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 »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: REBEL WIZARD, (0), PATRONS OF THE ROTTING GATE, WIRED ANXIETY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 252020
 


Rebel Wizard

 

My habit for a long time has been to stop posting things at NCS by around noon here in the Pacific time zone. At that point it’s getting into the late-night hours in Europe, where about half of our daily traffic comes from, and I usually need chunks of the afternoon to deal with work and personal business. But after sleeping for 10 hours last night and waking up much later than usual today, and then having to spend even more time getting my foggy head moderately clear, most of the morning was already gone.

I knew I wouldn’t get this post finished by noon — hell, I didn’t even start writing it until noon. But I thought, fuck it, if that noon-deadline rule comes from nowhere other than inside my own head, I can break it if I want to, even if a lot of people won’t see this until sometime Sunday.

The three Zoom happy hours I participated in yesterday, which began in the afternoon and went late into the night, prevented me from listening to any new music. And because I got such a late start this morning, I didn’t spend much time going through my list today either. But it was enough time to find and become satisfied with the following choices. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BOREAL — “THE BATTLE OF VOSAD”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 242020
 

 

More than 15 years ago Boreal, operating as a one-person project, wrote and recorded The Battle of VOSAD, a grand amalgam of dungeon synth, black metal, and doom that was released in 2006 by Eternal Warfare Records. All these years later, Boreal decided to resurrect that album and to re-imagine and re-record it, this time with a talented group of allies. In its new form, which includes mastering by Déhà and artwork by Inga Markstrom, it will be released on May 1st by Nebulae Artifacta (with a tape edition coming in July via Realm and Ritual).

The album, as it has been re-created, is the kind of immersive — indeed all-consuming — experience that kindles the imagination into a blaze, more like the stuff of dreams than of mundane earthbound days. And what magnificent and frightening dreams they are, transporting the listener into what seems like an ancient age or a mythic realm, there to bear witness to an otherworldly panorama of conflict, loss, and ascension on a vast scale. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MUR — “I SEE THROUGH STONES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 242020
 

 

Get ready to witness one of the most stunning videos you’re likely to see this year, a rapidly changing panorama of reconstruction, deconstruction, and geometric juxtaposition in which the natural flow of time is up-ended. It is an ingenious, thrilling, and harrowing accompaniment to a song that also radiates all of those same qualities, and more. And it resonates with particular intensity in our current time, when everything we thought we knew about the world seems to be fracturing, to itself be deconstructing.

The song is “I See Through Stones“, and it appears on Brutalism, the first full-length by the French band Mur, whose six-person line-up includes former members of Today is the Day, Glorior Belli, Mass Hysteria, Comity, and Four Question Marks. The album was released last October by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions, and this video and song provide a terrific reminder of why it’s a record you should explore without delay if you haven’t already. Continue reading »

SINISTRAL KING: “SERPENT UNCOILING”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 242020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the debut album by the multinational European band Sinistral King, which is being released today — April 24th.)

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men… how easily they go astray.

Case in point, I had, originally, intended to take today off from NCS work and leave this particular album until next week, where I planned to make it part of a six-album, Black Metal-focussed, round-up (which, just to be clear, I’m still going to do).

However at the eleventh hour I was struck with a sudden surge of inspiration, a compulsion to get this one written up as soon as possible, hence why I’m back again with my fourth review of the week.

The extra effort is all worth it though, because I can say, without a shred of hyperbole, that Serpent Uncoiling is one of the best Black Metal albums of the year so far. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 3): SLAGHEAD, THEMS THAT WAIT, ULTHAR, WIKING1940

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 242020
 

 

Here we come to the end of this alphabetized selection of new music from a dozen bands that I began yesterday with Part 1 and Part 2. Of course the flow of new metal didn’t stop after I picked these 12 earlier in the week, so it will soon be time to start over.

Because this is Friday, with three Zoom happy hours on my calendar, it will also soon be time to see how well I learned my lesson from last week, i.e., that if you drink for 7 hours straight on Friday night, Saturday will be a vast wasteland. But while I’m still able to write semi-coherently, let’s finish this round-up:

SLAGHEAD (U.S.)

“Resolving Origin” is a single released on April 20 by the band Slaghead from Hampton, Virginia. Per the band, it’s “a song about how to use rabies and car crashes to travel in time and become a God (do not try this at home)”. I’m not sure I would have interpreted the lyrics that way without insight from the band, but regardless, the lyrics are great — and you should go read them at Bandcamp on the way to buying this single (for one U.S. dollar or more) — because it’s well worth having on your hard drive. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): THE PATH OF MEMORY, A PREGNANT LIGHT, PURTENANCE, RESENT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 232020
 


The Path of Memory

 

On we go with today’s three-part mega-roundup, though it’s already late enough in our posting day that Part 3 will slip over into tomorrow.

As explained in Part 1, I alphabetized what I picked by band name, so we’re rolling on into the Ps and Rs in this segment (and in case you’re confused, I’m following the Chicago Manual of Style rules for alphabetization, in which introductory articles such as “a”, “an”, and “the” are disregarded).

THE PATH OF MEMORY (Switzerland)

The shimmering melodies in “Rancid Song” sound despairing, but that effect may also have something to do with the deep gothic vocals and the moody bass notes. The music is also haunting in its atmosphere, but don’t be misled — the slow-rocking, hard-hitting rhythms and that big bass tone will get you moving. A soundtrack for wandering alone, lost in gloomy memories, through vacant city streets lined with tall cold steel…. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONCEIVED BY HATE — “DROWNED IN TOMB MOLD”

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Apr 232020
 

 

Four years after their second album, the Salvadoran band Conceived By Hate returns with another menacing and malignant full-length entitled Putrid Realms of the Occult. A nine-track release that’s as electrifying as it is monstrous, the album is now set for co-release on May 30th by Satanath Records (Russia) and Morbid Skull Records (El Salvador). Once again, the project’s mastermind Morbid is at the helm, performing guitars, bass, and vocals, and he is again joined by session drummer Iosif Najarro.

Having tweaked the production and growing even less tolerant of melody (and more focused on achieving a rabid sound), Conceived By Hate lashes together death metal, thrash, and black metal to create a musical juggernaut, but one that’s gruesome and horror-stricken as well as maniacally destructive. The song we’re premiering today, “Drowned In Tomb Mold“, is a riveting example of these features. Continue reading »

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