OH GREAT, IT’S THIS ASSHOLE AGAIN:PART I

 LISTMANIA 2022  1 Response »
Dec 202022
 

 

(One of the perennial highlights of our year-end LISTMANIA series are the articles Neill Jameson has contributed, and we’re very happy that he’s done so again this year. This one is the first of a handful of Parts we’ll be publishing. To be clear, Neill wrote the title of this feature himself.)

I think I’ve struggled with the introduction to this more than the actual list. If 2022 was a flavor it would be lukewarm soft-serve dogshit with a sprinkling of cardamom for that nice little pop at the end. We could sit and examine the state of the world but that’s an increasingly depressing affair and this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, afterall. So instead I’ll just get into the reason for the season. 

I spent a lot of time with cassettes and eps this year so the bulk of the forthcoming prattlings will focus around that. I’ve tried to do theme pieces in the last two years but really the only one I’ll do is the coup de grâce with my favorite releases of the year. So until then nothing on these lists is in any kind of order. Hopefully one or two selections tickles you and if so then please support the artists directly, especially since Bandcamp is now taxing the fuck out of us. I’ve included links where I could find them. 

If I write about anything that came out at the end of 2021 and you’re excited to educate me on it, don’t.  Continue reading »

DANCING UPON THE GRAVE OF 2022: THE DGR YEAR-END LIST: 40-31

 LISTMANIA 2022  1 Response »
Dec 202022
 

(Today we continue the week-long rollout of DGR‘s year-end list with Part Two, encompassing his picks from 40 through 31.)

Day two keeps us in the upper reaches of the 2022 year-end party wherein the world burns and I keep typing away because I don’t know how to do anything else. It took four years to get breathing right and another six to understand walking, so someday I’ll figure out how to be a functioning adult, but in the meantime I’ve got heavy metal navel-gazing to do and ain’t nothing going to get in the way of that mess.

This section of the list handles the bulk of your rank thirties and things remain as chaotic as ever in this here segment. A little less artsy than the upper segment was but about as heavy, because the subgenres of death metal start to arrive strong here. There’s a good 80% of this subsection that could just be cateorized as fast and violent. and to be honest with you, thats perfectly fine by me.

Most of these are albums that powered me through my year by the sheer force of ‘dumb’, with only one being a progressive show-piece, which – if you know anything about my listening habits – you may have already guessed. If not, you certainly will not be surprised by the name that does show up. Let’s continue our tumble down the year of 2022. Continue reading »

BEER AND LOATHING IN DENVER: DECIBEL METAL & BEER FEST, ROCKY MOUNTAIN EDITION, 2022 — DAY TWO

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 192022
 

(Last week we published our friend Gonzo‘s report on Day One of the recent Decibel Metal & Beer Fest in Denver, and now we’ve got his write-up on the second day’s performances and beers.)

Day 2 at any festival always comes with a price – exhaustion, overstimulation, tinnitus, alcohol poisoning, IBS… the possible danger is almost limitless. But so is the potential for having a truly amazing time worth writing about.

For the second day of Decibel Metal & Beer Fest in Denver earlier this month, things could’ve easily gone in any direction for this humble scribe. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OF WOLVES — “MAKER”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 192022
 

Our old friends Of Wolves put out a hell of an album through Trepanation Recordings two years ago. Entitled Balance, it garnered a lot of well-deserved attention for its heaviness, its near-relentless intensity, its political stances, and its kaleidoscopic amalgamation of musical influences.

We devoted a fair amount of attention to the songs that emerged over a long period leading up to the album’s release, and now we’ve got a new reason to revisit the record, thanks to an unusual and likely controversial video for a punishing song from the album named “Maker“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOLFDOM — “MOONLIGHT MISANTHROPY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 192022
 

The evocation of mood and the inspiration of imagination are important ingredients in the darker veins of heavy metal. The international band Wolfdom obviously know that. They set about doing it before you hear a single note, through the band name they chose, through the name of their debut album — Moonlight Misanthropy — and through the record’s macabre cover art. It all combines to invoke a midnight atmosphere of supernatural horror and hostility to humankind.

But what of the music they’ve made? GrimmDistribution, the label that will release the album on January 23rd, discloses that Wolfdom operated under the influence of Darkthrone (especially the albums F.O.A.D. and Cult Is Alive), as well as Bewitcher and Midnight, reveling in “the glorification of Satan through the good old heavy metal”, with Satan representing for them a “raised banner of freedom, a creative realization of oneself in spite of the propagated propaganda of politicians and religions”.

But let’s see for ourselves, shall we? Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: WIl CIFER’S TOP 20 METAL ALBUMS OF 2022

 LISTMANIA 2022  7 Responses »
Dec 192022
 

(Long-time NCS contributor Wil Cifer weighs in here with his picks for the favorite Top 20 metal albums of the year.)

Making end of the year lists for me is more than just creating content, it is a celebration of the music that helped me make it through another year. I pound these out for a variety of blogs I write for but this one is close to my heart as it celebrates one of my favorite genres of music… metal. Of course I am always pushing metal to the forefront no matter who I write for, but some publications pigeonhole me as the goth guy or the punk dude, which are both genres I am into and their influence crosses over into some of the albums listed below, but with this list my sole focus is metal.

I am always thankful for Islander for giving me a voice here as my tastes often fall on the fringes of what is normally covered here. My tastes were shaped by growing up listening to Iron Maiden, Ozzy and King Diamond, along with my fetish for post-punk and goth that Cvlt Nation is normally my platform to discuss, though when it comes to metal I normally gravitate to sonically darker and dynamically melodic sounds. .
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This year I tightened my definition of metal for this particular list. There might be a few hardcore-leaning albums on here, but they are metallic enough to satisfy the scrutiny of my jaded ears. In doing this I sacrifice albums I was partial to such as the new ones from Messa and Hangman’s Chair, but you can find me giving them praises in other corners of the internet. Similar can be said of albums by bands gracing many other lists on many other blogs . Bands like Chat Pile, Callous Daoboys, Dead Cross, Brutus, KEN Mode, and City of Caterpillar. All made wonderful albums I enjoyed, but they are all noise rock, post-hardcore and screamo, once again not belonging on a METAL list. However if you are into those genres, I highly recommend all of those artists. Continue reading »

DANCING UPON THE GRAVE OF 2022: THE DGR YEAR-END LIST: 50-41

 LISTMANIA 2022  9 Responses »
Dec 192022
 

(Today we begin the week-long rollout of DGR‘s year-end list with Part One, encompassing his picks from 50 through 41.)

It’s an interesting problem having one of your favorite albums from the previous year come in right underneath the wire for your personal year-end season. It results in a weird dynamic of the first few months of the following year having to compete real goddamned hard to try and make any sort of dent in the sense of ‘but what if I just go back and listen to such and such again…’.

However, I’d like to believe – and likely failed at believing – that I was aware this would be a factor for a decent period of 2022’s release schedule, and did start keeping track of what I’d been listening to early in an attempt to save room in the year-end festivities for those who would bravely set foot into 2022 early on.

Every year since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out has been one of fits and starts, awkward stumbles, drunken lurches forward, and massive waterfalls, at the same time as the music industry has attempted to adapt to the ever-shifting and nebulous landscape. Considering that the current ground we all stand on is about as solid and reliable as a newly forming sinkhole, that much is understandable. If you’re a numbers nerd that means you’ll get to see all sorts of weird patterns and things pop up throughout this list of 50 album from ye olde’ 2022, before we send this thing off in a fitting funeral fire. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ATRA HAERESIS — “THE WHITE BOOK”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 172022
 

Last year the part-Russian, part-Belarusian black/death metal band Atra Haeresis appeared seemingly out of the blue with an album named Pretium that was their first release. We were introduced to it through a request to premiere the song “Pretium?” in advance of the album release.

In introducing that song, we warned listeners more than once that it would take their breath away and expose them to physical trauma, and eventually we named it to our list of 2021’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It still has its hooks in us, and it’s not too late for you to get hooked too:

The rest of the album is also well worth your time, and you can find it here or here.

But as you can see, the reason we’re thinking again about Pretium is because Atra Haeresis have now surfaced again with a new song named “The White BooK“, and we’re bringing it to you today via another lyric video. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FATAL EMBRACE, RUDRA, ENTROPIA, DEMORALIZER, UPON THE ALTAR, DECATHECT, AFRICAN IMPERIAL WIZARD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 172022
 

 

I hope this weekend is treating you well so far, and that you receive the other treatments you need. I hope you’ll forgive me for beginning with an essay about a small part of some books I’ve been reading. Eventually I’ll try to connect those parts to the more extreme forms of heavy metal.

The books are two novels by Cormac McCarthy that were published back-to-back late this year — The Passenger and Stella Maris. The protagonists of the books are a brother and sister, Bobby and Alicia Western, both of them children of a physicist who worked on the creation of the atomic bomb and both them doomed in different ways.

Bobby occupies most of the attention in The Passenger, though the most interesting character is his old friend Long John Sheddan. The Passenger has a rambling, mysterious plot, but the equally rambling and unpredictable dialogues are what kept me reading (which is why Long John is the most interesting character, because of his disquisitions).

You find out pretty early in The Passenger that Alicia has killed herself. She figures in the book through flashbacks in which she is visited by odd characters that we are led to believe are hallucinations, just as we’re led to believe that Alicia was schizophrenic. She was also strikingly beautiful, and a math prodigy (Bobby is brainy too, but not in her league).

Alicia is the main figure in Stella Maris. Indeed, that entire book is a series of transcripts of her discussions with a doctor in a psychiatric facility (named Stella Maris) where she has voluntarily committed herself (not for the first time), though not because she feels any need for “treatment”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SANZU, ROTTEN SOUND, TURBID NORTH, CLARET ASH, CHROME WAVES, VOLLOÍOM (AND MORE)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 162022
 


I’ve been reading my friend Andy‘s writing about metal for more than a decade, and even so, what he’s done this week had been mind-boggling. I marveled at how much music he listened to this year and at his ability to make year-end selections, organize them, and write about them distinctively. I mean hell, I marvel at how much time it must have taken him just to put all the embedded links to the streams in his articles this week!

All of which is to say that his week-long series of lists deserves the spotlight, and deserves all the time it would take you to go through them and make your own discoveries. His series ends today, but LISTMANIA will roll on next week as we begin posting year-end lists from other NCS contributors, including the annual five-part list from DGR.

Last weekend I announced that, by design, we wouldn’t have the normal volume of premieres on the calendar this week in order to keep the focus on Andy‘s series (and a few lists I’ve shared from “big platform” sites). I thought I might take advantage of the lull in premieres by compiling more new-music roundups during the week than I can usually manage. I admit that does seem a bit inconsistent with the goal of keeping the focus on year-end lists, but the lure of spreading the word about new music is a powerful one.

I did manage to get a roundup done on Monday, but failed at the next chance on Wednesday because of interference from paying work. Today, as you can see, I was able to follow through. I’ve also got things lined up for the usual Saturday roundup too. Continue reading »

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