AN NCS PREMIERE: VANHELGA — “DAGAR SOM DENNA”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 292020
 

 

Vanhelga are a Swedish band, the brainchild of J. Ottosson (aka “145188”), who from its inception in 2001 until roughly 2013 was the band’s vocalist and sole instrumentalist. Beginning with the release of the 2013 EP Sommar (which followed a pair of albums and a handful of shorter releases), he has been joined by a changing line-up of other musicians.

We’ve been following Vanhelga’s progress since Sommar, which has taken us through three more albums and further shorter releases, and has demonstrated an evolving integration of stylistic ingredients that made the music (which could be simplistically labeled “melancholic black metal”) ever more difficult to pin down in genre terms but continually interesting.

Vanhelga have been at work on a new release, which follows up on their excellent 2018 album Fredagsmys, and today (as we previously announced) we’re premiering a song from it named “Dagar som denna” — which translates to “days like these”. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: OHHMS / TIBERIUS / WREN

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 292020
 


OHHMS

 

(Andy Synn wrote this trio of reviews, covering just-releqsed albums by bands from his home country.)

This edition of “The Best of British” – my long-running column where I take a look at some of the best-kept secrets and flawed-but-fascinating gems coming out of the UK underground – is a particularly timely one… or, at least it was meant to be, since it was originally intended to be published on Friday last week, the same day that all three of these bands released their new albums.

Sadly the twin pressures of my day job (which remains reliably, sometimes excessively, busy) and some important band business (which I’ll hopefully be able to talk more about soon) meant that I didn’t manage to get the column fully finished until far too late in the day, at which point our beloved leader convinced me that we’d be better off waiting until Monday (i.e., today) instead.

So, here we are, better late than never, with three new albums straight from the bountiful bosom of the British music scene. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CULTUS PROFANO, DUMAL, KORIHOR, KIZIN, ZIFIR, GRISVELOS

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Jun 282020
 


Cultus Profano

 

The last 24 hours didn’t go as I had planned, but I have no one to blame but myself. I separated myself from most NCS activities after finishing yesterday’s round-up, and then partied a bit too hard with my spouse during one of our rare outings to a local bar and restaurant (which is very serious about social distancing). On the plus side, I slept for 11 hours after that. On the minus side, my brain was in a dense fog after awakening, a fog that’s only now beginning to dissipate.

So, to avoid letting the day pass entirely by without one of these usual Sunday collections, I had to change my plans and limit myself to a handful of individual songs and videos (and one demo), rather than trying to write about some recently released full-lengths that I want to strongly recommend. I’ll have to find some other way to do that.

CULTUS PROFANO (U.S.)

The first selection is “Cursed in Sin, Op. 25“, a song from the upcoming album Accursed Possession by Cultus Profano. We premiered not one but two songs off this Los Angeles-based duo’s debut album Sacramentum Obscurus, which was a terrific first full-length. And I’ve been eager to hear this new one. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): CIRKELN, FACELESS BURIAL, FULL OF HELL, GNOSTIC GORILLA, GRAVE SUPERIOR, INGESTED, SHITANGEL, UMBRA VITAE, VENOM PRISON, VOLTURYON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 272020
 

 

This is a follow-on to another gigantic round-up I posted yesterday, and almost all of the songs and videos below were released during the last five days.

I may have mentioned that although my day-job (which still hasn’t reopened) is in Seattle, I live on an island in Puget Sound. Living here has lots of pluses and a few minuses, one of which is that whenever one of the weather gods so much as sneezes the power and the internet go out, which is what happened this morning.

So, I’ve been using my phone as a hot spot. That has slowed me down, and has made doing this tedious enough that I’ve not only cut back on my words but also largely left these items without the usual purchase links, Facebook pages, and other info about the records. I’ll try to go back and fill all that in when doing it is a less annoying process.

CIRKELN (Sweden)

An epic musical narrative, both gloom shrouded and frenzied, melancholy and murderous, haunting and majestic. Seemingly a Tolkein-esque tale told by an orc bred in the subterranean halls of Utumno and raging against his enslavement, the dramatic song blends numerous heavy metal styles to very good effect. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BURIED REALM — “THE WONDER AND TERROR OF FORTUNE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

The Colorado-based melodic death metal band Buried Realm made quite a splash with its debut album The Ichor Carcinoma in 2017. It showcased the guitar wizardry and vocal dynamics of the band’s alter ego, solo artist Josh Dummer, and featured guest performances by such luminaries as such as Christopher Amott (Arch Enemy, Armageddon), Peter Wichers (Soilwork), Teemu Mäntysaari (Wintersun), and Travis Montgomery (Threat Signal, Jeff Loomis band). We summed it up as “so astoundingly exuberant and kaleidoscopic that it takes your breath away to hear it.”

Now Buried Realm is returning with a sophomore full-length named Embodiment of the Divine, which will be released on July 24th. Josh Dummer‘s songwriting and extravagant guitar talents are still the heart of the music, but he has again enlisted a tremendous array of guest performers. And as we did for the first album, we’re again premiering a song from the new one, a thoroughly exciting track called “The Wonder and Terror of Fortune“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANGEL MORGUE — “COSMIC TORMENT”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

“This release is likely to induce head-banging, living room moshing, raising of the horns, and many invisible oranges and ‘metal’ faces!” That was the enthusiastic message that Redefining Darkness Records sent to the label’s Bandcamp followers yesterday about In the Morgue of Angels, the debut album of the blasphemous New Hampshire quintet Angel Morgue, which RDR will be releasing on August 7th. And as if that come-on weren’t persuasive enough, Redefining Darkness also recommended the album for fans of Incantation, Immolation, Desolate, and Cruciamentum.

I’ve learned through experience that this label’s enthusiasm is genuine, and their taste in metallic extremity dependable. Still, to borrow the unofficial motto of Missouri, I prefer that someone “show me”. And I’ve been shown, in convincing fashion, and now we’ll show you that the words and name-drops above aren’t empty, but very well-founded. To do that we’re sharing today the first single released from the album — the well-named “Cosmic Torment“. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ANOPHELI, CIRCLE OF SIGHS, DRAUGABLIKK, HYPERDONTIA, INCANTATION, JUPITERIAN, KATASTAH, OTTONE PESANTE, SIEGE COLUMN, VOIDOATH

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

On Sunday I mentioned that I had a big block of time over the weekend that I was able to spend listening to new music. Almost everything I’ve selected for the following set of recommendations came out of that listening session. I resisted the impulse to replace a lot of those selections with things that came out this week, but I did add three of the tracks that surfaced during this week. Hopefully I’ll get to more of those in tomorrow’s round-up. The music today is presented in alphabetical order by band name.

ANOPHELI (U.S.)

I’m starting with something that’s not entirely new. It’s a debut album by Anopheli from Oakland, California (and other places), that was originally released in 2o15 (and I wrote about it here at that time). But the band had the album re-mastered by the same man who mastered the original release — the veteran producer Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden. He explained the changes: “”Things to listen for. It’s less overloaded and everything is more articulate. The overall low end is deeper, the high end is clearer. The drums snap better and interfere less with the other instruments.” Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “WOLVES OF KARELIA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

(Here is DGR’s review of the latest album by Finland’s Wolfheart, which is out now on Napalm Records.)

If you’ve been following, with …And Oceans and Feastem having gotten reviews, Wolfheart marks three from Finland that had been hanging out in the backlog pile.

With the April release of Wolves Of Karelia, it is clear that by their fifth full-length album — their second for Napalm Records after their couple on Spinefarm — Wolfheart have found a pretty solid niche for themselves. Performing epic-length hybrids of folk metal, melodeath, and a very light airing of the sort of ice and melancholy that affects their region’s branch of the doom metal tree, Wolfheart have for some time now been the ultimate representation of frontman/guitarist and project owner Tuomas Saukkonen‘s musical consciousness.

In fact, up until the release of this year’s Dawn Of Solace album Waves — arriving nearly fourteen years after that group’s previous disc — Wolfheart has been his only project for the last seven years and was consistently dishing out enjoyable music, Wolves Of Karelia included (for the early spoiler), on a nearly two-year interval. Other than the addition of new guitarist Vagelis Karzis into the band’s ranks, Wolfheart remain largely unchanged from when they became a full group rather than just a solo project. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: BLACK ALTAR AND KIRKEBRANN — “DEUS INVERSUS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jun 252020
 

 

All devoted fans of black metal well know that it encompasses a broad range of variations, even among bands who maintain links to its earliest days. Even the bands who originated the first and second waves did not all follow the same path in the music they made. Truth be told, despite the rigid dictates of some hidebound fans and the debates we could have about when a band has crossed over into territories that don’t merit the name, the variability of black metal is one of its enduring strengths.

What we’re presenting today is proof of that assertion — a split by two abundantly talented groups who are unmistakably black metal bands but who each have their own distinctive approach. Both of them are capable of mounting hostile, diabolical assaults, to be sure, but each of them brings a lot more to the table than blasting fury, and the differences between those other ingredients makes this new album-length split a great one to pick up.

The bands are Black Altar from Poland and Kirkebrann from Norway. Their split is named Deus Inversus, and all the tracks are new and exclusive to this record. It will be released by Odium Records on June 30th, and today you can hear all of it — preceded by our thoughts about what each band has contributed. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CRIMSON MOON

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jun 252020
 

 

Today we welcome a new contributor to NCS who goes by the name Jet. She has been a DJ and administrator at Metal Messiah Radio as well as staff interviewer for Sick Drummer Magazine and ViaOmega Magazine. Today she has brought us an interview of multi-instrumentalist Scorpios Androctonus, the founder of the black metal band Crimson Moon which has been located in Germany since 1998. The band’s latest album, Mors Vincit Omnia, was released last year by Debemur Morti Productions. Continue reading »

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