Jun 132023
 

(In the following review DGR catches up with one more release from the now-vanished spring of 2023, and this time it’s a debut EP by the German band Dysease.)

Sometimes genre-tags for a band can be amusing, mostly when it comes to the times where the ‘progressive death metal’ tag is applied. Such is the case with Germany’s Dysease – whose name lights up the dopamine centers of the brain over here because we love a good smashing-rocks-against-each-other level pun – and their debut EP Era Of Decay.

Released in the middle of March, the Dysease EP arrived in the hallowed NCS burnt-out corner office sometime in April, but as you’ve noticed, one of the more common refrains around here is how the day job tends to take everything from us. However; that doesn’t mean we’re willing to fully let something go, and in the case of Era Of Decay the constant return to the idea of being ‘progressive death metal’ was enough to keep one wondering what exactly was happening within the EP. Continue reading »

Jun 122023
 

The last time we visited the works of the Los Angeles band Our Dying World a year ago, the occasion was our premiere of a video for the song “Veil of the Reaper“ off their then-forthcoming second album Hymns Of Blinding Darkness. We introduced it with these words:

We’ll make you a solemn promise: Whatever condition you happen to be in now (unless you’re in a coma), the song and video we’re about to present will make you feel orders of magnitude more alive, accelerating your heart-rate, igniting your fast-twitch muscles, and spinning your head like a glorious top. And for those of you who want your music to attack like a pack of rabid dogs, it fills that need, too.

Today we get a chance to revisit the band’s work through our premiere of a new single named “The Egregious Sins Of Humanity” — and it’s another ravishing spectacle. Continue reading »

Jun 122023
 

(We were very fortunate that our Denver-based friend Gonzo made the trip to Seattle for the recent fifth edition of NCS-sponsored Northwest Terror Fest, and took it upon himself to report on the experience of all three days. You can find his report on Day 1 here and on Day 2 here. Below you’ll find his write-up of the third and final day, accompanied by photos again made by the excellent photographers John Malley and Jimmy Stacks, and by our editor islander.)

When you hit day 3 of any festival, it always feels like an accomplishment. If you’ve made it to this point, you probably deserve a merit badge for endurance or alcohol tolerance. And why not?

Personally, I’d settle for one more night of ear-splitting music and behaving badly in public, but that’s just my preference. My only goal for tonight would be to remain coherent enough to feverishly type on my notes app while trying not to get swallowed up by a rampant mosh pit.

I took my last remaining shreds of enthusiasm and trudged once again into the black hole of Neumos/Barboza. One more night of terror was all that was left. What madness would await tonight? What insanity would Ghoul unleash upon us as the closing headliner? And more importantly, would the inflatable animals make another surprise appearance?

It was time to get answers. Onward! Continue reading »

Jun 122023
 

Hailing from Queretaro, Mexico, The Pit will celebrate two decades of existence next year. Like other bands with such a long career, life has gotten in the way, and their recording output hasn’t been prolific. Until this year, their discography consisted of only a debut split in 2006 and a debut album (Disrupted Human Symmetry) in 2008. But now, 15 years later, Personal Records will soon be discharging The Pit‘s aptly named second album, Of Madness and Evil Whispers.

As one might expect, the line-up has changed in the interim, although original guitarist Antonio Nolasco, original bassist Octavio Olachea, and original vocalist Guillermo Galván are all still in harness together on the new album, joined by new drummer Mauricio Villalón and new second guitarist Angel Villegas.

Also not entirely surprising, The Pit have moved their music in different directions as compared to what you can hear on their first full-length, and the results are — in a word — electrifying. Where The Pit now thrive is in the unleashing of high-speed, high-power death metal fueled by ruthless ferocity, but also embedded with equally ruthless hooks that get stuck in the head, and simultaneously channel an array of dark and demented moods — which is to say that they are damned effective songwriters.

We’ve got two great examples of the sinister yet hurricane-strength power of the new album in two songs we want to share today, including one we’re premiering. Continue reading »

Jun 122023
 

(Andy Synn examines how it all began with the new album from The Anchoret, out next week)

Allow me a few moments, dear reader, to get a little “meta” and write a few words about the act of writing (specifically, the act of writing about music, as opposed to actually writing music).

No matter how good you are, the truth is the written word can only ever give you so much insight into an artist or album, dependent as it is on language’s ability to, at best, only approximate our unique sensory experiences.

Let’s face it, there are only so many synonyms, similes, and similitudes we can use – words that can imply, yet only incompletely capture, what we mean when we refer to something as “heavy” or “progressive”, and so on – before we begin repeating ourselves, saying the exact same thing using only slightly different permutations of the same old clichés.

That’s why comparisons – though I know some readers find them overly reductive – are so important. Because they make it easier for us to share our knowledge and understanding.

After all, we’re all hearing the same things, even if we’re not necessarily hearing them in the same way.

So I hope you’ll forgive me for all the various references I’m about to use to illuminate the brilliant new album by The Anchoret.

Continue reading »

Jun 102023
 

Tough choices to make today, but that’s every Saturday morning, even when I manage to round up some recent selections the day before (which I did this week). Knowing that I’ve got a third chance to make recommendations tomorrow (via Shades of Black) makes it slightly easier, though I didn’t shove off all the black metal into tomorrow.

There’s no real theme to today’s choices, other than the tennis-ball-in-the-tumble-dryer theme that I also used yesterday. Prepare to get bounced around again. (I did decide to book-end the collection with horrors.)

UNDERGANG (Denmark) / SPECTRAL VOICE (U.S.)

I’m drawn to new Undergang releases like a fly to honey, though in their case the better analogy may be flies drawn to a steaming pile of fresh viscera. Even sweeter, the latest Undergang release is a split with Colorado’s Spectral Voice. Continue reading »

Jun 092023
 

I was supposed to premiere and review an EP today. Despite knowing better, the label and band decided to publish the stream and circulate it to fans without waiting on us. Not the first time something like that has happened around here, but I no longer ignore it when people care so little about our unpaid efforts to help. Time is better spent in other ways, and so rather than finish that premiere write-up I decided to pull together this round-up of new songs and videos that mostly surfaced just this week.

I’ve not put much thought into some clever way of arranging the flow of them, in part because there are so many stylistic twists and turns in what I chose. Just think of yourself as a tennis ball thrown into a dryer with a lot of other tennis balls and start tumbling.

GRAND CADAVER (Sweden)

This week Grand Cadaver released a third single from their new album Deities Of Deathlike Sleep. They sum up the album as “Swedish Fucking Death Metal, the way we love it”, and the lack of pretension extends to the name of the newest song: “Vortex of Blood“. Continue reading »

Jun 092023
 

(We’re nearing the end of a long string of reviews DGR prepared in advance of his travels to Seattle for Northwest Terror Fest, and in this one he talks about a new album by the Japanese band Kruelty that was released in March by Profound Lore Records.)

At some point we’re going to have to come up with some sort of clever portmanteau to describe the level of ‘stupid’ that takes place within the scraping-hands-on-ground style of music that is working its way through the current death metal scene, and is especially present on the latest album Untopia from Japan’s Kruelty.

The best we’ve come up with so far is ‘Ridicudumb’ but it feels like three syllables too many for the type of low-end rumbling, brain-turned-to-jelly style of music that is happening here. You start to feel a little like Tom Hardy in Mad Max: Fury Road, pointing out of the car and declaring ‘that’s bait’ after instantly recognizing the situation around him. So too, can you listen to something like Kruelty‘s Untopia and know near-exactly what the hell it is aspiring to do within the first two minutes as the drums settle in to the solid and consistent groove that forms the backbone of death metal like this.

We’ve been to many a show where the vocalist has proclaimed to the crowd at one point or another that ‘now is your chance to hurt somebody!’. Kruelty’s Untopia is written to be just like that; it is an album that has set out for the sole purpose of hurting somebody. Continue reading »

Jun 092023
 

 

(We present here an interview by our Norway-based contributor Karina Noctum of Steffen Kummerer, a member of Obscura and leader of the German band Thulcandra, whose newest album was released last month by Napalm Records.)

Thulcandra have released one of the best and most beautiful melodic black metal albums this year so far. Hail the Abyss is a display of excellent musicianship and top-notch composition that pays attention to the details. The sound is a tribute to Scandinavian melodic and symphonic black metal while at the same exploring other tempos and structures that make it even more interesting.

In this interview Steffen Kummerer not only talks about his new release, but also gives us some Obscura updates. Continue reading »

Jun 082023
 

We almost never copy/paste what labels and PR agents write about the music they’re promoting. Not because they’re never right, but because we prefer to reach our own conclusions and express it in our own words, even when we’re enthusiastic enough about what we hear to host premieres. But sometimes, the word-smithing we receive is so glorious that it’s hard to resist. In the case of Sentient Ruin‘s come-on for the forthcoming debut album of Portland’s Disimperium, it’s gloriously horrifying:

As the debut 2021 7″ “Malefic Obliteration” had already hinted at, human ears will fall prey yet again to an entity whose quest for total sensorial destruction has now reached implausible and horrific extremes, far beyond the confines of sanity which had already been obliterated on the inaugural release. In its nine tracks and thirty two minutes of pure concentrated terror, “Grand Insurgence Upon Despotic Altars” discharges an inescapable payload of death that impacts the listener with the force and speed of an apocalyptic shockwave escaping the fireball of a nuclear warhead.

And there’s more where that came from, such as this: “Where bands like Diocletian, Impetuous Ritual, Tetragrammacide, Knelt Rote and Damaar had already tested and established the limits of human resistance against abstract ideas of omnipotent negativity and horizonless sonic bedlam, Disimperium explore these outer limits even further, venturing out and establishing a new era into which there is no more measure to the very definition of musical insanity sought and achieved for the sole sake of aggression”.

That’s all vividly evocative enough that you’ve probably already got a good idea of what you’re about to experience in the album track we’re premiering today, but we’ve got to justify our own existence, don’t we? So here goes…. Continue reading »