BEST OF BRITISH: ENSLAVEMENT / GARGANJUA / GODTHRYMM

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Feb 142020
 

 

(Here’s another one of Andy Synn‘s tripartite review columns devoted to recent releases by bands from the Emerald Isles.)

I’m sure I had some sort of cool, edgy, non sequitur of an intro in mind when I first started thinking about this column… but burn my eyes if I can remember what it was.

So let’s just get right down to it, shall we?

Here are three fine-fettered examples of “the Best of British” that I think you’ll all enjoy, two of which are actually only just being released today! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUINAS — “FAUCES DE SATURNO”

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Feb 132020
 

 

“Grinding Death Metal, sometimes dismal, sometimes punkish, sometimes sludgy, sometimes with a fuck off attitude….” That is how Spikerot Records describes the music on Ikonoklasta, the new album by the Spanish death/grind duo Ruinas, while also drawing comparisons to such bands as Rotten Sound, Incantation, Wolfpack, and John Carpenter.

While you’re trying to wrap your mind around that combination of references, we’ll tell you that Ruinas is the union of Rober, a member of the deceased Death/Grind legends Machetazo, and Angel, both of them hailing from the remote Spanish region of Galicia. We’ll also tell you that the band have a fascination with worms, spiders, rats and skulls, and a bleak view of humanity’s future. As you’ll discover from the song we’re premiering today from Ikonoklasta, their music is also far, far away from paint-by-numbers death/grind, and delivers dramatic emotional power (while also kicking a listener’s blood stream into a torrent). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LIVE BURIAL — “THE CRYPT OF SLUMBERING MADNESS”

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Feb 132020
 

 

The UK death metal band Live Burial (whose five-man line-up shares members with Horrified, Plague Rider, and Rat Faced Bastard) demonstrated a lot of versatility over the course of their two early short releases in 2013 and 2014, and their 2016 debut album Forced Back To Life, prompting the people at Metal-Archives to characterize their music as “Death/Doom Metal (early)” and “Death/Thrash Metal (later)”. But after those people hear the band’s new album they will be left scratching their heads and wondering how to update that genre description. Maybe they’ll just sigh and write “Death Metal”, and leave it at that. It definitely won’t do to sum them up as “Death/Thrash” any longer.

The band’s new album, Unending Futility, displays a multitude of interests, most of them rooted in the early days of such bands as Asphyx, Morgoth, Death, Cancer, and Bolt Thrower (with doses of rampant grind-inspired savagery in the mix). But rather than a patch-work quilt of styles, Live Burial‘s songwriting produces dynamic songs that are cohesive, integrating their influences with remarkable assurance and gruesome style.

The first advance track revealed from the album in advance of its April 3rd release by Transcending Obscurity Records was “Condemned To the Boats“, which proved to be a roiling and rapacious gore-splattering assault that descended into gloomy depths of oppressive horror. The song we’re presenting today, on the other hand, is even darker and more horrifying, while also revealing an even more elaborate sense of dynamics in the (very impressive) songwriting. Continue reading »

ANNIHILATOR: “BALLISTIC, SADISTIC”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 132020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the 17th (!) album by the Canadian thrash band Annihilator, which was released in late January by Silver Lining Music.)

Annihilator are one of the most fascinating of the super-old-guard thrash bands. Jeff Waters‘ capacity for diversity and his willingness to experiment (and risk having egg all over his face) has resulted in a VERY deep discography that, while definitely inconsistent, is consistently compelling in its ambition.

This is one of my favorite thrash bands, despite that very issue of consistency, and that’s because when Annihilator are having a good run, the run is the best of the more deliberately technical thrash metal of bands from this era. Continue reading »

BLASPHEMER: “THE SIXTH HOUR”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Feb 132020
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the latest album by Italy’s Blasphemer.)

This time around I have the opportunity to do a small write-up about the Italian band Blasphemer’s third album, The Sixth Hour, which was released on January 24th via Candlelight Records.

This project was given birth in 1998 by Simone Brigo (Guitars) and Paolo Maniezzo (vocalist up to 2017) with the intention to express their artistic vision, and their thoughts and views of organized religion, hate, and death, in a Brutal Death Metal setting.

It was not until 2002 that they released their debut demo, Life Kills, and subsequently they did some splits in 2003 and 2006, but it was when they released their debut album On the Inexistence of God that I found out about them. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ENSNARED — “INIMICUS GENERIS HUMANI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  9 Responses »
Feb 122020
 

 

To try to sum up the music of Ensnared‘s new album Inimicus Generis Humani as “progressive death metal” or “avant-garde death metal” would probably send the wrong signals. It might make people underestimate how vicious, how emotionally disturbing, and how mentally mutilating the music often is. But it’s definitely something very different from the kinds of death metal you come across on the usual beaten paths. Perhaps “interdimensional death metal” would be closer to the mark for music of such predatory spirit and such evil alien allure.

Inimicus Generis Humani is this Swedish band’s frightful and fascinating second album, following 2017’s excellent Dysangelium. The same two labels that released that first record, Invictus Productions and Dark Descent Records, will be releasing this new one on February 14th. Not long to wait, to be sure, but you won’t have to wait a moment longer to listen to the album, because we’re bringing the full stream to you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ALL MY SINS — “DALEKO AD JUGA”

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Feb 122020
 

 

The Serbian duo All My Sins devote themselves to the creation of atmospheric black metal as a journey on the path of southern Slavic mysticism. Following their 2018 debut album Pra sila – Vukov totem and a 2017 EP (Zov iz Magle) that we premiered and reviewed here  — both of which are well worth your time if you haven’t yet discovered them — the band will soon be releasing a new EP named Plamen i Led (Flame and Ice) through the partnership of Casus Belli Musica and Beverina.

The EP consists of three songs, two of which are the band’s interpretation of songs originally released by Luna (Yugoslavia) and Old Wainds (Russia), while the third is a re-shaped version of a song from All My Sins‘ second demo in 2004. Along with some further details about the EP, what we’re presenting today is the premiere stream of the Old Wainds cover, and an accompanying video. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HEAVEN SHALL BURN, BLACK ROYAL, REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER, SKAM, KALLOMÄKI

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 122020
 

 

One week has passed since I posted the last of these round-ups, and dozens of new songs have emerged since then that I’d happily throw your way, in addition to the many dozens I haven’t foisted upon you from preceding weeks. However, it turns out that I had overlooked new tracks from some of my favorite bands, discovering those only two days ago. I can’t resist including them here, along with a few newer discoveries.

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

We seem to have fallen off the radar screen of Century Media, because we haven’t received a single press release about the new album by Heaven Shall Burn, whose many previous releases we’ve covered with religious fervor. Even worse, none of my NCS compatriots breathed a word to me about the fact that three songs from the new album have debuted for public consumption. I had to find out about them yesterday via a YouTube side-bar. What is the world coming to? Well, I know it’s going to shit, I just didn’t know it was this shitty. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SALTAS — “ASTRAL FUNERAL MARCH”

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Feb 112020
 

 

We had some favorable things to say about Death•Spirit•Continuum, the 2019 compilation of demos by Saltas that first brought this formidable Swedish duo to our attention. We also remarked about how powerfully it created a deepening, and almost suffocating, atmosphere of disease, decay, and desolation, while managing to achieve hypnotic effects despite how emotionally unsettling and unnerving the music often was.

We have been eagerly anticipating something further from Saltas, and now we have it — a debut album named Mors Salis – Opus I that will be released on March 15th by Nuclear War Now! Productions. Created by the same two members who first appeared through the pair of demos on that compilation — guitarist N.R. of Runemagick and The Funeral Orchestra, among others, and drummer C.J., known for his work in Irkallian Oracle — the album is an arcane death ritual, immersing the listener in an experience that draws upon death and doom metal but goes far beyond familiar conventions into other-dimensional realms.

The first preview track from the album, “Dimensional Seismic Waves“, was a profoundly eerie and head-spinning piece of bizarre sonic alchemy — intricate in its composition, twisted in its path, and blood-freezing in its effects. And now we have a second track to present: “Astral Funeral March“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CRYPT DAGGER — “THE GOD FUKK YOU”

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Feb 112020
 

 

It didn’t take long for Germany’s Crypt Dagger to rip their way into the consciousness of certain segments of the underground (the crevices inhabited by denizens who like their music blasphemous, belligerent, and brazen). They detonated a two-song demo last year and then soon followed that with the four-track EP Tales of Torment, which one publicist has aptly characterized as “filth-banging, black-as-pitch SPEED METAL with a heavy debt to punk, as well as such surprising influences as Devo, The Mummies, and early B-52s“.

Wasting no time in building on the nasty impressions made by that EP, Crypt Dagger have brewed up a new eight-song inferno entitled From Below, which will be released by Dying Victims Productions on March 27th. It includes those four tracks from Tales of Torment plus three brand new onslaughts, and a cover of Dead Moon‘s “5440 or Fight”, adding up to 24 minutes of mayhem.

Today we’re premiering a lyric video for one of the new songs, the one that indelicately opens the new release: “The God Fukk You“. Continue reading »

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