SHADES OF BLACK: SKALDR, STELLAR FOREST, JZOVCE, SPECTRAL LORE

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Jan 052025
 

I had a decision to make that I knew would have a significant impact on how many new releases I could cover in this Sunday column. That decision is discussed in the intro to today’s last item. I made the decision in a way that forced me to cut down the total, and leaves a lot of other songs buzzing in the back of my head as if clamoring for the attention I didn’t give them.

But I better truncate this opening verbiage before I have to further truncate the selections. In short, I’m beginning with three singles, and then moving to a very long demo at the end.

SKALDR (U.S.)

The first single today is a song from this Virginia band’s new album Saṃsṛ (their second full-length overall). I’ve been meaning to include it in one of these columns for weeks, but one thing or another has kept delaying the follow-through on my intentions. The song’s name is “The Crossing.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SABHANKRA, ANDE, HOLY DEATH, MEGATON COMMUNION, CRACKWHÖRE, GASH FAITH, THE FALL OF MOTHER EARTH, ЧЕРНОПЛОДЬ

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Jan 042025
 

 

We’ve reached the end of a long holiday period and that left me feeling glum last night, morose over the realization that the rat race will resume on Monday. I felt much better after going through a big batch of songs I wanted to consider for this Saturday roundup.

Apart from enjoying the music, I’m enjoying the idea of how wobbly these eight selections will leave people who make it through all of them; there are many twists and turns along the way.

I arranged the choices in four two-band blocks. This doesn’t mean the selections in each part sound alike, but I did perceive some connections, except in the final two. Those two are together at the end only because I didn’t want to leave them out. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 2): ALTA ROSSA, CANDY, BLACKEVIL

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Jan 032025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 2 of this list of 2024’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. If you’ve stumbled across this for the first time today and have no idea what I’m doing, you could take a look at the introductory verbiage in Part 1. But today I’m just going to get right into the next three selections without delay, each one radically different from the others.

ALTA ROSSA

Alta Rossa‘s A Defiant Curse hit fairly late in the year, near the end of November, and Andy jumped on it fast. In his review he wrote:

“Dealing in a form of Sludge/Post-Metal that errs more towards the Hardcore-inspired end of the spectrum – think LLNN, Herod, and early The Ocean (i.e. when the band were at their best… yeah, I said it) – Alta Rossa hit hard and refuse to pull their punches…. As punchy and pugilistic as the band’s sound is, however (and there’s no question that Alta Rossa came ready to fight), it’s also brimming with dark, desolate atmosphere…. those who connect with this album will be in for one hell of a ride, equal parts primal, gut-level impact and deeper, darker soul-scarring slow-burn.”

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOMITRISTE — “VOID SERMON”

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Jan 032025
 

(written by Islander)

We are about to premiere a surreal video for a track from a new album fittingly named Black Abyss Invocation by the enigmatic Finnish duo known as Vomitriste. Set for co-release later this month by Roman Numeral and Machine Tribe Recordings, it represents a horrifying new chapter in the band’s creative impulses.

What they’ve done before consists of six albums, which Vomitriste have recently released as a compilation called Droneworks (2022-2024). As that collective title suggests, the music could be (too simplistically) summed up as an amalgam of “colossal, noisy drones and profound dark ambient.” But what they’ve done on Black Abyss Invocation leaves that behind and makes a new start.

The change was unexpected even to the band. They say the new creations, which were created in a single session overnight, left them “perplexed” as they opened their minds and accidentally stumbled across new methods of expression. Here’s how they explain it: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NAKED WHIPPER — “DEPRAVED TO THE BONE”

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Jan 032025
 

(written by Islander)

I don’t think I’d heard of Naked Whipper until Neill Jameson mentioned their forthcoming album not once but twice in his year-end articles at NCS, as something to look forward to in January. He made the same observations on social media. Just about every time, he included exclamation points. I began to think that was part of their actual name: “Naked Whipper(!)”

And then serendipitously we got asked to host this premiere. Sadly, I discovered that exclamation points aren’t part of their official name. Happily, I discovered why Neill was always adding that punctuation.

One reason is that their new album, Chapel Defilement, is the band’s first release of any kind since 1995, so there’s the surprise that comes from thinking something’s dead and dusted and then suddenly seeing it breathe again. But there’s another reason, which you’re about to discover. Continue reading »

TWO MORE FOR 2024: FRONTIERER AND SACRAMENTO

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Jan 032025
 

(Though we’ve turned the corner into 2025, DGR has a couple more records from 2024 he wants to recommend, through the reviews below.)

Ah, it’s the most wonderful time of a website’s year. That brief breather where we get to both get started on stuff coming out in 2025 and kick ourselves in the shins over stuff we missed over the course of the previous year – usually in about equal measure.

It is imagined then, that I shall not be the only one with a few demons still resting on my shoulders that I felt compelled to acknowledge before fully launching myself into the inevitable shitshow that will be the new year. This time around, I’ve managed to dig up two more – one which saw very late release at the end of the year and another that I am in awe I did not come across during my many bandcamp and youtube music rabbit hole tumbles.

So, I shall attempt at the very least to see that they get some sort of spotlight here lest the guilt overwhelm me to the point where I become locked in a paralysis unknown to man up to this time. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 1): DARKTHRONE, CRYPT SERMON, DÖDSRIT

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Jan 022025
 

(written by Islander)

I wasn’t able to make this list last year due to the rude demands of my day job. Especially because of that, I’ll repeat some things I’ve written in the past about this final part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy:

This particular series isn’t about best albums or best shorter releases, and it isn’t even about best songs. As the title says, it’s about “most infectious” songs. Some of those might be among the year’s best songs, but in every year there are stand-out songs that aren’t immediately infectious, and actually might never be. Conversely, there are some highly infectious songs every year that most people wouldn’t critically acclaim as great works of art.

The process of compiling this list, as in every previous year, is a bit bizarre, or at least very poorly planned. Let me explain: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEJECTER — “FIENDS”

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Jan 022025
 

On January 31st the Kansas City outfit Dejecter will build upon and expand what they’ve done on two previous EPs through the release of a new one named Oblation Husk, and today we’re helping to introduce it through our premiere of one of the four new songs. Its entirely fitting name is “Fiends.”

For those who haven’t yet discovered the band, it began in the summer of 2022 when Sean Rehmer (Mercurial) and Josh Caldwell (Godhammered, One Inch Punch) begun writing together at Storm Crow Studio just outside of Kansas City. Some months later, they sought out a vocalist to complete their vision and found what they sought in Silas Olson (Devourist).

They then put out those two EPs mentioned above, Human​(​v​)​oid in 2023 and Majesty Artificial last year. Those two led Metal Archives to brand Dejecter‘s music as “Death/Sludge Metal,” and you’ll detect both of those genre ingredients in the new EP, but other ingredients are now also apparent. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

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Jan 022025
 

(Andy Synn isn’t quite ready to say goodbye to 2024 just yet)

Well, here we are. It’s 2025 and time to start looking towards what this new year has to bring.

Or, should I say, almost time… because first I want to highlight a quartet of releases which – for various reasons (namely that either they hadn’t actually come out, or I hadn’t stumbled across them yet) – I didn’t have chance to include in my annual “List Week”, but which all definitely deserve some extra attention before we finally consign 2024 to the gaping maw of history.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON NEW YEAR’S DAY: AVULSED, CRAWLING CHAOS, ARGWAAN, SERPENTS OF PAKHANGBA, AWRIZIS, STRESS TEMPLE, GROUND SWEAT, HUSMANSKOST, BYFROST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jan 012025
 


Fireworks at the Seattle Space Needle last night (photo by Sigma Sreedharan / KOMO #SoNorthwest Photography)

(written by Islander)

Happy New Year to all of you! May the turn of the calendar page begin leading you to many good things over the coming year, even if it mainly leads you to still write “2024” in your date entries over the next few weeks.

Yesterday we finished the main part of our annual LISTMANIA series, and I posted a “wrap up” for it earlier today. All those lists verified what we already knew as the past year crawled by, i.e., that 2024 was another great interval for metal, even if it was a garbage fire in many other respects.

We have abundant reasons to expect that 2025 will also bring us abundant metallic goodness and greatness, and some of those reasons are already concretely apparent, witness the music I picked for this New Year’s Day roundup (though some of it also comes from the later days of December — and a couple songs are from 2010!). Continue reading »

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