OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 18): THY CATAFALQUE, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, SEAR BLISS

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

If you were with us when I started rolling out this list 26 days ago, then you know I’m going to call a halt to it on January 31st. That makes this the last week, with five installments left to go — though there are rumors that Andy Synn and DGR may prepare addendums that include favorites of theirs which I didn’t get to.

This week will be a disappointment to me and to many of you, not because the songs will be disappointments but because my self-imposed deadline will force me to leave out a lot of songs that deserve this kind of recognition.

Today’s group of three leans into black metal (among many other things), though the songs differ significantly from each other — and they are all out of the ordinary. To see the other songs on the list so far, this link will take you to all of them. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PRAETORIAN — “PYLON CULT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

At the end of this month APF Records will release Pylon Cult, the debut album by Praetorian from Hertfordshire in the UK. The label describes the album this way:

A new lesson in vile, disgusting and gruesome blackened sludge metal, mixed in a volatile cocktail of death metal, thrash and hardcore. Praetorian are here to take you on a wild ride with an album that fluctuates between hi-octane energy, colossal doomy riffs, a savage dual-vocal attack and insane tempo changes, all culminating in a violent, nightmarish thrill ride.

That provides a faithful description of the brutalizing but mind-bending sonic nihilism provided by Pylon Cult — a title that comes from contemporary British author David Southwell’s imagined county Hookland, in which a so-called cult begin to worship pylons in order to harness their energy.

But we have our own thoughts to share about this ruthless but consistently fascinating album — in addition to the main attraction, which is our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2025

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)

Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.

So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.

Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CONAN, GREY AURA, SEPULCHRAL CURSE, NITE, DEATH OBVIOUS, ABRAXAS HORN (AND MORE)

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 252025
 

(written by Islander)

In the early part of this month, as the old year moved into the new, the volume of new album announcements and new songs subsided. For people like those of us at NCS, things got kind of slow and comfortable.

Well, of course that turned out to be comparable to a “negative storm surge,” a phenomenon in which waves recede before a typhoon strikes, the water being pulled away from the coast by the storm’s low pressure system before the ocean comes rushing back when the typhoon strikes in full force.

Which is what is now happening in the music we pay attention to. Everything is in full force, and I’m drowning in new music. I know it gets repetitive and possibly mind-numbing when I share the count, but I’ve got more than 60 open tabs on my computer, each one linked to a song that came out just this past week which I was curious to check out in planning today’s column, on top of a lot more from last week.

Obviously, I didn’t listen to all of them. Obviously, I wouldn’t have liked all of them if I had. I liked the ones below that I did get to. How did I get to them within that great mass of tabs? I admit I gravitated to bands I’ve liked in the past — though I did take a few shots in the dark that also paid off. And I decided to add some music at the end without commentary (due to vanishing time).

P.S. In the early evening I’m going to an annual party in Seattle across the water from my home. I’m sure that if I make it back home, it won’t be until close to 2 am. I’m also sure I won’t make any effort to wake up before noon on Sunday, and will be woozy when I do. So, don’t expect a SHADES OF BLACK column this weekend (I won’t have enough time to pull it together before leaving home this afternoon). Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 17): DISENTOMB, WESTON SUPER MAIM, HYPERDONTIA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 17 of this still-expanding list, which ends this week’s rollout and paves the way toward one final sequence next week. I again had an idea of why I thought these three songs would fit together. It’s not that they’re all the same (far from it), but I still detected some kinship among them: an amalgamation of brute-force brutishness and other manifestations of head-scrambling extravagance.

In case you haven’t explored the songs in the preceding 16 Parts, you can find all of them via this link.

DISENTOMB

We didn’t get a new Disentomb album last year, but we did get a very arresting EP named Nothing Above. It was the subject of an Andy Synn review, and another review by DGR in the context of him putting the EP on his year-end list. I’ll excerpt from both: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INSANITY CULT — “WHISPERING DEPTHS”

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Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

After a long six years or so, we at last have a chance for a reunion with the aptly named Green black metal band Insanity Cult. That’s roughly the extent of time that has elapsed since their last album, All Shall Return to Chaos, and their subsequent split (Contemplation in Discordance) with Void Omnia.

The occasion for the reunion is a new Insanity Cult album named Κάθοδος, which will be released on February 28th by the Chilean label Tragedy Productions, in collaboration with Order of Antinomianism, the circle of which Insanity Cult is a member along with such bands as Isolert, Sørgelig and Sores.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a song from the album named “Whispering Depths.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SHAGOR — “HERSIELINGH”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

In 2020 the Dutch black metal band Shagor made their recording debut with an album named Sotteklugt. I was bowled over by it. As I wrote in my review: “This is one of my true favorites among all the black metal albums I’ve heard this year, and I don’t think my affection for it will fade, even a little, as time passes.”

Roughly five years later Shagor are returning with a second album named Lyksalver, which will be co-released by Vendetta Records and Swarte Yssel on February 8th. They have floored me again, and I think will floor many of you too – though the better metaphor would be more like getting hurled into the Sun. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): PAYSAGE D’HIVER, MERRIMACK, AKVAN

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 232025
 

(written by Islander)

The unifying theme that explains the grouping of today’s three selections for this list is… black metal… but although they all fit under that large and ever-expanding genre tent, each is quite different from the others.

To explore the songs laid out in the preceding 15 Parts of the list, go here.

PAYSAGE D’HIVER

In Part 6 of this list I included a song by Calcarata that I was confident was the longest song I’ve ever picked for one of these lists in the 16 years I’ve been doing them. That song was 17 minutes long. But today I’m starting with one that’s even longer, the 18+ minute opening track from Paysage D’Hiver‘s monumental 2024 album Die Berge. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OOBRIS IOS — “DOSTRATIS SATOD DUVON XAGAN”

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Jan 232025
 

(written by Islander)

Many people, including people at this site (witness these six articles going back to 2015), have had many good things to say about the music of the Canadian atmospheric black metal band Wilt, and that is reason enough to pay attention to Vospat, the forthcoming debut EP of Oobris Ios, because its three-person lineup includes two members of Wilt. Those two people are vocalist Jordan Dorge and drummer Jordan Sanderson, and the third member is guitarist/bassist Ryan Forsyth (from the death metal band Dissolution, among others).

It’s fair to say that Oobris Ios represents a departure (perhaps fair to say an experimental departure) from the members’ previous bands. Among other things, the songs on Vospat represent the telling of a dire and daunting science-fictional or fantastical narrative, related to us in an ancient alien language but prefaced in English this way:

Before light, there was darkness. Almost 14 billion years ago, the entity known as the singularity was slain, and its followers scattered across what is now known as the universe. Their chants within the dark matter echo in the light, constantly trying to diminish its power. Oobris Ios is the dimensional reverberation that those in the light can hear. Bring hate. Bring the dark out of the light and extinguish it once and for all. Continue reading »

CONCRETE ICON: “VORACIOUS STREAMS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 232025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile has brought us (and you) the following review of a new album by Finland’s Concrete Icon, released just a few days ago by Memento Mori and Fetzner Death Records.)

Maybe the dark, frozen months of the winter and the thick snow cover are not the right time to think about the reasons why there are not more death metal records played at the summer barbecue parties, but here we are. Just think about it, for it’s a perfect match-up, as both deal in the themes of dead, carved tissue, the eternal flames of charred remains, and the cult-like gatherings around those very flames, and are normally a whole lot of fun. Now only to find the place where this idea falls on fertile ground.

Not trying very hard, we turn our gaze towards Finland, the most metal-bands-per-capita country in the world, so if you’re going to make it anywhere, you can make it there with these random ideas. Anyway, all of this brings us today to our guests in Concrete Icon who, you might have guessed it, are indeed Finnish and play death metal. As if the spiky band logo and the toxic, green-tinged cover art by the brilliant Juanjo Castellano didn’t inform you enough, then heed these words. It really is a death metal album through and through. Continue reading »

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