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 »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II, INSTALLMENT 4

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 072014
 

 

(In this latest 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, and the third here.)

SHAVASANA

The other day I was talking to a friend about Astomatous, the long-since defunct Chicago death metal band whose ranks included Nicholas McMasters, the bass player for Krallice/Geryon/others, as well as drummer Lev Weinstein, who is also in Krallice and Geryon among his many other groups.

Out of curiosity, I as usual returned to Metal-Archives to see if any of the other players were involved in continuing projects, and saw that former Astomatous guitarist, Aaron Avellone, was part of a new-ish group called Shavasana. He performs the vocals for Shavasana in addition playing guitar for them. According to the almighty Metal-Archives, their name means “corpse throne” or “throne of corpses” in Sanskrit, a fitting name for sure. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERION — “CONTEMPT”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 062014
 

 

“Contempt” is a boiling cauldron of interesting extremity. I’m referring to the song we’re about to premiere from the third album by Florida’s Inferion, which is entitled This Will Decay and is scheduled for release by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions on October 21.

The music is seething in its ferocity, a flurry of scything riffs, weaponized drum and bass work, and scathing vocal vehemence that ranges from sulfurous black metal shrieks to cavernous death metal roars. And if that were all, this hybrid of black and death metal would be fine enough, but that’s not all.

Without missing a step, the song also includes an undercurrent of melody that, when it fully surfaces, proves to be quite entrancing. It adds a layer of depth and texture to an already dynamic, well-executed piece of music — one that still does an effective job just tearing your head off. Continue reading »

REVOCATION: “DEATHLESS”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Oct 062014
 

 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the forthcoming new album by Boston’s Revocation.)

Sometimes I think the best thing a band in Revocation’s position can do, with as many releases into their career as they are now, is to take a musical step back, in the interest of maintaining the essence of what the band are about.  Their previous self-titled album was good, but I and others felt that the music was stagnating a bit.  Oddly, this wasn’t because the band were getting too comfortable. Instead, I think the S/T suffered from attempts to include more progressive elements, sections, and song structures in the music, which detracted from the adrenaline and the intensity, while the core death/thrash sections felt a bit phoned in at times.  I can see where Revocation may have wanted to integrate more “out there” moments into their music, but I think maybe even Revocation themselves realized that they needed to get back in touch with what made them stand out in the first place.

In a lot of ways, Deathless feels like a back-to-basics record, at least within Revocation’s own sonic domain.  It finds the band more in the straight-up riff-driven death/thrash quality of their debut, Empire of the Obscene, and the album that catapulted them to notoriety, Existence Is Futile.  The result is Revocation’s best record since Chaos of Forms. The idea of moving in a more pure, riff-driven direction with more maturity was a really smart move, and it proves that Revocation are in fact still 100% in touch with the intensity and the knack for inducing adrenaline rush that they were founded on.

“Deathless” is 100%, back-to-front, Revocation-patented thrash-driven death metal at its best. David Davidson, as per usual, makes this record, and this band as a whole. His signature thrash/death/fusion riffing style is definitely in top form here, but those fusion-y elements of his style also feel dialed back in order to bring the thrash and death metal elements to the forefront.  It’s an interesting choice, considering it’s one of the things that “makes” him as a guitarist, but it also gives those moments when they come around an even greater impact. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DECAYING — “ZERO HOUR”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 062014
 

 

Given my near-pathological affection for old-school death metal, and particularly the curriculum taught in old European schools, I was kind of stunned to realize that I’ve failed to write about Finland’s Decaying since reviewing their debut album (Devastate) back in 2011. Since then, they’ve released two more albums — Encirclement (2012) and The Last Days of War (2012) — and now their fourth album is almost upon us. The new album’s name is One To Conquer, and based on the song from the album we’re about to premiere, it should be another strong one.

Decaying have a penchant for including longer, doom-suffocated tracks in their military-themed albums, but they’re fully capable of rolling right over you in a crushing assault as well — and that’s the style of “Zero Hour”. If you like your old school death metal in the form of a smoking tank attack with a howling, rasp-voiced commander exhorting the battalion to show no mercy, “Zero Hour” is your thing. It’s definitely my thing: The song is a gassed up, heavy-grooved headbang trigger with a beautifully morbid melody — death metal militarism that will put a charge into your brainstem.

Especially with the timbre of the voracious vocals, you may think of Asphyx or Hail of Bullets, but fans of Bolt Thrower should eat this up, too. Continue reading »

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