TORCH RUNNER: “ENDLESS NOTHING”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

Endless Nothing is good for one thing and one thing only: Caving in your damned skull, crushing all of your vertebrae, spilling your guts, and setting them on fire. Or maybe that’s four things.

Thirteen songs, most of them short, all of them tremendously heavy and brutally destructive — that’s what the new second album by North Carolina’s Torch Runner delivers. The riffs alternately hammer like giant mallet blows or roar like smoking concrete saws, and at all times they vibrate with radioactive levels of distortion. The percussion follows the same kind of tag-team format — pounding with enough force to split asphalt or blasting away like heavy artillery.

And my god, the bass — the bass is absolutely staggering. You don’t believe me, just check out the opening minute of the album’s longest song, the catastrophically bleak “Circle of Shit”. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II, INSTALLMENT 2

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(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.)

VEILBURNER

Veilburner are a two-man death/black band from Pennsylvania whose strength lies in oddball mania, conjuring an unearthly interstellar feeling. Veilburner burnish an esoteric atmosphere throughout The Three Lightbearers as they dig in dissonant ditches, arising frequently with technical guitar-led passages, some of which bring Gorguts and Obscura to mind. Veilburner often back up their aggressive core with experimental soundscapes of an industrial and occult feel that is oddly psychedelic in nature.

Simply hellish stuff, and damn fun to listen to death metal infused by a cold clinical black metal embrace. This album is killer from start to finish, and to me, frequently sounds like a black metal companion to the immersive insanity Gigan conjure — rife with psychedelic inclinations and robotic/reverb heavy vocal effects amid a massive mix of horrific undulating riffs and spine-shattering drum work. I recommend listening to the whole album at once, but if you need a starting point, go with “Nil Absolute”. The Three Lightbearers rips wormholes open in your mind, leading to self-collapse from within. Get your mind explosion on! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SPENCER PREWETT (ARCHSPIRE)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Oct 032014
 

 

(In this post we welcome metal interviewer Karina Noctum to NCS, and happily present her discussion with Spencer Prewett, the phenomenal drummer of a Vancouver band we’ve been following since early days — Archspire.)

Hello everyone! My name is Karina Cifuentes. I was born in Colombia, but I live in Norway and I’m here because of Black Metal basically. I had to live the BM dream with forests, darkness, and so on. I have been interviewing my favorite bands since 2008 and I do this because it really makes me do more research than I would otherwise and I get lots of knowledge that way. I’m also working with a Black Metal documentary called Blackhearts (https://www.facebook.com/blackheartsfilm) So here’s my first contribution, an interview with Spencer Prewett from my fav tech-death band Archspire.

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When did you start playing drums and what appeals to you the most about drumming?

The first time I started playing was when I was a kid. I was 8 years old when I first got my drum kit, but I didn’t actually start practicing drums until I got into metal and that was when I was 17. Now I’m 32, so I’ve been playing for quite a while. I find extreme drumming really appealing. I respect rock and blues drumming, but it doesn’t excite me the same way as Cryptopsy or Nile did.

 

Which drummer has inspired you the most and why?

Flo from Cryptopsy when I was younger, because when I was 17 I had a fake I.D. and I could go to my first Cryptopsy show. My first real metal show ever, and I didn’t know much about Cryptopsy. I was so blown away how fast the band and the drumming were, and that was probably what really affected me. So Flo was my biggest influence originally, but every year that goes by I discover a new band or I discover a new drummer or a new style. Continue reading »

METAL NOT PREVIOUSLY FEATURED ON NCS — PART 2

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(We welcome back our Norwegian guest contributor Gorger, with Part 2 of an entertaining post that we began earlier this week.)

Welcome to Part Two of my little presentation of stuff I don’t think NCS has covered. If I’m mistaken about that, sue me. There’s a few dozens other releases I would like to shout about, but this seems like the best criterion to help me select by means of elimination. Part One can be read here. On we go, then.

NO RAZA – WHEN CHAOS REIGNS

Let’s start of with a trip to Colombia to meet four guys who have managed to put together an unusually solid death metal album. My impression is that this South American country is better known for cranking out brutal extreme metal with limited sophistication. Maybe I’m wrong. It has to happen sometime.

The band was apparently originated as early as 1997, but the first sign of life was the debut album from 2004. This was followed by a live album, video, and an EP before the sequel was released in 2012. I’m new to this band, and my enthusiasm for their death metal is due to several factors. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TIM CHARLES (NE OBLIVISCARIS)

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  5 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(In this post we present KevinP’s interview of Tim Charles, violinist and clean vocalist of Australia’s Ne Obliviscaris, whose new album Citadel will be released on November 7 (November 11 in the U.S.). You can listen to two of the new songs while you read, here and here.)

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K:   So would this be the first interview you have done where the name of the site is diametrically opposed to your position in the band?

T:  I guess so! But despite the name of the site, you guys have always shown NeO great support over the years regardless, and so I’m very happy to be chatting with you today about our new album.

 

K:  We are coming up on the release of that album, Citadel, on Nov 7.  What would you say is different and/or what were you able to accomplish this time around as compared with Portal of I?

T:  When we first started writing Citadel we didn’t have any meetings to discuss the direction of the new songs. We simply just did what we’ve always done and write music until we were happy with the song. Personally we were very proud of Portal of I and we loved the songs, so when it was so well-received, that gave us a lot of confidence to forget about the outside world and just back our own judgement and have faith that as long as we love the new stuff then the public will enjoy it also.

We definitely noticed that there were some new sounds being explored, but honestly it wasn’t really until the end when it was completely done that we realised it was actually quite a bit different.  It’s still very much NeO, but honestly I’m not sure we could create 2 albums the same if we tried! It’s always been in our nature to explore and move forward musically, and to me Citadel just sounds like another step forward.

I guess one other difference between the albums is that Portal of I was more akin to 7 separate stories, all related to each other, that when put together create an album. This new album, however, was created in a more conceptual way with the music largely flowing continuously from start to finish and hence is more one unified piece. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MORDBRAND — “VASTATION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

I think I’ve written about every release by Sweden’s Mordbrand after their 2010 debut in a split with Evoke, including their excellent 2014 album Imago. Since I only write about what I like and want to recommend, you can figure out that they haven’t disappointed me yet — and they still haven’t: Their forthcoming two-song 7″, Vastation, is another winner for fans of Swedish death metal.

The first song, “Failure of the Paraclete”, is loaded with a variety of big riffs — riffs that grind, gallop, lurch, and stagger — and a rhythm section that expertly matches the music’s shifting patterns, with rippling bass and tremolo chords surfacing at the end to close the song memorably. Continue reading »

BIG ASS ROUNDUP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(Leperkahn continues to pitch in during my round-up hiatus.  Between what I sent him and what he found himself (of which there was quite an overlap), this is a monstrously large collection of recent, recommended goodies.)

Hey all! So a bloody lot of things got put up between when I sent in my last roundup and now, so this is gonna be a long one, since I’m not in the mood to separate them out. Strap in for a wild ride across the metalsphere.

BLUT AUS NORD

A few hours ago a new song named “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” from the new Blut Aus Nord album Memoria Vetusta III — Saturnian Poetry was made available for listening. This follows our own premiere of “Paien” right here. Islander says his review of the album will be posted on Monday, but he says there’s no point in waiting — just go pre-order the album in a special digipack CD edition here or on vinyl here. You can listen to “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” while you’re doing that:

https://www.facebook.com/blutausnord.official
https://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: VESANIA (ORION)

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(Andy Synn presents his interview of Orion, vocalist/guitarist of Poland’s Vesania (and of course a member of Behemoth), whose new album Deus Ex Machina is coming our way. All photos accompanying the interview were taken by Aleksander Ikaniewicz.)

In case you missed out, I previously featured Polish behemoths Vesania in the 22nd edition of The Synn Report, covering all three of their albums, addressing their underground (sort-of) supergroup status, and comparing their Symphonic/Blackened Death Metal hybrid sound to Emperor, Zyklon, and Dimmu Borgir.

If you want to read more about them, then head on over here to check out what I originally wrote, then come back to this article to get some updated goodies.

You see, recently I was lucky enough to be offered the chance to conduct an interview with Vesania main-man Orion, since the band are in the first stages of promoting their upcoming fourth album Deus Ex Machina.

It’s a short, but ultimately revealing, interview, where you really get a feel for the drive and personality of the members behind the music, and of the difficulties inherent in pulling together a band made up of such busy musicians, as well as the growing theatricality of the band’s stage show! Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: DECAPITATED AND BLOODSHOT DAWN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Oct 022014
 

 

I’m relenting briefly from my self-imposed round-up hiatus to bring you two music videos that appeared today.

The first is from Poland’s Decapitated, for the song “Instinct” from the Blood Mantra album, which is out now from Nuclear Blast.

The second is from the UK’s Bloodshot Dawn. The song is “Smoke and Mirrors” and it will appear on the band’s next album, Demons.

Both videos are after the jump, preceded by a bunch of links. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUND-UP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II — THE SEQUEL NO ONE ASKED FOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 022014
 

 

(Austin Weber provides this first part of a multi-part round-up focusing on recommended new releases.)

It’s been a good while since I got down to it and churned out a round-up article here at NCS. For months now I’ve had a massive list of bands to put in an article, but have been too weighed down by life and loss to finish it. As I attempt to accurately assess the current state of my life, things have again taken a trip to implosion town, and so many of the things I held dear or grew accustomed to bit the dust yet again. Of course, this happens in all our lives, so I try to be realistic in deconstructing the ills inherent in all our realities.

I find some comfort in these times of rebuilding, though, with the hope that at least, in thinking deeply and reflectively, I may yet again find a different way forward that I had never imagined possible. Even in the darkest and dumbest places my mind goes to, music guides me and temporarily frees and harnesses this incorrigible mixture of hyperactivity and depression into a more passive and calm state.

Typically I would abstain from such personal and soul-baring words, yet inasmuch as I know myself, I am not ashamed of exploring and expounding upon what it is to be human, full of frailty and weakness — to realistically accept frailty yet not dwell too deeply in its realms.

Like past installments, the music that follows trends toward death metal, yet lest I box myself in, bands of other stripes are also included. As usual, many hours spent scouring the depths of Metal-Archives and other avenues has delivered in a big way for me. There’s a lot of killer music to explore, so this is going to be broken up into several installments. This is the first. Continue reading »

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