AN NCS PREMIERE: ABYSSUS — “RELICS OF THE PAST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 112020
 

 

2015 brought the release of the excellent debut album Into the Abyss of a Greek death metal band named Abyssus, a group that began life in 2011 as the solo project of Athenian vocalist and musician Kostas Analytis and now also includes guitarists Panos Gkourmpaliotis and Christos Liakos, bass-player Kostas Ragiadakos, and drummer Jan Westermann.

That album was preceded by a pair of EPs and a trio of splits, all of which were eventually released in a compilation entitled Once Entombed… Additional splits followed the release of the album, and in 2018 Death In Pieces Records released an Abyssus EP named Unleash the Storm from which we proudly premiered a track (“Operation Ranch Hand”) that ultimately made our list of 2018’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (here).

2019 saw the release of yet another Abyssus split, a four-way conspiracy among Abyssus, Obsecration, Soulskinner, and Malicious Silence under the name Sign of the Covenant of Death. And now we’re in the midst of a new year and it’s time for more music from this tremendous death metal killing machine from Greece.

On July 6th, Death In Pieces Records will release a new Abyssus EP entitled Relics of the Past. Like the last EP, Unleash the Storm, it includes two new Abyssus songs and covers of three others, and we are once again handling a premiere from the EP. It’s the title track, “Relics of the Past“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TRYM TORSON (EMPEROR)

 Interviews  5 Responses »
May 112020
 

 

(Continuing with her ongoing series of interviews with metal drummers, this time Karina Noctum spoke with Trym Torson, who of course is the drummer for Emperor, and formerly for Enslaved and Zyklon, among other groups.)

 

Enslaved played Frost in its entirety in Bergen in 2018. It was a pretty special show with artificial snow and all that, really good. I don’t recall seeing you there. Why weren’t you a part of it?

Ivar told me to stay the fuck away and not ruin the evening! No, I’m just joking, I was never invited, so I never went… Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ORMSKRIK, ACEDIA MUNDI, DRATNA, AXIS OF LIGHT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 102020
 

 

As I wrote in Part 1 of today’s column, I have enough new music I’d like to recommend that I could fill out four installments, but that’s not going to happen. So I’ll have to content myself with just two Parts. I’m still thinking of ways to recommend everything else I had in mind, without just tacking a bunch of streams together without links of commentary. Though maybe that’s what I should do?

ORMSKRIK (Norway)

The first two songs in this collection, “Descend To Madness” and “Helheim“, are included on the self-titled debut album of Ormskrik from the west coast of Norway. Both of them are ripping black/thrashers with a powerhouse sound and absolutely unhinged braying, bellowing, and screaming vocals. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ÆNIGMATUM, ASEITAS, BLACK HATE, CAPE OF BATS, ULTHAR

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
May 102020
 

 

I spent hours yesterday trying to catch up on listening to new metal. I now have a giant list of things I’d like to recommend, including enough blackened sounds to fill up a four-part SHADES OF BLACK today. I haven’t figured out how to make that happen, and I don’t know how any normal person would be able to digest all of it even if I could. But I’m going to continue pondering how to deal with my desire to put it all out there. In the meantime, here’s the first installment.

I will say that the “shades of black” in this collection are often very faint shades, with other stylistic ingredients much more prominent than black metal. But I think all this stuff is outstanding, and fits very well together, for reasons you’ll figure out as you listen.

ÆNIGMATUM (U.S.)

“A wild ride full of twists and turns”. That’s how this Portland band describe Adorned In Wrath, a two-track demo that will be released on May 22nd, which they say will serve “to give a glimpse of our forthcoming sophomore full-length”. The first of those two songs, which is streaming now, is definitely a wild ride — in fact, that’s an understatement Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SINISTER DOWNFALL — “BEHOLD DARKNESS”

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May 102020
 

 

In 2018 the one-man German funeral doom band Sinister Downfall made its full-length debut with Eremozoic, which was the first release by the Armenian doom label Funere, in collaboration with the venerable Japanese doom label Weird Truth Productions. We premiered a song from that beautifully crafted debut, a song that was staggeringly bereft in its moods, and staggeringly heavy, too. Much like the album as a whole, it was tremendously evocative in its emotional resonance and persistently spellbinding throughout.

Sinister Downfall‘s sole member Eugen Kohl has continued to hone his craft since then, while remaining true to the vision of melancholic downfall that flowed through Eremozoic, and the result is a new album named A Dark Shining Light that will again be co-released by Funere and Weird Truth. And we again have been given the opportunity to premiere a song, the aptly named “Behold Darkness“, which is the track that ends the album. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: “ABYSMAL DAWN”

 Interviews, WAXING LYRICAL  4 Responses »
May 092020
 


photo by Terco Fredes

 

(In this new edition of Andy Synn‘s series of interviews focusing on lyrics in metal he elicited thoughts from Charles Elliott, vocalist/guitarist of California’s Abysmal Dawn, who have a new album out on Season of Mist.)

Since the release of their debut album, From Ashes, way back in 2006, Abysmal Dawn have gone on to become one of the most unrelentingly heavy, unfailingly reliable, and unrepentantly riff-heavy acts in Death Metal.

Hell, their most recent album, the fantastic Phylogenesis, recently received a glowing write-up by our own DGR, while its immediate predecessor, 2014’s outstanding Obsolescence, still remains in my regular listening rotation even now.

So, with all that in mind, what more is there left to say about the band?

Quite a bit, apparently, as you’re about to find out from vocalist/guitarist (and overall mastermind) Charles Elliott! Continue reading »

MEDIOCRITY ≠ MATURITY

 Mosh Pit  15 Responses »
May 082020
 


Facing Mediocrity by John Ransom

 

(Andy Synn wrote the following opinion piece.)

By good fortune I’ve got a rare day off from work today, which means I’ve finally got a little bit of time to dedicate to writing about something that’s been on my mind quite a bit recently.

So bear with me, if you will, and have those flaming pitchforks at the ready, as I go off on one of my signature rants… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: A WORLD WITHOUT — “IN EXTREMIS”

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May 082020
 

 

Once upon a time deathcore took the metal world by storm, drawing in vast legions of fans through its amalgam of monster vocals, brutish atonal riffing, and more bunker-busting breakdowns than any militarized armory could possibly hold. Like most waves of popular music in any genre, it quickly became saturated and homogenized, and came close to drowning beneath a tide of cookie-cutter mediocrity. The elements of the music that didn’t seem to require instrumental skill spawned hordes of bands that also had no talent for writing actual songs either.

But it would be wrong to proclaim that deathcore is dead. Instead, it has evolved, as all living things threatened with extinction must. Rather than depending entirely on the old core elements (so to speak), the better bands have expanded their musical palettes, some of them moving more in the direction of pure death metal and others integrating elements of melody and atmosphere, along with increased technicality.

The Portland band A World Without, for example, has retained some of those core features but has intertwined them with other ingredients, and today we have an example of their musical amalgamations through the lyric video premiere of a song called “In Extremis“, which includes a guest appearance by vocalist Steve Tinnon from Within the Ruins. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEVANGELIC — “ERSETU”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
May 082020
 

 

We have already written extensively about the new album Ersetu by the Italian death metal band Devangelic, just as we did about their previous releases. In this case, in addition to praising individual songs that have been previewed in the progress toward the album’s release, we published an enthusiastic review by our friend Vonlughlio, who summed it up as “a mandatory release for every brutal death metal fan”: These guys know their craft supremely well and have taken the time to create something special in their music that will pass the test of time”.

And indeed, despite how impressive Devangelic‘s first two albums were (2014’s Resurrection Denied and 2017’s Phlegethon), they have managed to elevate their music to an even higher (and more nuanced) plane of brutality with Ersetu. We are thus very excited to present a full stream of the record for you now, in advance of its May 15 release by Willowtip Records. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TABLEAU MORT, SXUPERION, WELL OF NIGHT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 082020
 

 

I’m hurrying to finish a couple of other NCS posts scheduled for today, but wanted to begin this Friday with something to occupy you while I do that. I’ve picked three new songs that I noticed over the last 12 hours, one of which comes with an intriguing video.

TABLEAU MORT

Within the last two hours London-based Tableau Mort (pictured above) released a professionally filmed video for “Ignorance (Tapestry Sewn Pt. II)“, which premiered at Antichrist Magazine. It follows their very impressive 2019 debut album Stigma Book 1: Mark of Delusion (released by Loud Rage Music), which drew symbolic and thematic influences from Romanian Orthodox Christianity, and embroidered their core framework of black metal with other stylistic ingredients, including Orthodox choral chants. Continue reading »

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