AN NCS PREMIERE: ZATYR — “HEART AND VISION”

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Apr 282020
 

 

Last September I came across a self-released, three-track digital EP, the first record of a new Swedish band named Zatyr. As a faithful homage to certain flavors of old-school heavy metal, and with clean singing dominating the vocals, it shouldn’t have made a positive impression on one whose tastes don’t normally lean in those directions, but Ornament of Proposition certainly did, and I wasted no time singing its praises here. At the end of that impulsive review I wrote:

“As for the music, it’s immediately infectious, and deliciously dynamic. The riffs are damned compulsive, the melodies are full of hooks, the soloing is fantastic, the rhythm section know what the hell they’re doing. It’s the kind of stuff that makes grown men lift their invisible oranges to the heavens. In short, Zatyr are a huge surprise, a bolt from the blue. It hardly seems possible this is their first release. I doubt it will take long for the word to spread and the fans to come thronging”.

That last line turned out to be an accurate prediction. Word has indeed spread, and it will spread further because on May 22nd Dying Victims Productions will release Zatyr’s eye-opening EP on noble vinyl, which will include not only the three original songs but a fourth track as a bonus — a track we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THECODONTION — “KENORLAND”

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Apr 282020
 

 

Today we are most fortunate and very pleased to help I, Voidhanger Records and Repose Records announce the debut album by the bass-driven black/death-metal prehistoric beast known as Thecodontion, which these two labels will jointly release on June 26th. That album, Supercontinent, has a fascinating conceptual focus, and the music (which has evolved from this Italian band’s previous releases) is equally fascinating, as you’ll begin to discover through our premiere of a song named “Kenorland“.

Concerning the album’s conceptual focus, it is a voyage through various stages of ancient Earth’s continental drift, from the earliest known supercontinent (“Vaalbara”) to the most recent one (“Pangaea”). We are told that the lyrics are based on extensive research into these formative phases of the world’s current geologic and geographical appearance, but also strive “for a certain vivid imagery, with poetic descriptions of ancient lifeforms populating the planet during the various geological eras, and cataclysmic events leading to the break up and collision of land-masses”. The album further includes four instrumental non-metal songs featuring short poems about “superoceans” — “enormous bodies of water which surrounded these continental assemblies”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAGE OF CREATION — “INTO NOWHERE II”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 282020
 

 

We are about to leap with glee off our well-trodden paths, leaving behind us our usual metal extremity, lured away by black magic into a strange (and for us, a largely unfamiliar) realm. The Russian sorcerers who have cast this spell of psychedelic black rock have named themselves Cage of Creation, and their most seductive incantations are now to be found within a new album named Into Nowhere II.

As the album’s title suggests, it is a sequel to their 2016 debut full-length Into Nowhere, the Roman-numeraled songs picking up where the last track of that one left off. And these are indeed masterful sorcerers, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin who will lead us dancing away, never to be seen again, or like Hansel and Gretel’s cannibalistic witch luring us with sweets into the oven, or like the Devil himself who invites us in charismatic commands to cavort around a midnight bonfire whose sulfurous fumes become deliciously aromatic to our bedazzled senses.

The album was first released digitally and on tape earlier this month by NEN Records, but on April 29th it will receive a CD release by Devoted Art Propaganda, which provides the occasion for today’s presentation of a complete album stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: RAGE OF SAMEDI

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Apr 282020
 

 

(Comrade Aleks has remained busy in these shut-in times and has brought us this engaging interview with Sam D. Durango, founding guitarist for the German band Rage of Samedi, whose latest album Blood Ritual was released in January of this plague year by Argonauta Records.)

Okay, so I was intrigued by whether the German sludge-doom outfit Rage Of Samedi had any connection with the voodoo creed as they’re named after one of most respected deities of that Afro-Caribbean cult. And the release of their third album Blood Ritual in January 2020 through Argonauta Records only stirred up my interest more. Are they that pious? Are they into catchy voodoo rhythms and riffs? What kind of shit is happening on the Blood Ritual artwork?

A lot of highly improtant questions disturbed me, so I approached Rage Of Samedi’s guitarist Sam D. Durango and learned a lot about how to stay cool, strong, and healthy. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: CRYPTIC SHIFT / DIVINE CHAOS / EMBODIMENT

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 272020
 


Cryptic Shift

 

(Andy Synn again focuses on releases from his home country, and today reviews two brand new albums and one that will be arriving soon.)

I’m not going to waffle on here about the state of the world, the way things used to be, etc. It’s all been said enough times already.

Instead, let’s get right to the matter at hand, and enjoy these three celebrations of the power of the riff, in all its unlimited glory! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABDUCTION — “JEHANNE”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  9 Responses »
Apr 272020
 

 

Few episodes in French history, or indeed of world history, have captured the imagination of so many people, or proved as inspiring, as the short life of Jeanne d’Arc (or Joan of Arc, for us English speakers). Born to peasant parents in roughly 1412, she claimed to have received visions in her teenage years of the archangel Michael and various female saints commanding her to lend her support to the unanointed king Charles VII in an ultimately successful effort to rescue France from English domination late in the Hundred Years’ War.

As part of a relief army, the king sent her to the Siege of Orléans, which was lifted only nine days later. But in May 1430, after further military triumphs, she was captured by a faction of French nobles allied with the English, who turned her over to the English. They tried her on a variety of charges, declared her guilty, and burned her at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was about 19 years old when the flames took her.

We’ve provided this truncated reminder because the new album we’re premiering today by the French black metal band Abduction is a concept album based on the life of Joan. Entitled Jehanne, it will be released by Finisterian Dead End Metal Label on April 29th, as a remembrance of the day on which Joan entered the besieged city of Orléans in 1429. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GABESTOK — “JEG SLÆBER”

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Apr 272020
 

 

The relatively new Danish label Strange Aeons Records is on a roll. After giving a vinyl release to a 2018 album by Poland’s Occultum, they’ve made a big move forward this year with the vinyl release of both the latest album by Horned Almighty (To Fathom the Master’s Grand Design) and the new EP by NyreDolk (Indebrændt), word of which seems to be spreading like wildfire among people I know. And now Strange Aeons is following that one with a new EP by the Danish band Gabestok.

As that list of band names would tell you, Strange Aeons has an affinity for black metal, and Gabestok are indeed a black metal band (though not, perhaps, in the conventionally understood sense). They’re part of what’s become known as the “Korpsånd circle”, a diverse group of DKBM bands who have rehearsed and recorded their releases at the venue/rehearsing space Mayhem in Copenhagen. Their debut album Tre (now sold out) was released last fall by Strange Aeons, and this new EP — På herrens brakmark — will be released on May 15th.

What we’ve got for you today is the premiere of a video for a track off the new EP named “Jeg slæber“, and both the sights and the sounds make for a hellishly good time. Continue reading »

AESMAH: “WALKING OFF THE HORIZON”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 272020
 

 

(In this review TheMadIsraeli catches up with the debut album by the French melodic death metal band Aesmah, which was released by Apostasy Records in February of this year.)

Quarantine has my sense of time and priority all fucked up dawg.

Doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping up with the musical landscape though, and today’s subject is a band who I definitely think needs more exposure.  Melodic death metal, as we’ve so often talked about on this site, is almost a relic of extreme metal.  It’s either been incorporated into something else, or the bands hanging onto it mostly are just not standing out.  They ride the most rote of wavelengths in every aspect of their sound and the by-the-numbers, trying to be oh-so-slightly commercially appealing nature of it is pretty exhausting.

Aesmah, on the other hand, are a new band who get the style they’re playing. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): TOSKA HILL, ARCHAÍA SOFÍA, DEATHSIEGE, LUSTRE

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Apr 262020
 

 

This completes today’s two-Part column. This installment includes an advance track from a forthcoming release, a demo single, an EP, and a full-length album, and the sounds are quite diverse.

TOSKA HILL (New Zealand)

If you visit the “About” section of this Auckland band’s Facebook page you’ll see a quote from Vladimir Nabokov about the meaning of the Russian word toska:

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ELFFOR AND KUOLEMAJÄRVI

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 262020
 

 

I’ve packed a lot of music into this Sunday’s column — four complete albums or EPs, as well as an advance track from a forthcoming record and a demo single. It’s all so new that I haven’t spent much time with the music, and am therefore probably not in the best position to give it well-considered opinions. But the first impressions have been so exciting that I didn’t want to wait. Not for the first time, impulse has again ruled this day.

Because there’s so much music here, I divided the column into two Parts. Part 1 is devoted to two full-length albums.

ELFFOR (Spain)

Unholy Throne of Doom is the latest album by this band from the Basque Country, which began long ago as the solo project of Eöl but seems to have fleshed out into a full line-up, with one of the members performing tambourine, flute, and a traditional Basque instrument called the Alboka. Released on April 22nd, the album consists of four tracks, each of them in the range of ten to thirteen minutes. Continue reading »

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