NO CLEAN SINGING

THE HALO EFFECT – DAYS OF THE LOST

Aug 112022

(Andy Synn gets to grips with the debut album from Melodeath “supergroup” The Halo Effect)

Let’s face it, a lot of people aren’t going to be able to resist pitting the upcoming albums from In Flames and The Halo Effect against one another.

And while that’s understandable to an extent – after all, most (arguably all, if you count Mikael Stanne’s early stint filling in on vocals) of The Halo Effect actually used to be in In Flames – any attempt to position them in direct competition to one another completely misses the point of why this band exists in the first place.

Let’s face it, while the current incarnation of In Flames are essentially a franchise unto themselves – with all the external and internal pressures to produce “hits” which that entails – The Halo Effect is, for all intents and purposes, just five old friends getting together to jam out some tunes that hew a little closer to their roots (though how closely is certainly up for debate).

But while this means that the pressures and expectations surrounding the release of Days of the Lost may not be quite as overbearing, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any expectations riding on it at all… and it’s up to Iwers, Engelin, Svensson, Strömblad, and Stanne to prove that they’ve got more to offer here than just a fleeting hit of feel-good nostalgia.

WEREWOLVES: “DEATHMETAL” AND “FROM THE CAVE TO THE GRAVE”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Aug 112022

Photographer credit: Rob Brens

(We continue our week-long series of reviews wherein DGR is doing a lot of catching up, and today he tackles not one but two 2022 releases by the same band, the Australian extremists in Werewolves.)

I get the sneaking suspicion that Werewolves‘ style of music works fantastically well for each person one time and after that it’s a little bit more give and take. Your first album with them is the revelation of how gloriously stupid and how intentionally so the Werewolves‘ brand of music is, and then once that becomes the high mark, everything is a little bit more even-keeled in spite how teeth-gnashing and vicious things may appear from there out.

For me, it was the group’s 2021 album What A Time To Be Alive, which was basically an album of deathgrind front-to-back with almost no chance to breathe. It was an album that basically felt ‘needed’ when it landed with, even if the overall approach was one-note as all hell.

Werewolves have achieved a rapid clip in terms of releasing music as well, essentially going year-over-year since the release of their debut album The Dead Are Screaming. 2022 alone has brought us the release of their latest album From The Cave To The Grave as well as a four-song EP simply called Deathmetal. We’re late to the bus on both, so this rumination needed to cover both releases, but that sure as hell isn’t going to stop us now. Continue reading »

FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022: DAY THREE

Concert Reviews 9 Responses »

Aug 102022

(Today our friend Gonzo brings us his third and final report on the recent Fire in the Mountains festival in Wyoming, along with a few of his own photos. You can find the first two installments here and here.)

Day three of any festival hits different. It’s no longer a matter of going balls-to-the-wall for 12 consecutive hours. It’s an endurance contest. It’s a marathon you’re running against yourself. One minute you’re staring bleary-eyed at the roof of your tent before the sun comes up, and the next, you’re chugging espresso you made in the back of a Subaru Outback in desperate hopes of being able to slog your way through the rest of the weekend.

And that’s just the first two hours.

But never mind that. No point in wasting any time lamenting your mental condition, I thought to myself as I threw some extra clothes into my backpack. Today would first be spent outside the confines of our beloved festival, and into the mountain range that we’d only been able to admire from afar. Before any music, we’d be taking a side quest to Grand Teton National Park. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLASTED HEATH — “VELA”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Aug 102022

“Vela is a blast of blackened chaos from distant galaxies, mastered by death metal legend Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Bloodbath). Imagine early Bathory mixed with Darkthrone’s grim eclecticism and Black Breath‘s punk grime. Mutate that sound with Lovecraftian psychedelia and you get this unforgettable album.”

That’s the PR come-on from Wise Blood Records for the debut album by Blasted Heath from Indianapolis. I thought, if that’s even pretty close to accurate I’m going to be very happy with this one. The preview checks a lot of the right boxes for my tastes. Another one got checked when I read guitarist/vocalist Kyle Shumaker‘s comments about the last three conceptually linked songs on Vela, which are about neutron stars (aka pulsars) and “Killanova” events in which two such stars in a binary system collide and potentially release “strange matter”.

And then there’s the fact that the band named the album itself for a pulsar that’s the remnant of a supernova that occurred 11,000–12,300 years ago, and the brightest pulsar (at radio frequencies) in the sky.

So, lots of reasons to be intrigued and attracted before hearing a single note. But, as always, it comes down to the payoff: Do these black/thrash cosmonauts deliver what’s promised? You’re about to find out. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: TOMBS — “EX OBLIVION”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Aug 102022

(We continue a week-long run of reviews by DGR, and this one takes stock of the latest release by the always-interesting NY crew Tombs.)

Tombs have made a name for themselves as more than just a black metal collective out of the East Coast. Whether through the rotating cast of band members or influences pulled from all around the underground scene, Mike Hill and gang have absorbed a lot more into their sound, evolving Tombs past a post-metal/black metal hybrid and into an art collective where you never fully know what to expect next.

Tombs have kept busy as well, especially in recent years, because, save for 2019, every year has seen some sort of release from them, whether it be an EP, full-length, compilation, or a single. There’s always something to keep them out there and show that maybe the constant refresh works for them.

Mid-June of 2022 saw the release of the latest addition to the group’s collective musical works with the EP Ex Oblivion, which contains one new song, one ambient block of experimentation, a remix/housewrecking of a track from Under Sullen Skies, and two cover tracks – for a combined total of three cover songs within the last year, if you caught their cover of Samhain‘s “The Shift” in 2021 – for twenty-two minutes of music. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SHROUD OF BEREAVEMENT

Interviews 3 Responses »

Aug 092022

(In late July the doom/death metal band Shroud of Bereavement released its first album in 15 years, and that prompted Comrade Aleks to catch up with the band’s founder, and the man responsible for resurrecting the band, Dan Robinson.)

Shroud of Bereavement! Shroud of Bereavement! Shroud of Bereavement from the darkness that surrounds us! Sorry, but Shroud of Bereavement’s names is very much in line with Paul McCartney’s hit, so I can’t get rid of this melody. Yet to the matter.

Death-doom never was he most popular genre in the States, and yet this band was founded in the most wrong period you could imagine – it was 1995, Kurt Cobain was already no more, but grunge and alternative metal rage on and moved aside most traditional metal bands. Despite this Shroud of Bereavement slowly developed their sound, moving from the demo The Forever Dance (1999) to the single A Rose for a Dying Muse (2001) and further to the self-titled EP (2003) and the debut full-length Alone Besides Her (2007).

The band’s last appearance was another EP While We Mourn (2012) and then they just disappeared from radars until the recent past when Shroud’s founder Dan Robinson started to update its status, sharing information about new recording progress. As a result his new album A Beautiful Winter was released about a week ago. Here’s our interview with Dan. Continue reading »

ETHER COVEN – THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE NAIL

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Aug 092022

(Andy Synn gets filthy and furious with the new album from Floridian sludge-slingers Ether Coven)

What makes a band “big” these days?

Is it album sales? Streaming numbers? Social media reach?

Maybe, you might think, it’s being on a “big” label… but if that’s the case then why are Ether Coven, currently signed to Century Media/Good Fight, such a relatively unknown and firmly underground phenomenon?

The answer, of course, is that the band’s music is so unflinchingly ugly, so unforgivingly abrasive (yet tempered with moments of bleak, brooding beauty) that, no matter who they signed with, they were always going to be something of an acquired taste.

But while Ether Coven might not be “big” in the conventional sense of the word, there’s no denying that The Relationship Between the Hammer and the Nail is anything less than an absolutely massive album.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TISHINA

Interviews No Responses »

Aug 092022

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Branislav Panić, the man behind the band Тишина (Tishina), whose excellent debut album was released in May 2022.)

It’s always inspiring when bands use their mother tongue in their lyrics or have enough courage to demonstrate their roots, their identity. But that move also builds a barrier sometimes, so there’s a kind of risk if your band’s name is written in Cyrillic, for example.

Тишина / Tishina means “silence” in Serbian, and the band’s founder Branislav Panić gained his first experience playing different sorts of metal in Serbian bands. Then he moved to Canada but the passion towards heavy music can’t be eradicated easily, and soon Тишина / Tishina was born.

Branislav chose to express his interest towards melodic death-doom through his project, and as result we have his first solo album Увод… / Uvod… released just two months ago. And if you dig old good stuff like Katatonia, Saturnus, and so on, then this album will linger in your play-list longer than you expect. Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH: “THE GREAT HEATHEN ARMY”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Aug 092022

(DGR has finally gotten around to reviewing the latest album by Amon Amarth, which was released last Friday by Metal Blade Records.)

While digging around in old files and folders I came across the old draft of my review for Amon Amarth‘s Berzerker, wherein the opening line – since scratched – was ‘fuck it, let’s do this’.

Even then, and especially around the release of Amon Amarth‘s Jomsviking album, it had become clear that the band that I’ve long referred to as one of a small handful of fantastic shuffle bands in the world were getting to be huge and had started to ascend in their career to the point of becoming more spectacle than music.

That’s fine but it just represents a shift in priority for seeing them live, much in the same way one might see Kiss, Iron Maiden, Gwar, or Tool. Yeah, you get a bonus and it feels great actually knowing the music, but you really don’t need to any more, because the band have become a spectacle to witness. The recent release of Amon Amarth‘s 12th album The Great Heathen Army hammers this fact home. Instead of Amon Amarth being the super-heavy melodeath-skirting Viking pillagers, they’ve become a spectacle themselves. Fewer runes and gravesites and a whole lot more medieval times.

However, since I’ve been the one to write about Amon Amarth releases here for a while now – though I skipped Jomsviking – l felt weirdly drawn to The Great Heathen Army. The traveling show that is Amon Amarth doesn’t really need our corner of the internet much these days, but there’s some amusing stuff happening within this album, so as the old draft for Berzerker said ages ago,

Fuck it, let’s do this. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEKROTISK — “SULFUR AND ASH”

Premieres No Responses »

Aug 082022

On the last day of 2021 the Minnesota-based extreme metal band Nekrotisk celebrated New Year’s Eve by releasing its debut EP, Apraxia I: Mors Certa. It was the solo work of Mehrunz Oel (aka Matt McGee), a six-track rendering of blackened death metal that impressively interweaves dire and hellish moods, searing and soaring riffage, jolting grooves, maniacally obliterating percussion, and crazed vocal tirades that are a fitting match for the frequent fretwork frenzies.

Mehrunz shouldered almost all the work that led to that EP, including recording, mixing, and mastering it and creating the cover art (with a guest appearance on the second track by James Benson of Amiensus and Chrome Waves). But his ambitions were greater than creating a studio project, and so in the coming months he assembled a talented live line-up and organized a first tour in June that took the band across the Northwest of the U.S., through Montana, Idaho, Washington, and back through North Dakota on the way home.

What we have for you today is a video that recaps that tour, set to the music of a riveting track from Apraxia I named “Sulfur and Ash“. Continue reading »

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