SEPULTURA: “QUADRA”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Feb 032020
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Sepultura, which will be released on February 7th by Nuclear Blast.)

People occasionally ask us why it is that NCS focusses mainly on underground and/or lesser-known artists over bigger and more famous groups.

The truth is that, as much as we enjoy a lot of big-name bands, it’s simply much more fun, and much more rewarding, to write about something fresh and new than it is to keep on rehashing the same old talking points about the same established acts, about whom there is often very little new to say.

After all, no-one needs to read yet another fawning article about how the new Tool album is the greatest thing to ever happen to music (even though no-one’s heard it yet) or some bored writer’s attempt to explain why Slipknot’s decision to fill most of their new record with radio-friendly ballads is actually the most extreme and rebellious thing possible. Those pieces have been written a million times already, so what more could we possibly add? Heck, what would we want to add?

But there are certain occasions – maybe we feel like we have a fresh angle to cover, or simply want to provide a more balanced and hype-free assessment than the ones we’ve found elsewhere – when we decide to break this self-imposed embargo and dedicate some space to an album or artist who doesn’t necessarily need it… but definitely deserves it.

Enter Quadra. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE COMPLETE LIST

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  3 Responses »
Feb 032020
 

 

First of all, I want to thank everyone who suggested songs for this list, from the readers who left so many good recommendations in the Comments on this post last November to my NCS comrades who offered some of their own. With more than 450 songs on the final list of candidates compiled from those sources, plus my own ideas (which I assembled as 2019 went along), it’s obvious that what I chose was going to be massively incomplete. For the sake of accuracy I should consider re-naming this “Among the Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of the Year“.

As I’ve made clear already, I forced myself to stop yesterday, not because I was completely satisfied that I’d gone far enough, but because I want to start devoting more time to 2020 music. At the end, I included 60 songs on the 2019 list, compared to a whopping 99 on the 2018 list, 78 from 2017, and 71 from the year before that. Below I’ve listed all the songs I chose, in the order in which I rolled them out, and I’ve hyperlinked them to the original posts where you can listen to the music. (I know it would have been easier on listeners if I had included all the streams right here in one place, but that would have taken more time than you probably realize. HOWEVER, one of our supporters, matt, has created a Spotify playlist that includes almost all the songs, and you can find that here.) Continue reading »

HORROR GOD: “CURSED SEEDS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 032020
 

 

(In this post Vonlughlio gives a strong recommendation for the latest album by the Russian black/death metal band Horror God, released last fall by Lavadome Productions.)

Cursed Seeds, the third album by the Russian band Horror God, was released last September by Lavadome Productions. I should confess that I have been following the label for years and become friends with the owner Jan, conversing about Death Metal, likes and dislikes, not seeing eye to eye, all the good stuff friends talk about.

Having said that, it is the music alone on Cursed Seeds that prompted this write-up. I have enjoyed each second from start to finish, because it is a perfect blend of Death/Black influences put into 7 songs totalling 36 minutes of pure fury, desperation, loss, and hope. My first listen turned into three listens in a row, and I found myself enjoying the overall effort from this group more and more each time. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ROTTEN MONARCH, ÌSINKÚ, ZWIESPALT, VOLLMOND MYSTIKER

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Feb 022020
 

 

Back on January 19th I bit off more than I could chew. I promised a second Part to the SHADES OF BLACK column I started that day, and wasn’t able to deliver, either that day or the day after or the day after that. And now here we are two weeks later. A lot more black metal has surfaced in that time, but I’ve decided to stay with what I had planned for that phantom Part 2 on January 19th.

ROTTEN MONARCH

This is another album in a long list of favorites that I wouldn’t have discovered but for the recommendation of Rennie (starkweather), who continues to enrich my listening and that of everyone else who follows him.

Winds Over Ash is the third release and second album by the American duo Rotten Monarch. When I checked Metal-Archives after listening to an early song from the album, that treasured encyclopedia classified their music as “Metalcore/Death Metal”. I thought to myself, even if that’s accurate as applied to previous releases, it doesn’t work for this new one. I checked M-A again yesterday, and now it says “Metalcore/Death Metal (early); Atmospheric Black Metal (later)”, which was obviously a reaction to Winds Over Ash.

But the newer description still doesn’t completely work. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 22): MATTERHORN, HELLRIPPER, ULTRA SILVAM, MAN MUST DIE, GORGON, TYRANT GOATGALDRAKONA, EXULANSIS, BORKNAGAR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  8 Responses »
Feb 022020
 

 

As predicted at the end of yesterday’s penultimate segment of this list, I spent hours agonizing about what to include in this final Part. And in the end, despite the internal misery occasioned by having to make a final choice among so many strong remaining candidates, it’s still a largely random outcome — even though this final episode includes a LOT more songs than usual. Basically, I went with my gut, slightly aided by my brain, which thought this sequence of tracks might be a fitting conclusion. At a minimum, it’s more directly in line with the title of this list than yesterday’s choices.

The first three songs are guitar spectacles, the fourth and fifth ones keep the savage energy in the red zone in different ways, the sixth moves into malevolent brutishness (with serious risk of sore-neck syndrome), and then we shift gears into downright epic territory with the last two stirring and marvelously multi-faceted songs, which seemed the right way, in farewell, to express how glorious metal was in 2019.

MATTERHORN

I first stumbled across the Swiss band Matterhorn in the spring of 2018 when they had two songs up for streaming in advance of Iron Bonehead‘s CD release of their debut album, Crass Cleansing, and I came away very impressed. I had a tough time categorizing the music, describing it then as a stew of extremity that included elements of thrash, speed metal, punk, black metal, and death metal — and the overall impact was electrifying. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLACK CROWN — “LAHAMU: THE AWAKENING”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 022020
 

 

When the passing of Necrophagia vocalist Killjoy effectively brought an end to that storied death metal band, Necrophagia bassist The Mountain VVitch eventually turned his unquenched musical impulses toward a new project named Black Crown. A demo named The Rise of Astaroth appeared without fanfare, but was noticed, and now Black Crown will release a debut album through the combined forces of Satanath Records (Russia), More Hate Productions (Russia), and The End Of Time Records (Ireland) on March 14. Entitled Caverns Of Thantifaxath, it includes nine demonic invocations, one of which we’re premiering today through a lyric video.

Black Crown self-proclaim their music “Black Ritual Metal”, and this new song, “Lahamu: The Awakening” does indeed sound like what the lyrics manifest — the invocation of a fearsome warrior demon. No solemn supplication this, but rather a conjuration made of fire and fury, of cold poison and ominous sorcery. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21): GAAHLS WYRD, SWALLOW THE SUN, ARCTIC SLEEP, KLONE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  5 Responses »
Feb 012020
 

 

I missed two weekdays in the rollout of this list, and I want to make up for that, so that’s the justification for breaking my promise to finish this list by the end of January. I have this installment today, and I’ll have another one tomorrow, and then on Monday I’ll tie things up with a black bow by listing all the songs from start to finish. Of course I won’t really be finished, because a ton of deserving songs will have been omitted. I will just have forced myself to stop.

Today’s four songs are all well-deserved exceptions to our porous rule about singing. The musical styles of the songs are all different from each other. All together, they make for an enthralling (and infectious) playlist.

GAAHLS WYRD

Wil Cifer reviewed GastiR – Ghosts Invited for us, and concluded with this paragraph: “This is one of the few albums this year that I have been able to just leave on a let-play all day, on endless repeat, and not get bored with it. If you do not need your black metal to live on blast alone and prefer the feel of darkness, then this is more than worth your time”. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: LEECHED + GEIST + TUSKAR – LIVE IN NOTTINGHAM, 30/01/20

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 312020
 


Leeched

 

(Andy Synn turned in this review of the performances by Leeched, Geist, and Tuskar in Nottingham, England last night — January 30th — with some of his own video documentation of the experience.)

Sometimes, despite all our best intentions, things just don’t work out quite the way we want them to.

That was certainly the case this evening, as, for various reasons which I won’t go into here, I ended up being massively delayed getting to this show, and therefore missed both the local openers Pemphigoid and Underdark.

This was actually doubly-unfortunate too – firstly because while I’ve never been the biggest fan of the latter, the last few times I’ve seen them it’s felt like they’re finally starting to live up to (at least some of) the hype , so I was hoping to see if this trend continued, and secondly because I’ve not yet managed to catch the former band live, and this was going to be my first chance to do so.

Still, putting aside these regrets and recriminations for the moment, I suppose you’re all wondering how the rest of the show went? Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20): OBSEQUIAE, GRYLLE, VÉHÉMENCE, SÜHNOPFER

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  1 Response »
Jan 312020
 

 

2019 was a banner year for medieval black metal, and in this 20th installment of the infectious song list I’ve included four of my favorite tracks from four of my favorite albums in that fascinating sub-genre. I’ll quickly add that this installment could have been longer, and I apologize in advance if I omitted an album you think should have been included here. In my defense I’ll note that this is the first time in this year’s list when I’ve included four songs instead of three or two. (To check out all the other songs that have preceded these three, click this link.)

OBSEQUIAE

Our old friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth (ex-The Number of the Blog) reviewed Obsequiae’s new album for us in late November, closing with the observation that “there is no doubt in my mind that The Palms Of Sorrowed Kings is the best album released this year”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OSSAERT — “IV”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 312020
 

 

Ossaert is a new one-person Dutch band, hailing from the river-wreathed city of Zwolle in northeastern Netherlands. The band’s first full-length, which also includes the work of session drummer W., is named Bedehuis, and it will be released on February 14th by Argento Records. The four songs on the album (which total 35 minutes of music despite the small number of tracks) don’t have names, only numbers.

I came across the opener, “I“, on Bandcamp before listening to the album as a whole, and wasted no time writing about it in one of our weekly SHADES OF BLACK columns. The song saturates the senses, delivering full-throttle drumming, rapidly gouging riffs, insanely flickering leads, febrile bass lines, and a rich array of harsh and clean vocals, which collectively become astonishing. Near the middle, a new riff appears which conjoins feelings of bleakness and grandeur, and becomes magnetically attractive.

The song attacks and it soars, and its intensity is unrelenting. I found it tremendously exciting — maybe “breathtaking” is a better word. And so when we were given the opportunity to premiere another track from Bedehuis, that was an easy “Yes!” Continue reading »

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