CHELSEA WOLFE: “THE BIRTH OF VIOLENCE”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Sep 182019
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by Chelsea Wolfe, which is out now on the Sargent House label.)

Metal is a sound. Heavy is a feeling. There are plenty of bands that on paper are metal, but when played are not heavy. There are some entire genres of metal that might be suited for the Friday night D&D game or drinking mead with your mates, but are not heavy. Then there are artists who are not metal, but given their sense of darkness, despair, or pure sonic gravity, are heavier than a great number of metal bands. Artists like Swans, Diamanda Galas, and The Birthday Party come to mind. Chelsea Wolfe is also one of those.

Her Burzum cover brought her to the attention of metal fans early in her career before she caught the ear of the indie rock crowd. I have obviously covered her here before, since I tend to prefer sonic heaviness and melancholic heaviness over metallic heaviness. This album falls more under melancholic heaviness and is less sonically heavy than her past three albums. Continue reading »

SAMMATH: “ACROSS THE RHINE IS ONLY DEATH”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 182019
 

 

Over the last 30 years many metal albums have taken inspiration from the two World Wars, and have used episodes from those terrible conflicts to form lyrical themes, but few records have so breathtakingly channeled the unchained ferocity, the horrifying decimation, the mind-shattering fear, and the oppressive bleakness of total war as Sammath’s new album, Across the Rhine Is Only Death.

As the title suggests, and as the band explain, this new release (Sammath‘s sixth studio album in a career that now spans 25 years) is “a true tale of death and destruction”, conceptually focused on the final months of World War II when Germany desperately tried to hold the Rhine as its western border. Far from a celebration of war, it represents an effort — and a very successful one — to summon the horrific annihilation that humanity is capable of inflicting on itself. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 2) — “SHOW NO MERCY”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Sep 182019
 

 

(This is the second installment in an extensive series of posts by TheMadIsraeli devoted to a retrospective analysis of the discography of Slayer. With luck, we’ll manage to post the remaining installments on a daily basis until it’s completed.)

The thing about these early proto-thrash albums is, frankly, that a lot of them kind of sound the same. Obviously, this isn’t a fault of the musicians, as this was a developing style at the time and a lot of people fail to remember that these bands all came up in the same area and no doubt fed off each other creatively.

For a proto-thrash record, however, Slayer’s Show No Mercy remains distinctive even for it’s time. While Metallica had a simplistic, straight-forward approach and Megadeth rejoiced in excessive technicality, Slayer knew how to write songs, and this record makes that fact more obvious than any other when placed in the context of when it came out. It’s brimming with energy, its mix is incredibly good for its era, and some of the song-writing ideas here were ahead of their time. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANCIENT MOON — “BENEDICTUS DIABOLICA, GLORIA PATRI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Sep 172019
 

 

Two tracks. One of them nearly 17 1/2 minutes long, the other one just over 20 minutes, each of them denominated as a Part of a single work. That’s the new album by the black metal band Ancient Moon, Benedictus diabolica, Gloria Patri, which will be released by Iron Bonehead Productions on September 20th. Two very long pieces composed and performed by anonymous artists, locations unknown, but apparently crossing continents.

Music of such daunting length can be… daunting to listeners, and to people such as myself who feel compelled to wrestle with words as a means of communicating sound. But don’t be daunted, or deterred from listening. Patience is obviously required, but in this case it will be richly rewarded. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 1)

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
Sep 172019
 

 

(This is the first part of an extensive series of posts by TheMadIsraeli devoted to a retrospective analysis of the discography of Slayer. With luck, we’ll manage to post each installment on a daily basis until it’s completed.)

I fucking love Slayer. The blasphemous flesh flayers are no doubt legendary in metal’s history and its evolution, for good reason. The speed, sheer technicality, outright viciousness, and the new wave of dark tonality they brought was absolutely, existentially crucial in the birth of what we now know as extreme metal.

However, there’s always been a lot of conjecture around this band. Lots of fluff about legacy, how they influenced metal, etc., but no one (that I’ve seen) has applied a hard critical eye and evaluated this band’s entire catalogue of albums as a work of art. Not as a piece of history, not as an influence, not as an example of innovation, but as an assessment of how Slayer have performed as musicians across their body of  work over time. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): KRATER, RAME, TYHJÄ, MAESKYYRN

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Sep 162019
 

 

As promised in Part 1 of this week’s somewhat delayed edition of this column, the music I’ve selected for Part 2 consists of recordings by bands who are new discoveries for me, for which I’ll credit two regular sources of new discoveries. But before we get to the music, I have an exciting announcement to share, which occurred just today.

KRATER

I didn’t jump into Krater’s creations until their third album, 2016’s Urere, but that instantly made me a fan, so much so that I felt compelled to share today’s announcement of their new album even though I don’t yet have any song streams to present. The opportunity to put Misanthropic-Art‘s creepy creation for the album’s cover at the top of our page was an added inducement. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI (AND JESU) — “HITMEN” (AND A REVIEW OF “BURIED MEMORIES”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 162019
 

 

Following hot on the heels of their 2018 album Continuum, the English instrumental post-rock band Sons of Alpha Centauri (SOAC) have created a second part to the journey which began there, and have done so in a stunning collaboration with industrial metal icon Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu…) and ambient gloom metal maestro James Plotkin (Khanate, Jodis, etc.). The results of these creative unions are relentlessly fascinating, amalgamating a wide range of stylistic ingredients in a way that’s both compulsively head-moving and equally mind-bending. The music has genuinely primal power, yet also transports listeners into an alien cosmos and seemingly spirits us away into haunting realms that we enter at our peril.

This new album, Buried Memories includes two 10-minute monoliths of eclectic ambient progressive rock by SOAC — “Hitmen” and “Warhero“. “Hitmen” was mixed by Broadrick, and the album further includes his interpetive remixes of the track, one in his guise as Jesu and the second as the eponymous JK Flesh. James Plotkin created the mix for the second long SOAC track, “Warhero“, and then the album further includes a third, shorter SOAC track (“Remembrance“) mixed by Plotkin, as well as his remix of “SS Montgomery“, a single from the band’s landmark self-titled debut album.

What we’re presenting today is the premiere of the Jesu remix of “Hitmen“, as well as an impressionistic review of Buried Memories as a whole, in advance of its release on October 13th. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): THE DEATHTRIP, DYSANGELIUM, SHRINE OF INSANABILIS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Sep 162019
 

 

I was in Utah over the weekend for my job and didn’t have a lot of free time. I did have enough time to do some listening and make these selections, but not enough to finish this column and post it in its usual place on Sunday before I had to go to the airport for the trip back to Seattle.

As you can see, there will be a second Part later today. For this first Part I’ve chosen songs that mark the return of  bands whose previous work we’ve praised and promoted. The second Part includes a number of new discoveries.

THE DEATHTRIP

My tumble into the music of The Deathtrip began in July 2016 when Neill Jameson included these words about the band’s 2014 debut album Deep Drone Master in an NCS post about black metal:

“The Deathtrip is an Aldrahn project (who you should know from Dødheimsgard amongst others). Two demos that were primitive and degenerate as hell were enough to keep my interest, but the realization of the building blocks they represented which came together on this release is startling and welcome. Aldrahn has always had one of the greatest voices in black metal and it has felt like far too long since it’s been heard. Hopefully this is a project that will continue and grow.” Continue reading »

WHITE WARD: “LOVE EXCHANGE FAILURE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 162019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Ukrainian band White Ward, which will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on September 20.)

To say that White Ward are the band Ulver might be today if they hadn’t totally abandoned the Black Metal aesthetic would, probably, be an over-simplification.

Both bands are, after all, distinct entities in their own right, and to imply that the former are simply a more metallic variant of the latter would be to do them a major disservice.

And, yet, there’s more than a hint of Perdition City to the Ukranian quintet’s new album, whose unusual mix of biting riffs, moody jazz inflections and neo-noirish vibes purposefully eschews the more “traditional” aspects of Black Metal – the nature worship, the rustic spirituality – in favour of a sound that’s distinctly urban in both tone and texture, all neon and glass and cold concrete.

But whereas Perdition City was billed as “music to an interior film”, this one is much more physical and grounded. It’s the soundtrack to the world outside your window, a world of digital prophets and ephemeral profits, social media sirens and vicarious virtual violence.

A world where what we put in no longer equals what we get out. Where what we give no longer balances what we take. A world on the brink of total Love Exchange Failure. Continue reading »

VOICE OF RUIN: “ACHERON”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 132019
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by the Swiss band Voice of Ruin, which is set for release on September 27th by Tenacity Music.)

Voice Of Ruin is a band that I get A LOT of promo and PR-related material about in my NCS inbox, and have since the band came about in 2014.  I’ve, like, SORT of listened to these guys?  But have never given them much of a chance because I’ve been confused by the references to melodic death metal, black metal, thrash metal, and metalcore, all of which have been attached to their name.

However, after receiving a promo for the band’s upcoming record Acheron, I decided why the fuck not, I’m going to sit down and really take in an album from these guys for the first time. Continue reading »

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