OMINATION: “NEW GOLGOTHA REPVBLIQ”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 162021
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Tunisian band Omination, which was recently released by Hypnotic Dirge Records.)

Like many of you (including, I would imagine, at least some who discovered the band through our site) I was first introduced to the work of Fedor Kovalevsky via 2019’s astoundingly ambitious Prog-Death opus Back to the Black Marsh, the second album from his semi-solo-project Vielikan.

Having instantly fallen head over heels for that release (which was, and remains, one of my favourite albums of that year) it wasn’t long before I decided to delve further/deeper into his previous work, which quickly led me to his other primary project, the “Post-Apocalyptic” Doom Metal of Omination, whose full-length debut, 2018’s Followers of the Apocalypse is well worth checking out if you’re after a truly gargantuan dose of gloomy grimness.

But we’re not here today to talk about the band’s past, we’re to talk about the present, namely their new album, which was released on February 05 by our old friends at Hypnotic Dirge Records.

So, without further ado, allow me to welcome you, my friends, to the New Golgotha Repvbliq. I hope you packed a change of clothes, because we’re going to be here for a while… Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 2): JARI LINDHOLM — “TRAJECTORIES”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 162021
 

 

(We present the second installment from an avalanche of four reviews that DGR delivered unto us yesterday, and this one focuses on a solo album by the Swedish musician Jari Lindholm that was released on February 12.)

Early 2021 did not seem like it would be the sort of release slate that would involve covering a few instrumental releases right out of the gate but here we are, inching our way further into February, and as we slowly hack away at our early-year backlogs and anticipate upcoming downpours we find ourselves at the doorstep of musician Jari Lindholm.

You may recall him from projects like Enshine, Exgenesis, and Atoma – which have received a fair bit of coverage here for their gorgeous takes on a melancholically minded doom genre. So while the initial reveal of a seven-song instrumental journey was unexpected, the combination of international musicians coming along for the ride and the fact that, well, we generally enjoyed most of Jari’s work up to this point, made it a little easier to justify the hard swings from albums chock-full of clean singing despite our site title to something that contains absolutely no singing.

Sometimes, I feel like a parent threatening to pull this car over and make you all walk home when we get to do that. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PERIHELION GNOSIS — “SYZYGIAL SUMMONING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 152021
 

 

With just two songs, the debut demo of Perihelion Gnosis makes a powerful statement of malicious intent, leading the listener into a lightless catacombs of dread, horror, and mindless violence. Through an alchemical amalgam of ghastly, ravaging death metal and soul-sucking doom, Syzygial Summoning delivers both stunning brutality and blood-freezing supernatural terror.

Caligari Records, which has a proven track record of taste in underground extremity, will be releasing this new demo on February 18th, but today we have the opportunity to present a stream of it in full. Wear body armor and tie your sanity to a firm foundation, because both body and mind will be in jeopardy. Continue reading »

NERVOSA: “PERPETUAL CHAOS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 152021
 

 

(We’ve already published one review of Nervosa’s new album (here), but now take the unusual step of presenting another one by long-time NCS writer TheMadIsraeli, who has pursued an unusually exhaustive approach to assessing it.)

This year I’ve decided to take an unorthodox approach to reviewing.  Any album you see me review this year, for the most part, will have been bought for money with me basing my purchase decision purely on the available singles, even when we have promos.  So far I am enjoying this odd “put my money where my curiosity is” approach to checking out music in a critical perspective on 2021. It’s also allowing me to approach metal I otherwise might not take a second glance at.

I am also trying to make a commitment to upping the quality of my writing.  A benefit to reviewing Perpetual Chaos long after it was released is it gave me the ability to assemble a full spread of materials to consume surrounding the album.  Just for this review I listened to the album ten times in a row, not counting listening in the car or as background during gaming sessions and the like.  That’s 44:30 x 10, which comes out to four hours and forty-three minutes.  I also consumed the band’s entire track-by-track video (here) and watched all four parts of the Perpetual Chaos recording documentary.

I also did a once-over pass-through of the band’s previous work, that being 2014‘s Victim Of Yourself, 2016‘s Agony, and 2018‘s Downfall Of Mankind.  I further used my sense of perfect pitch and my skills as a guitarist to learn to play every song on Perpetual Chaos so as to become immersed in the composition approach and riffing mindset of guitarist and founder Prika Amaral.  I recommend watching all of the aforementioned videos before reading my review in full.  The record also contains two surprising left-field but fantastically implemented guest appearances, with “Genocidal Command” featuring Destruction’s iconic banshee wailer Schmier, as well as Flotsam And Jetsam‘s Eric A.K. on the track “Rebel Soul”. Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 1): HUMAN SERPENT — “HEIRLOOMS ETERNAL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 152021
 

 

(We present the first NCS review of 2021 by DGR. Even though we’re already six weeks into the new year without hearing from him, he has been busy listening and writing — witness the fact that we suddenly have an archive of four reviews, divided into four parts, of which this is the first. The others will follow over the next three days.)

 

We’ve been hammering the drum for Greek black metal group Human Serpent for a little while now – at least your dear writer has – so the announcement last year of a full-length followup to the group’s scorcher of a 2018 album For I, The Misanthropist (after a series of intervening EPs and singles) was exciting. While the singles and EPs proved to be a lot of fun, if only as a small slice of just how surgically dangerous the band have become, a new full-length blasting from the group’s furnace was obviously going to be a lot more exciting.

And thus with the closing of January do we find ourselves at the feet of the group’s latest release Heirlooms Eternal, an album self-described by the band like this: “It is the most aggressive, soul-suffocating and mind-destructive Human Serpent album/It is a physical manifestation of a life-walking private hell.”

For one: The album is certainly the most visually colorful, given the group’s excellent choice of red and black for the cover art (we may be biased toward that combo) vs their usual muted blacks, greys, and sepia tones. But also, when you have a song with a title like “Memories Are Rooms Of Pain”, you can’t help but think that maybe the band might be on to something when they describe their own music as “soul-suffocating”. Continue reading »

REVULSION: “REVULSION”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 152021
 

 

(We present Aleksha McLoughlin‘s review of the debut self-titled album by the Finnish death metal band Revulsion, which was released on February 5th by Transcending Obscurity Records.)

It’s been over ten years since the last proper release from Finland’s Revulsion — their 2011 EP Defiled. Now the band are back to find their place among their country’s death metal greats alongside Abhorrence, Convulse, Depravity and Demigod. The long wait was certainly worthwhile, because Revulsion’s self-titled full-length debut is one of the best death metal albums to come out in recent years.

“Last Echoes of Life” opens the album with persuasive vigour and unrelenting aggression, very much setting the stage for how the rest of the record is set to play out. Immediately you are met with the powerful vocal attack of Aleksi Hunta, whose fierce aggression not only fits the music perfectly, but also lends weighty sincerity to the proceedings. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MARE COGNITUM, PAYSAGE D’HIVER, CAESTUS, WESENWILLE, LESATH, MINNERIKET

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 142021
 

 

Someone (besides Andy Synn) must have noticed that yesterday I posted a round-up of new songs and videos that I named “Seen and Heard on Valentine’s Day“, when in fact yesterday was not Valentine’s Day. I conceived of various justifications for this, including the assertion that I live in the future. But the truth is that what I did was probably dictated by my subconscious mind: Sundays here are for Shades of Black, even a Valentine’s Day Sunday, and I sure as hell couldn’t call this “Valentine’s Day Shades of Black”.

Let’s face it, black metal is not about love, even when it’s the kind of more modern blackened metal that wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s more about bitterness, hate, and hopelessness. When it becomes celebratory, it’s usually envisioning the savage triumph of the Fallen Angel over the deluded sheep of humanity and the institutions that have herded them, or the death of the cosmos itself.

Well, those observations may not cover the entire spectrum of black metal, especially in the modern era, but you know what I mean. Generally speaking, black metal isn’t about hearts and flowers unless the hearts have been freshly ripped from chest cavities and the flowers bloom at night and are poisonous. So, I’m just going to continue pretending that yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and we’ll say nothing more about it today.

As usual, I’ve struggled to make the following selections because so much worthy new music surfaced over the last week. There was a lot of other news as well, including the announcement that the long-running Serbian band The Stone will have a new album named Kosturnice coming out in late March, and that Necros Christos have announced their permanent disbanding. Nevertheless I did my best with these choices, and of course you should feel free to use the Comment section to point out other new black metal that I should have paid attention to in print. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON VALENTINE’S DAY: CHAINSWORD, A NOEND OF MINE, NANGA PARBAT, UNGRAVEN, MIASMATA, ALTARAGE, CIBOLA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 132021
 

 

Happy Valentine’s Day to one and all (a day early, as Mr. Synn reminds me), including those of you who’ve had all the romance beaten out of you by life’s misfortunes. With black hearts and wilted flowers, I bring you the following musical gifts, some of them nastier than rabid wolves, some of them as beautiful as an alabaster corpse, some of them wilder and more destructive than a cyclone.

I started the day as usual, venturing onto my outdoor deck, bleary-eyed and clutching coffee, yearning for a couple of smokes. What greeted me was the sight of the forest around our island home blanketed in about five inches of snow that had fallen overnight, quiet, grey, and cold. The next thing that greeted me on my phone was a message that gave me the way to launch this round-up.

CHAINSWORD (Poland)

The message waiting for me on my phone as I smoked and caffeinated was from my Norwegian friend eiterorm. He wrote: “Can you please do a review so that this album cover is the header image for the blog?  There is so much going on in that artwork, but my favorite thing is obviously the five-nipple pentagram chain”. I replied: “Your wish is my command.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THIS IS TURIN — “EXCOMMUNICATE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 122021
 

 

Beginning last fall, the British band This Is Turin have been gradually rolling out the three songs that make up their conceptual EP, T.U.R.I.N., with each song presented through its own video. The trilogy of tracks began with “Misery“, continued with “Absolution“, and concludes today with “Excommunicate” — the song and video that we’re now premiering on the day of the track’s official release.

With each new song the band have explained its meaning. In the case of “Misery” (which featured a guest appearance by CJ McMahon from Thy Art Is Murder), they wrote: “Misery is the point of no return. Misery is the cry for help that goes unheard. Misery is when life has stripped away every part of existence. It is giving up on hope. This is where the prayers go unanswered. Where absolution has failed. This is turning your back on salvation and finding solace in damnation. It is the soundtrack to complete spiritual discontent. Darkness will reign when the light fades.” Continue reading »

SUFFERING HOUR: “THE CYCLIC RECKONING”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 122021
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the second album by Minnesota-based Suffering Hour, which will be released by Profound Lore on February 19th.)

It remains a true pleasure, pure and unsullied, to watch a band grow and ascend from humble beginnings towards true greatness.

Such is the case with Colorado terror-trio Suffering Hour, whose second album, The Cyclic Reckoning, may quite possibly be the first truly “great” record of 2021. Continue reading »

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