TOP 5 TAPES OF A.C.W. RECORDS TO CELEBRATE VALENTINE’S DAY (WITH YOUR BETTER HALF)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 142023
 

 

(It’s Valentine’s Day. Axel Stormbreaker has gift ideas.)

Valentine’s Day is a universal holiday of its own uniqueness. Arguably, it may well be the only day of the year when every one of you feels both contrary and guilty simultaneously. The thing is, there’s been so much public discussion about why people should celebrate, or why they just shouldn’t, or even why the fuck should others care how people choose to spend this day. To the very point, a simple reminder of phrasal brawls is enough to mess with your mood momentarily.

Then again, metalheads feel even more divided for their own reasons. Especially, when the ones who choose to see to the needs of their better half got no clue as to what present they should be purchasing. Should it be a bouquet of roses, some exquisite chocolate box, or a rock ballad compilation? Most ideas seem so trivial, applied to the point of exhaustion. What present could you possibly choose that won’t appear as a petty option?

So, have no concern you troubled rascals! Dr. Love Stormbreaker is here to answer the dilemma that’s been dividing mankind since the birth of capitalism. Yes, you should celebrate Valentine’s Day and yes, you can do it in kvlt style! What I am about to give you is my ultimate top 5 cult tape list of Aloe City Wrld Records, each one selected according to your own special needs. Continue reading »

IN THE DEAD OF WINTER: A PLAYLIST

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 132023
 

 

(In a seasonal mood, our friend Neill Jameson (Krieg) has brought us and you a playlist of varied dark music for these chilly days in the northern half of the globe.)

We’re halfway through winter here in the northern hemisphere and, as is tradition by some of the louder dunces on the internet, people are already proclaiming their albums of the year. And while I could spend another few hundred words decrying the shortsightedness of this instant gratification culture we’ve fostered, that would only serve to give Metal Twitter™ more reason to warble on and on about my merits as a human being, which would take away from their time trying to figure out which band you like once shared an elevator ride with someone wearing a Goatmoon shirt.

As I’ve traditionally been a shut-in most of my life, I’ve spent a lot of evenings this winter reading, drinking tea and listening to music to find new projects to admire. I wrote that to sound more sophisticated than it actually plays out in an effort to make you like me. In actuality I’m just old and this is my idea of a wild night now. 

Anyway I’ve discovered a lot of interesting and dark music, mostly through the excellent Rites of Pestilence YouYube channel, most of which was unfamiliar to me, and started making a list of what I’ve really gotten something out of. Here’s that list.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KOLD — “VINDEN, DEN KALDER DIT NAVN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 132023
 

 

The Danish duo Kold made an auspicious start in the summer of 2021 with their self-titled debut EP released by the respected German label Vendetta Records. Over the course of four substantial tracks totaling nearly 40 minutes, they earned their name, winding through ice-bound realms of black metal, both bleak and brittle, desolate and haunting, but also thrusting listeners into blizzard-storms of harrowing intensity and elevating them into daunting vistas of panoramic scale.

The EP’s songs were long excursions but never monotonous, thanks to the band’s already well-formed talent for moving the songs through striking contrasts of momentum and mood, and an aptitude for crafting moving melodies of dark and formidable power. Depressive gloom might shroud the music with a heavy mantle in one phase, and in another it might ring like ethereal chimes, beautiful as well as chilling, or race like a dangerous mountain avalanche.

That EP made such a great first impression that we’re happy to report that Kold now have a debut album named Intet Mere Er set for a March 3rd release by the same Vendetta Records. To help spread the word we’re now premiering a captivating album track named “Vinden, Den Kalder Dit Navn”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TZOMPANTLI

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 132023
 

(We begin a new week at NCS with Comrade Aleks‘s interview of Brian Ortiz, a member of Xibalba and the creative force behind the California death-doom band Tzompantli, whose debut album was released last year by 20 Buck Spin.)

A tzompantli was a type of wooden rack or palisade documented in several Mesoamerican civilizations, which was used for the public display of human skulls, typically those of war captives or other sacrificial victims. Also it’s a death-doom band from Pomona, California.

Started in 2019 as a solo project of Brian a.k.a. Big o))), Tzompantli first shot out the EP Tlamanalli in 2019. Brian has been the guitarist of death metal / metalcore outfit Xibalba since 2007, so he knew how to deal with a lot of instruments and recording witchcraft too. His efforts were noticed by 20 Buck Spin, who soon signed the band. As result Brian’s next album Tlazcaltiliztli was recorded with G-Bone and Mateotl Gonzalez (both perform many of the folk instruments) and saw the light of day through this label in May 2022. However these songs are far from folk and embody the extreme, meat-grinding and bloody side of death-doom.

Now Tzompantli has a full live line-up and I can’t skip a chance to learn more about Indigenous Mexican death-doom from Brian. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: RÄUM, VITRAIL, THYSIA, LUX SINE LUMINE, ORDALIE, KAIVS, MALICIOUS, LESATH

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 122023
 

Obviously, I had time to pull together a lot of music for this Sunday’s column. I pushed at the usual boundaries by including bands that wouldn’t get a black metal label, but in different ways they’re close enough to blur the borders.

I ordered these seven offerings to create pendulum swings. One of them happens when you reach Lux Sine Lumine, and another happens at the end, with Lesath. In between those two are firestorms. I also thought the flow of the first three worked well, but you’ll be the judge of that.

 

RÄUM (Belgium)

Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions tell us that Räum was founded in Liege, Belgium during the first pandemic year, and perhaps they were influenced by those times. On the debut record’s Bandcamp page you’ll find this description of the music on these four tracks:

“It reveals the vacuity and the auto-destructive nature of the human soul, leading to an endless movement of rise and fall. Like a demon, it needs to burn our world to the ground to [be[ reborn again.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: YSKELGROTH, PINCER CONSORTIUM, FLESHMEADOW, ILLUMINATED VOID

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 112023
 

I had a fairly quiet Friday night, with just enough spirits over dinner to get loose but not enough to feel wrecked and disjointed this morning. Kept making my way through the first season of “Poker Face“, which is enormously entertaining through episode 4, and then another chunk of pages in the latest Murderbot novel, which I’m forcing myself to ration since I’ll be so morose when I have to wait for the next one.

Anyway, thanks for asking about my Friday night. Pretty sure that’s what those whispers were in my head. But now to drown out all whispers with a few more things I got into this morning. Yesterday’s roundup was heavy on the death metal, so I decided to branch out a bit today, while saving most (but not all) of the black stuff ’til tomorrow.

YSKELGROTH (Spain)

Well, as I said, I didn’t save all the black stuff for tomorrow. This first song was just too good a way to wake people the fuck up. It’s a head-spinning amalgam of symphonic grandiosity, bizarro-world guitar convulsions (with a few bracing gallops and insectile quiverings in the mix), full-throttle madhouse drumwork, bunker-busting grooves, and macabre vocals that stretch far to find so many ways to be ugly. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NIGHTMARER, BONE WEAPON, GRAND CADAVER, VADIAT, ANZV

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 102023
 

This has been a rare week when we didn’t have at least one premiere on the calendar every day. That gave me the time to do not one, not two, but three round-ups of new songs and videos, including this one. And I ought to have time for a fourth one tomorrow.

The timing has been fortuitous, because the past week or two has been jammed with new singles and advance tracks from forthcoming records that have piqued my interest (and should pique yours), including the following four, with news of a new reissue at the end.

NIGHTMARER (U.S./Germany)

This tremendously impressive band moved from strength to greater strength over the course of their Chasm EP (2016), their debut album Cacophony of Terror (2018), and their Monolith of Corrosion EP (2021), and now they’re returning with a second album named Deformity Adrift that’s set for release on May 5th via their label Total Dissonance Worship in the US and Vendetta Records in Europe. Continue reading »

MAJESTIES: “VAST REACHES UNCLAIMED”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Feb 102023
 

(Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to NCS with the following review of the debut album by Majesties, which is set for a March 3rd release by 20 Buck Spin.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. It is well-established canon at this point that your friendly neighborhood professor is a great fan of Tanner Anderson and his work in Obsequiae. Aria Of Vernal Tombs stood easily as my favorite black metal album and I was skeptical that anything could equal it, and honestly nothing did until Obsequiae‘s follow-up, The Palms Of Sorrowed Kings. Asked now, and I swear to you that I could not choose a favorite between the two, as they are both absolutely brilliant.

I tell you this because when I heard first of Majesties, I grew excited nearly to the point of arousal. Driven by my initial impression of the first track released, ‘The World Unseen‘, it seemed that Majesties was essentially Tanner Anderson and friends performing Lunar Strain-era In Flames-style melodeath, an impression bolstered by the release of a second track, ‘In Yearning, Alive‘. My friends, let me tell you, that seemed like a perfect combination, like the genius who first combined chocolate and peanut butter. And then I got to hear the entire album. Continue reading »

THE RETURN OF CULTHE FEST: APRIL 8-9, 2023 (MÜNSTER, GERMANY)

 Metal News  No Responses »
Feb 102023
 

 

We’re helping to spread the word about the return of Culthe Fest on April 8th and 9th of this year in Münster, Germany, and it’s a triumphant return. The 2023 edition of the festival, which follows a covid-induced hiatus in recent years, features performances by 18 bands from 7 countries on three stages.

The music spans a range that includes black, death, doom, post-metal, and dark folk, and includes headliners Ultha and The Ruins of Beverast, and co-headliners Wolvennest and Sun of the Sleepless. Those are impressive names, but the entire line-up is impressive, and further includes Dawn Ray’d from the UK, Yovel from Greece (in what will be their first show in Germany), and German underground favorites Friisk and No Sun Rises, all of whom had originally been scheduled to play in 2022 before the pandemic forced a delay.

Below you’ll find notes about the complete line-up (most of whom we’ve enthusiastically written about at this site) and a lot more details about the entire event, which also includes a Dark Arts & Crafts exhibition. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GOLOD

 Interviews  1 Response »
Feb 092023
 

(We thank Comrade Aleks for the following interview with Vadim (aka Holod), the person behind the Toronto-based black metal project Golod, whose newest album was released just last month via Ván Records.)

Little is known about Golod. “Golod” translates as “Hunger” from Russian. It’s a solo-project based in Toronto and it’s tagged as “black metal” and “ambient”. Its discography contains two full-length albums – .​.​.​to be Lost and Forgotten in Solitude (June, 2021) and the brand new Dnevnik (January, 2023).

It’s also known that the man who stands behind this project is Vadim, whom I interviewed about one month ago regarding another band – Hussar. So actually it was easy to find him and get more information about his lo-fi exercises in Black Art.

Well, do people use this definition in relation to this kind of music nowadays? However, let’s talk a bit about Black Metal Art! Continue reading »

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