PLEBEIAN GRANDSTAND: “LOWGAZERS”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 092014
 

(In this post Austin Weber reviews the second album by the French band Plebeian Grandstand.)

Sometimes a band’s evolution is so extreme, it’s as if a totally different group has emerged, completely shedding its sonic skin and realizing a new sound. It’s rare for this to happen, but in the case of Toulouse, France natives Plebeian Grandstand, it’s taken them to a whole other level.

How they sound on Lowgazers is a deep departure from how they began, which was a sort of experimental take on Converge’s style of hardcore with some mathcore and punk elements in the mix. They’ve largely traded in their prior stylings for dissonant, bone-chilling blackness, energizing the sinking weight of their sorrow with grind and powerviolence at just the right moments.

Lowgazers is not an inviting album. Its pitch-black litanies are bound to gloom and misery, hypnotically swelling and collapsing, caustic and bleeding in front of you, with no regard for boundaries, the tenderness of ears, or accessibility. The vicious experience of listening to Lowgazers produces a sickness that could drive one mad in large doses, its maximum-meets-minimum dense duality making for a masterful multitude of trainwrecks that derail into the abyss. Continue reading »

THANTIFAXATH: “SACRED WHITE NOISE”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Apr 082014
 

(Austin Weber reviews the forthcoming debut album by Toronto’s Thantifaxath.)

In the last few years, the black metal scene has taken an even darker turn, with many new acts expanding upon the influence of Deathspell Omega and others who have been turning black metal upside down and reinventing the evil within it. This is where the (literally) cloaked-in-anonymity Canadian group Thantifaxath come in. They reside somewhere within the frenzied straightforward past of the genre, while joining this new class of frightening dissonant acts, whose main goal is to make your ears recoil in uncomfortable revulsion.

Thantifaxath are focused on making your skin crawl and confusing your ears. The focus of this record is not on steamrolling you with aggression, but abducting and torturing you, utilizing bizarre methods and engulfing you in a sense of creepy unease. They leave you alone in the fathomless shadows of their music to cringe, become crippled by, and subsequently caught in its ceaseless sickness. Their memorable draw lies in their eerie riffing submerged in darkness and pain, memorable riffs that stick surprisingly easily in the brain like an inviting descent into hell. Continue reading »

PYRRHON: “THE MOTHER OF VIRTUES”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Apr 082014
 

(In this post BadWolf reviews the new album by Pyrrhon.)

Let’s talk about PR for a moment. Brooklyn outfit Pyrrhon have a pretty darn good PR outlet—one of the best when it comes to metal, in fact, and even they are having trouble pitching the band’s new album, The Mother of Virtues. In one email, they described the record as “Investigational Death Metal,” which is a patently ridiculous descriptor. First, how can music be investigational? I read it and think of True Detective, not riffs and blast beats. It isn’t as if listening to Pyrrhon will answer any mysteries in your life. In fact, it’s more likely to raise some serious questions, if you’re willing to listen. Second, I’m not entirely sure I’d call Pyrrhon a death metal band.

Which isn’t to say they’re doing a bad job. Quite to the contrary, Pyrrhon’s sophomore LP is earning rave reviews, and will probably end up on quite a few year-end lists, as well it should. The issue is that Pyrrhon’s sound is so out there that succinctly describing it is difficult.

It’s a difficult task for me, in particular, because Pyrrhon’s vocalist and lyricist, Doug Moore, is a friend, as well as my supervisor at Invisible Oranges. The details of our relationship, and a more in-depth disclaimer, precede my interview with Moore. Continue reading »

METAL FASTING: DAYS 6-7

 Off Topic  7 Responses »
Apr 072014
 

(NCS guest 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, and this is his report on the last two days of the experiment.)

Today’s listening, on my last day of exile (I must have missed a day in writing somewhere, ‘cause it’s definitely been seven days, but I only have six posts to show for it), was a rather faint attempt to delve into some classical, bolstered by catching up on SNL and Vikings (hence the reduced listening). Let’s get right on to it.

***

I pretty much went for the two classical pieces suggested by reader TGLumberjack: Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. The former was, as were the other classical tidbits I sampled yesterday, quite a journey throughout its roughly 40-minute runtime, introducing many interweaving melodies and tense climaxes. As for the latter, TGLumberjack probably described it best: Continue reading »

THY DISEASE: “THE COSTUME OF TECHNOCRACY”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 072014
 

(DGR reviews the sixth studio album by Poland’s Thy Disease, released in February 2014.)

Industrial hybrid genres are an oddball entity to write about when it comes to heavy metal. Often it feels like bands don’t have enough industrial elements and at other times it feels like those are are overwhelming the others to the extent that the remaining piece of the descriptor might as well not even be there. There are people who do get it correct, but it seems to have become the go-to for any band that adds some distorted whirs, buzzes, keyboards, and such, that they wind up with an “industrial” in front of their name.

Industrial Death often finds itself in that weird push-pull dynamic, having morphed into a groove-focused genre with very little of the actual death metal side present — namely, just growled vocals  and the occasional blast-beat battering. It’s also a very wide genre that has become a huge umbrella term for bands who might otherwise be characterized as symphonic or something else entirely. Long story short, it’s hard to tell if seeing a band described as Industrial Death Metal actually means anything at first glance, other than allowing you to infer that at some point there will be electronics in the mix.

Poland’s Thy Disease are one such band, a group who have adopted the “industrial death metal” descriptor as part of their image, playing up the “music made by and for Terminators” aspect of it while incorporating many of the aforementioned groove-heavy and instantly neck-bobbing riffs in their music. The band have been long-time staples of my personal Last.fm recommendations — one of the groups that I feel like I’ve listened to more on that site despite having a copy of Anshur-Za (their 2009 release) lying around in my house. Continue reading »

THREE KINGS: ENTHRONED, INFESTUS, HORIZON ABLAZE (AND AN NCS PREMIERE)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  8 Responses »
Apr 072014
 

(In one fell swoop, Andy Synn reviews three superb new albums — by Enthroned, Infestus, and Horizon Ablaze — and we bring you the streaming premiere of a song from Horizon Ablaze.)

It may only be early April but 2014 has already produced numerous candidates for my own personal End of Year list/s. And it looks like it’s going to be a very bleak, blackened year indeed.

So, to highlight the wealth of majestic misanthropy that has already appeared this year, I’ve selected three examples of Black Metal at its finest, three albums that richly deserve to be feared and worshipped in their own right, three artists who may yet lay claim to the crooked crown.

Each one has its own allure, its own character, from the uncompromising, to the unknowable, to the unorthodox. Each one has its own voice and style, from the demonic, to the despairing, to the deranged. Yet each one is united by an undercurrent of remorseless passion and refusal to follow the path of others. Each one a visceral, violent, dissonantly melodic and brutally infectious example of blackened musical magick. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WATCH INSOMNIUM’S NEW VIDEO FOR “WHILE WE SLEEP”

 Premieres  18 Responses »
Apr 072014
 

Only three weeks stand between us and the release of Shadows of the Dying Sun, the sixth album by Finland’s Insomnium. It’s both a summing up of where the band have come from and a step ahead, a forward movement that not only embodies the sounds and styles which have drawn increasing numbers of fans to their side but also moves their music in new directions. And as you might guess from that last sentence, it’s a diverse assembly of songs, with some that are faster and heavier than you might expect, and some that are softer. But throughout, the band once ago show their mastery at writing melodies that stay with you.

Shadows of the Dying Sun also marks the first album appearance of the band’s new guitarist Markus Vanhala, who has been a member of Omnium Gatherum throughout their career and has now collaborated with Ville Friman in the songwriting on Shadows.

One new song from the album (“Revelations”) has already debuted, and today we’re delighted to help premiere a second one — “While We Sleep” — and this one comes in the form of a new music video, directed by Dariusz Szermanowicz and produced by Poland’s Grupa 13. Unless we miss our guess, “While We Sleep” is one of the new album’s songs that’s going to get its hooks into listeners’ heads really hard, really fast. Continue reading »

WE BRING YOU A MESSAGE FROM ÆVANGELIST

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Apr 062014
 

Mile markers along the pathway into the void:

In February we brought you video of a previously unreleased song by the mysterious entity known as Ævangelist, a video announced in a message that concluded as follows:  “For now, we will withdraw into the temple of our muse and begin the recording of Æ III.”

On April 2, we observed a further message: “Progression of the aeon-dead academia of transcendent evil; Soon we will reveal the name of the third Ævangelist album.”

Today, a video message appeared, emanating from the Abysscape wherein Ævangelist dwell.

We have obtained the text of what you will hear. It follows the video below. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: IMPALED NAZARENE, DIOCLETIAN, GOJIRA, THE BODY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Apr 062014
 

I’ve collected here some things that made a big impression on me when I discovered them over the last 24 hours. Perhaps they will make an impression on you, too.

IMPALED NAZARENE

2014 will see the release of the TWELFTH (!!) album by Finland’s Impaled Nazarene. Although I haven’t listened to even half of those dozen, I’ve listened enough to know that although their sound might not be entirely predictable from album to album (not a bad thing), it’s always likely to be a skull-hammering good time. From what I’ve heard of the new album, that will hold true yet again.

The new one’s name is Vigorous and Liberating Death, and the album cover was painted by Taneli Jarva. It’s scheduled for release by Osmose Productions on April 14. It includes 13 songs, almost all in sub-three-minute territory. You can get a sense of what’s coming via a track named “Kuoleman Varjot” that recently appeared on SoundCloud. Plus, the band have released a lyric video for the album’s title track. You can check out both below. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VERBERIS — “VASTITAS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Apr 062014
 

Germany’s Iron Bonehead label has unearthed yet another seething snakepit of blackened death metal, this time from the deceptively beautiful land of New Zealand. The band’s name is Verberis and their debut demo is Vastitas.

With a bit of googling, I learned that “Vastitis” is a Latin word that variously means “wasteland”, “desolation”, and “immensity” or “vastness”. It’s a fitting title for this four-song offering. The music is cold, inhuman, and brutally destructive, with a style that falls somewhere in the plague-ridden landscape between Incantation and Mitcochondrion. The songs are driven by a raging storm of thrashing, low-pitched riffs and thundering, blasting percussion, with the only breaks coming in brief moments of solo bass grinding, eerie ambient conclusions, and a dirge-like segment in the last track, “Fangs of Pazuzu”.

Suppurating lead guitar melodies surface here and there, and the gargantuan echo-chamber roars and howls of the vocalist are reminiscent of Craig Pillard in his Onward To Golgotha days. While full-speed destruction is the name of this game, if you listen closely, you’ll notice a fair amount of flashy fretwork, changing guitar styles, and occasional bouts of drum acrobatics. Every now and then the band will also veer into a convulsive groove (my favorite of those moments coming from the pulsating melody that ends “Kaliginous Ascent”). Continue reading »

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