A DGR REVIEW ROUND-UP (PART 4A): ARCHONS

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 072019
 


Archons

(DGR turned in a surprise 4th installment in his effort to catch up with reviews of 2019 releases after a personal hiatus. The first 3 installments are here, here, and here. However, our beleaguered editor (me) decided to cut this 4th installment into 3 parts, focusing on one album per day, beginning with this review of the comeback album by Archons.)

Hey, did you guys catch when the previous collection of these reviews was referred to as part three of three?

Ha. Oops.

In all seriousness this last piece is it. After this, I’m caught up, and for that some thanks are in order. Even though life derailed me hard for a moment and this review archive for the longest time held a title of ‘Review Archive Jan-Feb’, ever-expanding and at one point holding twenty-two releases that I had hoped to look at, I was finally able to get this done thanks in large part to the other writers on this site being understanding enough to pick up some of my slack, including reviewing releases that are pretty firmly in the ‘DGR wheelhouse’.

This collection absorbed releases throughout the year, and thanks to the rest of the crew for picking up on bigger releases that I would’ve wanted to talk about like Wormed or Hate, I was able to knuckle up and tackle these lesser-known bands and finally be done.

Just in time for stuff like In Mourning and Insomnium to hit…whoops. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): XUL OV KVLTEN — “ENTROPIC INCREASE FROM THE OMEGA AEON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 042019
 

 

We’re calling this a premiere, but that’s not strictly true. It’s more like a wake-up call to people who might have missed the album we’re streaming below, and an alert to both old and new fans that the record is being released today on CD for the first time by ATMF.

The album in question is Entropic Increase From The Omega Aeon, the second full-length by the formidable Chilean black metal band Xul ov Kvlten, which was first released as a digital download this past January. As one of the late-comers to the album, but now having become immersed in it, I am not a bit surprised that ATMF picked it up for a physical release. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PROFETUS

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 042019
 

 

(This time Comrade Aleks brings us a revealing interview of Anssi Mäkinen, guitarist/vocalist of the Finnish funeral doom band Profetus, whose latest album will be released by Avantgarde Music and Weird Truth Productions on October 11th.)

Finnish funeral doom metal is a kind of trademark. In all ways you may be sure that a band from Suomi will grant you a massive overwhelming experience of utter desolation and cosmic loneliness. Such is Profetus, who started in Tampere 13 years ago.

Through Coronation Of The Black Sun (2009), …To Open The Passages In Dusk (2012), and now The Sadness Of Time Passing, the band has raised its ghostly sonic monolith built of down-to-earth burial riffs, immense guttural growls, and majestic and noble melody in its modest keyboards parts.

The Sadness of Time Passing will be out on Avantgarde Music on the 11th of October, and as Anssi Mäkinen (guitars, vocals) is the only Profetus member left from the original lineup, we spoke with him of the band’s past, present, and a bit of its future. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH 2019: COGNIZANCE / PSOTY / TORPOR

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Oct 042019
 


Cognizance

 

(Andy Synn again turns his attention to albums released by bands from the UK, and this time has provided reviews of new releases by Cognizance, PSOTY, and Torpor.)

You may have noticed DGR’s sly little dig at me in Part 1 of his recent round-up series last week and, rest assured, there will be repercussions. Terrible, terrible repercussions.

That being said, it’s good that he’s catching a few things that slip through my net as, no matter how hard I try, there’s no way I can cover absolutely every album and artist coming out of the UK scene that’s worth writing about.

In today’s column you’ll find my thoughts on a highly-anticipated, and understandably hyped, helping of razor-sharp Tech-Death, some brilliantly melodic, emphatically emotive Post-Metal, and a grim and gritty slab of suffocating Sludge, each of which is well worth checking out if any of those genres is your particular cup of tea (or whatever your daytime beverage of choice is). Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 14) — CONCLUSION

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 042019
 

 

(This is the final installment by TheMadIsraeli of a series devoted to a retrospective chronological analysis of the discography of Slayer. Links to all preceding segments of the series are at the end of the writing.)

So here we are, the conclusion.

Ultimately, I gotta be honest, I still love this band.  Despite, in hindsight, the inconsistency of a catalogue I used to think was perfect, the attitude, the envelope-pushing nature of their early material, their contributions to riff-craft on the guitar front of metal, are all things I can’t let go of and can’t dismiss as anything other than extraordinary. They’ve been such an influence on extreme metal, a pervasive one, that I feel like almost all the bands I’ve loved and a lot of my favorite albums were influenced by them, more or less heavily. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CTHONICA — “III VI: …NOT AS THOSE WHO SERVED AND PREACHED IN OBEISANCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 032019
 

 

The name of the abominable two-headed Venezuelan black/death entity Cthonica is an acronym, in its longer form manifesting as Claiming the THrone Of Noxious Illuminative CAtharsis. The members took their first steps under the name Okkvlt, but evolved and twisted their creative impulses into more ravaging forms under the name Cthonica, soon to be revealed through their debut album Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction.

The album is composed of three main tracks divided into acts, which represent three aspects or steps for what the band call “Spiritual Putrefaction”, or “pneuma-morphosis into corruption”: “Act I: The Chalice” (Will: To drink from the cup of Sin), “Act II: The Lantern” (Light: To enlight the paths of Acherontic teachings…), and “Act III: The Verb” (To Dare: As the alchemical / magical principle, to point the sword high and spread the seeds of damnation). We’re told that the remaining tracks result from the continuation of the first ones, all in order to “serve as bringers of the leviathanic breath (and winds) of Typhon towards Tehom”.

What we present today is Act VI, which represents a continuation of Act III. Its name is “…Not As Those Who Served and Preached In Obeisance“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WOLF’S SOURCE — “Ремиссия духа (REMISSION OF SPIRIT)”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 032019
 

 

Behind every metal album there is a story. Most such stories are unremarkable, usually of little interest except to die-hard fans of the bands, and often providing little insight into the music beyond what you could gather from simply listening. On the other hand, the story of Волчий Источник (Wolf’s Source) and this Russian project’s lone album Ремиссия духа (originally released in 2007) is like no other. It’s a story worth telling before we get to the music of the album, which we’re streaming in full at the end of this article.

In relating this narrative we’re dependent on what we’ve been told through the label (Goatowarex) that is releasing the album on vinyl for the first time on October 6th, and this is how the story goes (qouting from the promotional material): Continue reading »

IN MOURNING: “GARDEN OF STORMS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 032019
 

 

(Accompanied by a full stream of the album, this is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by the Swedish band In Mourning, which will be released on October 4th by Agonia Records.)

I’m kind of in a strange place when it comes to In Mourning. As far as melodic death metal goes, they are one of the genre’s best exports and one of the best bands of the style in a modern era extremely lacking in such. However, I feel that with the band’s last record, Afterglow, they started to make a very deliberate departure from what defined them and revealed an interest in expanding their horizons. I loved Afterglow, but it became impossible not to notice the band engaging in a little more ’70s prog death, and adopting some black metal and more post-y elements into their sound. In Mourning aren’t what I first looked to them for any more, not that that’s at all a bad thing, but the new path they are treading feels like it’s a work in progress.

That isn’t to say the band’s new album Garden Of Storms isn’t good. It’s fantastic, and it’s a super step up from Afterglow in just about every way, but it also definitively signifies that the band are done with their take on the doom-driven melodic death metal style and want to be more of an amorphous progressive band with a death metal foundation. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 13) — “REPENTLESS”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Oct 032019
 

 

(In the penultimate installment of a series devoted to a retrospective chronological analysis of the discography of Slayer, today TheMadIsraeli addresses the band’s last album, 2015’s Repentless. Links to all preceding segments of the series are at the end of the writing.)

After the absolute disappointment of World Painted Blood, Slayer would undergo a massive tectonic shift upon the death of founding member, guitarist, and key song-writer Jeff Hanneman.

This was a tragedy to be sure. Hanneman was responsible for many of the band’s best songs and he was a half ‘n’ half of a song-writing duo with Kerry King.  There were obviously concerns among fans that any future material would be heavily impacted by his absence. A lot of people at the time claimed Slayer should just hang it up, with a solid enough catalogue to go out on, and despite my feelings on World Painted Blood I agreed at the time.

I think on some level though, they knew World Painted Blood was a bad move, because the band’s final album Repentless may be unapologetic in its core message as a record, but it is definite repentance for the album that came before it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE DROWNING — “HARROWED PATH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 022019
 

 

The Welsh death-doom band The Drowning have been active for more than 15 years, and in that time have released four albums and a pair of shorter releases, and the fifth full-length, The Radiant Dark, is now headed for a November 8 release by Transcending Obscurity Records. As a sign of what it holds in store we’re presenting today the premiere of the third track to surface so far, this one aptly named “Harrowed Path“.

This new song provides a great example of The Drowning‘s ability to meld emotionally dark melodies, shattering vocal intensity, and head-hammering aggression, channeling both grief and rage in powerful fashion. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries