AN NCS INTERVIEW: WORM

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Apr 202020
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks spoke with the principal creator behind the Floridian extreme metal band Worm, whose latest album Gloomlord was released by Iron Bonehead this past January.)

Being born amidst the swamps of Florida as a solo project, Worm was a black metal outfit run by Phantom Slaughter, a.k.a. Wurm. He recorded two demos on his own — The Deep Dark Earth Underlines All (2014) and Nights In Hell (2016), and then he met a like-minded person.

Since 2017 Phantom Slaughter has worked together with Equimanthorn, and their collaboration has resulted in two full-length albums, Evocation Of The Black Marsh (2017) and Gloomlord (2020). Both albums were released by the famous Iron Bonehead Productions and both demonstrate Worm’s tendency towards a new direction – dirty and savage blackened death doom in its most nihilistic form.

How is it there in the Floridian underground? Let’s take a look together with Phantom Slaughter himself. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): CARPE NOCTEM AND ÁRSTÍÐIR LÍFSINS — “ALDRNARI”

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 192020
 

 

Earlier today I promised a second installment in this weekly column, and this is it, though it focuses on only a single release — but it’s a big one, album-length in size and featuring the work of two bands who have always made a big and very favorable impression: Carpe Noctem and Árstíðir lífsins.

The name of this new split is Aldrnari and it’s set for release by Ván Records on April 24th. It features cover art by Artem Grigoryev and is said to explore “themes of death and war, fire and life”. Each band contributed one song to the split, each of them more than 22 minutes in length, and both are now up for listening on YouTube. We’ll briefly consider them one at a time. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): IMPIETY, AKATECHISM, SLIDHR, EAVE, GOLDEN LIGHT, HEILUNG

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
Apr 192020
 

 

You may have noticed that I didn’t post anything yesterday, a rare missed Saturday opportunity. I participated in three virtual happy hours on Friday afternoon and evening and somehow didn’t understand that I wasn’t required to drink straight through all of them. Saturday taught me that lesson, brutally.

I’ll try to make up for lost time today with two installments of this usual Sunday column.

IMPIETY

Versus All Gods is the ninth full-length by this famous Singapore band, and the first one since 2012’s Revenge & Conquer. In those seven years two new guitarists joined the line-up, and something happened to the song-writing as well — something that seemed to convey rejuvenation, a return to the thermonuclear energies that fueled earlier releases, coupled with the mastery that comes with experience, sort of like a barbarian horde that has learned through decades of successful conquest how to decimate even more powerfully and brutally. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GORLVSH — “SHEPPARD ONE IS DOWN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 172020
 

 

When DECIBEL premiered “Wait For Me“, the first single off the forthcoming debut album of Montreal’s Gorlvsh (pronounced Gore-Lush), they compared the band’s music to a combination of Converge, Death from Above 1979, and Lightning Bolt, “an amalgam of math rock angularity, crushing metallic riffs, off-kilter rhythms and a few catchy hooks in there for good measure”. Gorlvsh themselves described the song as “our attempt to rip off NAILS and be heavy AF”, and as “the song where we finally nailed down the tone we wanted from the unconventional bass rig”.

The bass tone is maybe more important than you realize, because Gorlvsh don’t use a guitar. It’s just bassist Nick Boucher slinging the riffs in ways that provide a lot more than groove, drummer Noah Baxter working in an exhilarating amount of intricacy to go along with a lot of skull-busting, and vocalist Isaac Ruder adding both bleeding-edge intensity and melodic hooks. The result is music that’s sometimes bizarre and mentally unbalancing, sometimes gut-slugging, and sometimes downright enthralling — and rarely follows a straight line.

To go along with that first single, today we’re presenting “Sheppard One Is Down.” This time the band told us the track was their “attempt to rip off a tune from Converge’s last record, but diverged immediately and became something totally different, far slower and more atmospheric than the average Gorlvsh tune.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IMPAVIDA — “GRAM”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 172020
 

 

On May 8th Prophecy Productions will release a stunning album-length split by two formidable atmospheric black metal bands, the Dutch trio Vuur & Zijde (“fire and silk”), which features members of Laster, Nusquama and Terzij de Horde, and the enigmatic duo, one German and one American, who call themselves Impavida .

The three songs by Vuur & Zijde mark the recording debut of this new formation, while the two tracks by Impavida add to a discography that includes two full-lengths on Ván Records since 2008, the most recent of which (the astonishing Antipode) we premiered and reviewed here last year.

What we have for you today is the premiere of one of Impavida‘s two songs, one named “Gram“, as well as an impressionistic linguistic preview of what the band’s monumental second track holds in store for you (at a later time we’ll have something to say about the music of Vuur & Zijde). Continue reading »

NCS PREMIERE: AFSKY — “TYENDE SANG”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 172020
 

 

The second full-length album by the Danish black metal band Afsky is entitled ofte jeg drømmer mig død, which translates to ”often I dream myself dead”. The songs are based on a number of old Danish poems and texts by artists such as H.C. Andersen, Jeppe Aakjær, and Emil Aarestrup, and could be viewed, at least in part, as a tribute to a history of Danish lyricism and poetry.

The cover image for the new album is a painting by H.A.Bredekilde named “Udslidt”, which means “worn out”. We’re told that Afsky selected the painting because it “fits well with several of the selected texts for the record, which are precisely about the little man, who must work until he dies, for the higher classes in society”.

Consistent with the lyrical inspirations and that attention-grabbing cover art, there are also qualities in the music of Afsky that are poetic, even elegant in their own way, and also deeply sad. Yet as you’ll discover in listening to the song from the album we’re premiering today — “Tyende Sang” — there is also tremendous visceral power in the music as well as turbulent emotional intensity and sweeping melodic grandeur. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN PRESENTS: REVIEWS IN HAIKUS (GHOSTS OF THE SUN, IRIST, LUCTUS, MAIASTRA, ORANSSI PAZUZU, SOLOTHUS)

 Reviews In Haikus  6 Responses »
Apr 172020
 

 

(Nineteen months after the last time he did this, Andy Synn has brought us another collection of three-line album reviews.)

I have to thank our buddies over at the Toilet Ov Hell for inspiring this brand new edition of “Reviews In Haikus”.

After all, if they hadn’t recently tried to steal my thunder then I probably would have forgotten all about this particular column (it turns out I haven’t done one since September 2018).

It’s good timing too, as there’s been a bunch of newly released (or newly discovered) albums from the past couple of months which I’ve been itching to write about, but which I simply haven’t found the right time (or right format) to cover properly.

So, without further ado, here’s a collection of reviews/critiques/comments all delivered in the form of the ageless haiku. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHITFUCKER — “SEX WITH DEAD BODY”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Apr 162020
 

 

Some people who just landed on this page will already know something about the music of Shitfucker and will stay to listen to their new album, which we’re streaming in full today. Others who are ignorant of the music are probably outraged and about to leave after a quick glance at the name of the band and the title of the album — and they haven’t even seen the rest of the band photos. So I’m thinking I better get to the music fast.

What Sex With Dead Body will give you, at least right after the intro track, is admittedly carnal and filthy, but it’s also packed with skull-thumping beats, bone-moving and bowel-churning bass, head-hooking riffs, and exhilarating (though demented) soloing. And really foul and depraved vocals. And more variety in the song-writing than you might expect. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: REJOICE! THE LIGHT HAS COME, MICO, VOID PRAYER, KALL, INTEGRAL RIGOR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 162020
 

 

I hope all of you are well and staying safe and neither lapsing into stupor nor pulling our your hair due to quarantine-itis. I have chosen a few things to occupy your mind today, since you probably have more unoccupied mind than usual these days. To fill the vacancy I’ve selected a new EP, an assortment of recent advance tracks from forthcoming releases, and a new single. As is often the case, I owe thanks to a couple of trusted advisors for many of these choices.

REJOICE! THE LIGHT HAS COME

This is the (untitled) EP mentioned above. It was released on April 12th by a West Virginia-based band whose recording line-up for the EP also included a couple of well-known session performers (at least I assume they aren’t permanent members) — Colin Marston on bass (he also mixed and mastered the record) and drummer Kevin Paradis — in addition to guitarists Eric Gill and Dan Long and vocalist Paul Ozz, all of whom are also members of Aghasura. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JANNE JALOMA (NIGHT CROWNED, DARK FUNERAL)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Apr 162020
 

 

(In this new installment of Karina Noctum‘s interview series devoted to metal drummers she talked with Janne Jaloma, the drummer of Night Crowned (whose 2020 debut album is out now on the Noble Demon label), Dark Funeral, and Despite.)

In the summer of 2019 I went to a festival called Gamrocken in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. That festival is sadly no more. The 2019 version had an awesome line-up and some unknown bands to me. Out of those bands the one that I liked the most was Night Crowned. I eagerly waited months for their new album Impius Viam to come out, because it’s not like there are lots of bands at that technical level appearing all the time, and the fact they are from Gothenburg was a huge plus, because that scene is just awesome.

I love it when the Swedes play extreme Death Metal. You have acts like The Forsaken, Dimension Zero, Spawn of Possession, Soreption, Hypocrisy, to name a few. So I was really happy to have found Night Crowned to add to that list, and besides, their style is blackened — something that I truly appreciate.

So I had to interview their drummer, Janne Jaloma, who plays in Dark Funeral as well. His drumming is fast, neat, and he doesn’t withhold anything on his latest album. Continue reading »

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