(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 »
(Today Metal Blade is releasing a new album from the Faroe Islands-based death/doom band Hamferð, and to help celebrate the event we’re sharing Comrade Aleks‘ recent interview with Hamferð guitarist Theodor Kapnas.)
Wow! Time flies by! It seems that the last interview we did with Hamferð here happened in 2014. Back then we discussed with the band’s vocalist Jón Aldará the debut album Evst, but I believe there was another interview a few years later, though my memory sometimes fails me. However, it’s March 2024, and Hamferð’s third full-length work Men Guðs hond er sterk is ready to be released on March 22nd.
Metal Blade Records presented two new tracks “Ábær” and “Hvølja” recently, and the album promises to be another gorgeous monument of epic Nordic death-doom, with Faroese lyrics of course. The band’s sound evolved a bit as far as it could be heard, but there’s always something worth talking about with such a man as Theodor Kapnas, Hamferð’s guitarist. Continue reading »
(Our friend Ben Manzella caught the March 5 Los Angeles stop of the recently concluded Brainsqueeze Tour 2024, featuring performances by Municipal Waste, Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat, and brought us the following report and his own photos of the event.)
While I can’t claim I’ve been to every venue in Los Angeles, it is still rare I get to attend a show at a venue that has recently opened for business. After the ticket demand proved beyond the capacity of the original venue, The Tankcrimes Records Brainsqueeze tour headlined by Municipal Waste managed to find a more fitting space in the Bellwether.
Along with being the Brainsqueeze tour, this tour is also a celebration of 20 years since the release of Municipal Waste’s record Waste Em’ All. Along with Municipal Waste on the tour are Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat. While every band is heavy in their own right, each band is as similar as they are different; whether that was considered or not, this lineup sold out the Bellwether, which is just over double the capacity of the originally scheduled venue on a Tuesday night. Continue reading »
The image on the cover of the debut album from the Finnish duo The Bleak Picture is striking. It shows a group of people paused in their normal daily movements (except, perhaps, for the police) and staring at a dark hunched figure, or maybe two of them, on the precipice of some catastrophe, lost in either horror or mourning or both. The origins of the devastation are hard to decipher, but the ruination is apparent.
Gazing at the image, it does seem to connect with the title of the album — Meaningless — but the exact nature of the connection, even though it feels right, is as mysterious as the exact nature of the catastrophe in the cover image.
Well, it would have been an interesting question to ask composer/instrumentalist Jussi Hänninen and lyricist/vocalist Tero Ruohonen what that image depicts and why they chose it, but alas, the thought came too late. But maybe it’s for the best, because there are mysteries in the music too — and catastrophes and mourning and something like a search for meaning. Continue reading »
photo by Cristina Ferrero
(Through the good graces of Season of Mist, the distinctive Italian black/doom metal band Ponte del Diavolo released their debut album last month (reviewed here by our own Andy Synn), and that provided the impetus for Comrade Aleks to reach out for the interview we now present.)
Even though black metal in its pure, true, and evil form isn’t associated with Italy, there are a few interesting bands there with their own authentic view of this genre. Sometimes their uniqueness is rooted in a mix of black metal with other genres, sometimes it’s their native aesthetic or cultural references, and sometimes it’s both.
Ponte del Diavolo was founded in 2020 by Abro (bass), Laurus (bass), Segale Cornuta (drums), Nerium (guitars), and Erba del Diavolo (vocals). Only Abro and Laurus previously played in different death, black, and doom metal bands; as for the other members, Ponte del Diavolo was a new outfit.
Season of Mist released Ponte del Diavolo‘s debut album Fire Blades from the Tomb on the 16th of February. These six stories of authentic and passionate romantic black metal with doom influences and female vocals are complimented with a cover of Nick Cave’s “Weeping Song”, another good reason to pay attetion to this album.
We had a talk with several of the band’s members about the new album and other things. Continue reading »