MISCELLANY NO. 67: DIM AURA, TOLUCA, DEAD SOUL ALLIANCE

 MISCELLANY  3 Responses »
Apr 122014
 

I did say that I intended to post three editions of MISCELLANY on three successive days, but yesterday kind of got away from me. So, with an unplanned hiatus day, here’s the third installment.

Once again, here’s how the MISCELLANY game works: I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, usually focusing on under-the-radar groups whose names I’ve never heard before either. The selection process is random; for these three editions of the series, I tended to focus on bands who’ve written us recently. I try to limit my listening to a song or two and then write my impressions, while streaming what I heard so you can form your own opinions. I don’t know in advance whether I’ll like the music, so there’s an element of surprise involved (good or bad). For this listening session I once again investigated the music of three bands.

DIM AURA

Dim Aura are based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Earlier this year they self-released a debut album entitled The Negation of Existence (though they’re searching for a label to facilitate wider distribution). The band have put four of the album’s eight tracks on Bandcamp. I started with the first one, “Scarred Flesh Supremacy”, but I’ll just tell you up-front that I really cheated on the MISCELLANY rules and wound up running right through all four songs. They’re all good and they don’t all sound the same. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: A STREAM DUMP (PART 1)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Apr 122014
 

This has been one of those weeks where my blog time was severely constricted by both personal and job-related demands. You might have guessed that, based on the complete absence of any “seen and heard” posts since Monday. I didn’t have time to do much more than quickly scan through the interhole each day looking for new song and video premieres and make lists of what I’d like to hear and see when time would permit. This morning, I finally crawled through that list, and found a shitload of new things I really liked.

Because I’m behind, and because I don’t want to fall further behind, I’m taking the wimp’s way out in this post. I’m just going to stitch together a bunch of recommended song and video streams (11 of them) with almost no commentary. It’s a stream dump, and I will bet money you’ll find something to like, almost regardless of your tastes. It’s spring, and metal is in bloom.

Salted within this list are a couple of news items that perked my interest, even though there’s nothing available to hear… yet.

I present this box of chocolates in alphabetical order. There will be another similar collection either later today or tomorrow. Tell me what you like. Leave comments! Continue reading »

BENEVOLENT: “THE COVENANT”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Apr 112014
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album by Benevolent from Dubai.)

Islander recommended I check out this album some time ago.  I have to admit, I made an ass out of myself by prematurely judging the album before I gave it its just due with a fair listening.  What I listened to, at first, sounded like generic djent-infused groove metal.  Those are definitely big components of the sound of Dubai’s Benevolent.  But the music boasts a large array of modern melodic death metal elements as well — and after giving their debut The Covenant a solid listen, I can now safely say this may be one of the best modern metal bands out there.

I get vibes of Scar Symmetry, Textures, Cynic, Chimaira, and Fear Factory from this record, and even some aspects that remind me a bit of Byzantine.  It’s all about low-tuned riffage, lush walls of sound, fusion shred, dimension-opening gutturals, and airy cleans.  It’s kind of funny — they embody both things you guys would generally like, and also things most of us have grown tired of (mostly pertaining to djent elements).  Benevolent make those undesirable elements work in their favor, though, mostly through an immaculate perception of how to use all their elements in a push/pull dynamic. Continue reading »

COLLEGE ESSAYS, METAL, AND COMPARING FRUIT

 Mosh Pit  36 Responses »
Apr 112014
 

(NCS contributor Leperkahn shares with us the essay he submitted with his application to the college he will be attending this fall.)

I believe I’ve mentioned a few times here before that I’m still a high school senior (if you didn’t know, now you know). Thus, in the fall of 2013 I was more or less engulfed by the college application process, and the multitudes of essays that go with many applications, especially for those colleges that decide admission “holistically” (i.e., most of the ones I applied to). Most of their prompts are exactly the same, and evoke nothing but boredom and annoyance, such as the “describe an experience in which you had to come back from failure, and how it changed you” drek.

The University of Chicago, however, does it right, offering by far the most interesting (yet difficult) essay questions of any college I’ve heard of. The prompts an applicant had to choose from were as follows: Continue reading »

A HILL TO DIE UPON: “HOLY DESPAIR”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 112014
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the new album by A Hill To Die Upon from Illinois.)

Sometimes when you’re confronted with unexpected bouts of synchronicity, it’s best to pay attention to what’s being said. You might just learn something.

Case in point, at least three times in the last week, in separate conversations, someone has raised the point to me that A Hill To Die Upon (hereafter referred to as AHTDU) are one of the few bands “who sound like Behemoth… but don’t really sound like Behemoth”. And it’s true. Despite clearly holding the Polish blasphemers in high regard, AHTDU have always managed to remain somehow sonically separate enough to stand as their own entity.

I’m not sure exactly why. It’s maybe a combination of things. A tendency to use interesting, almost baroque chord patterns. A signature riffing style that illuminates, rather than imitates. Little twists and tweaks to their approach, a rhythmic shift here, a touch of esoteric instrumentation there, and a vocal style that heaves with righteous fury and passion. And blast beats. Lots of blast beats. All molded and shaped in a way that remains instantly recognisable and distinctive.

It’s hard to quantify. But it’s clear to me. AHTDU are their own breed of monster, plain and simple. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 66: OPHIDIUS, KING DEAD, NAGA

 MISCELLANY  3 Responses »
Apr 102014
 

As promised, I’m posting three editions of MISCELLANY in three successive days, this being the second.

Here’s how the MISCELLANY game works: I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, usually focusing on under-the-radar groups whose names I’ve never heard before either. The selection process is random; for these three editions of the series, I tended to focus on bands who’ve written us recently. I try to limit my listening to a song or two and then write my impressions, while streaming what I heard so you can form your own opinions. I don’t know in advance whether I’ll like the music, so there’s an element of surprise involved (good or bad). For this listening session I investigated the music of three bands.

OPHIDIUS

Ophidius are an instrumental death metal band from New Jersey. Their debut album (or I suppose you could call it an EP too), The Throat of the World, was released via Bandcamp last December and it’s available for a price you name. It consists of four songs, and the band explain that the compositions were inspired by “The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim”. Continue reading »

TRIPTYKON: “MELANA CHASMATA”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Apr 102014
 

(Here we have TheMadIsraeli’s review of the highly anticipated second album by Triptykon.)

For my tastes, there hasn’t been a tome of brutal filth as drenched in its own misery and occult sense of violence since Triptykon released their debut album Eparistera Daimones in 2010.  Triptykon so effectively epitomize the manifold attractions of metal and why people love the music so intensely.  The sound they produce is so dark, so dank, so utterly revolting and devastating, yet so diverse.

I fell in love with the combination of styles Tom G. Warrior started messing around with on Celtic Frost’s swansong Monotheist, and enjoyed Triptykon’s debut immensely, as simply a continuation of the sound found there.  Triptykon are the only band I can think of who have managed to mix thrash metal, doom metal, goth metal, and death metal into something that sounds like all and none of those styles at the same time.

Now here we finally have Melana Chasmata, Warrior’s second outing with this band.  He had a fuck ton of hype to live up to, given how near-flawless the debut was.  He’d have to make a record so utterly suffocated by its own personal demons that listeners could feel the voices starting to creep into their heads and begin wishing for psyche meds — and he succeeded.  Listening to this record may make you feel like you’re trying to break your way out of a strait jacket in the most feral and desperate manner possible. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KILLGASM — “REVENGE OF THE PANZERGOAT”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Apr 102014
 

When I think about metal that delivers unbridled feral explosiveness, two of the genres that come to mind immediately are grindcore and the kind of fast-paced black metal that’s ripping and ravenous. Now, think about combining those two styles of mayhem. That’s what Sacramento’s Killgasm have done on their forthcoming album A Stab In the Heart of Christ. It’s music that will leave you bleeding from all the orifices.

This is the blasphemous trio’s second album, following their 2011 debut Bloodbath of Satanic Vengeance, and an assortment of previous EPs and splits, as well as last year’s single, “High On Church Fumes” (which also appears on the new album). Today, we’re giving you a taste of the rapacious fury that the new album delivers with our premiere of its third track, “Revenge of the Panzergoat”. Continue reading »

METAL FASTING — REFLECTING ON EXILE

 Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 102014
 

(NCS contributor Leperkahn decided that for a school project he was going to spend a week without metal. He received a lot of suggestions from our readers for non-metal listening, and he wrote day-by-day reports of what he explored instead of metal. In this post he reflects on the experience.)

Well, I’ve finally returned to my beloved metal. Though it was very interesting and informative to explore other genres, the experiment also proved to affirm metal as my outright favorite genre, at its best combining all the disparate positive elements of nearly every other genre into one. Part of that may stem from the extremely vague definition metal has come to assume: Perhaps the only uniting factor is a strong, loud percussive unit (and even that could be called into question).  Many of the other genres I explored seem to have somewhat stricter definitions, which necessarily seems to place an eventual constraint on the directions in which a genre can evolve.

That’s not to discount the ability of these other genres to go places where metal has never gone, nor could ever go. Most forays of metal into rap’s “territory”, for example, have been rather ill-fated (I think of Limp Bizkit here, as opposed to the success story of Rage Against The Machine). Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 65: NIHILO, VALLEY OF HINNOM, EXISTENTIUM

 Free Shit, MISCELLANY  3 Responses »
Apr 092014
 

MISCELLANY is probably the most irregular of the regular features at NCS.  Though I’ve found that it’s a good way to discover new music, I often let weeks or months go by before revisiting the series. But this week there will be an unusual burst of activity. I have the 65th edition today, and both the 66th and 67th editions are in various stages of completion. With luck, I will post them over the next two days — three in a row!

Here’s how the game works: I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, usually focusing on under-the-radar groups whose names I’ve never heard before either. The selection process is random; for these three editions of the series, I tended to focus on bands who’ve written us recently. I try to limit my listening to a song or two and then write my impressions, while streaming what I heard so you can form your own opinions. I don’t know in advance whether I’ll like the music, so there’s an element of surprise involved (good or bad). For this listening session I investigated the music of three bands.

NIHILO

Nihilo are from Switzerland. They’ve released three EPs, as well as a previous full-length (2010’s Concordia Perpetua). In March of this year they released a new album entitled Dum Spiro Spero, which features cover art by Paolo “Madman” Girardi, and was a promising sign, all by itself. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries