot of significant changes in his personal life, the kind of changes that couldn’t help but influence the music (see this interview of Wrest to learn what I’m talking about). I’ve been very curious to hear the results.

And today we finally have the first piece of music from Scar Sighted: A track named “All Tongues Toward” is now available for listening — and it comes with another piece of Wrest’s artwork for the album: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 19

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014  4 Responses »
Jan 152015
 

 

We’ve arrived at Part 19 in the continuing rollout of our list of 2014′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. For the other songs we’ve previously named to the list, go here.

Such an overused word, “epic” is. A couple of years ago I promised one of my then co-writers that I would stop using it. Add that to the list of promises broken. If the list of broken vows weren’t already so long, I’d be disturbed by my lack of faithfulness: These two songs are epic.

PANOPTICON

I went on at excruciating length about Roads To the North when I reviewed the album. I will be more brief here. I’ll quote only a part of what I wrote after I noted some differences between this new album and works that preceded it, because it’s relevant to what I’m doing today: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MINDFUL OF PRIPYAT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jan 152015
 

This is the third of three EP reviews I’m posting today. The first band was Australia’s Ur Draugr, the second was New Zealand’s The Skull, and now we leap across seas and continents to visit a band from Italy named…

MINDFUL OF PRIPYAT

Mindful of Pripyat are a new death/grind collective from Milan who released their debut assault — …And Deeper, I Drown In Doom — via Bandcamp last week. I was drawn to explore the music because the band includes Giulia (aka Doomed Warrior) from the fantastic Into Darkness on guitars, bass, and vox. Her bandmates are Tya (lead vocals and noise) and Gio (drums and vocals) — and yes, all three members vocalize.

Taking their inspiration from old-school grindcore in the vein of Napalm Death, Terrorizer, and Dead Infection and with a conceptual focus on dystopian futures and post-apocalyptic scenarios, Mindful of Pripyat have delivered 16 tracks in less than 20 minutes. They make very good use of the time. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: THE SKULL — “NUCLEAR WAR DEMO”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Jan 152015
 

This is the second of three EP reviews I’m posting today. I began the day (here) with Ur Daugr from Australia, and now I’m jumping across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand and a band named…

THE SKULL

The Skull includes ex-members of Demoniac, as well as current members of Bulletbelt, Dying Of The Light, and DBC (Dead Brain Cells). Their debut demo, which surfaced last November, is named Nuclear War. It seems to have been in the works for quite a while; it appears from their Facebook page that recording took place back in March 2013. But hey, having heard the demo, I’ll happily say, “Better late than never!”

Listening to the five songs on Nuclear War — which will race through your earholes in a tight 10-minute blitzkrieg — is to be victimized by auditory slaughter, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s a one-two punch of old school speed metal and venomous death/thrash that will lay you out. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: UR DRAUGR — “THE WRETCHED ASCETIC”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 152015
 

This is the first of three EP reviews that I plan to post today. The EPs are all very different from each other, but they’re all very good.

UR DRAUGR

I have a feeling that metal fans have lost a real gem, but the significant fragment that remains still gleams brightly.

Ur Draugr are from Perth in Western Australia and the band’s ranks include past or present members of Impiety, Wardaemonic, DeathFuckingCunt, and Morphica. When I first wrote about the band last November (here), it was in connection with their release of an impressive new song named “Unseen Golgotha”. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 18

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014  4 Responses »
Jan 142015
 

 

Welcome to Part 18 in the continuing rollout of our list of 2014′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. For the other songs we’ve previously named to the list, go here.

I failed to post another installment in the list yesterday, due to the annoying distractions of the job that, unlike this one, actually pays me for services rendered. However, I’m resuming the rollout today with two songs by bands who are among the best-known in the American extreme metal scene and who both released very strong albums in 2014. The cover art for both albums is also wonderful.

JOB FOR A COWBOY

Andy Synn review JFAC’s new album Sun Eater for us, and I thought he hit the nail on the head:

The struggle for credibility and acceptance by the Death Metal elite has been a long and arduous one for Job For A Cowboy. Their Deathcore roots and that name certainly tend to prompt a rather knee-jerk reaction from a certain section of the Death Metal community, despite the fact that the band’s purposeful progression from internet darlings to legitimate contenders has been an absolute joy to behold. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JANI KOSKELA (0XíST)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jan 142015
 

 

(In this post Evita Hofmane of the Latvian e-zine P3LICAN interviews Jani Koskela of Finland’s 0 X í S T. Music from the band’s live performances and their forthcoming second album is also included with this interview.)

 

The Finnish band 0 X í S T, for “zero exist”, was formed in 2008. The band aim to create dark metal that stands truthfully for the description in their name. Therefore, 0 X í S T perform music that is menacing, heavy, and dark.

0 X í S T completed their first recording, the Unveiling the Shadow World CD-EP in September 2009. The EP was released in April 2010 by the French extreme doom metal label Ostra Records. After releasing a two-track demo in October 2010, the band started to concentrate on producing their debut album Nil. Nil was released in December 2012 as a joint effort by Ostra Records and Cold Void Emanations. It includes six doomy tracks of dark metal.

The band recorded their second album One Eon during the summer of 2014 and has announced that it will be published as a CD and digital release on the 4th of February 2015. A limited edition picture vinyl print will follow in March. One Eon will feature six works of slow and heavy Dark Metal, with cover art made by Hungarian artist Péter Takács. The album was recorded at D-Studio and partly recorded and mixed at 0 X í S T’s private studio. The band will self-release the album on Death Shrine Offerings (www.deathshrineofferings.net). The CD and digital versions are now available for pre-ordering at http://0xist.bandcamp.com.

In this interview the band’s leader Jani Koskela speaks about their new album, touring, and music itself. Continue reading »

2014 LISTMANIA WRAP-UP

 LISTMANIA 2014  6 Responses »
Jan 142015
 

 

Rumor has it that Andy Synn will eventually be delivering his annual list of favorite songs, but with that exception, our 2014 edition of LISTMANIA has finally drawn to a close. Or to put it differently, since we’re halfway through 2014′s first month, I decided it was time to wrap it up.

Our 2014 series of lists was another extensive one — we posted more than 30 lists with accompanying commentary. Some of these were lists that appeared at other “big platform” web sites or magazines — places with large audiences, many of which cover musical genres well beyond metal. We also published our own staff lists, of course. But the largest group of list posts came from guest writers — NCS readers, band members, and fellow bloggers/writers. Plus, we also received many lists in reader comments on THIS POST.

In this article I’m collecting links to all of the 2014 year-end lists that we published, divided into categories and listed within each category in the order of their appearance. For people who are looking for the best metal that 2014 had to offer, I think these lists provide a tremendous resource.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to 2014 LISTMANIA and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together. Continue reading »

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