SEEN AND HEARD: METALLICA, NEGATIVE VORTEX, PINCER CONSORTIUM, HYPER PLANET

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 292022
 

Lo and behold, even though we’re two days past the Thanksgiving break my fucking day job is still mostly leaving me alone, so I’ve got time for a quick round-up of new songs and videos this Tuesday. Given the song I picked as the opener, it’s an outlier from my usual proclivities, but don’t worry, it gets a lot more subterranean after that, and then ends with a rebellious song that qualifies as a well-earned exception to our rule about singing.

METALLICA (U.S.)

A good argument could be made that Metallica is the biggest name in metal, and therefore a name very unlikely to appear at this site, where we tend to focus our attention on bands who need (and deserve) more exposure. Even just listening to their new song “Lux Æterna” wasn’t high on my list of things to do. It felt like I’d just be joining a surging crowd of lemmings and wondering just how big a cliff I’d be falling off of.

And then I began to see comments from assorted friends on social media who aren’t given to mindless fawning, even though, unlike me, they spent their formative years listening to Metallica during the band’s best years. One of them thought Metallica were channeling Motörhead. Another wrote that it sounded like a lost Diamond Head cover from Garage Inc. But everyone seemed to be liking it, even if maybe it was pushing slightly different buttons from person to person. So, I gave in and gave the song a shot. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HELLISH — “VIOLENT, BLOODY & COLD”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 292022
 

It seems quite likely that fans of black/thrash are well aware of the Chilean hellions in Hellish. They’ve filled up the dozen years of their existence with a plethora of frequent releases, including two albums and last year’s stand-out EP The Vermis Mysteriis. As the releases have piled up, however, it has become increasingly evident that Hellish have been bent on giving genre die-hards more for their money than what might be typically expected from this evil genre, and there’s no more striking demonstration of those ambitions than the band’s new album The Dance of the Four Elemental Serpents.

Not surprisingly, the especially inventive and interesting nature of the new music has become the lead story-line of the promotional activity for the album, which is set for release by Dying Victims Productions and Unspeakable Axe Records on December 16th, and as you’re about to discover through our premiere today, the music really is dizzying as well as diabolical, just as the PR material proclaims. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RAMCHAT — “KRVEL'”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 292022
 

Almost exactly two years ago I had the great pleasure of premiering an album named Znelo lesom by the Slovak pagan metal band Ramchat. At that time I wasn’t familiar with their previous works, and so I went into the album with no expectations. What I found was a gigantic surprise — so surprising that I likened it to a comet racing across the skies.

I opened the floodgates to a great torrent of words about that album in introducing its premiere, but here I’ll only repeat 104 of them:

“The songcraft of Ramchat is, for want of better words, idiosyncratic and mercurial. At a high level, it could be described as a fascinating amalgam of folk-influenced blackened metal and devilish rock that’s capable of generating (among other things) orchestral levels of grandeur, barbaric levels of savagery, bewitching episodes of sinister sonic sorcery, and heart-breaking moments of melancholy. In each song (no two of which are quite alike) the band pack an ingenious array of sonic sensations and moods, and while the changes are often unexpected, there is still a natural flow and integration among them which makes the progressions cohesive rather than jarring.”

Ramchat have now brought us another new album, one named Krveľ (“Blood”). Having been exposed to the marvels of Znelo lesom, I had very high hopes for it, and have not been disappointed. And so here we are again, with another Ramchat album premiere — though it’s not literally a premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MONOLITHE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 292022
 

(On November 25th the French band Monolithe released Kosmodrom, their latest album in a 20-year career, and in this new interview we present Comrade Aleks‘ discussion with Monolithe multi-instrumentalist Sylvain Bégot.)

Monolithe went their long way from sci-fi influenced funeral doom metal with a unique approach and to their own original melodic death-doom from outer space. Their reputation at first was built around the Monolithe triptych (The Great Clockmaker concept) where each of this series of albums consisted of one huge epic track. The band developed their ideas further and made a step out of funeral doom territories with the next albums.

The lineup is remarkably large, as their masterplan demands a careful and individual approach where each of the band’s members plays his role: Sylvain Bégot (guitars), Benoît Blin (guitars), Olivier Defives (bass), Thibault Faucher (drums), Matthieu Marchand (keyboards), and Rémi Brochard (vocals, guitars).

The new Monolithe album Kosmodrom is a 67-minute-long journey to the brave past of the Soviet Space Program, the times of healthy competitions and high hopes which seem to be lost for us nowadays. This story was told with the universal tongue of death-doom, but some of its parts demand explanations, and Monolithe’s keeper Sylvain Bégot is the one who knows all the secrets behind it. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORS VERUM — “PURGING WATERLOO” (LIVE SET)

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 282022
 

Almost exactly one year ago we had the pleasure of premiering a song from a then-forthcoming EP (The Living) by the Canadian death metal band Mors Verum. In commenting on that ever-changing EP, we made reference to the music’s volcanic viciousness, its firestorms of mind-mauling dissonance and bursts of head-twisting technicality, and its capacity to induce feelings of madness, violent chaos, pestilential peril, and shattering emotional downfall.

Now we’re returning to Mors Verum, and hopefully introducing even more people to what they’re all about, through our premiere of “Purging Waterloo“, a video of the band’s full 35-minute set performed in Waterloo, Canada, in July of this year. Continue reading »

IMHA TARIKAT: HEARTS UNCHAINED – AT WAR WITH A PASSIONLESS WORLD

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 282022
 

(Andy Synn goes to war once more with the music of Imha Tarikat)

While you’re reading this there’s a good chance I’ll be attending a funeral for one of my oldest, dearest friends.

As you might imagine, feelings have been running high ever since his death, and each of us who knew and loved him have had to find our own way to deal with his loss.

Perhaps unsurprisingly I have been turning to music, even more so than usual, as a conduit for my emotions, and Hearts Unchained – At War With a Passionless World has been one of the albums I have returned to most frequently over the past several weeks.

Of course, I’d like to think that I’d have listened to this record just as much even without this tragedy occurring (after all, I was a huge fan of the group’s previous work and have been looking forward to this one ever since), but sometimes an album hits you at just the right moment, in just the right way, to resonate even more deeply.

And this is one of those times.

Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2022: REVOLVER’S LIST OF THE 25 BEST ALBUMS OF 2022

 LISTMANIA 2022  14 Responses »
Nov 282022
 

 

“In case we’re wondering how things are going in surface level rock and metal world. Fun for curiosities sake.” That’s the message I saw from DGR providing a link to Revolver magazine’s list of the 25 Best Albums of 2022, and the message kind of sums up why you’re seeing the list here now.

As part of our annual LISTMANIA series we re-publish “best album” lists from some of the the few surviving print publications that cover metal, and from a handful of “big platform” sites that include metal in their on-line coverage, along with a range of other music genres and other aspects of popular culture.

We don’t re-publish those “big platform” lists because we think it’s likely to be a source of useful discovery for most of the people who come to NCS, though of course that’s possible. It’s really more a matter of peering at the surface world as a form of modest entertainment. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VIDMERSHIY SHMAT, OBRIJ, FROSTNATT, ENGE STORE, FUNEBRE, ULVIK, VESPERWYND, NARRENWIND, GROHOT

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Nov 272022
 


Vidmershiy Shmat

My NCS time can be captured by this formula:  NCS = 24 – [FDJ + FAF + SBBS + MAE], where 24 is the number of hours in the day (a constant I haven’t figured out how to extend), FDJ is Fucking Day Job, FAF is Family and Friends, SBBS is Sleep, Bathroom Breaks, and Smoking, and MAE is Meteors and Earthquakes.

EAD (Eating and Drinking) doesn’t enter into it because I can do those things at the computer. So far, the value of MAE has been Zero. I might have made a place for DDD (Disease, Dismemberment, and Death), which would leave the calculated NCS time at Zero, but hope springs eternal!

The most consequential variable (so far) is FDJ. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore it, as I sometimes do with FAF, and it’s difficult to minimize the time required, as I sometimes do with SBBS. But during this long Thanksgiving holiday it has left me alone, and that’s why I finished two big roundups on Friday and Saturday, and now a third one here. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SKARNTYDE, SARKASM, BEAST MODE, Заводь, FOREVER AUTUMN, BENEATH MY FEET, DIE OBERHERREN, YUNCLAS

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 262022
 


Skarntyde

Since yesterday was a Bandcamp Friday [actually, it wasn’t, as Nic pointed out in a comment below] I wish I could have spent more time recommending more music than I did, but at least I got a full handful of choices out there. Now my hands are full again, and when I open them these things will fly like moths to your flame, or I hope they will.

This new collection was the result of lots of surfing the effluent that continually floods the interhole, searching for nuggets that aren’t the kind you’d find in a septic tank. I found them, an octet of them (including three complete EPs), but I must confess that in the course of the sifting I fell into a strange trip. Dark moods descended, and occasionally lifted, but not entirely. I encountered nostalgia too, and found a pair of curveballs to throw at you for the finale, which is always fun, especially for those of you who have no idea about baseball.

But of course, although these trips are mainly about what pleases me, I always hope (fervently) that some or all of it will please you too. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP BLACK FRIDAY: HOST, GOATBURNER, ÚZKOST, FORMLESS ARCHITECT, SLEGEST, ONHOU, TCHORNOBOG, ABYSSAL

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 252022
 


Host

When you combine a Black Friday with a Bandcamp Friday the result is a goddamned typhoon of new music and videos, with bands and labels not only launching sales but trying to take further advantage of the situation with new releases, some of them out today and some now up for pre-order.

Correction: As Nic pointed out in a comment on the post following this one, Black Friday was NOT in fact a Bandcamp Friday, and now I’ve forgotten why I thought it was. On the plus side, I get to do something like this again on December 2nd!

I can’t say I’ve waded through all of it to make your shopping experience easier (I’m only one bedraggled human and speed-cloning is a generation or two away), but I did make my way through some of it, and have these recommendations for you.

I also did try to provide some genre scatter in the choices, knowing that not everyone loves everything, and to provide a range of radar elevations among the bands. As vivid proof of that, I’m leading off with… Continue reading »

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