LISTMANIA 2021: A YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN LUNN (PANOPTICON)

 LISTMANIA 2021  8 Responses »
Jan 042022
 

(As our 2021 Listmania series winds its way to the end we are again delighted to present one of our most anticipated features in the series every year — a year-end list from our friend Austin Lunn of Panopticon, whose latest album …And Again Into the Light has rightly found its way onto many a 2021 YE list itself.)

Hello again,

I want to take this opportunity to preemptively apologize for the intense length of my list here… I swear I actually cut stuff out… but there was just so much amazing music this year, I decided to sacrifice brevity for thoroughness and make a list that is, from my view, obscenely long.

This list is in no particular order… it’s just a long list of records I thoroughly enjoyed this year… I am sure after this is posted I will be kicking myself because someone in the comments will express their disappointment in me by saying “ what, no _________?” And I’ll inevitably say to myself ,” dammit I can’t believe I forgot that!”

2021 was a gnarly year and presented a lot of huge changes for me and my family, as well as many changes for people we know. Many tragic events, joyous triumphs, crushing losses, and heartbreaks. In the end, all I can do is express gratitude to the folks who were there for me, and to the folks I was able to be there for…. I am appreciative of the sense of community I have had the privilege to enjoy this year. I hope to return this favor as best as I can.

So thanks for kindness, friendship, and support. And thanks for MUSIC.

Here’s my list: Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2021: MAGDALENE / MAHA SOHONA / MIRE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 042022
 

(Andy Synn presents three more albums from last year that you may have missed)

You may not realise it, but I’m actually a little behind (already!) with this series of “Unsung Heroes” articles, as I’d originally meant to start posting them last week.

Unfortunately I’ve been sick with a (thankfully relatively mild) dose of that which shall not be named for a little while now, and between the lethargy, breathlessness, and general mental fuzziness I’ve not really had it in me to get any writing done.

Until recently, that is, as you may have already noticed that we’ve published one of these articles already (focussing on Grieving, Kollapse, and Monument of Misanthropy), with at least one more… and possibly another after that… lined up to follow this one.

So let’s all cross our fingers and hope that this renewed burst of mental energy I’m feeling portends a quick recovery, as I’ve got lots of albums from last year still to write about even before I get started on whatever 2022 has to offer!

Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (SURGICALBRUTE’S BEST OF 2021 EDITION)

 LISTMANIA 2021  27 Responses »
Jan 032022
 

 

(For the 11th (!) year in a row, we asked our old friend SurgicalBrute to weigh in with his year-end list of favorite albums and/or EPs. As expected, his list adds many names that haven’t appeared before in our 2021 Listmania series, and this year there’s perhaps even more variety on offer than usual, though the prose is just as curmudgeonly as ever.)

Given the amount of time it took me to get my act together and actually write something up, I have a feeling I’m going to be the poor schlub who gets to close out this year’s Listamania [not quite]. That means the only people probably reading this are the completionists, the perpetually bored, and that one guy who claims to actually enjoy my list each year (I see you back there Deckard). You know what though…that’s fine. Everyone knows they always save the best shit for last, and that’s exactly what this is, the best goddamn metal list you’re going to find this year. Why is that? Because, you casual, my taste is objectively superior to everyone else. Now, if there are no other stupid questions, let’s go over the ground rules.

First, this is my top 25 releases for the year… plus a whole lot of honorable mentions. No compilations and I don’t do split albums… man, do I not like split albums. Second, descriptions are going to be short and to the point. If you want to read poorly worded music dissertations, Metal-Archives is that way. As it is, I’m already late enough turning this in, and I sincerely doubt you all have any interest in watching me struggle to come up with 25 different synonyms for “vicious” and “crushing”. Finally, yes… I did indeed fail to include that overproduced tech/prog/melodic bore-core album that you had in the number one position of your own list. No, it was not great. Yes, you should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting it to me.

Everyone got all that?

Good… then let’s get on with the music \m/ Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEAVY META — “BLASTOCYST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 032022
 

 

Just because New Year’s Eve is now in our rearview mirror doesn’t mean we have to stop with the fireworks displays, and man, have we got a musical fireworks display queued up for you today, one that will pop eyes, drop jaws, and leave listeners in a state of (perhaps deranged) joy.

The source of the head-spinning adventure that awaits you is a track from the debut album by Heavy Meta (no, that’s not a typo) from Lowell, Massachusetts. Mana Regmata is the name of this mind-scrambling full-length, and it’s set for release on February 11th. It defies genre categorization because it pulls from so many different wells, both metal and not-metal. The band themselves, with tongues in cheeks, brand it as “blackened progressive cowboy nintendocore”, which is really just a way of signifying that labels don’t make much sense here.

Further evidence of that (apart from the music itself) can be found in PR materials for the album that are making the rounds, which ask you to imagine what would happen if Sikth joined forces with Every Time I Die, Botch, Voivod, Mr. Bungle, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Rush, while also dropping references to Candiria, Faith No More, Converge, Atheist, King Crimson, Coroner, Boss Keloid, and Abigor. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2021: GRIEVING / KOLLAPSE / MONUMENT OF MISANTHROPY

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jan 032022
 

(After a short hiatus Andy Synn returns with the first in a series of articles focussing on some of the “unsung heroes” of last year)

Let me present to you my simple thesis for why these “Unsung heroes…” posts exist.

Quite simply, there’s too much music released every year and I can’t keep up with it all!

This doesn’t mean that I/we haven’t listened to them, by any means – in fact all but one of the albums I’m going to be highlighting over the next week or two were mentioned in my annual year-end round-up – it’s just that listening to and appreciating an album is only the first step… actually finding time to write about them, in any depth or detail, is a whole different matter.

So consider these posts a second chance to catch up with a few albums which I would have recommended (heck, one of the records featured in this article snuck its way into the “bonus features” of my “Critical Top Ten” even though I hadn’t written a word about it before) if I’d had more time to write this year!

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DUSK — “ANCIENT SHATTERED MOON”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 032022
 

 

The Pakistani band Dusk has deep roots in the dark earth of heavy metal. It was born in Karachi in 1994 under the name Carcinogenic as the brainchild of Babar Sheikh and released a first demo the following year. By 1999 Babar had formed a partnership with guitarist Faraz Anwar, and along with drummer Irfan Ahmed they released their debut album My Infinite Nature Alone in 1999.

After that Dusk released two more albums and a handful of shorter releases. There were line-up changes, and the band’s stylistic directions changed as well. As Metal-Archives sums it up, Dusk began as a death metal band, moved into doom, further evolved into makers of progressive music, and then turned to death/thrash. But as you are about to discover, Dusk have returned to their death/doom roots.

This year Dusk will release their fourth full-length in a career that now spans a quarter-century. Babar Sheik is still at the helm, but has been joined on the new album by drummer Halim (Tremor ov Kaos of Impiety), long-time comrade Mike Bloodcurse (Illemauzar) on bass, and guest appearances by both metal and non-metal artists. The album is entitled The Imaginary Dead, and today we’re premiering a stunning song from the album in advance of its release early this year by Cyclopean Eye Productions. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HORN, PROMETEUS, STRAEGOR

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jan 022022
 

 

Dead Week is dead and so is the old year. With a turn of the calendar page we’ve started another 365-day march into the unknown even though everything feels just as familiar as yesterday. Tomorrow will be more work or more school and definitely more covid, which is why I’ve always felt the first Monday of a new year is kind of depressing: What’s on the horizon that’s worth looking forward to?

Well, hopefully you can find something, perhaps some new music. I have some of that to share with you today, in this first Shades of Black for 2022 — which is more abbreviated than usual and probably more strange than usual too.

HORN (Germany)

Horn‘s new single “Alpenrekorder” is as majestic and as desolate as the alpine vistas in the accompanying video. The music is both uplifting and deeply melancholy, and carries a feeling of reverence in both of those aspects. It benefits from a guest cello performance and from Horn‘s own performance on another old instrument, which seems to be an hourglass-style mountain dulcimer (based on my own internet browsing). Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 141): VVILDERNESS

 THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Dec 312021
 

Recommended for fans of: Agalloch, Alcest, Wolves In The Throne Room

It’s not just the end of the month, but the end of what’s been a difficult twelve months for most of us, so what better time to get introspective and immersed in the rhythms and cycles of the natural world as we transition from one year to the next?

With three albums now under their belt, VVilderness – the scintillating solo-project of Hungarian vocalist and multi-instrumentalist vvilder – have been exploring the musical boundary between light and dark for a number of years now, each harsh yet haunting composition rich in both bitterness and beauty, atmosphere and energy, rugged metallic riffage and spellbinding melody.

And though the band’s sound is based in Black Metal, such is their embrace of other elements and influences – from dreamlike Doom to gloomy Shoegaze to brooding Folk – that what they create will likely appeal to a much wider audience, if they’re willing to give their music a chance.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DRUID LORD — “RELICS OF THE DEAD”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 312021
 

 

We can only guess at why Druid Lord and their label chose the last day of 2021 to reveal the title track from their new album, Relics of the Dead. But contemplating that title and marinating in the horrors of the music (which are both crushing and spellbinding, both chillingly ghastly and brazenly exhilarating) confirms the wisdom of the decision. This rotten year must be buried, though something equally ghoulish may rise from its grave, still plagued by the terrible relics of what is now nearly dead.

Through two previous albums and a sequence of intervening short releases these Floridians have proven their mastery of a particularly supernatural and titanically heavy variant of death-doom. The new album confirms their diabolical talents, but if anything delves even more deeply into the contrasting sensations of their music, harnessing sounds and moods that are unearthly and uncanny with the kind of earth-shaking force that threatens a listener’s skeletal integrity. Witness the song we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD APPROACHING NEW YEAR’S EVE: ARCHITECTS OF AEON, SURFER JAMES, DE GEVREESDE ZIEKTE, SEVEN NINES AND TENS, SNAUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 312021
 

 

“Next year’s gonna be better than this year!” Yes, the chorus of that not-metal song I put at the end of the last round-up is still in my head. In fact I woke up this morning with it ringing in my head. I’m still highly skeptical about the message, and decided the best way to push the damn song out of my mind was to replace it with some other things — which I’m sharing with you now.

It’s a weird time for anyone to be releasing new music, a time when die-hard metalheads are perusing year-end lists or making their own, i.e., looking backwards. But weird as the timing may be, new metal is still coming out. In fact, we ourselves will be premiering a new Druid Lord song a bit later today to help beat the life out of what’s left of the soon-to-be-cold-corpse of 2021.

We also have a few more year-end lists to present next week, including lists from Austin Lunn, SurgicalBrute, and a combined list from our friends at Brutalitopia, and then, to complete our annual Listmania series, I’ll start rolling out our annual Most Infectious Songs list. So I guess we’re doing our part to help distract from the new music that’s still surfacing.

All of us here also want to wish you a Happy New Year. I might wish you a Happy New Year tomorrow too, but I’m not sure I’ll be posting anything tomorrow so I’ll convey the wishes now. We also hope you have a nice New Year’s Eve and that however you’re spending it you won’t be rubbing shoulders with omicron as an uninvited guest. Now, for some music…. Continue reading »

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