IRON MAIDEN: “SENJUTSU”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 062021
 

 

(Here’s Wil Cifer‘s review of the new Iron Maiden album, which was released three days ago.)

The unholy trinity of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden spawned all metal since their influence trickled down to Metallica, Slayer, Bathory, and pretty much anyone wearing a bullet belt since then. Now with album 17, Iron Maiden comes back stronger than ever after a six-year hiatus from the studio. I assumed The Book of Souls was going to be their last album, and even after hearing the single for “The Writing on the Wall“ I was not expecting a double-album worth of material.

When I press play on any Maiden album since Brave New World my immediate worry is what shape is Bruce‘s voice going to be in? Now that he’s at age 63 this is an even more legitimate concern given the fact that his leather-lunged voice is a defining staple of their sound. This is put to rest after hearing how Bruce belts it out on the title track that opens the album. Given that the producer was Kevin Shirley, who worked with Rush, Dream Theater and Journey, another surprise is how beefy the guitar tone is — though Steve Harris co-produced, so I am sure breathing over his shoulder every step of the way. “Stratego” that follows is even more of an urgent headbanger and has its boot firmly on the monitor. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: NUR RUN, NIFROST, ADOPERTA TENEBRIS, SATURNIAN MIST, SOREM, GLYPH, LURID, DEATHFUCKER

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 052021
 

 

You want to know how the sausage gets made? Okay, I see one hand at the back of the room and that’s all I need even though the rest of you are recoiling.

When I woke up at 4:30 a.m. this morning I had about half a dozen candidates I was considering for this column based on previous listening. But I didn’t stop with that. After feeding the cats, caffeinating myself, and smoking a couple cigarettes, I collected links to more than 20 other possibilities, some of them from tabs I’d opened on my computer during the past week and some I found from crawling through arrivals in the NCS email in-box over the last few days, which I hadn’t perused carefully until yesterday afternoon.

I then copied all those links into the NCS WordPress editor and opened them again at a computer in our house that has shitty wi-fi. The one with a decent internet connection is in the “family room” where the TV is, and my wife was in there catching up on the news (she wakes up ridiculously early too). Even with headphones on, I can’t listen to metal in that room when she’s there. I have to crank up the volume, and her ears are so sensitive that she can hear the sound leaking through the headphones. It annoys her because she can’t stand extreme metal. I strongly prefer that she not be annoyed. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 042021
 

 

Can’t you read plain English? It says “Labor Day”. It doesn’t say “Holi-Day”. So I’m just following the prescribed agenda, and laboring.

Because I unexpectedly agreed to write a whopping four premieres yesterday, I had no time to begin rounding up a selection of songs and videos that surfaced this past week. Leaving that until today has resulted in another massive collection, again featuring too many bands to name in the post title.

As it happens, the majority of the new music you’ll find below is accompanied by videos. It also happens that almost all of the new songs are high-speed devastators. This isn’t entirely by accident, because many of them were recommended in our NCS group by DGR, who tends to prefer musical riots over other forms of audio entertainment. And once I’d gotten into that kind of groove, I tended to stick with it in choosing from among other possibilities I checked out.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

We’ll start with a new lyric video for a frantic new song by Archspire, in which vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron goes faster than a cattle auctioneer and the rest of the band spits a variety of bullets even faster — but then abruptly the song gets dreamy. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AZOTHYST — “RITES OF ASCENDANCY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 032021
 

 

Shrouded in underground mystery, the Canadian black/death band Azothyst are at last prepared to reveal their first diabolical recordings to a largely unsuspecting public that will either cower in fear or become exultant in the throes of such madness: Their debut album Blood of Dead God will be released on October 1st by a coalition of labels led by Vault of Dried Bones.

As the first sign of the tumultuous yet perversely mesmerizing terrors within the album, today we present its opening track, “Rites of Ascendancy“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AEONS ABYSS — “PRELUDE TO TERROR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 032021
 

 

Suitably on a Bandcamp Friday, today is the official release date for a new stand-alone single by the Melbourne-based death metal band Aeons Abyss. Fittingly named “Prelude To Terror“, it also serves as a ravaging introduction to the band’s sophomore album Terror Manifest, which is now set for release on November 5th. And to help spread the word, we’re premiering a lyric video for the track right now.

In crafting the new album, Aeons Abyss have built upon the work they began in 2017 and have drawn into play an array of stylistic ingredients that range from melodic death metal to experimental thrash/grind. But they’ve also drawn upon their skills as storytellers, with each track representing a card from the deck of Tarot and (as they reveal) delving into “what these characters mean, not just to the individual, but to all of society as we currently know it…. Terror Manifest explores what the world has made of us, and what acts of terror must be done to end the mental imprisonment thrust upon us by the greed of nations”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABSTRACTER — “ECLIPSE BORN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 032021
 

 

More than a decade ago the founding two members of Abstracter came together in Oakland CA under the influence of such bands as Amebix, Godflesh, Blut Aus Nord, Corrupted, and Disembowelment, with the objective of creating “dark, bleak, and suffocating music as a vessel to channel their obsession with the apocalypse and other nihilistic end-time visions”.

So say the press materials for Abstracter‘s new album, and those materials further expose the animating environments and philosophies that spawned such hopeless and harrowing visions: “…the world’s unravelling, ruin, darkness, annihilation, nuclear devastation, war, plague, and mankind’s fundamental existence as a plague and as a deeply flawed species….”

In the years that have passed since the band’s inception they have been on a continuing quest for ever more astonishing, cataclysmic, and authentic ways of expressing the most abominable aspects of human existence, drawing upon elements from black, doom, death metal, crust and drone/noise, and making their music increasingly more difficult to classify. That quest now reaches its apotheosis (so far) in Abstracter‘s latest album Abominion, which will be released by Sentient Ruin Laboratories on October 1st. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NORSE — “PARASITE WARMONGERS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 032021
 

 

If you think of the eight tracks on the new album by Australia’s Norse as pieces in a subterranean nightmare museum shrouded in gleaming black cloth, Transcending Obscurity Records has been pulling the shrouds away, one by one, to disclose what lies beneath. Four of these terrifying obsidian sculptures have been revealed so far. Today we’ve been allowed to expose a fifth one.

Well, that metaphor only works to a limited extent, because the eight tracks on Ascetic aren’t fixed in place like sculptures. They move in strange and frightening ways, morphing like a viscous metallic liquid that’s freezing to the touch. The music writhes and contorts, twisting in unexpected but relentlessly frightening ways. Even when the band use ambient and symphonic textures to create mysterious and mesmerizing visions, as they do most prominently in “Fearless Fifth Seeker”, there’s a feeling of alien menace lurking within those sonic astral planes. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEADS FOR THE DEAD — “MANIAC”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 022021
 

 

Metalhead lovers of ghastliness in all its forms, but especially classic horror flicks from decades gone by, will have reason to rejoice when a new EP by Heads For The Dead hits the streets on November 5th.

Through two previous albums this group of metal veterans have already proven their devotion to supernatural subjects, but this time they’ve taken that a step further — providing their own reinterpretation of theme songs from movies such as Maniac, Halloween and The Thing. And as icing on this gory cake they’ve also recorded cover songs of tracks by Misfits and the Ramones.

What we’ve got for you today is the band’s homage to “Maniac“, presented through a video that’s replete with over-the-top lyrical pathology and an abundance of blood-drenched film clips. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OCCULSED — “CONCUPISCENCE OF FRENZIED HUMORS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 022021
 

 

We’re still banging the drum and yelling at the top of our lungs about Occulsed, with this being our third (but not the last) premiere of music from their debut album Crepitation Of Phlegethon. We’ve previously remarked about the intriguing wordplay reflected in the album and song titles, which have repeatedly sent us scurrying to the dictionary, and it’s true again with today’s new song: “Concupiscence Of Frenzied Humors”

For those who might have missed our previous premieres, shame on you this latest track vividly displays the band’s talents for creating electrifying visions of horror and disease, of madness and mayhem, and of blood-freezing intrusions from spectral realms. Continue reading »

BEER & LOUDNESS IN LAS VEGAS — THREE DAYS AT PSYCHO FEST 2021 (DAY 3)

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Sep 022021
 

 

(We’ve been enjoying the hell out of our friend Gonzo‘s reports on the 2021 edition of Psycho Fest in Las Vegas a couple weekends ago, and hope you have too. Today we present his third and final write-up, concerning his adventures on the fest’s last day.)

 

“The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

–Hunter S. Thompson

Those words from the good doctor rang out in my brain the moment I opened my eyes on Sunday morning. My ears were still ringing in spite of wearing earplugs for the majority of Saturday, but like so much else, Vegas cannot be bothered with your feeble attempts at self-care. Continue reading »

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