AN NCS INTERVIEW: SUNKEN

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 072020
 

 

(Comrade Aleks returns to NCS with this interview of guitarist Keränen, co-founder of the Finnish band Sunken, whose debut album was released on July 10 by Argonauta Records.)

Sunken from Tempere, Finland was founded in 2009 by guitarist Keränen and drummer Korpi. They’ve chosen a path leading towards doom-death isolation from the start, but Sunken took shape very slowly: Jokipii (vocals, rhythm guitars) joined in 2013, Tuomi (bass) entered in 2017, and only since then has the real darkness started to take its form from sketches and the riffs that Keränen and Korpi had in their minds for years.

Song by song, their debut album From Slow Sleep Like Death grew, blossomed, and soon was discovered by Argonauta Records, who made the decision to support this ascetic doom choir. So I do as well. Continue reading »

TERMINAL NATION: “HOLOCENE EXTINCTION”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 062020
 

 

(On August 7th 20 Buck Spin will release a new album by Arknasas heavyweights Terminal Nation, and in anticipation of that calamitous event Andy Synn wrote this review.)

I don’t know how things are where you are right now, dear reader, but here in the UK people are finding lots of different ways to cope with the uncertainty and upheaval caused by this goddamned pandemic.

Personally I’ve been lucky enough to be able to ride things out (so far at least) with relatively little disruption, and right now my plan is simply to go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

In the meantime I’ve been alternatively amusing/tormenting myself by speculating what bands, and what tours, I’d most like to see when normal service finally resumes (whenever the that might be).

One line-up which I think would really bring the house down (possibly quite literally) would be if someone could pull together a triple-header of Misery Index (headlining), Xibalba (main support), and Terminal Nation, especially since the latter’s new album, Holocene Extinction, seems like it was purpose-built to deliver the sort of in-your-face impact that can only truly be appreciated live. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ELDERSEER — “BIND US AS ONE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 062020
 

 

The British pagan doom band Elderseer are a relatively new presence, having come together in 2017 and with only a single record to their name so far — an EP entitled Bind Us As One that was released at the end of 2018. But that first EP was more of a giant assured step than a halting, timid feeling of a way forward. It drew considerable praise in the metal press, and in its varying stylistic dimensions it spawned references to the likes of My Silent Wake, Primordial, My Dying Bride, and Amorphis.

The title track was the one that closed the EP. At more than 10 minutes in length, it was the most substantial (and perhaps the most powerful) of the EP’s four songs. Not surprisingly, it’s the song that Elderseer chose as the subject of the video we’re privileged to bring you today — a lyric video that also includes footage of the band performing the song and of the imposing ancient landscapes that form a part of the band’s inspirations. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GOJIRA, SÓLSTAFIR, TERATOLITH, SHEENJEK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 062020
 

 

Two old favorites released new singles yesterday, and not just bands who’ve been personal favorites for a very long time but bands whose music has continually evolved, which added a big curiosity factor to the experience. I’m beginning the round-up with those two tracks. As we’re want to do around here, I’m then moving into music from bands I’d never heard of before yesterday, bands whose profiles are buried far deeper in the underground than the first two.

GOJIRA

The beautiful animated video for Gojira’s new song is sufficiently engrossing that it pulled my focus away from the song when I first saw it. I definitely had impressions of the music, but needed to listen to it again without watching the video to better appreciate what the band were doing. The video is indebted to a certain work by the French author Pierre Boulle, but it’s especially haunting because of the perils of our current existence. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KATAKLYSM (MAURIZIO IACONO)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Aug 052020
 

 

We present an audio stream of DJ Jet‘s lively telephone interview with Maurizio Iacono, frontman of the renowned Kataklysm. Their new album Unconquered will be released by Nuclear Blast on September 25th.

The interview covers such subjects as the effect of the pandemic on Kataklysm and the band’s plans for the release and promotion of the new album,  its impact on the activities of other bands for whom Maurizio provides management services, and of course his insights into the music, lyrics, and artwork of this fiery new album and how it became a reality (as well as the status of work on the next Ex Deo record).

After the interview, also check out the video for the first single for the album, a track named “The Killshot“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IDOLATRIA — “NOCTULE – THE EMPEROR OF SCOURGE”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Aug 052020
 

 

Tetrabestiarchy is the new album by the Italian black metal band Idolatria. It is book-ended by intro and outro tracks that are thematically and musically more significant than such tracks often are. Between them are four songs, each of them named for animals that occupy places in the myths of various cultures and that have also been associated with Satan as tools for the annihilation of other religions. The song titles give these creatures an arcane significance beyond their presence as features of the natural world. We are told this about what inspired such references:

“The descriptions of these four animals are inspired by a porphyry sculpture, dating from around 300 AD, called The Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs. It depicts the four rulers in charge of the entire Empire, instituted by Emperor Diocletian. The sculptural group has been fixed to a corner of the façade of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy since the Middle Ages. It probably originally formed part of the decorations of the Philadelphion in Constantinople, and was removed to Venice in 1204 or soon after.”

One of the four animals in this Tetrabestiarchy is the noctule — a name given to various species of vesper bats found in Europe and Asia, some of them golden in color. And it is the Idolatria song devoted to the noctule that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND AN INTERVIEW): EXITIUM SUI – “THE SINISTER BUSINESS OF SELLING HOPE”

 Album Reviews, Interviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 052020
 

 

(Andy Synn introduces our premiere stream of a new EP by Exitium Sui, the solo project of ex-Deadspace frontman Chris Gebauer, and presents an interview of him as well.)

Exitium Sui may be a relatively new name, but if you’ve been paying attention to this site over the last several months you’ll no doubt have spotted our coverage of the band’s debut EP, Nuclear Sundown, as well as our preview of “Eviscerate My Withered Soul”, the first song from their upcoming album, Ad Personam (which I’ve heard in full, and it’s a suffocatingly dense and doom-laden slab of grim, blackened filth, make no mistake).

Today we’re bringing you an exclusive stream of The Sinister Business of Selling Hope, which finds the band’s sound pivoting away from the more doom-inflected approach of their first EP in favour of something more closely related to the pulsating blackened belligerence of Leviathan or Blut Aus Nord.

That’s not to say that these four tracks are a total departure from what has gone before – in fact, when the full album is released you’ll likely gain a much better appreciation of  …Selling Hope’s role in the band’s overall development – but suffice it to say that those looking for some seriously oppressive, shockingly aggressive, and crushingly claustrophobic Black Metal will do well to check this one out at the earliest opportunity.

So, please, read on for a full stream of the entire EP accompanied by a short but illluminating interview with band mastermind ES. Continue reading »

SELBST: “RELATOS DE ANGUSTIA”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Aug 042020
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote the following review of the new album by Selbst, a band that originated in Venezuela and is now based in Chile. The album will be released on August 7th by Debemur Morti Productions.)

For a while now I’ve been trying to put into words precisely what the difference is between Death Metal and Black Metal.

Oh, I know there are lots of physical, practical differences between the two genres (despite what some people might think) but I’ve often struggled to express what I feel is the fundamental difference which separates and defines the two.

The best way I can think to put it is this – if Death Metal is comparable to another form of art, it would be sculpture. It’s all hammer and tongs, chisel and awl, structure and form. It’s about making a plan, holding it in your mind’s eye, and then beating things into shape, chipping away at the excess, to forge something with real, tangible physicality.

Black Metal though… Black Metal is more abstract. It’s about letting whatever’s inside you (for better or worse) pour out onto the canvas in wild, expressive strokes and lurid, hypnotic patterns.

That’s not to say there isn’t a clear sense of vision behind it – there often is – but this willingness to just cut loose and see what flows out is, in my opinion at least, what makes the genre so utterly visceral, so unexpectedly versatile and, every so often, so breathtakingly vulnerable.

And it’s also what makes Relatos de Angustia one of the best Black Metal albums of the year. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORSE DRAWN — “AMONGST GHOSTS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 042020
 

 

We’ve already seen abundant evidence that pandemic shutdowns and searing economic calamity haven’t crushed musical creativity. Those two ruthless giant hands may be doing their best to choke the life from artists (along with the rest of us), but they haven’t succeeded. In fact, rather than becoming numb or being struck dumb, many musicians have continued to record new music, and for many of those the work has itself become a mental and emotional survival mechanism. Horse Drawn is a case in point.

This Ohio-based duo — multi-instrumentalist Jonny Doyle (Coldfells) and vocalist Bryce Seditz (Plaguewielder) — haven’t been prolific, but their output under the Horse Drawn name has for this writer become must-listen material. While in the midst of the giant mess we all now find ourselves in, they’ve recorded a new EP named Amongst Ghosts that’s being released today, and we are happily spreading the word through this premiere. Continue reading »

VOUS AUTRES: “SEL DE PIERRE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 042020
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of Sel de Pierre, the new album by the French band Vous Autres, which will be released on September 25th by Season of Mist Underground Activists.)

The French seem to have a history of creating black metal not afraid to stray from the blast-beaten path. On their sophomore album this duo continues the tradition. Their debut album was one of 2019’s best black metal releases. This one might not be as blatantly heavy, but it makes up for this in the expansive array of sonic colors they paint these songs with.

While this album is much more atmospheric than their first, I would not label them “post” anything. Sonically, are there elements in the same zip code as post-rock? Yes, but they are gracefully ugly with chilling dissonance. The album’s third track even has an instrumental interlude that would not be out of place on a Nine Inch Nails record. Where most atmospheric black metal takes on a droning meditative quality, here it’s used in the same unnerving way that horror movies manipulate you with their scores. Continue reading »

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