(Andy Synn has a few words to share about the outstanding new album from Seattle’s Witch Ripper)
I mentioned yesterday that writing about music is a joy unto itself (or, at least, it is if you do it right).
But it’s even more enjoyable when the music you’re writing about it this good.
Because, make no mistake about it, as much as I enjoyed the band’s debut album, the long-awaited follow-up is a whole new level of awesome.
In the midst of daily reminders from around the globe that humans are in fact plagued by a god disease (masking won’t help and there’s no vaccine), the band God Disease are about to land a new album, with a title that makes clear what this Finnish group see in their crystal ball: Apocalyptic Doom.
That title is also a fine summing up of the music on this Helsinki band’s second full-length, and a sign of how much further they’ve moved in their evolution from death metal to the most soul-stricken and earth-quaking doom. Continue reading »
I fucking love the promotional photos of The Grifted. I admit I’m influenced by the fact that they look closer to my generation than most current death metal bands, but it’s more than that. It’s that they are making a statement.
Surely the suit jackets, the vest, the shorn heads, and the setting are no accident. The gaze at the watch suggests they’re about to be late to some kind of professional meeting (and not with a tour promoter). It seems a way of saying (with a sense of humor), we have other lives, we’re not pandering to expectations but are more interested in confounding them, we know who we are even if you might not guess… and we’re quite happy to let our music speak for itself.
Well, you might not guess who they are, but once you know their connected histories it will come as no surprise that The Grifted‘s debut album Doomsday & Salvation is so damned good. Continue reading »
Nothingness
(Another month has closed its doors, and Gonzo takes another look through them, this time spotlighting five favored albums released during February 2023.)
I can’t be alone here in saying February is the most useless fucking month on the calendar. More often than not during that godforsaken stretch of time – in its cold, dreary misery – I’m finding myself constantly losing track of time, forgetting what day it is, and scrambling to fit four weeks’ worth of plans into what seems like two.
Priorities, I suppose – that’s what it all comes down to. I’ve managed to listen to an alarming amount of music already, and seeing that we’re only just over two months into 2023, that’s always time well-prioritized.
Here’s the new shit that’s been on my heavy rotation through the last 28 days.
(Andy Synn has four excellent under the radar releases for you today)
Well, it’s that time again… time for me to harangue and browbeat you all for failing to keep up with all the great new releases that came out last month.
Of course, that’s not why I do these pieces at all. In fact, as much as I’d hope they provide a public service – cluing you in to some stuff that may have, understandably, flown underneath your radar(s) – there’s an argument to be made that I do them just as much for myself as for other people.
After all, I enjoy writing, and writing about new artists/albums I’ve discovered is a particular joy unto itself.
So here’s four releases from the last month (and a bit… I’ve stretched things a little this time around) for you to check out whenever you get the chance.
Almost exactly two years ago we had the pleasure of premiering Unohdan Sinut, the debut album of the Finnish band Qwälen. As is our habit, we spilled a lot of words introducing it, dropping references along the way to such bands as Young and in the Way and Dödsrit, but also the likes of Darkthrone, Nifelheim, Bathory, and Terveet Kädet. We identified “speed and fury” as perhaps the record’s main hallmarks, but also underscored the gripping harmonies created by the feverish dual-guitar leads:
“They not only vibrantly channel a range of dark and disturbing emotions, they also burrow into the listener’s head with relentless penetrating force, their relative clarity piercing through the raw and ravaging tones of what surrounds them.”
It’s fair to say that Unohdan Sinut was a damn tough act to follow, but these black metal punks were undaunted. They’ve made a second album, Syvä Hiljaisuus, that’s just as fury-filled and emotionally powerful as the debut. Continue reading »
Endorphins Lost
(DGR has surfaced from what sounds like some hellish recent weeks in his non-NCS life, and brought along with him some mean and explosive music, courtesy of the three bands whose recent releases he reviews below.)
The death and grind side of the heavy metal world is one that seems to be continually spinning no matter what people do to try to stop it. It’s become a machine that is always absorbing new bodies for energy and unleashing it in violent bursts that could make astronomers and physicists take note. The ferocity that is unleashed by such groups is often unmatched, and if they’re not moving in pure, bludgeoning force then it is a series of strikes that are happening so fast you don’t even notice the ground that has been razed alongside you.
The three gathered here come from different corners of the musical world as well as having some actual physical distance between them, with the one unifying theme among them being an unmatched fiery energy, and that they had releases hit in February.
In fact, the releases here get longer as you travel further down the list, but still manage to keep things around twenty-five minutes. February: Short month, short songs, short reviews – let’s party. Continue reading »
(In this interesting new interview Comrade Aleks questioned the anonymous person behind the Italian atmospheric b lack metal band Medenera, whose most recent album was released last December.)
Five full-length albums for five years! Isn’t it a good score? Mysterious Italian one-man band Medenera produces its atmospheric black metal with a good working pace, and creates majestic melancholic realms built of both celestial ambient passages and quite grim mid-paced black metal.
Medenera is totally anonymous, and the albums’ concept is blurred, but we got in touch with the project’s founder and he told a lot about his sources of inspiration and the meanings behind this series of albums. Continue reading »
Diablation
I’m roughly 1,900 miles away from my home. I made the trip last Thursday (an excruciating journey packed with delays), something I needed to do for my job. Since then I haven’t had much time to myself, night or day. My comrade Mr. Synn suggested I just take the weekend off from NCS. As he put it, “The world will keep spinning”.
I’m not so sure about that. What if the world is an incredibly detailed simulation running on the substrate of my mind? What if Mr. Synn is, as I have always suspected, a figment of my imagination? What if music has no objective existence unless someone other than its creator hears it?
I may have become too subsumed by a new sci-fi novel I’m reading, which I shouldn’t name because the idea of a simulation is one of its many surprises.
I did take yesterday off from NCS (actually not a lot of choice in that matter). I was very tempted to take today off too, but I do have a little time to myself before beginning the trip back to Seattle, and whatever airline- and weather-related fuck-ups will plague it. So I snagged just a few new songs to recommend, so you don’t think I had a stroke or a Sunday brunch in jail. Continue reading »
The Ancient Greek word katabasis referred to a journey into the underworld — the Hades of myth — but in time it has come to refer to travels into the realm of the dead in tales beyond the stories of Odysseus and Orpheus.
“Katabasis” is also the name of the song we’re premiering today from the debut album of the Italian/German band Nekus, and as song titles go, this one was a perfect choice — because the music is horrifying and hopeless, supernatural and suffocating.
It does seem to rudely usher us into an ugly, abominable place where only the dead may dwell, and suffering is endless. But as you’ll discover, the song is also a sonic cataclysm of immense destructive power. Continue reading »