SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLACK AEVUM, NECROBODE, TRENCHLUNG, TOUNDRA, DEAD SERENITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 212019
 

 

With the new year rushing to an end and the holiday season rushing toward us even faster, it will become even more difficult for me to compile these collections. Among other things, our annual LISTMANIA orgy consumes a lot of my NCS time. Even though I don’t prepare my own list, I do track down album art and embed codes for album streams for the lists made by others, and conform the formats to our usual style, and do lesser or greater amounts of text editing. And speaking of year-end lists, I’m sitting on a slate of eight of them by both musician guests and NCS writers that I’m planning to begin rolling out next week, with a few more yet to come.

New music, of course, doesn’t stop appearing just because the holidays and the end of the year are almost upon us. In fact we’ve been getting recent reminders that maybe a lot of year-end lists were made too soon, as well as indications that 2020 is going to start off with a BANG!, at least in terms of forthcoming metal albums, if not in terms of North Korean missile launches, or maybe that too.

Anyway, to underscore that last observation I’ve chosen a couple of very impressive late-year releases, a few tracks from 2020 records, and one new stand-alone single — and as usual I’ve mixed things up a bit just so you don’t get too comfortable.

BLACK AEVUM

This new Black Aevum EP is one of two releases in today’s collection that Rennie (starkweather) messaged me about just yesterday. He wrote about a third one, too (by Reasoning Reflections), but I haven’t made it to that one yet — because I got completely drawn into the two you’ll find here. In fact, in the case of Black Aevum I only intended to quickly check out one song just to see what was going on, and the next thing I knew 23 minutes had passed and I was tempted to start again from the beginning right away. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: FRIGORIS, ENTHRONED, SCARAB, INVOCATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 202019
 

 

Unsurprisingly, I have accumulated quite a lot of new music I want to share since the last of these round-ups almost one week ago. I’ve picked four new songs for the following collection and have plans to highlight a few more on Saturday.

FRIGORIS

In 2016 we had the privilege of premiering the third album, Nur Ein Moment…, by the atmospheric black metal group Frigoris. As I wrote then, “Through the course of the album’s six long tracks Frigoris move from passages of soft, ethereal beauty to storms of surging blackened power, interweaving elements of black metal, post-metal and doom to create a journey through a changing emotional landscape of peaks and valleys.”

That album was the beginning of a concept that reaches its conclusion on the band’s fourth album, …In Stille, which will be released by Hypnotic Dirge Records on January 24th. The first song I’ve selected for today’s collection is one from the new Frigoris album that was revealed just yesterday, and it makes a powerful first impression of the new record. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATBLOOD — “APPARITION OF DOOMSDAY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 202019
 

 

Two years ago when we premiered a demo by these two German devastators we wrote:

“There is little risk that you will be deceived about the music we’re about to present. The band’s name is Goatblood. The demo is named Gasmask Devastation Terror. The artwork depicts a bullet-draped demonic form shrouded in eldritch energies and fire. Biohazard and radiation warning signs would probably have been superfluous….

“Their brand of black/death metal is lo-fi filth, a toxic and insidious stew of grim, buzzing riffs, pounding chords, and muffled, clattering percussion. Solos leap from this morass of malignancy like crazed vipers made of flame and plutonium. The vocals are a roaring, shrieking horror — merciless and hollow-hearted….

“Goatblood haven’t forgotten the appeal of dynamics — but they also never lose sight of their lethal mission, which is to assault the senses and mangle the mind until it can see nothing but an apocalyptic wasteland.”

Since we wrote those words, Goatblood have released a 2018 EP (Arma Inferre), and now they’re on the verge of discharging their third full-length through Dunkelheit Produktionen. Fittingly entitled Apparition of Doomsday, it will bury the old year on December 27th — but we have a full stream of all its multifarious and nefarious depredations today. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2019: A YEAR-END LIST BY DGR (PART 5)

 LISTMANIA 2019  4 Responses »
Dec 202019
 

 

(We have reached the end of DGR’s week-long roll-out of his Top 50 year-end list, with this segment devoted to the Top 10. All the preceding installments can be found behind this link.)

The final ten of this year’s year-end list is special to me. That coud be easily stated for every year, but 2019 is one of those years that just went absolutely crazy — in fits and starts of course, there’s a lot of April and September representation here — and it brought on a massive torrent of metal that not only pushed out the boundaries of the genre but also twisted, mutated, and contorted it into all-new forms. You also had fantastic releases from groups who are already working within well-established blueprints and finding ways to keep things interesting.

While I could go on an endless screed about 2019 as a whole, keep in mind that although I have fifty releases on the list that I particularly enjoyed — an admittedly ridiculous number —  I listened to and generally got a kick out of so many more. A lot of those are popping up at NCS, on other writers’ lists and on users’ lists, and even on the occasional big website list when they’re not seeing just how much prose they can dedicate to Blood Incantation or showing off that they’re hip with the kids by nominating every teenager’s favorite new and hip band Tool (and I love Tool). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNHOLD — “BARREN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 192019
 

 

Although I have many things to be proud of about what we’ve accomplished at NCS in helping spread the word about worthy music, I have many regrets too, one of which is our failure to pay more attention to the immensely accomplished Swiss band Unhold. That failure is all the more shameful because Unhold are now five albums deep into their career. The most recent of those, Here Is the Blood, was released in November 2018 by Czar of Bullets, and represents the pinnacle of their significant achievements so far.

Briefly summarizing the music on that album (or really, on any of its predecessors) is a daunting challenge, as is any effort to provide a pithy genre description. References to post-metal, sludge, doom, and hardcore might be useful, but don’t really give you much guidance about how fascinatingly Unhold have combined those stylistic ingredients (and others) in ways that dynamically create such a wide range of emotionally powerful and often transportive experiences, ranging from mesmerizingly beautiful to crushingly bleak and compulsively body-shaking — and much else besides.

But while we’ve regrettably neglected Here Is the Blood since its release, we do have a chance to make partial amends today by premiering a new single entitled “Barren” which was recorded in the same sessions that produced that album. This new single is not only well worth having in its own right but also should serve as an inducement for people who haven’t heard that album to check it out immediately. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: CHERNAA / HYPNO5E / UNDER THE PLEDGE OF SECRECY

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 192019
 


Chernaa

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three 2019 albums that we haven’t previously paid attention to with the thoroughness that they deserve.)

No big intro or preamble this time. Just three very cool albums delivering only the best in heart-stopping Post-Black Metal, cinematic Prog Metal, and rampaging Death Metal.

Prep your ears accordingly. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE BASTARD WITHIN — “BETTER DEAD THAN FRIENDS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 192019
 

 

Let’s cut to the chase: For a debut album, it’s astonishing just how good Better Dead Than Friends is. It would also be astonishing even if it were an album released by any top-shelf grindcore band far deeper into their career than the place where The Bastard Within find themselves, close to the beginning of their own. This isn’t completely shocking, given that the members of this group have made names for themselves in other bands already, but still… what they’ve accomplished on this first full-length is a big eye-opener.

Those members, spread around Italy and Switzerland, are vocalist CN Sid, guitarist Gianluca Sulpizio, and bassist Davide Stura, as well as American drummer extraordinaire Kevin Talley. And while all credit goes to them for Better Dead Than Friends, they’ve also augmented their formidable attack with an array of noteworthy guests on various tracks — Jason Netherton (Misery Index, Asphalt Graves), Trevor (Sadist), Juri Bianchi (Addiction, Any Face, Hayma), Mãra Lisenko (Mãra), and Stefania Minervino (Too Late, Cave, Spoiled). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2019: A YEAR-END LIST BY DGR (PART 4)

 LISTMANIA 2019  No Responses »
Dec 192019
 

 

(We continue a week-long rollout of a 2019 Top 50 list by NCS scribe DGR, counting down in groups of 10 each day. In this fourth installment we’ve got Nos. 20 through 11.)

When you reach the final twenty or so of your year-end list – as ridiculous as it may have gotten *cough* – you start to develop some sort of a mission statement. I can’t really say that I’ve accomplished that this time around, I’ve just continued to notice really small trends within each grouping. Last time I noticed that I wound up bookending the list with black metal and this time I found that the groups at top and bottom were deathgrind bands. In between there was a smattering of all sorts of different genres, including two albums that I can’t quite pin down to any one specific style, other than what could politely be described as “complete madness”.

2019 was an adventure musically, and I think part of that is reflected in some of the longer running times of the albums present on here as well. I discovered I was really open to the idea of exploring a whole bunch of massive soundscapes – which again is hilarious, given that the records at positions 20 and 11 are the punchiest of the no-bullshit style deathgrind bands out there. We’ve also got some of the earliest and some of the latest 2019 releases packed in here, as well as September continuing its hot streak for having been a fantastic month for music.

We’re only one day away now from the super-shiny, absolutely-unfuckwithable, proof that DGR has his finger on the pulse of the world of heavy metal, final ten of the year. So let’s enjoy this latest smattering of bands and see how many of you can still walk after being put through the wringer by this group. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COLOSSO — “PESTILENCE”

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Dec 182019
 

 

Visions of the Apocalypse have become one of the thematic staples of Death Metal, and for understandable reasons. For a genre of music that itself bears the name Death, and whose musical ingredients are capable (in the right hands) of creating sensations of destruction on a massive scale, the linkage is a natural one. But not all death metal bands drawn to the imagery of Revelation have explored the themes as thoroughly as Colosso has done on this Portuguese band’s newest release, or have so powerfully translated those horrifying visions into sound.

Entitled Apocalypse, Colosso’s new record consists of four tracks, each named for one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who in the prophecy of Revelation were set loose to ruin the world as harbingers of the Last Judgment. Today we’re premiering the opening track “Pestilence” in advance of the record’s release by Transcending Obscurity Records on February 14, 2020. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HANGING GARDEN

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 182019
 


photo by by Kalle Pyyhtinen

 

(Today Comrade Aleks presents the following interview with Toni Toivonen, vocalist of the Finnish band Hanging Garden, whose name will be well-known to long-term visitors at our site, and whose latest album Into That Good Night was released by Lifeforce Records on November 15th.)

Started fifteen years ago as a melodic death doom band, Hanging Garden from Finland follow their way of metamorphosis from album to album, while keeping a few things inviolable. They have a dominating melancholic mood, through the general melody of their material and their artistic approach to performing their material, and emotional variety based on heavy and cleaner instrumental parts as well as extreme and clean vocals.

Their sixth album Into That Good Night saw the light of day on November 15th through Lifeforce Records, and we can tag it as “melancholic metal” as this term doesn’t imply any strict obligation. But why not try to root out Hanging Garden’s essence with one of its members — here’s the interview with Toni Toivonen (vocals). Continue reading »

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