AN NCS PREMIERE: THE CANYON OBSERVER — “URN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 232019
 

 

The last time we splashed The Canyon Observer‘s name across our page was 20 months ago, the occasion being a premiere stream of their latest album, NØLL, which was released by Vox Project (France) and Kapa Records (Slovenia) soon after. Now we have a new occasion to share the music of this talented genre-splicing Slovenian group, because tomorrow they will release a massive new single that serves as a gateway between the old and the new in terms of their musical creativity, and we’re presenting a full stream of it today.

This new track is named Urn, and it’s 17 minutes long. The band have told us this about how it was created: “We’ve always been intrigued by free forms and tried to accommodate that into our working method. The willingness to dive into the unknown, to trust each other enough to let go. The risk of failure that comes with this kind of musical expression is important and fulfilling and gives us more room for musical development.” Continue reading »

2019 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE EPs

 LISTMANIA 2019  2 Responses »
Dec 232019
 

 

(In some past years Andy Synn has launched his roll-out of personal year-end lists with one devoted to EPs and other shorter releases, but this year it comes after all the others — and you’ll find the others linked below.)

As you may have noticed, since the publication of my Disappointing/Good/Great/Critical/Personal lists I’ve been easing back a little bit, giving myself room to rest and relax as well as allowing other writers (both regulars and guests) a chance to step into the spotlight instead.

That doesn’t mean I’ve been entirely clocked out, however, and over the next week or two I have another couple of articles planned (including, due to popular demand, a “Best” of the decade list), beginning today with a round-up of the many different EPs and short releases which I’ve enjoyed over the last twelve months. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): CULT OF ERINYES, GREVE, LJOSAZABOJSTWA

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Dec 222019
 

 

Welcome to the second Part of this week’s foray into black and blackened metal. I’m hurrying to get this done, so I’ll dispense with any further introduction — other than to encourage you to check out the music in Part 1 (here) if you haven’t already.

CULT OF ERINYES

I’ve been following and writing about this Belgian band since just before the release of their second album in 2013 (Blessed Extinction), but I’ve fallen down on the job since I failed to yell at you in advance about the impending release of their latest album Æstivation (which now features the prolific Déhà as a full band member, along with members of Wolvennest and LVTHN). But now the album is out — having been released just yesterday by Amor Fati Productions. The benefit of my foot-dragging is that (after a bit of yelling from me) you can dive right into the entire record on your own without delay. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): DEEMTEE, DARK FORTRESS, CANIS DIRUS, IZTHMI

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Dec 222019
 

 

You can tell from the title of this post that I have ambitions for putting a lot of black/blackened metal in front of you today. As I explained in yesterday’s post, the torrent of new music hasn’t let up just because we’re on the brink of the holiday season and the turnover from 2019 to 2020. So I’m trying to make the most of this weekend for round-ups of new music before the new week makes me focus again on LISTMANIA and premieres.

DEEMTEE

Did you miss Deemtee’s debut album when it was released last June? If you did, and you’re also a fan of such bands as Deathspell Omega, Oranssi Pazuzu, Valborg, Blut Aus Nord, and Ved Buens Ende, it’s well worth carving out some of your year-end time to check it out. We premiered a full stream of Flawed Synchronization With Reality, and I’ll excerpt only these words from the very wordy review which accompanied that: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLACK AEVUM, NECROBODE, TRENCHLUNG, TOUNDRA, DEAD SERENITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 212019
 

 

With the new year rushing to an end and the holiday season rushing toward us even faster, it will become even more difficult for me to compile these collections. Among other things, our annual LISTMANIA orgy consumes a lot of my NCS time. Even though I don’t prepare my own list, I do track down album art and embed codes for album streams for the lists made by others, and conform the formats to our usual style, and do lesser or greater amounts of text editing. And speaking of year-end lists, I’m sitting on a slate of eight of them by both musician guests and NCS writers that I’m planning to begin rolling out next week, with a few more yet to come.

New music, of course, doesn’t stop appearing just because the holidays and the end of the year are almost upon us. In fact we’ve been getting recent reminders that maybe a lot of year-end lists were made too soon, as well as indications that 2020 is going to start off with a BANG!, at least in terms of forthcoming metal albums, if not in terms of North Korean missile launches, or maybe that too.

Anyway, to underscore that last observation I’ve chosen a couple of very impressive late-year releases, a few tracks from 2020 records, and one new stand-alone single — and as usual I’ve mixed things up a bit just so you don’t get too comfortable.

BLACK AEVUM

This new Black Aevum EP is one of two releases in today’s collection that Rennie (starkweather) messaged me about just yesterday. He wrote about a third one, too (by Reasoning Reflections), but I haven’t made it to that one yet — because I got completely drawn into the two you’ll find here. In fact, in the case of Black Aevum I only intended to quickly check out one song just to see what was going on, and the next thing I knew 23 minutes had passed and I was tempted to start again from the beginning right away. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: FRIGORIS, ENTHRONED, SCARAB, INVOCATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 202019
 

 

Unsurprisingly, I have accumulated quite a lot of new music I want to share since the last of these round-ups almost one week ago. I’ve picked four new songs for the following collection and have plans to highlight a few more on Saturday.

FRIGORIS

In 2016 we had the privilege of premiering the third album, Nur Ein Moment…, by the atmospheric black metal group Frigoris. As I wrote then, “Through the course of the album’s six long tracks Frigoris move from passages of soft, ethereal beauty to storms of surging blackened power, interweaving elements of black metal, post-metal and doom to create a journey through a changing emotional landscape of peaks and valleys.”

That album was the beginning of a concept that reaches its conclusion on the band’s fourth album, …In Stille, which will be released by Hypnotic Dirge Records on January 24th. The first song I’ve selected for today’s collection is one from the new Frigoris album that was revealed just yesterday, and it makes a powerful first impression of the new record. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATBLOOD — “APPARITION OF DOOMSDAY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 202019
 

 

Two years ago when we premiered a demo by these two German devastators we wrote:

“There is little risk that you will be deceived about the music we’re about to present. The band’s name is Goatblood. The demo is named Gasmask Devastation Terror. The artwork depicts a bullet-draped demonic form shrouded in eldritch energies and fire. Biohazard and radiation warning signs would probably have been superfluous….

“Their brand of black/death metal is lo-fi filth, a toxic and insidious stew of grim, buzzing riffs, pounding chords, and muffled, clattering percussion. Solos leap from this morass of malignancy like crazed vipers made of flame and plutonium. The vocals are a roaring, shrieking horror — merciless and hollow-hearted….

“Goatblood haven’t forgotten the appeal of dynamics — but they also never lose sight of their lethal mission, which is to assault the senses and mangle the mind until it can see nothing but an apocalyptic wasteland.”

Since we wrote those words, Goatblood have released a 2018 EP (Arma Inferre), and now they’re on the verge of discharging their third full-length through Dunkelheit Produktionen. Fittingly entitled Apparition of Doomsday, it will bury the old year on December 27th — but we have a full stream of all its multifarious and nefarious depredations today. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2019: A YEAR-END LIST BY DGR (PART 5)

 LISTMANIA 2019  4 Responses »
Dec 202019
 

 

(We have reached the end of DGR’s week-long roll-out of his Top 50 year-end list, with this segment devoted to the Top 10. All the preceding installments can be found behind this link.)

The final ten of this year’s year-end list is special to me. That coud be easily stated for every year, but 2019 is one of those years that just went absolutely crazy — in fits and starts of course, there’s a lot of April and September representation here — and it brought on a massive torrent of metal that not only pushed out the boundaries of the genre but also twisted, mutated, and contorted it into all-new forms. You also had fantastic releases from groups who are already working within well-established blueprints and finding ways to keep things interesting.

While I could go on an endless screed about 2019 as a whole, keep in mind that although I have fifty releases on the list that I particularly enjoyed — an admittedly ridiculous number —  I listened to and generally got a kick out of so many more. A lot of those are popping up at NCS, on other writers’ lists and on users’ lists, and even on the occasional big website list when they’re not seeing just how much prose they can dedicate to Blood Incantation or showing off that they’re hip with the kids by nominating every teenager’s favorite new and hip band Tool (and I love Tool). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNHOLD — “BARREN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 192019
 

 

Although I have many things to be proud of about what we’ve accomplished at NCS in helping spread the word about worthy music, I have many regrets too, one of which is our failure to pay more attention to the immensely accomplished Swiss band Unhold. That failure is all the more shameful because Unhold are now five albums deep into their career. The most recent of those, Here Is the Blood, was released in November 2018 by Czar of Bullets, and represents the pinnacle of their significant achievements so far.

Briefly summarizing the music on that album (or really, on any of its predecessors) is a daunting challenge, as is any effort to provide a pithy genre description. References to post-metal, sludge, doom, and hardcore might be useful, but don’t really give you much guidance about how fascinatingly Unhold have combined those stylistic ingredients (and others) in ways that dynamically create such a wide range of emotionally powerful and often transportive experiences, ranging from mesmerizingly beautiful to crushingly bleak and compulsively body-shaking — and much else besides.

But while we’ve regrettably neglected Here Is the Blood since its release, we do have a chance to make partial amends today by premiering a new single entitled “Barren” which was recorded in the same sessions that produced that album. This new single is not only well worth having in its own right but also should serve as an inducement for people who haven’t heard that album to check it out immediately. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: CHERNAA / HYPNO5E / UNDER THE PLEDGE OF SECRECY

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 192019
 


Chernaa

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three 2019 albums that we haven’t previously paid attention to with the thoroughness that they deserve.)

No big intro or preamble this time. Just three very cool albums delivering only the best in heart-stopping Post-Black Metal, cinematic Prog Metal, and rampaging Death Metal.

Prep your ears accordingly. Continue reading »

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