(Andy Synn adds his voice to the cacophony of praise for Aberration‘s debut album, out now)
If you’re going to describe your music as “light-devouring, abyssal Death Metal” then you’d damn well better be able to back up that claim.
Good thing, then, that Aberration are more than capable of doing so.
(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with bassist Mat from the German doom band Spiritual Void, whose latest album Wayfare saw release last summer.)
As we interviewed Iron Void, why don’t we do the same for Spiritual Void?
This doom metal trio is located somewhere in the Lake Constance area, at the northern foot of the Alps in Germany. That explains why the band prefers themes related to Nature in the artworks and lyrics of their albums White Mountain (2017) and Wayfare (2023). Spiritual Void’s members weren’t involved in any other bands before, so for Mat (bass), Schlunsky (drums), and Rob (guitars, vocals), Wayfare was only the second album in an entire career, so to speak.
And yet this material is remarkably solid, loud, and mournful, as any traditional doom metal album should be. Now come and taste it, while reading this interview with Mat.
On May 3rd much of the world will be deep into spring or entering summer, but it will still be a very dark day, cast into deep and sinister shadows by Pulverised Records‘ release of Nokturnal‘s debut album Shades of Night.
The album by these Indonesian necromancers is well-named, because the darkness of their music does have different shades, and reveals many shifting shapes within the gloom, as you shall witness through our premiere of an utterly diabolical and relentlessly dynamic album track named “Dagger of Will“. Continue reading »
The capacity to create sonic scenes of crazed and cataclysmic conflict, weaponized by technically eye-popping instrumental armaments and urged on by monstrous proclamations — these are among the achievements of the Turkish death metal band Engulfed, whose name encapsulates the experience of being caught and consumed by their ravenous music.
The engulfing savagery and racing technicality of the band’s music would by themselves be enough to put Engulfed on the global map, circled in red, but they also manage to insidiously infiltrate their music with mood-moving atmospherics both grim and grievous.
After only one album and a pair of EPs, Engulfed are already at the point when news of a new release whets appetites for angry and exhilarating music, and a new Engulfed release is what we’ll have on on April 19th when Me Saco Un Ojo and Dark Descent release the band’s second album, Unearthly Litanies of Despair.
So far, one song has erupted from the album, and today we un-cage a second one through our premiere of “Cursed Eternity“. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn eases us into another week with his take on the debut album from Leaving, out now)
Webster’s Dictionary defines “liminal” as “of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional”.
Which is a pretty apt metaphor for Californian collective Leaving, whose sound exists somewhere in the strange, unresolved space between Doom and Shoegaze.
Scarcity — photo by Caroline Harrison
Today’s selection of black and blackened metal was partly the result of coincidence and partly by design. Coincidentally, out of all the worthy songs I listened to in searching for selections, many of them were by bands whose names begin with “S”. By design, I limited this column to those bands. Chalk it up to some need for order out of chaos.
Also coincidentally, two of these songs were accompanied by videos that are among the best I’ve seen this year in any genre, and by arranging this column alphabetically by band name, they come first. Continue reading »
Blaze of Perdition – photo by Justyna Kaminska
My day job is in an extended period when it’s leaving me alone. This is a double-edged sword for my unpaid work at NCS. I’m able to notice a lot more new songs and videos, but that also leaves me feeling overwhelmed. The flood of new stuff is insane, and equally insane is how much of it is good.
A lot of listeners are so wedded to specific sub-genres that they’re unimpressed by much of what falls outside their solemn vows. I guess I’m wedded too, but am very much a polygamist and feel the need to give all the brides, even the ugliest ones, their fair share of attention.
OK, that was gross, but the point is that I’m enamored of metal from many sub-genres (the more extreme ones), as today’s large roundup demonstrates (though I still think power metal wears too much makeup and flashy clothes). Continue reading »
When is a curse also a blessing? The answer is Coffin Curse, the demon-spawned Chilean death metal band whose thoroughly evil new album The Continuous Nothing is now racing hell-for-leather toward an April 22nd release by Memento Mori.
We were blessed four years ago to premiere a song from this duo’s mortifying debut album Ceased to Be, and now we get to make another premiere today for the new album, presenting “Reeking Filth of Ages“. Continue reading »
Six years after their debut album Rituals and a year after their split-release with Feral, the Swedish death/crust band Crawl are making a rampaging return with their second full-length Altar of Disgust, which is set for release on May 3rd by Transcending Obscurity Records.
In listening to the new album, the phrase “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” comes to mind, because Crawl still revel in delivering ugly, adrenaline-fueled mayhem and skull-busting punishment, steeped in an atmosphere of ghastly horror and well in line with a rich tradition of Swedish-style, punk-influenced death metal.
But that’s not to say that Crawl have stood still since their debut album. While still unmistakably a Crawl release, the songwriting is more nuanced and more adventurous, and as Transcending Obscurity correctly previews, they’ve brought a bit of blackening into the mix here and there as well. Continue reading »
(Didrik Mešiček wrote the following review of a new album by the Faroese band Hamferð, which is being released today by Metal Blade Records.)
The Faroe Islands, a harsh archipelago, technically belonging to Denmark, with a population of roughly 54k people has 14 bands listed on Metal Archives. Ten of those are active and one of those is Hamferð, which is the band whose new release, Men Guðs hond er sterk, I’ll be covering in this article. The band has been around since 2008 and won the Wacken Metal Battle competition in 2012, after which they’ve released two full-length albums, with this being their third, which will come out on March 22nd on Metal Blade Records.
I can’t say I’ve been overly familiar with this band before and mostly only knew them by name, but what really drew me to this record immediately was the title. Men Guðs hond er sterk or, in English, “but God’s hand is strong”, is for some reason one of those phrases that automatically make me very intrigued, as it’s filled with promise and romance.
If we take into account the harshness of the Faroes, the phrase is so much more impactful, as life on the islands can truly be rough and, from what I’ve seen and been told, it truly feels as if you’re at the mercy of some sort of a god and its whims, whether on land or in a fishing boat not far off shore, a lesson captured in the tragic 1915 whaling event that inspired the record. Continue reading »