AN NCS PREMIERE: LORD ALMIGHTY — “HOODED THREE”

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Sep 282020
 

 

Genre gene-splicing in heavy metal, as in all forms of music, offers the potential for glorious highs and abysmal lows. When it works, the results can be electrifying, particularly when the differing strands woven together by the music would hit a whole bunch of a listener’s sweet spots individually. Pulling them all together in a way that doesn’t feel jarring but instead seems intuitive and natural compounds the pleasure in ways that just focusing on one style would not (and honestly, sometimes that pleasure derives from a feeling of pleasant surprise that the feat has been pulled off so well).

On the other hand, we are all familiar with the pitfalls of genre-splicing that has gone awry, when bands have strained to do something — anything — different, as a way of standing out from the ever-expanding pack, and the result is a Frankenstein’s monster of stitched-together parts, a forcing together of ingredients that sounds, well, forced-together.

With those observations as a prelude, it will come as no surprise that the subject of today’s premiere — Boston-based Lord Almighty — are a band who pull from different genre wellsprings, and achieve a union among them that in my humble opinion is hugely successful. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: APATHY NOIR, IRON FLESH, YASHIRA, PTEROGLYPH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 282020
 

 

I finished my hike through a grand forest yesterday, more than three miles. My wife and her friend didn’t even have to drag me to the finish, though the fact that we had an hour break for lunch is the only reason I made it. I slept like a dead man last night and, to use an old idiom, was all “stove up” (google it) when I staggered out of bed this morning.

Confronting a massive list of new songs that could have been fodder for this post, I decided to make it easy on myself and just use a quartet that Andy Synn recommended to me late last week. This was a bit of a shot in the dark, since I hadn’t yet listened to any of them, but not completely in the dark since Andy has decent taste. On the other hand he’s not completely disinterested, because he performs with one of these bands. But that’s where I come in, to bring some objectivity to bear (through the waves of muscle and joint pain).

APATHY NOIR (Sweden/UK)

Wonderful cover art on this one, credited to the band’s sole instrumental performer on this release, Viktor Jonas, based on the original artwork “Grappling for the Lost Cable” (ca. 1866) by Robert Charles Dudley. It’s for a single called The Shipbreaker’s Song, with a B-side track named “The Sunken Place“. And yes, our own Andy Synn wrote the lyrics and performed the vocals on these two songs. Continue reading »

ON HOLD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Sep 272020
 

 

As regular visitors to our site know, I didn’t post anything yesterday, which was the result of me sleeping in (sleeping way in) and then having to devote hours to my fucking day job, which sometimes views Saturdays and Sundays as just more work-days. I’m not going to post a SHADES OF BLACK column today either. I decided to goof off yesterday after I finished with work, and this morning I’m going on a hike.

You have no way of knowing how unusual this is. The only hiking I’ve done since March has been between the front door of my house and the mailbox, and between my computer and the refrigerator or bathroom. I get winded going to the mailbox and back. Only a blob of mercury on an undulating surface would be less “in shape” than I am. But my spouse, who hikes with a friend several days a week for hours at a time, has finally talked me into going with them this morning. I think she worries that as a result of muscular atrophy, my skeleton is the only thing that keeps me from dissolving into a puddle of fleshy goo.

So I’m going to hike. How far I get before my wife and her friend have to begin dragging me like a sack of cement is a question I can’t answer. We’ll have to see. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: MR. BUNGLE, THE OCEAN, MORTA SKULD, SODOM, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE & THOU

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 252020
 


Mr. Bungle by Buzz Osborne

 

(Gonzo brings us another Friday selection of new songs.)

We talk a lot at NCS about how utterly fucking wild this year has been. As September winds down and we all welcome the fall (that’s autumn, not the imminent collapse of society), it seems like the metal community is pulling out all the stops to close out the year – familiar faces releasing some of their strongest work in years, newcomers putting out amazing debuts, and unexpected surprises materializing out of seemingly nowhere.

This week is no exception to any of that. It’s a glorious mix of old, new, and “holy shit these guys still make albums?” Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S BIG GAME HUNT (WITH DEFTONES, ENSLAVED, AND THE OCEAN)

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Sep 252020
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews three albums being released today or in the near future — by Deftones, Enslaved, and The Ocean.)

As anyone who’s been following this site for, ooh, more than five minutes, will know, we tend to aim our collective focus at the more underground and/or underappreciated albums and artists out there.

Not because we have to. Not because we think it makes us “cool” (trust me, we’re not cool). Not even because we’re trying to make some sort of point or big statement. It’s just because we want to, and because it’s generally more fun to write about these sorts of bands than it is to regurgitate the same generic platitudes you can see/read everywhere else about bands who already have more than enough exposure.

That being said, sometimes we like to turn our attention to some bigger game, and bigger names, because… well… because we feel like it, basically. Which is why you’re about to read my short, but sharp, take on three artists/albums who’ve already received a fair bit of praise elsewhere but whom I think deserve a slightly more critical (dare I even say, objective?) assessment.

Think of it as my attempt to restore some balance to the force, as it were. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRÉPUSCULE D’HIVER — “PAR-DELÀ NOIREGLACES ET BRUMES-SINISTRES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 252020
 

 

Par-Delà Noireglaces et Brumes-Sinistres, the new album by the French band Crépuscule d’Hiver, is a time machine for the mind. It brings back memories of the more mysterious and fantastical strains of black metal from the ’90s, and also sends the imagination looping much further back, into a medieval age — or at least a long-lost age we romantically imagine it might have been, where even in blood, suffering, and death there was glory to be found, and an appreciation of elegance to be treasured.

The album is substantial in its length and tremendously elaborate in its experiences, produced by a combination of medieval black metal and dungeon synth, among other ingredients. It combines the talents of the band’s alter ego Stuurm, who is the composer, guitarist, keyboardist, lyricist, and principal vocalist, and NKLS, whose contributions as bassist and drummer play a vital role in the music’s overall success. In addition, credit must be given to an array of guest vocalists and guitarists — Hexēnn, Aker, 
Wÿntër Ärvń, Vettekult, and Spellbound — whose carefully chosen contributions make a richly multi-faceted album even more spellbinding.

The album is being released today by Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions, and it’s our pleasure to present a full stream of all the music, with our own thoughts about each of the seven songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CEREMONIAL BLOODBATH — “PRIMITIVE”

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Sep 252020
 

 

Gluttons of the most malignant and mutilating strains of death metal, open your maws wide and prepare to become engorged in your feeding. Everyone else, get ready to cower in the corner. Because on October 23rd Sentient Ruin Laboratories will release the debut album of Vancouver’s Ceremonial Bloodbath, aptly named The Tides of Blood.

The album is startling in the degree to which it plumbs the toxic depths of death metal darkness and dementia, and in its ability to discharge sonic sickness and chaos with such fiendishly ingenious calculation and such cleverly sadistic flourishes. That a new band have been able to achieve such heights of well-constructed slaughtering and drag the listener into such abysmal descents is not surprising when you learn that their line-up consists of members of such established bands as Scum Division Cult, Nightfucker, Encoffinate, Radioactive Vomit, Grave Infestation, Mass Grave, Temple of Abandonment, and Deathwinds.

As they say in the trade, the music’s not for the faint of heart. But for connoisseurs of top-shelf bestiality and supernatural dread, it’s a gem. And the album track we’re presenting today, “Primitive“, is proof positive of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANCIENT THRONES: “THE SIGHT OF OBLIVION”

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Sep 252020
 

 

After beginning their career under the name Abysseral Throne in 2011, and thereafter releasing an album and an EP, Ancient Thrones both chose a new name and shifted ground among the Canadian Maritime Provinces from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia. In the process their line-up changed and they shifted ground in their sound as well. Now with a new name, in a new place, and having embraced some different influences than before, Ancient Thrones are poised to discharge a new concept album named The Veil, which will be released on November 6th.

You’ll see “Blackened Epic Heavy Metal” as Metal Archives‘ summing up of Abysseral Throne‘s music, and while that might not be entirely accurate, Abyssal Thrones recommend The Veil for fans of Revocation, Skeletonwitch, and The Red Chord — and their current name was inspired in part by a lyric from a Wolves In the Throne Room song.

It’s evident from the first single off The Veil (“The Soul to Flesh“), as well as from the song we’re premiering today (“The Sight of Oblivion“) why those afore-mentioned band references make sense. Both are high-voltage thrashers that show off impressive technical chops, with elements of black and death metal in the mix. But both also include evocative melodic accents that create contrasts with the songs’ hard-charging savagery and head-spinning instrumental flair. Continue reading »

WASTEWALKER: “LOWBORN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 242020
 

 

(DGR finally got around to writing about the second album from fellow Sacramento denizens Wastewalker.)

There is a part of me that worried for a while that I was holding Wastewalker to a much higher standard than I would have for most groups, which may be why this review took so long to hammer out.

Wastewalker are something of a local Sacramento tech-death “supergroup” as far as the term could be stretched, comprising members who have been involved in some of the more interesting projects to come out of that region in the past few years. Born from of the ashes of the “too death metal for the core kids, too core for the death metal kids” Conducting From The Grave, guitarist John Abernathy found himself accompanied by a stellar roster of musicians.

Their drummer Justin has been in a small collective of projects – the highlight of which is the angular madness that is Journal – while bassist Joel Barrera has been holding down the rhythmic fort for a handful of promising death metal groups, the most recent of which (actually written about here) is the newly launched Katholik. Vocalist Cam Rogers comes shrieking in from an impressive first volley on Alterbeast’s first album, and guitarist Nate Graham was involved in a later lineup of that same group, while also recently joining the promising The Odious Construct.

It’s such a promising lineup that you couldn’t help but be excited for them, which is why it was so frustrating that even though it found a foothold here, only half of the group’s debut album Funeral Winds seemed to stick with me. The group’s sophomore disc Lowborn, released in May after a sizeable delay, is proving to be a far different story. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: BOSPHORUS / SCORDATURA / SVALBARD

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 232020
 


Svalbard

 

(Here’s another edition of Andy Synn‘s continuing series focused on the review of records recently released by bands from his native land.)

Isn’t it great when things just kind of… line up on their own?

Case in point, just last week I was thinking that it was about time to put together another edition of “The Best of British”, especially with new albums from both Scordatura and Svalbard on the horizon.

But, here’s the rub, I didn’t have a third band lined up to round out the article. That is until a passing comment clued me into the fact that Scottish Post-Sludge trio Bosphorus were also set to release their long-gestating debut album this Friday, making for a killer triumvirate of new records all scheduled to come out on the same day.

Like I said at the start – isn’t it great when stuff just falls into place? Continue reading »

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