SHADES OF BLACK: FLAMMENKVLT, SZNUR, ISELDER, GRAB, NEBULA ORIONIS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 182021
 

 

I miscalculated. I spent time over the last couple of days listening to music and developing a big list of releases to include in this column. I knew that my spouse and I and some friends were supposed to drive over to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington today, but what I didn’t realize was how early the trip was supposed to begin — too early to do all the writing I had planned. And I went to a baseball game last night, so couldn’t get a head-start.

Due to this miscalculation, I’ve had to cut back on the amount of music (though it’s still a lot), but also to shrink the volume of words. No idea when or if I’ll get to everything else that was originally on my mental drawing board, but I hope you’ll enjoy what’s here.

FLAMMENKVLT (Austria)

The following video is intense and moving. It depicts bruised, hollow-eyed, and frantic women who have been beaten by men — hospitalized, driven to the brink of suicide, and worse — as well the suggestion of girls subjected to similar abuse. Intertwined with that are feverish montages of other imagery, both frightening and hallucinatory. The band’s rage over the subject matter comes through most powerfully in the vocals, but not only there. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN, THY CATAFALQUE, AKIAVEL, SIDEREAN, VIOLATED GRAVE, [4672], WINTER ETERNAL

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Apr 172021
 

 

Roadburn Redux is going on right now. It should be a “must watch, must listen” event for me (and for you), but I’ve had too many distractions the last few days to glue myself to my computer and take it all in. Sadly, I can’t do that this weekend either. All I’ve done so far is to check out a few songs and videos, and I’ve included two of those (which were premieres) at the front of today’s round-up — along with a bunch of other good stuff I discovered over the last 24 hours.

To see the full line-up of events at Roadburn Redux go HERE. You’ll see that it includes both live and pre-recorded music, some of it full sets and some of it individual songs and videos, including premieres. You’ll also see that if you have missed something, the streams and videos will remain on-line at the Redux site until the evening of April 20th.

AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN (Netherlands)

Next month this excellent Dutch band will release their ninth album, As The Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes. At Roadburn Redux they premiered one of its songs along with a video for it. That song, “Melancholia“, is true to its name in some of its moods (which have a wistful quality) — but the rambunctiousness of the rhythm section, the vibrancy of the gleaming guitar harmonies, and the soaring brilliance in the high end are bursting with life (and the strangled harshness of the vocals are vicious). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER, ΛΔΛΜ, ANHARAT, GO AHEAD AND DIE, CHADHEL, TOOTH AND CLAW

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 162021
 

 

Since we’ve only had two posts today, and because I found myself with a little extra time this morning, I decided to get a head-start on the usual Saturday round-up of new songs and videos. As is sometimes the case, there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to why I chose the following items, and there’s a risk of whiplash as you make your way from one to the next. There’s also a greater-than-usual percentage of videos included here — I think they’re all very good in different ways.

I will come back later when I have a bit more time and add the rest of the usual artwork and links.

DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER (Germany)

Savage, crazed, blazing, and viscerally propulsive in its tribal rhythms — those are the immediate impressions of this first song, though I must admit that the wild and transfixing video that accompanies the song is a big reason why I picked it. It suits the music supremely well. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTIMOZDEBEAST — “SINS OF THE MUSE”

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Apr 162021
 

 

We’re about to take a mad leap off our usual beaten paths, flying off a precipice into a chaotic collage of sounds that differ stylistically from the genres of our usual focus but are still extreme and, yes, still metal (at least in part).

What we’re doing is premiering a track named “Sins of the Muse” from a forthcoming EP by the Floridian project AntiMozdeBeast (the solo work of one Gabriel Palacio). Entitled The Ritual, the EP is a melting pot of industrial, harsh electronics, metal, and a general affinity for the macabre (which extends to the varying vocals). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: STERBEFALL — “VERBOGENE GRAS”

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Apr 162021
 

 

Verlorene Zeit is the forthcoming third album by the band Sterbefall from Voronezh in central Russia. Through a hybrid of black metal and post-metal the album gives voice to feelings of despondency, depression, self-hate, and pain — feelings that also lead into expressions of rage and bitterness. The two labels that will be releasing in on April 23rd — Satanath Records (Russia) and Fog Foundation (Italy) — recommend it for fans of Dystopia Nå!, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Amesoeurs, and Hvøsch.

Those other names used as reference points are enticing inducements for Verlorene Zeit, but even more so is the song we’re premiering today, “Verbogene Gras“. Continue reading »

PANOPTICON: “…AND AGAIN INTO THE LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 152021
 

 

Next month the world will get a new Panopticon album. Like all Panopticon albums, but maybe more so than any other, it’s a very personal expression, a reflection of a pivotal time in its creator’s life and a form of therapy as well. Its principal theme or message, as Austin Lunn told us in the interview that accompanied our announcement of the album in mid-January, “is atoning for wrongdoings and failures, growing and changing, casting off darkness and returning to hope again… returning to and improving on a better version of myself”.

In that same interview, Austin described the message in another way, with reference to the photographs of his partner and aesthetic collaborator Bekah that accompany the record: “All of the photography Bek took for the album are of places within a couple hours’ drive from our house, either in Minnesota or Wisconsin. The places aren’t as meaningful as the plants that grow there are… a metaphor for regrowth, healing, and survival. The photography is mostly taken in bogs… so the plants grow top towards the sun from the murky waters and moss below. That’s essentially the concept of the album”. Continue reading »

LASCAILLE’S SHROUD – OTHERCOSMIC DIVINATIONS II

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Apr 152021
 

(Andy Synn ventures once more towards the outer limits with Prog-Death powerhouse Lascaille’s Shroud)

As I mentioned earlier this week, when we like a band here at NCS we try our best to stick with them, through thick and thin, and keep tabs on what they’re doing.

Sometimes, however, we’re more successful at this than others, as the case of sci-fi solo artist Lascaille’s Shroud so clearly demonstrates.

While we wrote at length about each of the project’s first three albums, we somehow lost touch with them soon after that, and although my bonus edition of The Synn Report last November went some way towards making up for this (by covering the entirety of their back-catalogue, including the three albums they’d released since we last checked in with them) I still felt bad that we’d allowed ourselves to lose touch with a band we’d once been so enthusiastic about.

With that in mind, there was no way I was going to make the same mistake with Othercosmic Divinations II (which was released just last week), and it’s a good thing too, as it’s yet another impressive addition to the legacy of Lascaille’s Shroud.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SPECTRAL LORE, DEMERSUS AD NIHILUM, KAFIRUN, OMEGA

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Apr 142021
 

 

Although there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to the musical parameters of Part 1 of today’s roundup, Part 2 is a little more coherent since it uniformly leans into black metal. However, to suggest that these four songs follow a consistent pattern would be wrong — each one sounds very different from the rest.

SPECTRAL LORE (Greece)

My first choice is “Φονικό Φως (Murderous Light)“, which surfaced as a digital single on Bandcamp yesterday. It was originally written for and released as part of Art Against Censorship, a compilation of 36 songs from Greek musicians to protest a law that was intended to target and silence radical political artists.

That comp was released in February of this year as a free download (here), and I managed to overlook it. It obviously includes a ton of music, and most of it is from bands whose names I don’t recognize, so one benefit of Spectral Lore‘s single will be to help draw attention to it. (I’m not surprised to see a Yovel song at the close of the comp.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, DANNY ELFMAN, HIRAES, GABESTOK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 142021
 

 

I found time last night to rumble through a lot of new or newly discovered music, and enough time today to stitch together a two-part round-up. There’s not much rhyme or reason as to why I put these first four in Part 1, because the music is kind of all over the map. It would have been even more hard-to-classify if I’d included Mick Jagger‘s new jam with Dave Grohl, which I do like despite the silliness of the lyrics.

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT (Netherlands)

Having finally listened to “Gone Sour, Doomed” and watched the video that accompanied it when it debuted in February, I’m even more befuddled about why it took me so long to do that. I can’t pretend to hold all the songs of The Monolith Deathcult in my head, despite how memorable many of them are, but I will still say that this new one is among the most exhilarating they’ve ever concocted. And the video is HIGHLY entertaining, and proof that the band’s renowned sense of humor is still alive and well. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INCARCERATION — “EMPIRICISM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Apr 142021
 

 

The part-Brazilian, part-German death metal band Incarceration have compiled a discography that includes a pair of splits, an EP, and a 2016 debut album named Catharsis. To that collection of releases they are now adding a new EP entitled Empiricism that’s set for release on Friday of this week (April 16th) by Dawnbreed Records.

On this newest effort the band’s core duo of Daniel Silva (who performs vocals and bass on this release) and Michael Koch (drums) are joined for the first time by guitarists Pedro Capaça (Violator) and Alex Obscured (Speedwhore, Obscured by Evil). Whether for that reason or others, the band seem to have thrown themselves without reservation into the most furious and unhinged side of their sound.

And thus, as you’ll discover through our full streaming premiere today, the new EP generates adrenaline-fueled mayhem with explosive, savage power, although that ruthless, visceral intensity is accompanied by spectral leads and coruscating solos that generate a frightening aura of the occult. Continue reading »

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