THE SYNN REPORT (PART 155): REMOTE VIEWING

 THE SYNN REPORT  2 Responses »
Feb 282023
 

Recommended for fans of: Primitive Man, Planks, Phantom Winter

Selecting what band to feature for each monthly edition of The Synn Report is more of an art than a science.

Sometimes I like to provide a primer on a seminal band for those looking for a good place to get started with their discography, other times I prefer to highlight the work of an underrated or relatively unknown act who I think deserves more respect.

Sometimes it’s good to focus on a band who are currently active (and this is the case more often than not), at others it’s fun to provide a retrospective on an artist who may no longer be with us but whose work has stood the test of time (and which, unbeknownst to a lot of us, have influenced many of the bands we know and love).

Really, it all just comes down to what I’m feeling at the time, and I’ll often change my mind at the last minute. But today’s entry – covering all three albums, including their recently released new record, by London-based Sludge/Doom/Noise-mongers Remote Viewing – has been set in stone for weeks.

And you’re about to learn why.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DESOLATE REALM — “THROUGH THE DEPTHS”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 282023
 

The name of our site has never been a literal commandment, but it’s also fair to say that we tend to observe its mandate more often than we bend or break it. We need a good reason to do the bending and breaking — but we’ve got a very good reason today, thanks to the return of the Finnish duo Desolate Realm and their forthcoming second album Legions.

Formed by members of Decaying, Chalice, and Altar of Betelgeuze, this Helsinki band worship at the altar of traditional epic doom metal, but with a penchant for highly infectious riffs and the kind of potent grooves that kick-start hearts.

Not for naught does the advance press for the album proclaim that it combines “the epic grandeur of doom-metal acts like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus with classic heavy-metal of Savatage and Metal Church and the mighty groove of Black Sabbath“. And we’ve got the proof in our premiere of Legion‘s second single, “Through the Depths“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VANISHMENT — “NO MORE TORTURE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 282023
 

(On March 3rd Dead Sage Records will release No More Torture, the debut album from Seattle-based Vanishment, and today we’re delighted to premiere the album in its entirety, preceded by the following review written by Todd Manning.)

Retro-thrash can be a dicey affair. Too many bands opt to play an oversimplified version of the genre and forget the nuance and complexity exhibited by many groups as they developed. However, this isn’t the case on No More Torture, the debut full-length from Seattle’s Vanishment.

While No More Torture is the group’s debut, these guys are no rookies. Containing current members of Trial, Himsa, Heiress, and Lair of the Minotaur, their collective experience shines through in both instrumental chops and songwriting acumen. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NINE ALTARS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 282023
 

 

(Today we have a big and well-earned exception to the rule in our site’s title, as we present Comrade Aleks‘ new interview of Kat Gillham from the epic UK doom band Nine Altars. Their debut album The Eternal Penance will be released on CD tomorrow by Good Mourning Records, with vinyl coming later via Journey’s End Records.)

This traditional epic doom metal band was founded in Durkham not so long ago by Kat Gillham who performed this kind of music back in the mid-’90s with Blessed Realm. It seems that some of the other bands and projects where she’s involved, like Uncoffined (death-doom), Lucifer’s Chalice (heavy metal), and Winds of Genocide (crust / death metal), have been on temoprary hiatus — though Thronehammer (doom metal) remains very active — so this band has a new line-up:

Kat Gillham performs drums and vocals, Charlie Wesley and Nicolete Burbach play guitars, and Jamie Thomas is responsible for the bass’ low vibration.

Good Mourning Records seems to ready to release Nine Altars’ debut The Eternal Penance, and regarding the three tracks I’ve heard, that should be a truly notable exemplar of UK doom metal. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CROWN OF MADNESS / TORN IN HALF / VAMPIRE SQUID

 SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 272023
 

(Andy Synn presents three bite-sized morsels of brutality that you may have missed this month)

After my spectacular failure at keeping up with the various short-form releases which came out last year (ultimately having to relegate my coverage to most of the EPs, splits, etc, from 2022 to the end of year round-up instead) I made a vow to myself to stay more on top of things this year.

Obviously this hasn’t happened but… here’s three you may have missed from February that I didn’t want to wait until December to write about!

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IDLE RUIN — “SHACKLED FOR ADORNMENT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 272023
 

Just last month Bitter Loss Records released the debut album of the Australian band Idle Ruin (from Brisbane). Entitled The Fell Tyrant, it unleashed nine tracks of mainly full-throttle thrashing death, hurling the listener into one exhilarating escapade after another, propelled by bone-splintering drumwork, iron-shod bass lines, wild-eyed guitar work, and larynx-lacerating vocal extremity.

Idle Ruin packed each song with head-spinning twists and turns as well as spine-slugging and skull-smacking grooves, channeling mayhem, madness, and a general air of marauding savagery. The album’s explosive energy was (and is) potent enough to power massive turbines, but the band also picked their moments to downshift their racing speed, darken the mood, make room for surprising instrumental maneuvers, and plow up the pavement with bursts of jolting (and highly headbangable) brutishness.

And although there’s an abundance of guitar soloing through the album, the “personalities” of those solos change repeatedly, sometimes exotic, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes despairing, and sometimes downright berserk.

The album’s opening track, “Shackled for Adornment“, sets the stage for this mind-bender of a record in electrifying fashion, and that’s the song which is the subject of the video we’re premiering today. It was filmed at the The Fell Tyrant album launch show at The Bearded Lady venue in Brisbane on January 21st of this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AYYUR — “A CHANT FOR THE DEAFS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 272023
 

Extreme metal finds fertile soil in nearly every corner of the globe, though the soil is undeniably less hospitable in some places than others. It is, for example, more difficult for such musicians to become noticed (and possibly more difficult even to indulge their creative interests) in a country like Tunisia, a land where many ancient cultures intersect in the northern-most geography of Africa. But there, Ayyur was born 16 years ago, and has managed to survive and, against all odds, even to thrive.

After Ayyur‘s inception, Metal Archives shows us that the project quickly released an EP, a pair of splits, and a demo in its early years, but then fell silent for nearly a decade. Beginning in 2018 Ayyur has returned, releasing three EPs with only two-year gaps between them (including last year’s Hidden Room Sessions I), and now the band has at last completed a debut album named Prevail, a title which seems to stand for what the band itself has managed to do.

We’re told by the labels which will release it that through this new album of blackened doom metal “the artist observes the desolating reality which surrounds them, finding a personal path and the answers to their own questions”. It is thus also described as “an intimate album, strongly introspective and ruthless at the same time, with lyrics sharp and pungent like blades”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: XALPEN, KALMANKANTAJA, EXDESTRIER, PESTIS, DEKADENS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Feb 262023
 


Xalpen

I read an article about sleep this morning, It reinforced the idea that I’m doing the right thing sleeping 8-10 hours a night on the weekends, a fairly recent development for me. It also helped explain why I have such vivid dreams in the last phase of sleeping right before waking up, even if they’re like ghosts that tend to vanish within minutes of waking. The article may be pay-walled, but you might find it interesting too (it’s here), or maybe you already know the details.

On the downside, sleeping late makes for a slow start on my weekend NCS posts, especially when I don’t get a head start on the selections the night before. Fortunately there’s someone out there who may have a different sleep cycle, in addition to being in a different time zone, and what he finished very late last night in his time zone was waiting for me in my in-box this morning.

Is it stealing for me to just copy/paste a few things from his collection right into this post to make up for my late start? If so, I confess to theft. At least I won’t pass it off as my own. But I do have a few of my own choices to lead the way in blackening the sabbath. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THECODONTION, CEREMENTED, ZEPHID, NETHERMANCY, VOIDCEREMONY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 252023
 


Thecodontion

I used to type lists of new songs and videos I wanted to check out, pasting the links below the band names. Now I use a Firefox thingy called Pocket. When I’m on a web page for a song or video, I tap the Pocket icon on the Firefox browser and it automatically saves the link in Pocket.

Much faster than what I used to do, but the downside is that when I go to Pocket I see endless rows of thumbnail images for all the links I’ve saved. I fear my fingers will cramp from the scrolling, down and down and down… and my mind starts to cramp up on me too.

The result is that I tend to focus on stuff at the top (the links I saved most recently), especially when I’m hurrying. That phenomenon explains most of the choices in today’s round-up. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: KRULLUR — “DEAD LIVE!”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 242023
 

The world is obviously a very big place. Most of us will only glimpse relatively tiny corners of it in a lifetime’s worth of travels. Similarly, there are vast numbers of far-flung metal bands most of us will never get to see on stage, no matter how addicted we are to their music, and studio records just don’t often come close to capturing the explosiveness of some bands’ live performances.

Houston, Texas-based Krullur is undoubtedly one of those bands a lot of people overseas, or even in the U.S., will never get to see as they destroy venues with their crazed and crushing amalgams of thrash, death metal, punk, and grindcore. But what we’ve got for you today is the next best thing, the premiere stream of a record called Dead Live! that does an astonishingly effective job of bringing listeners right into the head-exploding blast zone. Continue reading »

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