LIVE IN VIETNAM: SUFFOCATION, GATECREEPER, BLOOD SERPENT, THANH DUC, DIARSIA, DISTRICT 105 — 27 MARCH 2024

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
May 202024
 

(Our Hanoi-based correspondent Vizzah Harri prepared the following report of a hell of a show that took place in Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon, on March 27, 2024. Uncaptioned images in the article were made by him.)

The late eighties and early nineties must have been suffocating times – there were 6 bands formed around the same period with the name Suffocation. Though the band that formed in the same year that Soviet troops finally withdrew out of Afghanistan was the one that prevailed.

Suffocation needs no introduction for being groundbreakers in the genre of death regarding brutality and technicality. If anyone didn’t know, they’re from Long Island, home to the NYC boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, the former of which has some of the coolest metal bars any side of the Atlantic. I for one am really lucky to have not been born too late to witness Saint Vitus perform in the eponymous bar named after them.

Jesuit, if translated phonically, will sound like dễ sử in Vietnamese, which means ‘easy to use’ and the line followed unto the Latin of ‘lesous’ leads us to the catch 33 of salvation. These missionaries were extremely successful and had a massive influence on the eventual subjugation of the ‘J’ or ear-shaped French Indochina. An area that according to Wikipedia covered less ground than the three sovereign nations of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam of today.

Vietnam and Cambodia together are about 9 Long Islands smaller than France at 512,247 square kilometers (km2), which is about 20 Long Islands (3,629 km2) bigger than Arizona and the State of New York as one (436,554 km2). If you follow my bulletproof logic here… it’s been almost 20 years since Suffocation from Long Island visited this humid ‘little’ corner of the world. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBSCENE — “THE REAPER’S BLESSING”

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May 202024
 

We are genuinely thrilled today to blow up a grenade of sights, sounds, and information regarding an eagerly awaited new album from the Indiana-based death metal extremists in Obscene.

The name of the new album, which is the band’s third full-length, is Agony & Wounds. It’s now set for release on July 12th by Nameless Grave Records. As you can see, it’s adorned by eye-catching and mind-bending cover art created by the wickedly talented Brad Moore.

The new music turns out to be every bit as macabre and mind-blowing as the artwork, though it is ruthlessly brutalizing as well, and thus it legitimately represents a significant step forward for a band that has already made a cult name for itself among death-worshipping denizens of the underground.

Which brings us to the first song from the album that you’ll be able to hear, and that we’re maliciously thrilled to premiere today. Get on your knees and prepare to receive “The Reaper’s Blessing“. Continue reading »

GATECREEPER – DARK SUPERSTITION

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 202024
 

(Is the new Gatecreeper a trendkiller, or just a trend-follower? Andy Synn sets out to find out)

Let me ask you a question – how important is originality to you?

No, it’s not a trick question. After all, I’ve stated before that making a good (or great) album doesn’t necessarily require you to be particularly original – let’s face it, the Metal scene does tend to love a good throwback (sometimes too much) – as long as the execution and (more importantly) the songwriting are good enough.

Case in point – Gatecreeper‘s third album is basically a Dismember record in all but name.

But while Dark Superstition has definitely gained an advantage by standing on the shoulders of giants, it remains to be seen whether it has the songs to properly stand on its own two (or ten) feet.

Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD”

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May 202024
 

(Below you will find DGR‘s extensive review of the newest album from NZ’s Ulcerate, in advance of its June 14 release by Debemur Morti Productions.)

Weirdly enough, I had to check to see who had penned the last few reviews for Ulcerate’s releases as they’ve crossed our desks in the burnt-out husk that is more colloquially known as the ‘NCS Office’. The situation was one of those, ‘I’m pretty sure it was me, I am not a thousand percent sure it was me’.

You’ll forgive someone, of course, who has been spending a decent block of their heavy metal writing ‘career’ within the distant chasms of the Ulcerate discography for experiencing some sense of disassociation with the self. It turns out, it has in fact been yours truly for the most part, which means we can now add ‘Semi-Expert on Ulcerate’ to the resume, which’ll be only the third or fourth strangest thing on there, placed right up next to ‘balloon animal fluffer’. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AQUILUS, OPPRESS., AKVAN, NON EST DEUS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
May 192024
 

I made a bare-bones start on the writing of this column yesterday, and then halted that in order to venture into downtown Seattle for what turned into a long night of talking, eating, and drinking with DGR and former NCS scribbler BadWolf.

I woke up very late this morning for me, head stuffed with fuzz, and feeling very tempted not to finish what I started yesterday. But since I missed doing this column last week due to Northwest Terror Fest and likely won’t do one next Sunday due to Maryland Deathfest, I forged ahead… sort of.

Instead of trying to put into words everything I have been feeling about the music I chose for today, I can only offer relatively short recommendations. The glass isn’t even half full, but at least it’s not an empty glass. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE TROOPS OF DOOM, SOL DE SANGRE, WEREWOLVES, COLDCELL, NIHILO, LACABRA, KYBALION, BALWEZO WESTIJIZ, KŌYA, WHARFLURCH, AMORPHIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 182024
 


Troops of Doom – photo by Cissa Flores

I wasn’t able to serve up a Saturday roundup last weekend due to working on Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, and it’s highly unlikely I’ll get one done next Saturday since I’ll be at Maryland Deathfest (if you’re there and spot someone who looks like a heavily tatted escapee from a nursing home, come say hi). So that makes this one kind of important, if only for me.

There’s gobs of new music to choose from, many more gobs than usual since I missed a week. And by the way, I’m using “gob” here as a word meaning “a large amount” and not its other meaning, i.e., “a lump or clot of a slimy or viscous substance”, though I have included a song off an album named Shittier/Slimier.

Ready, set, go! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PERVERSA — “THE TRIAL OF CHRISTIANITY”

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May 172024
 

On May 27th Satanath Records (Georgia) and Pluton’s Rising Productions (Poland) will co-release Under The Sign Of Blasphemy, the debut album from the Roman black/death metal band Perversa, and today we help introduce it through our premiere of an album track named “The Trial Of Christianity“.

The members of Perversa aren’t newcomers, having been involved in numerous other groups before this one, including Lord Vampyr, Malamorte, Handful of Hate, Massemord, Funeral Oration, and Iblis, but what brought these Italian musicians together under the banner of Perversa was a shared desire to practice satanic black metal in a most evil way — and that’s vividly borne out by the song you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TLÖN — “THROUGH NEBULOUS SCARS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 172024
 

In May 1940 the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, widely credited as a founder of “magical realism” in literature, published a story named “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius“. In that mind-bending tale Borges was himself a protagonist. The plot concerns events going back as far as the early 17th century and culminates in a postscript, set in 1947. As summarized in The Font of All Human Knowledge:

“Told in a first-person narrative, the story focuses on the author’s discovery of the mysterious and possibly fictional country of Uqbar and its legend of Tlön, a mythical world whose inhabitants believe a form of subjective idealism, denying the reality of objects and nouns, as well as Orbis Tertius, the secret organization that created both fictional locations”.

That story inspired both the name of the new Scottish band Tlön and the lyrical themes of their debut EP Through Nebulous Scars — an astonishing mind-bender of its own that we’re helping spring upon an unsuspecting world today. Continue reading »

WASTEWALKER: “TRAPPED BETWEEN REALMS OF SUFFERING”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 172024
 

(In April of this year Sacramento-based Wastewalker released a new EP dedicated to their late guitarist Nate Graham, and long-time Wastewalker follower DGR delves into it in the following review.)

Sacramento’s tech-death group Wastewalker have been put through the wringer lately. The band, finally somewhat ascendant after the release of a solid sophomore album in Vengeance Of The Lowborn, suffered from the tragic passing of guitarist Nate Graham in mid-2023. While the band were never short on talent, the group were put in a hard place on multiple fronts, yet in that time somehow managed to soldier on. The band returned in early April of 2024 with a three-song EP entitled Trapped Between Realms Of Suffering – their first as a four-piece act.

Wastewalker have been a slow burn, launching out of the gate with Funeral Winds back in 2016 and then growing into their sound from there. Funeral Winds had an air of expulsion to it, like the band had to get a ton out of their system and exorcise a cadre of demons before they could truly evolve into what is Wastewalker. Funeral Winds felt like it was moving in twenty different directions all at once, overstuffed with ideas – and sometimes even lyrically – and interesting on the front that there was a lot of promise there; Wastewalker just had to hone in on what was really working within those bounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ROPE SECT — “ESTRANGEMENT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 162024
 

Rope Sect is about seclusion.
Renunciation of society.
A dance on ruins.
A doomsday revel.
Naked spite.
Eleutheromania.
Obedience.

So say this clandestine German band in their own words. They also say this about their new album Estrangement, which you’re about to hear:

“It can be seen as a reflection of all the ruins we are surrounded by, the increasing reign of pessimism over optimism in a world that seems to have doomed itself as well as expressing a sense of not belonging and the connected urge to escape all this and live by your own rules in your own little world, passing all the warning signs of human kind going astray.” Continue reading »

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