AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HUSQWARNAH — “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY”

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Dec 022021
 

This is the time of year when ardent fans of metal, or at least the ones who enjoy bestowing accolades via year-end lists, are thinking hard about what they’ve been listening to over the last 11+ months. As all such list-makers know, it’s a time of year when December releases tend to get overlooked, even though the release schedule does tend to slow down some as we barrel ahead toward December 31st.

We’re probably as guilty of this as anyone else, but we’re still making an effort to keep at least one of our eyes focused on the horizons ahead, and the truth is that some very good records are still set for release this month, and Husqwarnah‘s debut album Front Toward Enemy is one of them. It’s so good that devoted fans of death metal might want to check it out before putting the finishing touches on their year-end lists.

And although we’re still a day away from the album’s official release, you can check it out right now, because we’re now hosting the premiere of Front Toward Enemy in its entirety. Continue reading »

MUSTAFA GÜRCALIOĞLU: A RETROSPECTIVE

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Dec 022021
 

(NCS contributor Nathan Ferreira prepared the following exhaustive retrospective concerning the work of Turkish musician Mustafa Gürcalioğlu (a current or former member of such bands as Decaying Purity, Burial Invocation, Engulfed, Diabolizer, and Hyperdontia), which includes extensive discussions with the artist.)

I’m back with another way-too-ambitious deep-dive project, inspired by my excursions into The Ruins of Beverast’s body of work earlier this year. I was hoping to get this out in time for the premieres of either or Hyperdontia, but alas, that proved to be too lofty a goal. I may have bit off more than I could chew. Either way, it’s finally ready for all your music nerd-related pleasures, just in time for you to add those two bands to your year-end lists – if they’re not on there already.

The discography of Mustafa Gürcalioğlu was one that I wanted to give in-depth coverage to for a few reasons. One, it’s incredibly consistent – I don’t think the guy’s put out a stinker yet, and even the ones you don’t think you like tend to grow on you over time. Two, it starts out good, slowly gets better, and it sounds like the best is yet to come, since the most recent albums by all four of his projects are the strongest. Three, there are enough small differences between albums and different bands that you can tell them apart, but because of the aforementioned consistency, you’re still guaranteed a solid listen while also getting something new along the way. No one has given his discography the appreciation it deserves – if you didn’t get the hint yet, pound for pound it’s one of the best in metal.

Since Mustafa is a more accessible and/or approachable character than Alexander von Meilenwald proved to be, I was able to flag him down and ask him a ton of questions, so with each venture into one of his bands, I’ve included some information straight from the creator’s mouth (keyboard?) to add extra context and colour. In addition, I’ll kick off the article with some more general questions so you can get to know the man behind the music a bit more before fully taking the plunge. Enjoy! Continue reading »

DORMANT ORDEAL: “THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 022021
 

(DGR provides both a very short and also a much longer review of the new album by the Polish band Dormant Ordeal, which will be released tomorrow [December 3rd] by Selfmadegod Records.)

Do not sleep on Dormant Ordeal‘s newest release The Grand Scheme Of Things.

There’s your review.

Seriously.

By following the site for a while you’ve been subjected to the absolute torrent of music that we’ve reviewed over the years. We do this on purpose, partially because we collectively have tastes that spread far and wide, and by maintaining the cadre of writers that we do it pretty much insures we’ll cover a tremendous amount of ground throughout the year. However, when we do sync up around a certain band we tend to bang the drum for that band hard and take them up as one of our causes.

Poland’s Dormant Ordeal are one such group and have been for a while now, at least since the release of their previous album We Had It Coming all the way back in 2016. That album’s take on relentless death metal was so filled to the brim with sharp grooves, hammering drums, and non-stop guitar assaults that it was kind of shocking it didn’t seem to make as much of an impact as it should have. We shouted out the disc constantly, even including it amongst our various end-of-year lists that year and awarding it one of our ‘most infectious song’ awards before that list inevitably managed to suffocate under it own weight.

Hell, during one of our GimmeMetal invasions we even closed out one of our programs with the two-parter of “Derangement Zone pt 1′ and ‘Derangement Zone pt 2’ from that disc.

Needless to say at this point, our history with Dormant Ordeal runs pretty deep – which is why the group’s newest album The Grand Scheme Of Things has been in damn near constant rotation since the moment it landed on our fire-charred desks. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2021: AN INVITATION FOR READERS’ LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

 LISTMANIA 2021  96 Responses »
Dec 012021
 

 

We have now entered the final month of 2021, and that begins the final countdown to the end of the year. In the world of metal, this month we’ll also start seeing more and more lists of the year’s best releases.

Back in 2009, when this site was just a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. However, we publish the picks of each of our regular staff writers as well as a group of invited guests, in addition to lists that we re-post from a few print zines and “big platform” online sites.

Every year we also invite our readers to share their lists and we’re doing that again right here, right now.

If you’ve been pondering what you’ve heard this year and have made your own list of the albums, EPs, or splits released in 2021 that you think are the best of what you’ve heard, we invite you to share it with everyone in the Comments section to this post. And if you haven’t made a list yet but want to, there’s still plenty of time (read below). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLK OPS — “THE HEROIC DOSE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 012021
 

 

Austin-based BLK OPS haven’t been prolific. Until now, following their formation in 2014, their discography consisted of a pair of 2017 splits (with Cave Bastard and KRVSHR) and a live album released just at the start of the pandemic in 2020. But though their output has been limited, their abrasive but cathartic amalgamation of hardcore, metal, and harsh noise has made a crater-sized impact, harrowing to hear but impossible to forget. And now, at last, we have their debut album, The Heroic Dose.

From what we hear, getting the album to the point of release — which will happen via Roman Numeral Records on December 3rd — has itself been a harrowing and frustrating ordeal. But the considerable time that BLK OPS spent working and re-working the record, that time shows itself in the outcome. The Heroic Dose builds upon all the qualities that made BLK OPS‘ splits so striking, and creates an even more daunting, elaborate, and demanding edifice of sound, which you’ll get to experience in its entirety today. Continue reading »

REDEMPTOR – AGONIA

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 012021
 

(Andy Synn has a long history with Redemptor, so we knew he was the only man for the job when it came to writing about their new album, Agonia, which comes out Friday on SelfMadeGod Records)

I love Death Metal. And, if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you do too.

But, as someone who loves Death Metal I do find myself wondering sometimes… where is the genre going?

Let’s face it, there’s only so far, and so fast, that the more “Technical” and/or “Brutal” strains can push things before giving themselves whiplash, crippling arthritis, or an aneurysm, and only so many times that the corpse of “Old School” Death Metal can be dug up for yet another revival before it starts to smell, well, a little off.

What I’m really looking for, then, what I’m hoping for, is a new generation to step up and refine/define a form of Death Metal that’s actually new – call it “Post-Death Metal”, if you’re so inclined – rather than simply presenting something that’s just a flashier or more “extreme” variant of what we already know.

We’re not quite there yet – not as far as I can tell anyway – but it seems to me that there’s several bands already moving in this direction, capturing both the vibe and atmosphere of the genre without precisely fitting in with any one particular sub-style, and Redemptor are clearly right at the forefront of this movement, if the evidence presented on Agonia has anything to say about it.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HADAL MAW — “OBLIQUE ORDER”

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Dec 012021
 

 

Since 2014 Australia’s Hadal Maw have released two albums (2014’s Senium and 2017’s Olm) as well as a 2018 EP named Charlatan, and throughout that time we’ve followed them closely, as attested by the appearance of 10 different posts in which we’ve discussed their music since 2014. Now we have the chance to focus on them again, because at last they’re releasing a new record destined for detonation at the very end of this miserable year.

The clock continues to tick on the arrival of a new Hadal Maw album, but at least we now have a new four-song EP, the name of which is Oblique Order, and it’s the EP’s jaw-dropping title track that we have for you today. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “MOONFLOWERS”

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Dec 012021
 

 

(DGR continues an extensive series of reviews this week with the following take on Swallow the Sun‘s new album, which is out now on the Century Media label.)

Swallow The Sun are at a point now in their careers that they’ve become an institution in the realms of all things moody and melancholic. It’s been a journey too, one that has been exceedingly well-documented and at times absolutely heart-wrenching – and not just musically – and in my own personal case, one dating all the way back to 2007’s Hope album. The band are already at two decades of slow, frozen, and moody doom music and it has been interesting watching their trajectory into and out of funeral doom, fuller-sounding death metal, and even moody-rock music. Here at NCS we are very well acquainted with all of those journeys – especially since yours truly is now on the third review for the band with this most recent release.

Moonflowers arrived on November 19th via Century Media Records and comes to us nearly two and a half years after 2019’s When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light. Granted, when you consider that seven of Swallow The Sun‘s eight mainline releases have hit during a period between November and February, you could argue that the group have carved out quite a niche for themselves in the colder months of the year. Continue reading »

IN MOURNING: “THE BLEEDING VEIL”

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Nov 302021
 

(DGR prepared the following review of the new album by the Swedish band In Mourning, just released on November 26th.)

In Mourning have definitely found a sound since the heady days of 2012 and their release of The Weight Of Oceans. Creating their own loosely conceptual lyrical universe, that album laid the groundwork for just about every release of In Mourning that followed it. While early works in the band’s discography would land them on the radar of prog-death fans – and I will go to bat for Monolith being an absolutely fantastic and underrated release – The Weight Of Oceans and its doom and post-metal influences would be where In Mourning would stake their claim.

Both 2016’s Afterglow and 2019’s Garden Of Storms continued along that path, acting as extensions of that musical world, sometimes wandering down a more death metal oriented path and sometimes going full avant-garde, as Garden Of Storms would reach its tendrils into every crevice it found. Now firmly ensconced in their corner of the progressive death metal world and with an even smaller gap between releases, In Mourning are with us once again with The Bleeding Veil, the group’s sixth full-length and the third release so far to contain seven songs in its track list.

Given that the throughline of The Bleeding Veil and its two most recent siblings is so similar, it’s interesting to see what paths In Mourning have decided to chart this time around. The Bleeding Veil is In Mourning in full focusing mode, as the disc takes all of the different directions that Garden Of Storms shot out and hones them down, refining them into a much more tied and tighter release. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GATEWAYS — “GODS OF THE GAPS”

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Nov 302021
 

We’ wrote frequently and favorably about the music of the solo project Haustið (the work of one A. Enrique), which consisted of five demos released in 2018 and 2019. Haustið‘s creator has now prepared a new EP, Gods of the Gaps, although under a new name — Gateways — and today we’re presenting a premiere stream of its captivating title track in advance of the EP’s December 3 release date.

I learned about Haustið just before Thanksgiving Day in 2018, thanks to a recommendation from Rennie of starkweather, who vividly compared Haustið’s then-latest demo to “a cross of Emanation and Wolok on a suicide mission”. When I wrote about that demo, Howling, the Sol Above, Nothing Below, I described “a surreal quality to the music as it flows along its twisting course, with outbursts of dark, dissonant, thorny permutations interwoven with soulful, gliding, and sinuous instrumental passages, both moody and mystical, that sometimes partake of traditions other than extreme metal”.

The next Haustið recording, released in the spring of 2019, and also discussed here, was a two-track EP named Long Lost Ruins Cried their Black Soot. It was also a marvelously multifaceted experience, with both a “physically” powerful impact and a bitter and chilly atmosphere, delivering one changing experience after another. Continue reading »

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