SHADES OF BLACK: ARKONA, GROZA, GAEREA, AETHYRICK, SVRM, EZKATON

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 252024
 


Arkona

(written by Islander)

Yesterday I read a story about a recent lobster-boat race across Casco Bay along the coast of Maine. It was won by a man and his 14-year-old daughter, with his daughter at the wheel of their 32-foot diesel-powered fishing boat. The man summarized their race strategy to a reporter: “Point it and punch it!”

Today’s collection includes new music from black metal bands who follow a similar strategy, but it also includes music that reveals a different strategy, something more like “slow it and sink it” (and maybe set it on fire first).

What ties all the music together is the presence of emotionally moving melodies and often the achievement of a certain scale and sweep (vast). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GIGAN, OLD MACHINES, FURNACE, SOLUS REX, ENDLESS CHAIN, LUSCA, KOBOLD, THE HYPOTHESIS, NARKOSE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 242024
 


Gigan

(written by Islander)

Poor you, I had lots of time on my hands yesterday, and so made my way through a lot more music than I’m usually able to do, and even had enough time to spill a bunch of words, like kernels from a violently ruptured grain silo.

With this much music in a weekly roundup, I often default to mentally un-taxing organizational strategies like alphabetization. But not today. I made these choices because of connections, and organized them in the way they connected for me. You’ll get it or you won’t, but as always, I hope you find one or more things you’re really glad you found, in whatever order it comes. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAPIENTIA DIABOLI — “I OV THE DARKNESS”

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Aug 232024
 

(Written by Islander)

Despite the fact that the identities of the most infamous progenitors of second-wave black metal, including arsonists, murderers, and the murdered, are very well-known (famous now, as well as infamous), anonymity remains among the more defining characteristics of black metal.

More so than in any other genre of metal, black metal is home to creators who adamantly prefer to let the music speak exclusively for them, without the potential distractions of identity. It’s not just a rejection of “celebrity”, it’s an embrace of obscurity, not just a pervasive use of pseudonyms but a blank space un-filled by any details other than what can be heard.

This iron-clad embrace of an underground ethos where the people making the music allow no light to shine on themselves (and sometimes no light to shine through the darkness of the music) often complicates and almost always undermines the mission of spreading of the word about the music. People who choose not to talk about what they’ve done, or even to tell actual or potential fans anything about who they are, leave more to chance about whether their accomplishments will find an audience.

Which brings us to Sapientia Diaboli, whose name is Latin for “The Wisdom of the Devil”. Maybe it is the Devil’s wisdom they practice by concealing everything except the shuddering impact of their sounds. Continue reading »

SURRENDER TO DEATH: A HISTORY OF THE ATLANTA METAL UNDERGROUND VOL. 1

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 232024
 

(In the following article our contributor Wil Cifer, who spent a lot of years in Atlanta, comments on a compilation set for release on September 6th by Boris Records and Deanwell Global Music which serves as a retrospective of the Atlanta metal underground from 1982 to 1999. It includes remastered original recordings by more than 20 bands from the area.)

In the ’80s Norway was not the bustling mecca for metal the media tries to portray it as today, so even Atlanta, Ga was impressive to me at 12 years old when I began visiting my grandparents in the States for a few weeks in the summers at their Stateside home just outside the city limits of Atlanta. My first exposure to what the music scene in America was like in the flesh is captured in Surrender To Death: A History of the Atlanta Metal Underground Vol. 1, a compilation by Boris Records and Deanwell Global Music. For me, it’s a fun indulgence of nostalgia for those summers spent venturing into the city for all-ages shows. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SINISTRO — “ELEGIA”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 222024
 

We’re about to premiere a video for the second advance song from Sinistro‘s new album Vértice. But before we get to it, let’s take a few steps back.

This Portuguese band’s last album, 2018’s Sangue Cássia, made a big and favorable impact around our crumbling and gore-streaked halls, and a very distinctive one given that their music was a very big exception to the permeable “rule” in our site’s title.

Our Andy Synn named Sangue Cássia to his year-end list of 2018’s “Critical Top 10” albums, calling it “one of the most intensely intimate, moodily mesmerising releases of the year.”

For us (and for many others) it was therefore very exciting and intriguing to learn that Sinistro would be returning this year with a new album, with a new singer (Priscila Da Costa) and a new label (Alma Mater Records), masterminded by Moonspell singer Fernando Ribeiro. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHLESS VOID — “PURPLE TRIAD”

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Aug 222024
 

(written by Islander)

The Dutch extremists Deathless Void burst upon the scene in 2022 with a debut demo that Iron Bonehead Productions wisely picked up for release on vinyl and tape. Its experiences of dread and delirium spawned comparisons by the label “to later Katharsis or Antaeus or especially turn-of-the-millennium Thorns“.

Deathless Void opened that demo with an instrumental piece, and followed it with “The Shattered Realms of Man Become the Abyss” and the stupendous “Crossing the Threshold“.

Not the usual dispensable intro track, “Ignis Fatuus” created an authentically flesh-creeping sonic hallucination, building layer upon layer of dismal, diseased, and demented sensations, both haunting and nightmarish.

In the subsequent two songs Deathless Void maintained the intro track’s connections to hostile beyond-our-world dimensions but escalated into mind-warping paroxysms of violence. Even more elaborately layered than the intro but orders of magnitude more orgiastic, those songs scathed and screamed, hurtled and heaved, and twisted themselves into a multitude of unexpected directions — including episodes of blaring and boiling grandeur, thrilling exoticism, and bottomless descents into the ice-cold void of their name.

Now, Deathless Void are poised to release their first album, The Voluptuous Fire of Sin, again ushered into our world by Iron Bonehead. It includes those latter two tracks from the demo, plus seven other songs, and we have one of those to share with you today. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ATAVISTIA / HOLY BLADE / SOLNEGRE / TIDES OF ACCRETION

 SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 222024
 

(Andy Synn recommends a quartet of short but sweet recent releases to check out)

We’ve featured a bunch of pretty big and/or up-and-coming bands this week – Spectral Wound, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Leprous – so maybe it’s time to shift focus back on some lesser-known names?

And since I also haven’t covered anywhere near enough EPs so far this year I was thinking… why not kill two metaphorical birds with one proverbial stone and write about a bunch of short-form releases that, perhaps, haven’t gotten enough attention?

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFIN ROT — “HANDS OF DEATH”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 212024
 

When we last devoted attention in our pages to the works of Coffin Rot from Portland, Oregon, the occasion was the impending release of their split with Molder in 2018. Much has happened to the band since then, including the release of their 2019 debut album, A Monument to the Dead, and the expansion of their lineup from founders Hayden Johnson (vocals) and Derek Johnson (drums) and guitarist/bassist Tre Guertner to also include bassist Brandon Martinez-Woodall and second guitarist Jonathan Quintana (from Decrepisy, Thanamagus, and Ascended Dead).

Now, this quintet has prepared a second album. Fittingly entitled Dreams of the Disturbed, it’s set for release by Maggot Stomp on September 20th. As you’ll discover, it’s not just the lineup that has changed since 2018, but the array of ingredients Coffin Rot have brought into their sound, and the array of skin-crawling moods they’ve thereby created on this new full-length.

As proof of this, today we premiere the new album’s second single, “Hands of Death“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INGURGITATING OBLIVION — “THE BARREN EARTH OOZES BLOOD, AND SHAKES AND MOANS, TO DRINK HER CHILDREN’S GORE” (PART 2)

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Aug 212024
 

(written by Islander)

Four weeks ago we embarked here on an unusual collaboration with the German avant-garde death metal band Ingurgitating Oblivion and Willowtip Records, the label that will release their new album Ontology of Nought on September 27th. What we began doing four weeks ago was the rollout of a single long song from the album, a rollout divided into three segments. Today we present the second Part, with the third and final one still ahead next month.

The name of the song is also long, and unsettling in the vision it portrays: “The barren earth oozes blood, and shakes and moans, to drink her children’s gore”. As we disclosed in Part 1 of this premiere, the rest of the song titles on the album are also unusual, and also evocative of dark moods — and all those other songs are also expansive in their duration. Here’s the track list: Continue reading »

LEPROUS – MELODIES OF ATONEMENT

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Aug 212024
 

(Andy Synn continues his on/off love affair with Leprous, whose new album comes out 30 August)

Being “heavy” is not the same as being “good”. We all know that, right?

But I must admit, as someone who first fell in love with Leprous back when they were still serving as Ihsahn‘s backing band, and who still believes that Bilateral is one of the best and most unique albums of the new millennium, I was certainly excited by the announcement that Melodies of Atonement was going to showcase a “heavier” side of the group than what we’d seen/heard in recent years.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve continued to be a fan (to a greater or lesser extent) of the band’s output – Coal and Malina are also still firm favourites, and there’s some great tracks on The Congregation, Pitfalls (including the outstanding “The Sky Is Red”), and Aphelion (whose cinematic highs more than make up for the record’s occasional lows) – but the idea that they might be bringing back some of the edginess and punchiness of their earlier work(s) certainly had me intrigued.

Of course, as any sensible person might have predicted, MoA isn’t just Bilateral, Part 2 – there’s some moments here that probably deserve that comparison, but overall the two albums really share only the most basic musical markers, enough to tell that they’re related but probably not enough to make them genetically compatible – as the Leprous of today is quite literally not the same band they used to be.

Even so, however, I can tell you now that the group weren’t lying when they said that this would be a “heavier” album… even if the story is a little more complicated than that.

Continue reading »

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