NO CLEAN SINGING

ROTTEN SOUND: “APOCALYPSE”

Apr 042023

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by Finland’s Rotten Sound, which is out now on Season of Mist.)

The thing to keep in mind with Rotten Sound‘s newest album Apocalypse – arriving almost five years after the group’s last recorded material in the 2018 EP Suffer To Abuse and almost seven years if you want to stick strictly to full lengths in 2016’s Abuse To Suffer – is that it is the sort of grind album that starts and stops. That makes no sense, you say, every album has a beginning and end, what sort of difference does an album starting and stopping have to do with the descriptor of an album?

To refine it a bit, let’s treat Apocalypse this way: There is no build up to Apocalypse and there is no wind-down in Apocalypse, at any point, at all. You hit ‘play’ on the album’s first song and Rotten Sound are already screaming at a thousand miles an hour and every song after that does the same. The start/stop mechanism is the most perfunctory in existence. It’s a quick blast of feedback and the song is over with not a single song getting close to the two-minute mark. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, MARCH 2023

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Apr 032023

(We’ve just barely breached the walls of April, and so our friend Gonzo makes a timely reappearance with a selection of five albums released in March that made a big impact in his listening.)

Before I get to writing this month’s helping of my choice cuts from last month, I gotta get something out of the way first:

I am still absolutely buzzing from last night’s Death to All show here in Denver.

To see the likes of Steve DiGiorgio and Gene Hoglan play music of any kind on stage, in person, is a treat enough by itself, but having them rip through selections from the inimitable Death for almost two hours was an experience that I plan to re-live in perpetuity. Possibly forever. Who knows?

It was an insane spectacle for the eyes as well as the ears, and I’ll get to writing up the entire thing soon enough. If you missed this tour, you have my condolences.

Let’s get to the good stuff from March.

CURSEBINDER – DRIFTING

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Apr 032023

(Andy Synn presents his thoughts on the new album from Cursebinder, out Friday on Avantgarde Music)

First things first, I’d like it to be noted that Cursebinder is a truly excellent band name.

Of course, the… ahem… curse of having such a good moniker like that is that you really have to live up to it, musically speaking. And if you don’t, well… you’re going to hear about it.

Thankfully, however, the band’s captivating concoction of pristine blackened power, dream-like melody, and doom-laden melancholy proves to be more of a blessing than a curse, and fans of of the introspective intensity of Der Weg Einer Freiheit or the darkly melodic majesty of Claret Ash in particular would do well to invite Drifting into their lives.

AN NCS PREMIERE: BONJOUR TRISTESSE — “ODE TO EMPTINESS”

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Apr 032023

On April 7th Supreme Chaos Records will release Against Leviathan, the third album by the Bavarian black metal band Bonjour Tristesse. It’s the first part of a two- part cycle, which has a conceptual thread running through it. As the band and label describe: It “paints an extremely bleak picture of the dystopian reality of our time from an unusual perspective. It can be seen as an angry and passionate critique of the industrialized world we are living in. At the centre is the conflict between modern humanity and nature”.

The album consists of four long songs, and today we present the one that closes the record — “Ode to Emptiness“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GABESTOK, REVA, THY CATAFALQUE, DAUGHTERS OF SOPHIA

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK No Responses »

Apr 022023

Gabestok (2019) – photo by Adriana Zak

Every week we receive what mathematicians used to call a metric shit ton of black metal submissions. Maybe it’s because we tend to spend more time than many other metal sites focusing on that ever-expanding genre, and maybe because we try not to limit ourselves to well-known bands with substantial label backing or PR apparatuses.

But as some people still don’t understand, there are very few of us here, and our NCS time comes after paying work, family and friends, and every other demand and distraction that everyone else deals with on a daily basis. So, lots of worthy submissions just don’t get attention in our pages.

From amongst the worthy, there’s truly a high degree of randomness in what we choose to write about, and even more so on days like today when my own NCS time has gotten further compressed by unexpected events (including the Third World quality of internet service on the island where I live).

Yeah, I hear you — “Shut Up and Get On With It, you could have covered one more song in the time it took you to write that pathetic introduction!” I hear you, so let’s get on with it: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HASARD, BURIAL CLOUDS, NEÀNDER, DJATLOW, HIDEOUS DIVINITY

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Apr 012023

Still playing catch-up on all the new songs and videos that surfaced last week… and before….

I suppose I should include some kind of April Fool’s joke, but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be obvious. We’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer? We’re starting a clothing line? We’re merging with Rolling Stone so their year-end list will become our own? An AI wrote all the song descriptions in this article? Well, maybe that last one might be believable, if the writing were better.

Anyway, no jokes in the following music, though I have made these selections with the intent of keeping you off-balance.

HASARD (France)

I, Voidhanger Records has once again dropped a bunch of pre-orders and advance tracks for forthcoming albums in one fell swoop. I’ll probably get around to saying something about all of them, but impulsively chose just one today — a new song from Hasard‘s debut album Malivore. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CREPITATION — “METHANATED PROPULSION OF GASEOUS LEVITATION”

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Apr 012023

April Fool’s Day! Yes it is, and the joke’s on you!

Well, we’re not suggesting that we don’t really have a Crepitation premiere for you today, because we really really do. But look, the song was inspired by the kind of wet farts that provide a queasy recurring lift to your stride.

Hold that thought… along with whatever gaseous emissions may be trying to escape your bunghole at the moment … and let’s consider “Methanated Propulsion of Gaseous Levitation” (the nasty song from a new Crepitation album we’re premiering along with an insane “lyric video”), not the nasty bodily phenomenon for which it was named). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE INFERNAL SEA, NERVOSA, WORM SHEPHERD, PAVOR NOKTURNUS

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Mar 312023

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The Infernal Sea – Photography by Jay Russell

Well, this was another ridiculous week for the release of new music and videos designed to tease forthcoming records, not to mention the release of complete albums, EPs, and splits. Sadly, it was also another week when I couldn’t manage to catch up to them in other round-ups. At least I got a bit of a head-start today on the usual Saturday and Sunday collections, when more catching up will occur.

THE INFERNAL SEA (UK)

Oh hell, where to start? Well, how about with a new single from NCS favorites The Infernal Sea?

“Apostle of Gehenna” is a nice surprise, since about 2 1/2 years have elapsed since the band’s last release (the Negotium Crucis album, reviewed here), though there’s nothing “nice” about gaping jaws of the hellhound in the artwork (the work of Rob Gould). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VALGRIND — “MILLENNIUM OF NIGHT BLISS”

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Mar 312023

We’ve been following the music of the Italian death metal band Valgrind for many years, and for good reason. But if you happen to be discovering them for the first time, despite how often we’ve written about them, they released four demos and an EP between 1995 and 2002 — and then seemed to go into hibernation until the appearance ten years later of their debut album, Morning Will Come No More. Another four years passed, and then Valgrind’s second album, Speech of the Flame, was released by Lord of the Flies Records. The wonderful 2017 EP Seal of Phobos tided over Valgrind fans until the 2018 appearance of the next album, Blackest Horizon, via Everlasting Spew Records.

And then came their Condemnation album released in 2020 through the Spanish label Memento Mori, followed by their From the Viscera of Darkness EP in 2021. Now, the same Memento Mori is poised to release Valgrind‘s mind-blowing fifth album, Millennium of Night Bliss, on April 24th, and we’re able to share the title track with you today. BUT… before we get to that song, we want you to lend your ears to the new album’s previously released opening track “Teshub“. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 157): AFSKY

THE SYNN REPORT 3 Responses »

Mar 312023

Recommended for fans of: (early) Ulver, Panopticon, Wolves In The Throne Room

Well, I promised you two Synn Reports this month, and I always (well, sometimes) keep my promises.

So here’s a little extended feature about Afsky, the solo-project of one Ole Pedersen Luk, whose music – rich in rugged sonic textures and raw, unfiltered emotion – errs more towards the “atmospheric” side of the Black Metal spectrum, while still possessing a sense of primal power and passionate urgency that runs deep through each and every track.

Equal parts melancholic and majestic, and infused with sombre folk influences that add a brooding, soulful edge to each of the band’s albums – all three of which I’ll be talking about here today, while leaving their two EPs (their self-titled 2015 debut and their 2022 acoustic release, I stilhed) for you to discover on your own time – this is Black Metal that you really feel, right down in the marrow of your bones.

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