BRAIN STEW: TERATISM, NECROSIS, THEOLOGIAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

I keep endless lists of music I mean to check out some day based on things I see or messages I receive. Unfortunately, time being in short supply, I never make it through everything. But last night I ticked off about a dozen items on the list and I picked these three with which to launch this Happy Friday. I picked them because in different ways they tend to mess with your brain, and collectively they create a nice stew bubbling inside the cranium.

TERATISM

This black metal band’s last release was an MLP entitled La Bas, which I reviewed here. All of those songs were recorded years ago though they were only officially released this past summer. But Teratism are working on their next album and they’ve recently made two demo tracks available on Bandcamp for a “pay what you want” price, under the title Prelude to the Second Death. While both songs contain eruptions of destructive blasting, they are for the most part slow and freighted with the weight of doom.

“Four Waters” is draped in sheets of radioactive guitar noise and harrowing feedback, which are pulled back in the song’s mid-section to reveal guitar notes that peal like funeral bells, the steady pulse of a bass, and the muffled thump of the drums. “Micturation Into the Tributary of Death” works with a similar funereal atmosphere, lacing it with eerie harmonic arpeggios that transform the music into a slow waltz of death. Both songs are deeply unsettling, and yet they are both almost beautiful in their utter bleakness. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PYLAR, SKYDANCER, IMPENDING DOOM, AND ANTERO SLEEPS

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Here’s a round-up of music I discovered today in periodic forays through the interhole and a quick glimpse at the flooded NCS e-mail inbox. Stylistically, the music is all over the place, and it’s scattered geographically, too.

PYLAR

I came across this band via a short post at CVLT Nation, which gave no clue what the music is like (apart from calling it “pure magic”) or any information about the band, other than the fact that they’ve recorded an album entitled Rises In My Mighty that’s being released (on Nov 1) by Knockturne Records. (Actually, the album’s name is Poderoso se alza en my; I can’t vouch for the English rendition of the title.) Pylar have a Facebook page, but it’s not very informative either, providing neither the band’s location nor the identity of its members, though it’s apparent they’re from somewhere in Spain.

But I decided to listen to the song that CVLT Nation premiered because of that eye-catching album cover that you see above. According to the band’s FB page, it was created by “the expert in alchemical symbolism and sacred geometry, Gamaheo, member of the Numinoso Círculo Atlante.” Speaking of which, it’s also apparent that Pylar themselves devote their music (and possibly other activities) to certain ancient alchemical and occult arts, the meanings of which are completely obscure to whitebread me. But I do find that song fascinating. Continue reading »

IN SOLITUDE, IN THE CASTLE

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Last week I had the chance to see Sweden’s In Solitude perform in Seattle as support on a tour headlined by Watain (who, by the way, were stunningly good). I was already a fan of the band’s 2013 album Sister, but came away even more impressed because of the high quality of their live show — an experience marred only slightly by the over-the-top “I’m a rock god” posing of the band’s bass player in the spotlight at the center of the stage while the true rock god, vocalist Pelle Åman, positioned himself off to the side, head down, hair covering his face, belting out wailing vocals that were damned near pitch-perfect.

This morning I watched a new video of the band in an unusual setting that captures their skill in the flesh, as well as the brilliance of their songwriting. A Swedish TV channel called PSL journeyed to the band’s hometown of Uppsala last spring to interview the band. While there, In Solitude took the crew to the band’s favorite hometown place, the castle ruin of the bloodthirsty King Erik XIV, who descended into madness before ultimately being deposed and most likely poisoned while in prison. As PSL writes at their online blog:

As the clock struck 12 – exactly 446 years after the king orchestrated a bloodbath in the very room where we stood – the band played us the song ”A Burried Sun” from their latest album ”Sister”.

And that’s what’s captured on the shadow-blanketed video — the potent mix of occult rock, doom, and psychedelia that makes up “A Buried Sun” and the spooky power of Pelle Åman’s voice. It’s very cool, and it’s available for viewing right after the jump (and yes, the music is an Exception to the Rule around here). Continue reading »

BLOOD MORTIZED: “THE DEMON, THE ANGEL, THE DISEASE”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Sweden’s Blood Mortized are back with a new album, and as you might guess from that album cover, they’re not fucking around. However, as you might not guess from that cover art, there’s a lot more going on in The Demon, The Angel, The Disease than maniacal serial killers and a big unholy whiff of cemetery rot.

The resurgence of Swedish-style death metal in the blood line of Grave-Dismember-Entombed proves the adage that, in time, everything old is new again. But frequently the new releases in this vein just sound old, old and tired, even to people like me who are addicted to this style. It’s not enough to simply capture the tone and the atmosphere. Make no mistake, you do need that, but you need more to make a great album that will put smiles on the faces of the hellish faithful and cause them to slobber in ghoulish glee. I’ll tell you how Blood Mortized have pulled off that trick.

We begin with the essentials. The production job on the album (by Linus Nirbrant of Sweden’s This Ending) makes it sound absolutely massive, not too murky or raw but still corroded and corrosive. When heard at the proper volume (i.e., the level that will leave you with tinnitus for days), the music is overwhelmingly powerful. The drums (performed by Norway’s Brynjar Helgetum) go off like cannon volleys, like nearby thunder, like heavy caliber machine guns on full auto. And listening to the guitars and bass, tuned low and deep and shrouded in distortion, is like being trapped inside a giant chainsaw or a titanic tunnel boring machine. Like these things: Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “VERMIS”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

(In this post, NCS writer DGR reviews the latest album by New Zealand’s Ulcerate.)

Ulcerate were one of those bands who for a long time had a firm spot on my metal radar, but I never really got around to checking them out. The group got my attention around the time of their Willowtip release Everything Is Fire, mostly because I’ve always tried to keep up with that label after they gifted us with Arsis’ first couple of releases in the early aughts. However, where Ulcerate really made their impression was with Destroyers Of All, which it seemed like I listened to at first by gunpoint, with every metal listener I knew screaming from the mountaintops about it.

Destroyers Of All was a massive disc, a gargantuan, lumbering beast that you don’t really hear in death metal outside of the Polish scene or the more doom-oriented bands, yet Ulcerate had created an album that made me picture the band as one of the few who would be playing when the apocalypse happened. There was such a cavernous sound on display that it pretty much became an unspoken rule that anything the group did henceforth would be hotly anticipated. And so, as the group geared up to put out their 2013 release Vermis, I disconnected from most press outlets in a desire to go in somewhat unspoiled.

The album has been out in the world for a month at this point, and the reason that we’re only now getting around to a review is because Vermis is a dense, dense album. It feels like a brother to Destroyers Of All but with a bigger emphasis on the doom atmosphere. While the group had already been making long songs, Vermis extended them into the hopeless territory, with the listener being dragged almost unwillingly behind the band. It makes Vermis a difficult and challenging album to fight through, yet it is also one of the most intense experiences released this year. Continue reading »

DARKNESS AND LIGHT: LUMBAR AND THE BINARY CODE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 232013
 

This has been a very full day at the site, but I wanted to add one more post about the last two pieces of music I heard this morning. They pulled me in two very, very different directions, but they each made an emotional connection. And since blogs exist so that extroverted personalities never have to keep anything to themselves, I’m sharing.

LUMBAR

Without ever hearing the music, there have been powerful reasons to believe that Lumbar’s first (and maybe last) album — The First and Last Days of Unwelcome — was going to be very heavy. As you’ll know if you read our interview of the band’s founder and instrumentalist Aaron Edge, the songs were written as he was being afflicted by the pain of what would ultimately be diagnosed as multiple sclerosis, and the lyrics were written after he had spent 40 days bed-ridden with the disease, as he was beginning to come to terms with what had happened to him. I still find his description of the music evocative and gripping:

“Imagine three people, a small band or tribe. A storm is coming and it forces the small party into the ground, into caves. The spaces are small, cramped and dark. As the three huddle together, they hear/feel the approaching roll of nature’s foul breath, as it tears trees up from their roots, pushing huge boulders from their resting spots and dumping rain across the land. The tribe, without light and much hope, shudder. Feet stomp in panic. Teeth chatter. The wind howls, the rain becomes rivers and starts to fill up every hole in the earth. Air is thin. Breathing becomes harder, labored and louder. All these sounds and rhythms, the shared feelings of both paranoia and claustrophobia, the fear smelled in the sweat of these three… that’s what Lumbar sounds like.” Continue reading »

DEVIL YOU KNOW — A NEW “SUPERGROUP” SIGNS WITH NUCLEAR BLAST AND DEBUTS THEIR FIRST SONG

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 232013
 

Devil You Know is a new band that includes some old and respected names: Howard Jones (former frontman for Killswitch Engage and Blood Has Been Shed); Francesco Artusato (solo artist and guitarist with All Shall Perish); and John Sankey (drummer for Devolved and formerly with Divine Heresy). Today brought the announcement that this new “supergroup” has signed with Nuclear Blast for release of their debut album next year.

Within the last hour, the band also began streaming a demo version of a new song from the album, “Shut It Down”. And if you think you know what it’s going to sound like based on Howard Jones’ previous work with Killswitch Engage, you’re likely to be wrong. He does bring out the clean vox, but the extremity in his harsh vocals — especially combined with the gut-busting heaviness of the riffs and John Sankey’s spine-jarring drum assault — will strip paint from the walls. The dude lets it all hang out. Continue reading »

CHAPTERS: “THE IMPERIAL SKIES” (A Review and A Song Premiere)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 232013
 

(In this post we present our second review of the new album by Chapters — this one written by TheMadIsraeli — as well as the premiere of a combined song from the new album: “March of the Puritan/Arising”.)

This review comes later than I had planned. I was going to publish something I had originally written but it just didn’t convey the passion I have for this album.  Neither did I feel, in hindsight, that I gave Chapters their musical due, or rather, I was missing the target as far as what they do.  The thing is, Chapters channel a musical era of metal that I was passionately into and couldn’t get enough of.  The fact that a band like this existed when I discovered them back in 2011 excited me, and that excitement hasn’t waned one bit.  Their new album The Imperial Skies is one of the best releases of the year, no doubt, and it re-captures the excitement of a musical movement that unfortunately got trampled underfoot by the bullshit metalcore explosion that occurred from 2005 onward.

Chapters are, ironically because of their British origin, New Wave of American Metal.  I don’t say this solely as a matter my own speculation or opinion, mind you. In the friendships I’ve developed with masterminds Joe Nally and Angus Neyra, we’ve discussed this and they pretty much agree.  While they do draw influences from Death and from Bay Area thrash, it’s bands such as Shadows Fall, Lamb of God, God Forbid, Himsa, and early All That Remains who are the foundation Chapters have built upon.  Whether you want to call it metalcore (which I argue that stuff was) or not, Chapters fully embrace the thrash/hardcore/melodic death metal combination in which those bands fully entrenched themselves.

As such, you get all the expected elements: Melodic technical guitar work, driving emotive melodic passages, vocals with a great deal of passion behind them that sound like they’re being delivered at the risk of the vocalist’s voice, and beautiful acoustic interludes.  I eat this shit up, always have and always will, but Chapters deliver it exceptionally well, leagues beyond anyone else who’s tried to capture this sound since its heyday. Continue reading »

MANHANDLING THE MAINSTREAM

 Mosh Pit  23 Responses »
Oct 232013
 

(In this post, Andy Synn offers thoughts and opinions about the challenges that upwardly mobile bands face once they reach the peak of success within the confines of metal, and about the risks of attempting to make a leap into the mainstream. Your thoughts, as always, will be welcome in the Comment section.)

Oooh… there’s that word. The “M” word. A term so divisive I bet half of you just vomited from sheer internet-based rage. A word so contentious we had to invent our own subdivision of it (the “metal mainstream”) just to better separate the “true” from the “false”.

But… does it have its place? And if it does (and I think it does)… what are we going to do with it?

After the jump… my lengthy, stream-of-consciousness, pseudo-philosophical ramblings on the subject! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FULL-ALBUM STREAM OF “WOMB OF LILITHU” BY NECROPHOBIC

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Oct 232013
 

Sweden’s Necrophobic trace their roots back to Stockholm in 1989, right in the heart of an explosion of creativity when a uniquely Swedish brand of death metal was beginning to take the world by storm. Yet Necrophobic followed a different path. Along with Dissection (which was also formed in 1989), they began combining elements of death metal and second-wave black metal, helping establish the foundation that would go on to influence a multitude of other bands over the following decades.

Now Season of Mist is on the verge of releasing Necrophobic’s seventh album and their first in four years: Womb of Lilithu. Combining razor-sharp riffs, eerie melodies, progressive lead guitar work, and striking vocal variations, it’s a blend of the vicious and the spellbinding that will stand as one of the band’s strongest works to date.

Today we’re privileged to bring you a full-album stream of Womb of Lilithu. The album is due for release on October 29 in North America and October 25 everywhere else and can be pre-ordered here. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries