AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BELUSHI SPEED BALL — “WE’RE NOT THRASHERS, WE’RE HIPSTER POSERS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 052021
 

 

As we all know, social media can become a cesspool of sarcasm, ignorance, and meanness. Most of the time, when you find yourself in the cesspool, the wise course is to stay silent and leave as fast as you can. The Kentucky band Belushi Speed Ball didn’t follow that advice, but instead used the nastiness as an inspiration.

This might not be a good long-term creative strategy, but it worked out pretty well in the case of the song that’s the basis for the video we’re premiering today. And it’s in keeping with the unorthodox (and sometimes absurdist) aesthetics of this crossover thrash band, who seem to revel in thumbing their noses at conformity.

For example, although I’ve never witnessed one of their live performances, I thoroughly enjoyed this evocative excerpt from a write-up in Louisville’s Leo Weekly: “Watching a Belushi Speed Ball show is a lot like going to a pro wrestling event. There are costumes, outlandish characters and antics, raw energy and the key ingredient: an involved audience.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLD SPIRE — “SKULL CHOIRS”

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Oct 052021
 

 

“Genre-bending” and “genre defying” are overworked phrases, and often misused in ways that exaggerate the extent to which bands bring differing genre ingredients into play. But those phrases are absolutely on-point in considering the wondrous music of the Swedish band Gold Spire.

The tale of the band points the way to the tales of the songs on their self-titled debut album, which will be released by Chaos Records on November 5th. Gold Spire was formed in 2019 in Uppsala by the brothers Erik and Påhl Sundström following the demise of Påhl‘s former band Usurpress. Functioning as co-producer and session drummer for Usurpress, Erik worked closely with Påhl on what came to be that band’s last album, 2018’s Interregnum.

We’re told that the ideas which were created during these sessions, together with the general focus on storytelling rather than genre considerations, formed the basis on which Gold Spire was born. And in keeping with those ideas, the brothers then enlisted musicians outside of the traditional metal spectrum: jazz saxophonist extraordinaire Magnus Kjellstrand and progressive rock bassist Petter Broman. They completed the circle by bringing in veteran death metal vocalist Heval Bozarslan (Sarcasm, Third Storm). Continue reading »

ATRÆ BILIS – APEXAPIEN

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 052021
 

(Apexapien, the highly anticipated debut album from Canada’s Atræ Bilis is out this Friday via 20 Buck Spin, and Andy Synn would like to tell you exactly why that should be so exciting)

It really is a pleasure to see/hear a band living up to their potential, isn’t it? Especially a young band who seemingly have the world at their feet and a bright future laid out before them.

Case in point, when I wrote about Divinihility, the debut EP from up-and-coming Canadian death-dealers Atræ Bilis, last year I noted that while the band clearly owed a great debt to some of the biggest and best names in the genre – describing their sound, at one point, as “a combination of beefy, Blood Red Throne inspired riffs, chunky, Suffocation-style slam parts, and unexpectedly Ulcerate-esque moments of eerie dissonance” – they still, even at this early stage of their career, managed to pull it all together in a way that implied greater ambitions, and possibilities, for the group than just being one of the crowd.

As you might imagine, then, I predicted (and expected) big things for the band’s next release, and now, finally, we get to see/hear whether that prediction was in any way accurate.

Spoiler alert: it was.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SELF HYPNOSIS

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Oct 052021
 

 

(If you’re not fascinated by this interview and eager to give this band’s music a chance, there’s something wrong with you. There, we said it, and mean it. We thank Comrade Aleks and Kris Clayton for the time they devoted to this discussion.)

Kris Clayton, who did some strange things with his experimental doom project Camel of Doom, wasn’t satisfied with the level of its authenticity. Those things weren’t strange enough for him. But believe me or not, his latest Camel of Doom long-play Terrestrial is worthy of listening. However, in order to raise the level of his doom experiments to new heights Kris invited doom death psycho magician Greg Chandler (Esoteric) into his new band Self Hypnosis and a year ago their first album Contagion of Despair saw the light of day.

This album presents a beast of another kind, grotesque sometimes, built of abstract forms and ideas and yet alive, breathing and amusing. Kris and Greg combine in one vessel not only emanations of their own bands, they add more and more, holding the right balance which keeps Contagion of Despair coherent to some degree and exciting.

We do invite you to take a part in a Self Hypnosis séance together with Kris. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUNLESS — “ASCENDED FORMS”

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Oct 042021
 

 

As the song we’re premiering today abundantly demonstrates, Minnesota-based Sunless have mastered an unusual art form — the creation of intricate riffs and rhythms that are not conventionally melodic or predictable, and indeed are suggestive of chaos and madness, and yet still get quickly stuck in the head. This isn’t to say they’re the only band out there who have exhibited such mastery in making unnerving sounds seductive, but it’s definitely not a big crowd.

Today’s premiere, “Ascended Forms“, comes from the band’s new album Ylem, which will be released on October 29 via Willowtip Records. It follows their 2017 debut full-length Uracca, which we summed up as a record that delivers “an impressive variety of Gorguts-ian, dissonance-heavy technical death metal — an astonishingly well-composed, well-executed album that is frantic and terrifying in its sonic panic… a must-hear this year”.

Ylem functions as Part Two of a trilogy that Uracca began, and it’s even more fascinating than its predecessor — which is saying something. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FORDOM — “THE UPRISING OF BARBATOS”

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Oct 042021
 

 

I’m in the midst of reading a long essay that was prompted by the appearance of three new translations of Dante’s Purgatory, which were recently published to coincide with the seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death, at fifty-six, in September of 1321. While devoted primarily to Purgatory, the essayist eventually brings into play the depravities rendered in Dante’s Inferno, the place where (as one writer put it) “the self and its despair [are] forever inseparable”. At that point the essayist included this quotation from an Inferno translation:

I never saw a barrel burst apart,
Having sprung a hoop or slipped a stave,
Like that man split down to where we fart,

His guts between his legs, his body splayed,
Its organs hanging out, among them that foul sac
Which turns to shit all that we eat.
As I beheld this gore he looked at me
And even wider tore his breast apart
“See how I spread myself,” said he.

Not long after stopping at that blood-congealing point in my reading, I listened for the first time to the song we’re premiering today, and became equally horrified. The juxtaposition couldn’t have been more abominably perfect. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BRODEQUIN

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Oct 042021
 

 

(Karina Noctum brings us this new interview of Jamie Bailey from the Tennessee brutal death metal band Brodequin, whose new EP Perpetuation of Suffering was released at the end of August 2021 by Unmatched Brutality Records.)

I discovered Brodequin pretty early when I started listening to metal as a child because I was pretty impressed by impossibly fast tempos and looked specifically for the most extreme music I could find. It was awesome to get to to see the band live and active again some years ago. Now recently they released their latest EP Perpetuation of Suffering after a long hiatus. The EP has a bit more slammy parts, but just enough, and it’s highly enjoyable. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to interview Jamie Bailey and talk about the EP, his label Unmatched Brutality, and what’s to come for Brodequin.

******

I loved the EP. When did you start writing it?

Thank you! We have been working on a lot of material for about 2 years. These tracks we have had for about a year, maybe a little less. We selected these as we felt they were a good representation of how we’ve been moving in respect to the writing style. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HAIDUK, KANAHN, ANIMA HERETICAE

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Oct 032021
 

 

This week’s SHADES OF BLACK is going to be a bit shorter than usual. For better or worse, I spent a fair amount of time pulling together the two Overflowing Streams roundups that I posted earlier today, and wasn’t able to get to everything I wanted to write about for this column. Still, it’s a fair share of music, with streams and reviews of two new albums and one new EP. I’ll add that all of these selections include black metal as only one of several genre ingredients.

HAIDUK (Canada)

Haiduk‘s fourth album Diabolica (released on September 21st) consists of 11 tracks, all but two of them less than three minutes in length. Both individually and collectively, they deliver such full-bore intensity they may suck the wind from your lungs. You can imagine being caught in the midst of a gale-driven firestorm, or desperately hanging onto the wing of a jet aircraft that’s blazing straight up into the skies. The dense, swarming riffs and maniacal leads are themselves a superheated blaze of head-spinning, mind-mutilating sound. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): LOCK UP, MASSACRE, MASTODON, MIRE, ORANSSI PAZUZU, SARKE, SELBST, WOMBBATH

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 032021
 

 

And now to conclude the big round-up of new songs and videos I started here earlier today. I’m continuing to arrange everything in alphabetical order by band name, picking up where Part 1 ended, and continuing to add only scattered comments instead of more effusive verbiage.

LOCK UP (Sweden)

Last weekend I started a round-up with the same cover art you see above, though at that time there was no music. Now there is, along with a video made by Chariot of Black Moth. The song is from Lock Up‘s new album The Dregs of Hades (November 26, Listenable Records), and includes vocals from Kevin Sharp (Venomous Concept, ex-Brutal Truth) was well as Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates). Prepare for screaming, scathing, hammering death/grind madness. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): AQUILUS, ARCHSPIRE, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, ENSLAVED, HYPERDONTIA, HYPOCRISY, IN MOURNING

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 032021
 

 

I’m playing catch-up, as usual. I had hoped to get this humongous round-up of new songs and videos (and one news item) posted yesterday, but the day didn’t work out as planned. Should you choose to go through everything (and you damned well should), it will take a while, because there are 15 items here, divided into two parts. And on top of that I still hope to pull together a SHADES OF BLACK post.

I’ve again alphabetized the selections by band name. There is singing to be found, especially in Part 2, as well as many candidates for my year-end list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. To get this done I’ve again limited my own verbiage to just brief scattered comments, without artwork and missing some of the usual pre-order links.

AQUILUS (Australia)

I don’t have any music to share for this first band, merely the long-awaited news (and yes, a 10-year gap between albums qualifies as “long-awaited”) that Horace Rosenqvist has a new Aquilus album named Bellum I set for release in early December by Blood Music. That’s so exciting that I thought it was worth including the news, which I usually never do when there’s no music yet. Also, the cover art by Julius von Klever is great. Continue reading »

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