HATE: “RUGIA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 192021
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of Hate‘s 12th album, which was released by Metal Blade on October 15th.)

I guarantee you my Hate collection is incomplete given the storied career that Poland’s blackened death metal export have had, but my music library informs me that I still have upwards of ninety-something songs accredited to them. I sometimes wonder if that is being generous, as Hate are one of those groups who are a hallmark of consistency in the metal scene.

After having found a blueprint that worked for them, Hate have been rigid adherents to it. They’ll put a spin on it so that over time the outside of the package morphs and changes, but that core is solid and immovable. That’s why it doesn’t really feel like I have ninety-something songs from Hate, so much as I have three-to-four distinct moods of the band, as they continually remake the outer structure of their machine while keeping that main sort of imperial march to their overall sound.

In my review of Aborted’s Maniacult release, I mused on the idea of how some bands have served as a gateway to deeper genres, and one of the ways of doing so has been by achieving the sort of consistency that could be compared to a Japanese train line. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNCTORIS — “CERCHERÒ IL PASSAGGIO DI RITORNO O SARÒ CANCELLATO”

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Oct 182021
 

 

The bizarre Italian black/death metal band Unctoris have been quiet for eight years, for it was in 2013 that they released their last music, a split that culminated a series of demos and EPs which began in 2005. Those of us who were unaware of their mad and mutilating experiments might therefore be forgiven for our ignorance. But at last Unctoris have revived, or perhaps finally escaped from whatever asylum confined and attempted to treat them.

They completed work on their debut album Shout Demise, which seized the attention of Iron Bonehead Productions, who will release it on November 19th. What we have for you today is evidence that whatever asylum treatments they received were utter failures. If anything, Unctoris have been reveling in their loss of sanity in even more weird, wild, and wondrous ways.

Witness “Cercherò Il Passaggio Di Ritorno O Sarò Cancellato“, a song that in its diabolical ingenuity will shake your sanity like a rag doll but paradoxically becomes mesmerizing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AUTOKRATOR — “DCLXVI”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 182021
 

 

Autokrator is one of those bands whose music I think of as the soundtrack to world-ending calamity. The almost unmitigated savagery and destructive power of this French duo’s death/black/industrial assaults are overpowering, even though their music also exerts a powerful primal appeal — you can become easily intoxicated by their brand of blown-out violence. And so it was more than a little frightening to read the comment by guitarist/bassist Loïc Fontaine that the song we would be premiering today is “probably the most brutal song Autokrator has ever composed and played”.

This song, “DCLXVI“, appears on Autokrator‘s forthcoming fourth album, Persecution, which is set for a November 5 release by Kruyator Productions. As has been true of previous albums, this one again takes historical episodes as its theme. Here, they recount the persecution of Christians during the ancient Roman Empire — under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian, Domitian, and Trajan.

They make clear that “the record has nothing to do with glorifying the barbarity; it rather conjures up the cruel and dreadful sufferings of the victims — be it decapitation, execution, lapidation, damnatio ad bestias, dislocation, imprisonment, or banishment”. That is a harrowing mission, and the music Autokrator has created is equal to the task. Continue reading »

ARCHSPIRE – BLEED THE FUTURE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 182021
 

(Andy Synn takes up the challenge of reviewing the new album from Archspire, out 29 October )

I don’t know about you, but it seems more and more evident to me with each passing year that the current Tech Death scene has gotten itself caught up in a perpetual arms race of velocity and virtuosity.

And, sure, it can be a real thrill to witness bands continually pushing themselves, and pushing the envelope, in terms of how many notes per second and beats per minute they can crank out, but you know what happens when an arms race reaches its inevitable conclusion, right?

Mutually assured destruction.

Thankfully, this particular scenario may not be quite as inevitable as it appears, as several of the genre’s leading lights seem to have realised that this constant competition over who can be the fastest, techiest, or shreddiest isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to live, and have already begun taking steps to ensure that when the bubble finally bursts – and it will – there will at least be a few bands left standing.

And I’d put money on Archspire being one of them.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEMONIC TEMPLE — “THROUGH THE STARS INTO THE ABYSS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 182021
 

 

The fire-breathing band photo of Demonic Temple featured above hearkens back to ancient black metal days, to the fiery expulsions of Quorthon, Frost, and Abbath. Apart from linking arms with the vanguard of black metal’s second wave, the photo also serves as a mission statement for the music of this Polish duo, as revealed through their forthcoming third album, Through the Stars into the Abyss.

The sensations of the album are incendiary, but they also set fire to the imagination, creating both blood-freezing and blood-heating visions that seem both subterranean and celestial. Put differently, the trip through the album is very much what the album title portends — a dazzling but terrifying excursion through the stars above into the abyss beyond.

You will get a very good sense of this by listening to the album’s title track, which we’re premiering today in the lead-up to its November 11 release by Putrid Cult and Dark Horizon. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HEMELBESTORMER, ARKENFROST, OTARGOS, VISEGARD, SVARDENVYRD

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Oct 172021
 


Hemelbestormer 2021 – photo by Istvan Bruggen

Greetings earthlings. It is reportedly the 42nd anniversary of the publication of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — not the 40th, not the 50th, but the only anniversary that matters, and you know why, don’t you?

Today we resume hitchhiking through the galaxy of black and blackened metal, with occasional detours. Please follow along, and don’t forget to bring your towel. (I may have a second installment of SHADES OF BLACK for you later today, but am not positive, and so I haven’t called this Part 1.)

HEMELBESTORMER (Belgium)

I must confess that the anniversary of Hitchhiker’s Guide may have had something to do with why I chose the first three songs in today’s collection, though this opening trio of tracks isn’t nearly as light-hearted as that book. Moreover, thoughts of traveling through the dangers of space also had something to do with why I decided to open with a long a track that’s much more post-metal than it is a spawn of the black arts. I also just think the song and video are so damned captivating that I didn’t want to delay putting them before you. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: PHRENELITH, MÆRE, 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER), DRUNE, ANTI RITUAL, LHAÄD, PSILOCYBE LARVAE, SINIESTRO, LÄHDÖN AIKA, IMPENDING DOOM, VELCH, BURNING TONGUE, TEETHGRYNDER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 162021
 

 

I experienced NCS anxiety again this morning. That’s what comes from having 84 open tabs on my computer for new songs and videos, all of which I opened just since last Saturday. Not lying — 84 of them! To increase the anxiety level, I hadn’t listened to any of them until this morning.

Of course, I didn’t listen to 84 music streams, some of which are complete albums and EPs that were released over the last week, nor to all the other songs on the long list of candidates that I’d made over previous weeks. I did add all 84 to that pre-existing list, so I could stare at the band names and try to figure out what to spend time on. I stared… made choices… and from those choices here’s what I decided to share:

PHRENELITH (Denmark)

Nice to have these Danish death metal heavyweights back, with a jaw-dropping song named “Awakening Titans“. That’s what the music sounds like too, mystical and ringing at first, and then furiously slaughtering, packed with electrifying drumwork, unhinged, venomous riffing, jolting grooves, gargantuan growls, and maddened howls. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PRIMEVAL WELL — “TALKIN’ IN TONGUES WITH MOUNTAIN SPIRITS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 152021
 

 

I grew up in central Texas in a household of three generations that included an old-time folk fiddler and a square-dance pianist. Sometimes other musicians would drop in for rehearsals or impromptu performances for friends and family. I’d sprawl on the floor with my brother, mesmerized by the sometimes fiery sometimes forlorn bluegrass and mountain music they made.

This was long before black metal (or really any kind of extreme metal) existed. I mention it because it may help explain how thoroughly my mind was blown when I first heard Primeval Well‘s self-titled debut album two years ago, though that was probably evident from the run-away words that spilled out of me at the time:

“Primeval Well make you understand what black metal would have sounded like if it had originated along the Mason-Dixon line in America or in the Appalachian mountains, instead of Norway. It swirls and spins, it dances and cavorts, it soars to grandiose heights of sheer ebullience, it takes us under sodden wisteria beneath crescent moons. It unleashes hellfire and black magic, lunacy and seizures, the savage delight found by lean, hard-living people who were given nothing by anyone and found their own pleasures in the devil’s dream, and the woozy somnambulance brought about by corn liquor from the still.”

All this comes back to me because I’ve had my mind blown again, this time by Primeval Well‘s second album, Talkin’ in Tongues with Mountain Spirits, which is set for release on October 20th by Moonlight Cypress Archetypes, and which you will now have a chance to hear for yourselves. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DAUÞUZ — “ZAUBERWERK / BERGSCHMIED IV”

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Oct 152021
 

 

The German black metal band Dauþuz, whose musical tales have largely focused on mining in the Old World, have readied an hour-long fourth album for release by Amor Fati Productions on November 12th. The name of this new one is Vom schwarzen Schmied (“Of the Blacksmith” in English). All-consuming darkness and lyrical despair, which ultimately leads to fatal realization, characterize this fourth full-length from Dauþuz. And yet the music is very much a fantastic and even mythical experience.

Take for example, the song we’re premiering today. “Zauberwerk / Bergschmied IV” is a grand blaze of sound, all-consuming in its heart-pounding power and dazzling melodic extravagance. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IN LOVING MEMORY — “FRACTURED”

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Oct 152021
 

 

The video we’re presenting today includes stunning scenes of sunrise and of cold flowing waters, of haunted souls, the descent of winter, and of graveside grief. The words tell of emotional wounds that won’t heal and of the approach of a time to die.

Like the video, the music brilliantly soars like the sun, and ebbs and flows like tidal waters. It has the majesty of nature in its vast ringing sounds, and the gloom of hopelessness and death in its gripping melodies. Its stately rhythms are viscerally compulsive, its heaviness is crushing, and its feelings of resignation and despair are heart-shaking. It casts a spell that penetrates deeply, and the spell survives the end of the song.

The name of that song is “Fractured“, and it comes from the third album by the Spanish band In Loving Memory. Entitled The Withering, it will be released on January 14, 2022, by the Funere label. Continue reading »

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