SARATTMA: “ESCAPE VELOCITY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 262022
 

 

(Todd Manning has turned in this extravagant review of an extravagant album by Philadelphia’s Sarattma, which will be out on August 12th.)

It may take years for us to know all the things we missed during the early days of Covid. Apparently, Philadelphia-based duo Sarattma recorded their debut album Escape Velocity in 2019 but it’s just now about to drop, courtesy of Nefarious Industries.

The duo consists of guitarist Matt Hollenberg, best known for his work in various John Zorn projects, along with Cleric and John Frum as well, joined here by Sara Neidorf, who did a stint with Brian Jonestown Massacre and played with doom metal band Aptera and doom-jazz duo Mellowdeath. Both those outfits are vastly underrated and deserve investigation. Sarattma, though, finds Hollenberg and Neidorf at the pinnacle of their instrumental abilities. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VORARE — “THIS BODY AWEIGH”

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Jul 252022
 

What you’re about to hear is a piece of music that may make you imagine you’ve been taken hostage, with no real understanding of how it happened or why. Blindfolded and hands bound, strapped to a chair in a cold, lightless place, you hear the workings of brutal machinery and eerie vibrations that don’t seem to originate from any earthy transmitter. Your unseen captors go on horrific tirades that seem un-moored from sanity and magnify your fear and confusion. Trembling, you become convinced — this isn’t going to end well, and there’s no escape.

Well, those are one person’s nightmare impressions of the unnerving experience created by “This Body Aweigh“, which is the track we’re premiering today along with a video that manages to make the disorienting audio even more chilling. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MRTVI — “HOME”

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Jul 252022
 

 

In March of this year we premiered a remarkable video for a remarkable song off the then-forthcoming fifth album by the experimental black metal band MRTVI. Entitled The ExiZentialist, the album was released last month by Life As A Dream Records, and today we premiere yet another video for yet another song off that fascinating record.

When we made that previous premiere we explained that although all of MRTVI‘s albums have been rooted in the experiences and thinking of their sole creator, Damjan Stefanović, this newest one is even more autobiographical. It was inspired by his own experience of being uprooted long ago from his homeland in Serbia (to escape from war), transported to live for roughly 20 years in the UK (where he began MRTVI), and much more recently returning to the country of his birth.

In that previous premiere we also included extensive comments from Damjan about the album as a whole and the song in particular that we premiered (“Lake of Memories“). All of that is well worth reading, but today we’ll focus on this one song that’s the subject of the video, a song called “Home“. Continue reading »

ORDER OV RIVEN CATHEDRALS: “ABSOLUTE”

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Jul 252022
 

(Here we present DGR‘s review of a new album by the Italian dark death metal architects Order Ov Riven Cathedrals, which was released by Ultimate Massacre Productions.)

Late May of this year saw the release of Order Ov Riven Cathedrals‘ fourth album, Absolute – their first via a record label. The ever-ambitious brutal death project took some time between their third album Thermonuclear Sculptures Blackness and Absolute, almost three years in fact, after having previously placed themselves on an increasingly intense year-over-year churn of albums.

There’s a few surprising things about Absolute for those who have been following the band as long as this site has. You’re likely already familiar with them essentially as a two-piece hyperspeed blastbeat bulldozer, but Absolute could actually serve as something of a bookend for the slate of releases Order Ov Riven Cathedrals have put out thus far. It shares more in common with the group’s debut release The Discontinuity’s Interlude than its immediate predecessor, especially when you take into account that both weigh in at a concise seven songs and clock in at about thirty-two minutes a piece. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ABIGORUM, MISERY, RAAT, OBLITI DEVORAVIT

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 242022
 


“Dracula’s castle” by Daniele Serra

I’m afraid I have no time to set the stage today with introductory comments, other than to fore-warn you that the moods of today’s selections are intensely dark and packed with pain. Paradoxically, the intensity may make you feel terrifyingly alive and perversely spellbound.

ABIGORUM (Georgia/Germany)

In 2021 Abigorum released their latest album, Vergessene Stille. On that record, the band had been reduced to the size of a duo, combining the talents of Russian musician Aleksey Korolyov (who now lives in Georgia) and German guitarist/vocalist Tino Thiele (from Wulfgar and Metamorph).

In the lead-in to that album we premiered a song named “Erhebt eure mit Blut gefüllten Hörner“, which managed to create an experience that was both hypnotizing and nightmarish, both hauntingly seductive and terrorizing. It was not alone in those respects, as we’ve been reminded by a new video for another song off that album. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DEATH BREATH, VORLUST, CONSUMPTION, ILUNA PERPETUA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, Movie Reviews, Premieres, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 232022
 

 

Would one four-song roundup yesterday have been satisfactory? Were two of them too many? Is it overkill to add music from four more bands today, for an even dozen of them? I hear your answers to those questions, all those deafening howls of “NO!!! WE WANT MORE!!!””

So, on we go….

DEATH BREATH (Sweden/U.S.)

It took me almost a week to catch up to Death Breath‘s two-track EP, The Old Hag, but once I did I haven’t been able to get enough of it. It does its dirty work in just a bit more than 7 minutes, which makes it really fucking easy to keep going back to it whenever I need a musical riot to rocket me out of the doldrums and make me feel like fighting the bastard world. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): NOCTEM, CULT BURIAL, INNUMERABLE FORMS, CRIPPLED BLACK PHEONIX

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 222022
 

Welcome to Part 2 of this Friday round-up of new songs and videos. It includes perhaps even more musical scatter than what I collected in Part 1 (be forewarned, there’s singing in the last of these tracks!), which may increase the odds that you’ll find something to like. And if you don’t, try your chances tomorrow when I’ll have one more collection to throw at your head.

NOCTEM (Spain)

We’ve been following the twisting and turning path of this Spanish band for a lot of damned years. It has been something of an adventure to witness their musical evolution, but a generally exiting one, and now we get to discover their next steps through an album named Credo Certe Ne Cras that’s coming out in late October via MNRK Heavy. Just today they released a video for the album’s first single, “We Are Omega“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): STRIGOI, THE LOVECRAFT SEXTET, KRISIUN, UZUMAKI

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 222022
 

 

This was a humongous week for new music, and my head is overflowing with round-up selections, so many that I decided to present them in two Parts today. Beyond those, I also have aspirations to compile another collection for publication on Saturday. Without further ado, here are the first four choices.

STRIGOI (UK)

In case you might have forgotten, Strigoi is the band formed by Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost) after he interred his previous project Vallenfyre. Joined by Vallenfyre bassist Chris Casket, he released a debut Strigoi album named Abandon All Faith in 2019, and we devoted significant attention to it, including a lavish review here by DGR.

It was thus exciting to learn that Strigoi are returning with a follow-up full-length named Viscera, which is set for release by Season of Mist on September 30th. The first advance track from it — “Hollow” — is how we begin today’s round-up. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LIVE BURIAL — “BLOOD AND COPPER”

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Jul 222022
 

Two years have passed since the release of Live Burial’s striking second album, Unending Futility, and now these British ghouls have crawled from their crypt again, bearing a third album in their monstrous claws. As with the second album, the new one will be released by Transcending Obscurity Records, and it is again embellished with the cover artwork of Luke Oram. In February 2020 we premiered a song from the second album, and now we’re doing it again for the third one.

The name of the new full-length is Curse of the Forlorn, a title that suits the music, which carries forward the band’s doom influences, and does indeed sound cursed. Death metal through and through, these songs slug with gruesome, bone-shaking force, create horrifying supernatural nightmares, and explode in convulsions of maniacal fretwork and frenzied percussion.

The music is capable of both suffocating hope and supercharging the senses with high-voltage energy. It’s muscular enough to pack a wallop and creepy enough that its horrors shiver the spine, and the embroidery of the guitar-work has become even more technically accomplished and elaborate than before, adding to the music’s dynamism. We have a great example of all these qualities in the song we’re presenting today — “Blood and Copper“. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: ASHENSPIRE / THE EVER LIVING / ITHACA

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jul 212022
 

(Andy Synn provides another insight into the rich diversity and vitality of the UK scene)

Living in the UK, but being very much on the fringes of the UK “scene” – I’d say we were the black sheep but that presupposes we were ever part of the flock in the first place! – is an odd situation to be in.

On the one hand it feels like, no matter how many of these columns I write, and no matter how many shows we play, I’m always going to be an outsider.

On the other, however, it’s oddly freeing… I don’t have to worry about upsetting people (and, trust me on this, some people can’t take even the mildest criticism) and can write about who and what I want, from big names to relative unknowns, without anyone accusing me of having any sort of hidden agenda or ulterior motive.

So when I tell you that all three of these albums – one from last week, one from this week, and one scheduled for next week – are all worth your time you should be confident that I’m not just blowing smoke… I really mean it.

Continue reading »

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