AN NCS INTERVIEW: OCEAN CHIEF

 Interviews  No Responses »
Mar 252020
 

 

(The heavy-hitting Swedish doom band Ocean Chief will release their sixth studio album on April 17th via Argonauta Records, and in this new interview Comrade Aleks talked about it with guitarist Björn Andersson.)

Long-liver of Swedish underground scene, Ocean Chief close toward their twentieth anniversary. Since 2001 this hard crew has driven their ugly and heavy drakkar through sonic tsunamis of sludge, doom, and stoner. I found them with the release of their third album Sten (2013) and was blown away with its massive and thick sound representing the primitive power of the ocean at full capacity. Their next work Universums Härd (2014) was a bit different thing with twice shorter tracks (in comparison with Sten’s 15 – 20-minute huge monsters) and then…

Then Ocean Chief almost disappeared from radars, so I was surprised when I get the promo of their new CD Den Tredje Dagen. I hope that virus panic won’t delay its release and that we’ll witness Ocean Chief’s return on April 27th through Argonauta Records. The band’s guitarist Björn Andersson sheds some light on this work. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AEONIAN SORROW, ARCANE SANCTUARY, BARISHI, CARNAL SAVAGERY, DECAYING, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, HYZZTEREZIS, LIGHTNING BOLT, ORANSSI PAZUZU, PARADISE LOST, THE RUINS OF BEVERAST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 242020
 

 

For reasons I can’t identify, these days I feel compelled to throw as much music your way as I can. I’ve noticed that, contrary to my expectations, this unnerving shut-in phase that most of us are going through has led to a significant increase in daily visits to our site. Maybe people need music more than usual to get through these dark days. Maybe that’s the source of my greater-than-usual compulsion.

Whatever the reason, it seems like you’ll be seeing more and more of these big compilations (with brevity of words) rather than the more typical SEEN AND HEARD posts. I hope I can do another one tomorrow, because I still have a lot I want to recommend.

AEONIAN SORROW (Finland/Greece)

A beautifully contrasting experience from this multinational funeral doom band, the song juxtaposes graceful and ethereal sounds of mist and mysticism and episodes of ravaging heaviness and splintering sorrow, combining the most harrowing roars and haunting feminine singing, creating moods of stately bereavement and wrenching frenzy. A really beautifully executed new video, too. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PERDITION TEMPLE — “SACRAMENTS OF DESCENSION”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 242020
 

 

For those of us who relished and reveled in Perdition Temple‘s last album, 2015’s The Tempter’s Victorious, it has been a long wait, but that wait is nearly over. On Friday of this week, March 27th, Hells Headbangers will release the band’s third album, Sacraments of Descension, on CD, LP, tape, and digitally. It fully deserves that kind of royal release treatment because listening to this record — which we’re giving you the chance to do today — is like sitting in on a masterclass in breathtaking musical demonism.

For the new album Gene Palubicki (co-founder of the legendary Angelcorpse) again makes hellish and harrowing guitar sounds but also returns to vocals, and he was joined by bassist Alex Blume (a longtime member of Ares Kingdom and also Palubicki’s bandmate in Blasphemic Cruelty) and drummer Ron Parmer (of Amon and Brutality). That’s a lot of veteran talent, and it shows in spades on this new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TOWARDS DARKNESS

 Interviews  No Responses »
Mar 242020
 

 

(In this extensive new interview Comrade Aleks talked with Simon Carignan, a member of the Montreal-based band Towards Darkness, whose new album Tetrad will be released on March 27th by Solitude Productions.)

Towards Darkness’ original name was The Mass. Founded in 2001 this band held out ’til 2005 when it was renamed. A change of style came with the change of the title, and these guys from Montreal switched from sludgy doom to its funeral-oriented brother.

Funeral is well-known for its low vibrations and slow ceremonial pace, so Towards Darkness moved further without any haste. Their debut Solemn appeared in 2007, the Barren album followed it only five years later, and after a new EP Empire (also in 2012) the band was laid in deep slumber… I watched them from afar, awaiting news to appear, and my patience was rewarded with the announcement of their third full-length album Tetrad, which is scheduled on March 27 by Solitude Productions.

Here is Simon Carignan (keyboards, effects, guitars) — we had quite a productive conversation. Continue reading »

FEMINAZGUL: “NO DAWN FOR MEN”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 232020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by North Carolina’s Feminazgul, which was released on March 17th.)

There’s a lot of things I love about Metal. Heck, I wouldn’t have been writing here for over nine feckin’ years if that wasn’t the case. But, truth be told, there’s a lot of things about the Metal scene which I don’t love.

For one thing, our tendency to bend over backwards to excuse or justify something reprehensible which our favourite artists have done, purely because of how good their music is, has always struck me as pretty distasteful (and I’m not excusing myself from this either, as I’ve certainly done it in the past).

But, similarly, the idea of simply praising a band for having the “right” ideology, for saying the “right” things, doesn’t sit quite right with me either, and I’ve seen far too many instances recently where people seem willing to overlook a band’s relative mediocrity simply because they’ve got the “right” message.

Don’t get me wrong, a band’s message, a band’s meaning, can be just as important as their medium (though it doesn’t have to be), but I don’t think, with the wealth of options available to us all these days, we should feel like we have to sacrifice one in favour of the other.

Which brings me, smoothly, to Feminazgul (FYI, love the name), a band whose music and meaning is so tightly interwoven that there’s simply no question of separating the art from the artist. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE MALICE — “LEGIONS OF THE DAWN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 232020
 

 

The cover art for Legions of the Dawn (by Remy from Headsplit Design) is sure to seize attention. The sight of all those humanoid horrors shambling through horned tentacles sprouting from hellish ground makes a vivid and ghoulish impression. There’s murder in those eyes and ruthless hunger behind those teeth. But what lies within the album behind that ghastly artwork? You’re about to find out.

Legions of the Dawn is the work of The Malice, a two-headed death-metal monster consisting of Hubeister (Father Death) Liljegren from Sweden and Claudio (CorpseFührer) Enzler from Germany. With a pair of EPs and a single behind them, they first released this album as a demo last September under the title of The Unholy Communion, but it has now been picked up by Satanath Records and More Hate Productions for re-release on March 25th with new mastering, that eye-catching new artwork, and of course the new title. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AARA — “EN ERGÔ EINAI”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Mar 232020
 

 

About six weeks ago, when the world was a very different place than today, we had the privilege of premiering a song from En Ergô Einai, the remarkable new album by the unconventional Swiss black metal band AARA. Some of what we wrote then bears repeating today, when we now get to bring you a stream of the entire album in advance of its April 3 release by Debemur Morti Productions.

In the first place, the album draws inspiration from the Age of Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe, and “serves as a tribute to the duality in man’s pursuit of perfection and the futility found therein.” With the album’s opening song “Arkanum” as the immediate context at the time of our previous premiere, we shared these words from the band: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ISKALDE MORKET, COLDWORLD, OMNIKINETIC, CRUSTY OLD TOAD

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Mar 232020
 

 

Here’s the second part of this week’s column, which I began here yesterday. As usual, I’ve been unable to write about everything I wanted to write about and have had to be (relatively) brief, but that’s because I have a couple of album reviews to finish writing — they will accompany premiere streams today, both of which will be worth your time.

All of the music you’ll find below was created by one-person bands — one from the UK, one from Germany, and two from Portland, Oregon. In these days of the virus, when most people follow the edicts of social distancing, we may come to increasingly rely on such one-person projects for new music. Not all of that will be as good as what you’re about to discover.

ISKALDE MORKET

This is the UK project I mentioned; its creator lives in Norwich. The album, Metaphysics of Mass Murder, was released on March 17th. The band’s thumbnail description of the music on Bandcamp is “Apex Dissonance. Labyrinthine Technical Black Metal”, and that happens to be not only evocative but also accurate — though it doesn’t go quite far enough. Continue reading »

TESTAMENT: “TITANS OF CREATION”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Mar 232020
 

 

The half-witted editor of this site (that would be me) didn’t realize until this past weekend that Wil Cifer had sent in this review a week ago. And thus it is purely a coincidence, and a very sad one, that it’s now being posted the day after we learned that Chuck and Tiffany Billy and members of Testament’s crew have tested positive for COVID-19, apparently contracted during the band’s recently completed European tour. Members of their tour-mates Death Angel and Exodus have also tested positive for the virus. We wish them all the best under these unfortunate circumstances. Titans of Creation will be released on April 3rd by Nuclear Blast. And now, on to Wil’s review…

 

Testament lurk just outside of the “Big 4 “ but, The Ritual aside, they have held their own against Slayer over the years when it has come to putting out quality heaviness. The New Order might have been the metal album of 1988. That year had some tough competition, so at least in the top five. The first song on this album, “Children of the Next Level”, feels like it is fueled with the same fire that propelled their glory days. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): PRISON OF MIRRORS, YALDABAOTH, DEPARTURE CHANDELIER, REVENGE

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Mar 222020
 

 

Maybe it’s because I’ve become a virus shut-in, but I’m finding even more than the usual quantity of new black metal that is appealing, and even a greater desire to spread it around. I’ve consumed a lot of time over the last 24 hours with those two Overflowing Streams round-ups (here and here), and want to at least make a start on today’s SHADES OF BLACK before I have to do something else (and surely there’s something else I have to do besides blog, though I can’t think what it is). So, I’ve divided it into two Parts. Depending on whether I think of something else I should be doing, it may arrive later today or be deferred until Monday.

PRISON OF MIRRORS

I first encountered this Italian band in 2017, following he release of their second EP, Unstinted, Delirious, Convulsive Oaths, whose sound I described as the feeling of being pursued by wolves in the dead of night: “Across all the changes in tempo, the atmosphere is pitch-black and ice-cold, and traces of dissonance in the hopeless melodies heighten the sense of frightening peril at your heels and sinister, supernatural forces at work on your mind. And the vocals are as ugly as a sin you’ll never purge”. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries