NO CLEAN SINGING

BLASPHEMY, PRAYERS, AND THE CALLOUSNESS THAT FOLLOWS: TRIBE OF PAZUZU, SARCOPTES, AND TONGUE SCUM

Mar 202023

(Sacramento-based writer DGR pulled together the following reviews of albums that surfaced over the last 30 days.)

The tour through the world of heavy metal continues, this time covering a good portion of the planet as we carve our way from Canada through the States and land in Australia for three suitably intense and mind-scarringly mean experiences that saw recent release. We begin with names familiar to longtime NCS readers and end on someone new but a group that’ll instantly appeal to the wall-punchers as decorative artists among our readers.

Tribe Of Pazuzu – Blasphemous Prophecies

It hadn’t occurred to us around here that it had been close to three years for the Canadian crew Tribe Of Pazuzu when it came to the gap between releases, nor the fact that Blasphemous Prophecies represents the group’s official first full-length album.

For those who haven’t been wandering around these fetid halls for a while, Tribe Of Pazuzu unleashed two EPs in late 2019 and early 2020 entitled Heretical Uprising and King Of All Demons. With the year-over-year churn on those particular EPs and each of them clocking in at a stocky five songs and near-twenty minutes each, it felt like the combination of the two together – which the band would eventually release in 2021 – was their debut full-length. Continue reading »

TELOS – DELUDE

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 202023

(Andy Synn has had his face ripped off by the new album from Telos… and now it’s your turn)

We’re now a little under a quarter of the way through 2023 and so far the “theme” of the year has yet to reveal itself.

Last year, for example, was a very Hardcore-oriented year for yours truly, with an extremely varied and visceral assemblage of bands – Beyond the Styx, CLEARxCUT, Get the Shot, Helpless, Ithaca, Nostromo, Spill Your Guts, Spiritworld, and so on – helping to remind me just how much power and potential the wider genre has, in all its different forms, and why I’ve always loved it.

Of course, it doesn’t always happen like that – not every year is clearly a “Death Metal year” or a “Black Metal year”, etc, etc – so we’ll just have to wait and see what the rest of 2023 has to offer.

But, let me tell you, if the eight tracks of abrasive, anxiety-inducing Blackened Hardcore which make up Delude had been released in 2022 they’d have fit in perfectly alongside the year’s very best.

SHADES OF BLACK: OLD FOREST, AFSKY, UKĆ, LE PROCHAIN HIVER, MOTSTAND, HYRGAL

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK 2 Responses »

Mar 192023

Old Forest

I often rely on the recommendations of friends in deciding how to spend my listening time, and then deciding what to recommend to you. I like rooting around myself, like a truffle-sniffing pig, but after pouring a fair amount of time into yesterday’s big roundup I wasn’t left with a lot of sniffing and rooting time, and therefore took my lead from friends for much of what’s coming below. They didn’t let me down, and hopefully I won’t let you down with these choices either.

OLD FOREST (UK)

I had to start today’s collection with a new song by Old Forest because I found it so immediately captivating. I’m not steeped in the band’s extensive discography (seven albums and a bunch of shorter releases going back to 1998), but Neill Jameson is, and he introduced Decibel’s premiere of the song last week with a brief history.

The new track, “Master of Arachnids”, is from a forthcoming album named Sutwyke, which Neill lauded as “easily the band’s best full length since their phantasmagoric re-materialization” in 2008 following a long hiatus: “Taking elements from all eras of their discography (including the clean vocals, though somewhat more subdued) this is also their most jet-black record showing that there is still plenty of (un)life in these bones”.

Well, that was more than enough temptation to dive into “Master of Arachnids”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SHAKMA, KAAL AKUMA, ÓREIĐA, SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH, MIASMA OF OCCVLT LIMBS

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Mar 182023

Shakma – photo by Kristian Eikeland

Anyone who visits here on a regular basis knows I like to host premieres of new songs and complete releases. Other people seem to like that too, since our daily calendar of premieres is full from now through April 21st, which is about as fully stocked and as far out-front as I can remember we’ve ever been with our premiere schedule.

The downside of this for me is that it cuts deep into the time I have for something else I enjoy — roundups of new music like this one. Lately, I’ve been lucky if I can get one done on the weekend. Doing them on the weekdays has become a rarity, especially since the job that pays the freight around here has been pressing me more than usual too.

I know I sound like a broken record, constantly expressing disappointment and frustration that I can’t highlight more bands and their music in this way. But none of these records is broken…. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: JAUE — “GUERRERO MAPUCHE”

Premieres No Responses »

Mar 172023

Many of you will be familiar with the decades-old Colombian death metal band Vitam Et Mortem, in which Julián “Thánatos” has been the composer, vocalist, and guitarist. What we have for you today is the music of a side project of Thánatos that he has named Jaue, which we’re told is the name of a spirit that can take the form of any animal.

We’re also told that the purpose of forming Jaue, as revealed in the project’s debut album Cantos del Sur Salvaje, was to “explore ancestral sounds and voices from ancient cultures of the world and puts them in relation to metal”. Organized as a trio of triptyches, the songs interweave many styles, with results that could broadly be summed up as “Colombian epic melodic pagan black metal”.

But summing up is a difficult thing to do with this album, because the journey through it is so varied. As evidence of that we’re presenting a heart-bursting song called “Guerrero Mapuche” today, as well as a juxtaposition of it with the new album’s first single, the majestic “A vuelo de cóndor“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BURIAL HORDES — “INFINITE SEA OF NOTHINGNESS”

Premieres 1 Response »

Mar 172023

Our fidelity to the Greek band Burial Hordes is of long standing — not as long as the band’s own existence, which stretches back roughly 22 years, because they were practicing their black craft well before our site came into being in 2009, but we’ve been steadily writing about their music for a decade. And for good reason. Over the course of four albums (with a fifth one on the way) and a handful of shorter releases, they’ve established themselves as premiere purveyors of hellish musical visions, while refusing to just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

The band’s pronounced tendency to use their music as a vehicle for continuing exploration of dark subjects is one reason for our eagerness and sense of intrigue every time they release something new. What’s new now, as mentioned above, is Burial Hordes‘ fifth full-length, Ruins, which is set for release on June 9th by Transcending Obscurity Records. That feels like a long way off, but we already have exciting signs of what the album presents — two songs that have already debuted, and the third one we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

HOST: “IX”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Mar 172023

(What you’ll find below is Axel Stormbreaker‘s review of the debut album by Host (the duo of Greg Mackintosh and Nick Holmes), out now on Nuclear Blast.)

My connection to Paradise Lost’s music resembles the terms of a permanent relationship. Its integral qualities may revitalize your body and thought, to a degree you feel capable of achieving nearly everything. While, on different occasions, it can turn out as an ordinary mess that’s so fucking disappointing.

Before you feel the need to educate me, lemme state here I am fully aware the album in question belongs to a side-project, a work put together by its core members mostly for their personal fun. But since the main people are present in an endeavor named after their most “infamous” album, what’s to expect? Plus, the music itself strongly reminds of their alt-metal era. Do we need further boxes to check?

AN NCS PREMIERE: WITTE WIEVEN — “KOORDDANSER”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 1 Response »

Mar 162023

We had some favorable things to say here about the Dutch band Witte Wieven‘s 2016 debut EP Silhouettes of an Imprisoned Mind (available here):

“Perhaps best summed up as an offering of somber, atmospheric black metal, the songs combine low, gravelly riffs and grumbling bass lines with waves of guitar melody that shimmer and mesmerize, accented by beautiful, haunting clean vocals and such things as keyboard notes that sound like a harmonica (or perhaps an accordion) and spectral ambient tones.

“The songwriting is very good — the three songs are each quite distinct and memorable — and so is the production. It’s easy to lose yourself in this otherworldly dreamscape of lost souls and restless spirits.” Continue reading »

DISSENTIENT – LABYRINTH

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 162023

(Andy Synn guides you through the twists and turns of the new album from Ottawa’s Dissentient)

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the corruptive influence of the profit motive… how difficult it makes it to believe that anything that’s written can ever be impartial (and I know there’s a whole other argument to be had over objectivity, or the lack thereof, in reviewing music) once you realise that every feature, every review, every cover photo, comes with a potential price tag attached.

It’s one reason (among many) that I consider myself lucky to write here. None of the three of us who still form the core team – Islander, DGR, and myself – make any money from the site, nor do we have any advertisers to please or specific print deadlines to meet, and so we’re free to write about what we want, when we want.

Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to tear down print media wholesale – as someone who used to write for a physical magazine I’m fully aware of the complexities which need to be balanced in order to both serve your readers not just what they want, but also what you think they need, while still remaining solvent (or not) – I’m simply laying out a case for why you can (and should) trust us.

Hell, we don’t even write to please the bands themselves (there’ve been a few times when people have gotten pissy with us because we didn’t blindly praise them enough) and have, in fact, alienated a few labels and PR firms in the past with our refusal to just dole out perfect scores to anything and everything that comes our way.

Long story short… believe me when I say that you won’t regret checking out Dissentient‘s new album.

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOMITHEIST — “TORMENTING FUNGAL INFESTATION”

Premieres 1 Response »

Mar 162023

Let’s be clear: We have no private info about why a trio of Swiss musical collaborators chose Vomitheist for their name. Mainly, all we have to go on is the name itself and a rudimentary understanding of words. The name looks like a conjunction of “vomit” and “theist”, which suggests that vomit is their god. Which raises the question, what does the worship of vomit sound like? We’ll come back to that.

We say that linguistic analysis is “mainly” what we have to go on, but there’s a bit more, before we get to the music itself. There’s the name of their new album – NekroFvneral – and song titles such as “Putrefaktor”, “Symbiotic Putrefaction”, “Chapel of Abhorrent Reek and Festering Slime” (in case you’re wondering where the worship of vomit takes place), and “Epidemic Disembowelment” (which sounds like a pithy summing up of what a few years of life under covid was like).

All of this points the way to a death metal band who kneel at the altar of disgusting musical extremity, with no pretenses to any higher calling and no problem joining a long lineage of other DM bands who have made their “ethos” out of steaming piles of the nastiest stuff the human body is capable of producing, in life or in death. The kind of extreme metal themes that might be the hardest to explain to the kind of people whose listening choices get nominated for Grammy awards.

So now you’re already pretty well-prepared for what you’re about to hear. You probably already can guess whether Vomitheist are going to be in your personal wheelhouse. But even if you have a taste for the most foul and regurgitative death metal, maybe it’s a refined taste. Maybe you know that there are gradations of quality in this kind of thing (and there most certainly are), so you still insist on getting some filthy tastes before taking the plunge on NekroFvneral. We’re here to help. Continue reading »

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