AN NCS PREMIERE: NAGA — “ONLY A GOD CAN’T SAVE US”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 092019
 

 

On their new album, Void Cult Rising, the Neapolitan band Naga have created a meditation on death, not only the grief that comes from the loss of a loved one but also an apocalyptic vision of the end of all things. In approaching calamities of such vastly different scales through their music, the band have fused the bleak, gut-rumbling heaviness of sludge, the downcast resonance of doom, and the nihilistic acidity of black metal. The sound is grim and raging, crushing and inconsolable.

The opening track of the new album, which follows a 2014 debut full-length (Hēn) and a 2016 EP (Inanimate), is “Only A God Can’t Save Us“, a title that seems to be a dismissive play on familiar words, and the music suggests that we can’t save ourselves either. We have a stream of the song for you today, in advance of the album’s November 15 release by Spikerot Records. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ROUND-UP (PART 4C): TO DUST — “FALSE GOD OF DEATH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 092019
 

 

(This is the third and final subpart of a fourth installment in DGR’s effort to catch up on reviews of 2019 releases he wants to recommend, with this 3-part fourth post devoted to melodic death metal. Today the subject is the third full-length by the Swedish band To Dust, which was released in March of this year.)

 

The presence here of To Dust comes courtesy of the random-band button at Metal-Archives, which has provided me with quite a few gems and discoveries over the years. I’ve gained a habit of just slamming on that button while on lunch break at work, with the endless flood of metal bands providing multiple cocked eyebrows in the form of ‘that looks interesting’ to ‘holy shit, are you kidding me? that qualifies here?’. To Dust were very much the former — even though their profile photo on that site is hilariously out of date.

For some reason the title of their latest album, False God Of Death, caught my eye, and the simply stated cover art somewhat sealed the deal, though I’d be bullshitting you if I denied that their being a melodeath band didn’t help give the group a boost. As stated before, although tech-death has become a comfort food, melodeath has become my bread-and-butter genre to enjoy.

False God Of Death was released all the way back at the tail end of March and bears a lot of the hallmarks of the melodeath genre: grand keyboard swells, hefty two-step-driven guitar work, and a snarling vocalist hovering in the mid-high range whose vocal delivery is as percussive as their drummer is. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ROUND-UP (PART 4B): FADING AEON — “A WARRIOR’S TALE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 082019
 

 

(This is the second subpart of a fourth installment in DGR’s effort to catch up on reviews of 2019 releases he wants to recommend, with this 3-part fourth post devoted to melodic death metal. Today the subject is the debut full-length by the German band Fading Aeon, which was released on July 5th.)

At five songs and over forty minutes of material — with the Bandcamp download including an instrumental version of the title song if you really want to stretch — it was initially hard to place what exactly Fading Aeon’s A Warriors Tale was going to sound like. A Warrior’s Tale was released on the group’s Bandcamp in July, but became a victim of circumstance on my end and thus became a late-in-the-year discovery — one of the longer waits of any of these groups to become part of this review round up.

The three-piece could have been any number of things, with song lengths that stretched well into the nine-minute range, although their album art and logo suggested they probably weren’t a doom band. With a name like A Warrior’s Tale, my best guess would’ve been the sort of keyboard-and-guitar-interplay-heavy, folk-melodeath of a group like Wintersun. I seem to find one band every year that is really good that also really loves that particular slice of the melodeath scene and has absorbed heavy influence from it.

After a lot of listens to A Warrior’s Tale I can say that I was partly right, as Fading Aeon are an epic melodeath band, heavy on the keys and long song lengths — but not so reliant on speed as one might expect, instead favoring an approach that makes this trio sound massive, and with a pleasant surprise on the vocal front to boot. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PROFANE ORDER — “HEXED (DEFILING GOD’S CHILD)”

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Oct 082019
 

 

The channeling of fury and violence, boiling over into chaos, has been a strain of extreme metal for decades, reaching its apotheosis in sectors that combine “the cold and malefic grimness of black metal with the most bludgeoning strains of death metal and the blind terror of grindcore” (to quote from the press materials for the debut album that’s the source of the following premiere). At its most unhinged, these black/death abominations of sound become such willfully abrasive, brutally distorted assaults on the senses that sometimes they seem to have no objective other than winning an arms race for who can abuse listeners most sadistically.

Well, one person’s poison is another person’s meat. The musical rendition of large-scale violence, whether spawned by imaginings of biblical apocalypse or nuclear holocaust, or the mutilations of more conventional weaponry, can be thrilling. Whether it comes from the cathartic exorcism of our own violent impulses or the fight-or-flight adrenaline kick that comes from being in a war zone, even if your own life isn’t at risk, the excitement can be undeniable, despite (or because of) all the storming ugliness.

But when a band are capable of producing apocalyptic levels of violence AND doing that with actual riffs AND with melodies you can actually detect and remember (in a genre where “melody” is a dirty word), that makes them stand out. And that brings us to Montréal’s Profane Order. Continue reading »

AN NCS DOUBLE PREMIERE: LES CHANTS DU HASARD AND MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY

 Metal News, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 082019
 

 

Meaning no disrespect to all the other labels whose music we’ve become attached to over the years, it must nevertheless be said that the releases of I, Voidhanger Records are like no others. They are incredibly distinctive, often strangely so, and unpredictable in a way that makes each new announcement exciting. Part of this is the result of the richly idiosyncratic yet incisively perceptive tastes of the label’s owner, and part of it is undoubtedly the gravitation in his direction of musical creators who definitely march to the beats of their own drummers and whose creations often expand the mind in unexpected directions.

We are fortunate to present today two premieres that abundantly illustrate the truth of these observations. One comes from the new album by the French band Les Chants du Hasard, and the other from the new album by the Australian band Midnight Odyssey. Both of these are one-man projects whose releases continue to move from one precipice to the next, way up in rarefied air. Both will be released by I, Voidhanger on November 1st.

LES CHANTS DU HASARD: “CHANT VI – LA COURSE”

I became utterly enthralled by Livre Second before ever hearing a note. Simply reading the lyrical narratives of the nine Chants included in the album, each of which is something like a mythic short story or a “fairy tale”, captured me. The stories are mysterious, frightening, haunting, metaphorical, eloquent, and a bit like ghost hands that grasp and won’t let go. Continue reading »

SEMJAZA FOR NO CLEAN SINGING (PART I)

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2019  6 Responses »
Oct 082019
 

photo by Vamperess Imperium

 

Beginning with 2014, Semjaza, the main creative force behind the Greek black metal band Thy Darkened Shade, has shared with us his year-end lists of favorite metal and non-metal releases. However, rather than prepare year-end lists for 2018, Semjaza embarked on a much more extensive project that would not be limited to releases from that year, but would encompass recommended music across the significant span of his listening (a significant span both in years and in genres). Most of this project was completed many months ago, and therefore does not include many of this year’s releases — and the delays in beginning to post it have been our own, not his.

But now we begin, with this post, which includes an introduction and lists of favored split releases and full-length releases, and a special focus on French black metal. Further installments will appear in the coming weeks.

Having listened to metal music since I was a little kid, I have seen various great and not-so-great things happening within this very movement. Most people prefer to either keep silent or to completely ignore the bad things for their own reasons, which I do not really care to elaborate on. I have been amazed by what is overly promoted within the metal scene right now. It is scary how easy it is for some to either fall into the trap of stupid advertising campaigns or simply follow any trends and ignore real soulful music. I can get the following of trends by the rather very young listener, who is easily convinced, but not from the ones who know what this music really stands for, or those who have been listening to this kind of music for many years. 

Most of the big labels can happily promote their paid advertisement releases with great reviews, and many listeners just buy the trends made by the system. The main thing that really bothers me concerning this is the following: The advertised bands end up having the budget they need to tour and record, but the underground bands lack the money to record and properly mix and master their albums (there are obviously exceptions; there are exceptions to every rule).

Therefore, I decided it is just a fine day to stare once again inwards and post some of the releases I have listened to a lot over the past year (old and new, known and not so known) in order to spread an alternative mindset.  Thanks to NCS, this will reach more people than just a Facebook post, a medium that I use in order to spread great music created by others, as well as my own creations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOX IRAE — “KNIFE UNDER THROAT”

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Oct 072019
 

 

From the ashes of two storied French death metal bands, Catacomb and Affliction Gate, a hellish new formation has arisen under the name Nox Irae. The combined experience of these veteran members, as well as the range of their interests, is lividly on display in the band’s new EP, Here the Dead Live, which will be released by Transcending Obscurity Records on November 15th.

Transcending Obscurity has an extensive list of references as a jumping-off point for the music, dropping such names as Morgoth and Death, Demolition Hammer and Kreator, Asphyx and Bolt Thrower, among others. And it turns out to be a useful list once you listen to the music, including the song we’re premiering today. As “Knife Under Throat” proves, Nox Irae‘s song-writing talents are formidable, capable of creating music that’s bone-breaking in its heaviness, crazed in its savagery, ghoulish and sinister in its atmosphere, and highly contagious in the catchiness of its riffs. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ECTOPLASMA — “WHITE-EYED TRANCE: ENSNARED IN DEVILRY”

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Oct 072019
 

 

We have been clamoring about what a great year for death metal 2019 is turning out to be, with many strong releases already behind us and still more to come — and the forthcoming second album by the Greek band Ectoplasma is definitely one of those. Of course, death metal has morphed into many shapes over the decades since its earliest origins, some of them shiny and ornately filigreed, but Ectoplasma are devoutly dedicated to the old foul, fetid, and ferocious sounds, rooting their music in early ’90s death metal from both sides of the Atlantic, but also injecting it with a black magic devilry of their own conception.

Paranormal horror has played a significant role in the band’s inspirations, and that fixation persists in this new album, White-Eyed Trance, a concept record organized around lyrical themes threaded through the songs. And speaking of devilry, today we present another new song from the album, the seventh in the running order, named “White-Eyed Trance: Ensnared in Devilry“, in advance of the album’s CD released by Memento Mori on October 31st. Continue reading »

GATECREEPER: “DESERTED”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 072019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Arizona death metal band Gatecreeper, which has just been released by Relapse Records.)

I’ve been making my way through the Will Forte-led comedy/drama (dramedy?) series The Last Man On Earth recently, having missed out on it when it first aired.

This has very little to do with Gatecreeper, to be entirely honest, except to allow me to say that Deserted continues to prove that Death Metal is still “alive in Tucson”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SARTEGOS, AVSLUT, GOLDEN CORE, TOOTHGRINDER, ZARRAZA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 072019
 

 

I took the weekend off for a short road trip with my spouse. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry on Friday morning to get out of town I might have thought to mention that, so people wouldn’t get the wrong idea about why we didn’t post anything over the weekend. I didn’t listen to any new metal over the weekend either (my wife has no use for it), at least not until after we got home last night. And I didn’t have enough time to make much of a dent in my listening list after the return home — but enough time to find the new songs you’ll find below, all of which are IMHO great.

SARTEGOS

My introduction to this Galician black/death band came through their 2013 EP, As Fontes Do Negrume (“The Origin Of Darkness”), which demonstrated the band’s impressive ability to combine exotic melody and harrowing ferocity. The conviction only grew stronger three years later when they participated in a split release (Resvrrezionespiritval) with Ysengrin, which Semjaza of Thy Darkened Shade included in his 2016 year-end list for our site, with praise. Early last year we premiered their next release, a split with Balmog, which only strengthened the attraction to their music.

Now, at last, Sartegos has a debut album on the way: On November 29th Blood Harvest Records and I, Voidhanger Records will jointly release O Sangue Da Noite. Continue reading »

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