SHOW REVIEW: CANNABIS CORPSE + WITHERED – BIRMINGHAM, 22/01/20

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 242020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the performances by Cannabis Corpse, Withered, and Violated Flesh in Birmingham, England, on January 22, 2020, with video highlights.)

One of my resolutions for this year has been to go to more gigs. In fact I’ve already got several booked in for February and March, and another one to attend next week.

Sadly, however, the twin constraints of money and time mean I can’t go to every single show I’d like to, which is why I was forced to miss the Darkest Hour/Fallujah show in Manchester this week.

Thankfully, however, I’d already made firm plans to hit the Birmingham date of the Cannabis Corpse/Withered tour, which definitely helped ease the pain somewhat, especially since this would be my first time seeing Withered since way back in 2005! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PRIMEVAL MASS — “BURNING SORCERY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 242020
 

 

I’ve been following the activities of the Greek solo project Primeval Mass since having my eyes opened wide by Karmazid‘s cover art for the band’s third album, To Empyrean Thrones, in 2016. After hearing only one song I described the music there as “a treasure chest of riffs, one jewel after another”: ” When the music accelerates into a white-hot fury, it’s a mainline injection of pure adrenaline, but its’s just as gripping when it courses like shimmering streamers of lights. The inflamed vocals — a combination of demonic barking and head-back howls — are a perfect match to the molten, cyclonic surging of the music.”

In a subsequent review accompanying our premiere of a full stream of that album I summed up its atmosphere as “one of chaos made manifest in sound”, yet observed that “within these thrashing maelstroms lurk tantalizing melodies, booming grooves, white-hot solos, and well-timed changes of pace”, as well as surprising diversions and digressions that made the album fascinating and also highly infectious.

Now, Primeval Mass is returning with a fourth album, Nine Altars (with equally stunning cover art by Martin from LGN Art), that’s set for release on February 21st by Katoptron IX Records, and today we get the chance to share a track from it, fittingly named “Burning Sorcery“. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “CYCLE OF SUFFERING”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jan 242020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Sylosis, which will be released on February 7th by Nuclear Blast.)

Sylosis are one of Britain’s all-time great metal exports, and in my mind are undeniably one of the most important metal bands of the 2000’s, the 2010’s, and now. Nevertheless, these guys seem to get a lot of what I see as undue shit from a lot of people. They are often maligned for being boring (whatever that means) and for not doing anything essentially original (not essentially true), and somehow are accused of writing uninteresting riffs despite Josh Middleton, Sylosis’ founder and composer, being one of the post-2000‘s greatest riff writers. He blends an interesting approach to thrash metal and the heyday of pedal-point-riff-driven melodic death metal with the emotive, bruising nature of early metalcore, and further combines that with a post-y sense of ambience and atmosphere that sounds like no one else.

I guess for me, Sylosis has been metal at its most emotionally honest. It’s powerful, melancholy, angry, and arresting, and since the band’s debut, Conclusion Of An Age. I’ve just been unable to stop listening. They combine the technical aspects and the speed of styles of metal dear to me while also being provocatively emotive, which is a hard line to straddle and make it work. I am a fan, to say the least, with a view of their past catalogue as flawless, a band who’ve never written a record that includes a single throwaway song and who’ve always tried to evolve and refine their sound, never staying in quite the same place. They are modern song-writers still attracted to the past, a sort of approach to metal that I admittedly will eat up like candy if the passion is there. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 14): VACIVUS, DEATHSWARM, SNĚŤ

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  1 Response »
Jan 232020
 

 

Yesterday’s Part of this list was pretty blackened. Today I decided to become enshrouded by death (metal). The first band is now up to their third album, but the other two made their debut releases last year (though one of those has a veteran line-up whose members are attached to a much more well-known band, who themselves released a new album in 2019 that may also make an appearance before I finish this list).

VACIVUS

As in the case of yesterday’s list, I’m beginning with a band whose discography was the subject of a SYNN REPORT last fall (here). That band is the UK group Vacivus, whose work Andy recommended to fans of Incantation, Teitanblood, and Sulphur Aeon. But he mentioned some other names as reference points as well. He wrote: Continue reading »

THY CATAFALQUE: “NAIV”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 232020
 

 

(Our old friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to NCS with this review of the new album by one of our favorite bands, Thy Catafalque, which will be released by Season of Mist on January 24th.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. I am here today because we have been blessed once again with a new Thy Catafalque album, a wonderfully common occurrence in the last few years (with new albums being released every year-and-a-half to two years). For those unfamiliar with my love affair with the work of Tamás Kátai, I first discovered Thy Catafalque in the olden days of The Number Of The Blog thanks to an old contributor, Tr00 Nate (if you’re out there somewhere, yes, I’m still giving you the credit you deserve). The album Róka Hasa Rádió was an eye-opener for me, providing a portal through which I could immerse myself in something utterly distinctive and unlike anything I had ever heard.

Since then, Thy Catafalque’s catalog has reached nine full-length albums (plus the Cor Cordium demo), and each album is a masterwork in varied songcraft. I lack any real grasp of music theory, and so I’d imagine that there is someone out there more learned than I who could probably explain it, but there is something about Kátai’s music that makes it immediately recognizable as his work, regardless of the song’s composition. Given how much variety there is in your average Thy Catafalque song, much less an entire album, this musical identity is simply staggering to me. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: MENTAL CASKET — “DEMO 2020”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 232020
 

 

Mental Casket first crawled forth from some stinking grave in Warsaw, Poland, in 2018, inspired by the early works of Chuck Schuldiner and other fore-runners of Floridian death metal, with an affinity for the likes of Autopsy and Pestilence as well, plus newer bands like Gruesome. Last year they released their debut demo, and today their second one is making its grotesque appearance. We’re fiendishly happy to help spread the word through this premiere of its three tracks.

Mental Casket proudly wear their influences on their ragged and rotting sleeves, but while their chosen formulations of death metal may be quite familiar, they’re so good at composing and executing their sonic monstrosities that it’s still a thrill to hear what they do. Sometimes you don’t need to break any molds in order to put a charge into a listener’s brain stem, and Mental Casket definitely do that. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: POSTVORTA — “DECIDUA TRAUMA CATHARSIS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 232020
 

 

The video we’re premiering today for a song by the Italian post-metal/doom band Postvorta has a hazy, dreamlike appearance. Glimpses of a gauzy youthful form appear in a dirty and degraded dwelling — along with ominous black-clad figures whose countenances are also masked in black. The effect is haunted and frightening, and the mounting tension is palpable… but the music has a lot to do with that as well.

Eventually, the music becomes orders of magnitude more crushing and harrowing — just as the child in the video leads his mother up the stairs, both of them dressed in black as well, perhaps in mourning, to the area where we know those threatening figures lurk in the corners and loom in narrow hallways. The music pounds and seethes, torquing the tension, and the scalding vocals enhance the feelings of fear and a mood of imminent violence. Continue reading »

SLAVE ONE: “OMEGA DISCIPLES”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 232020
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the new album by the French progressive technical death metal band Slave One, which will be released by Dolorem Records on January 24th.)

It’s been a while since I have done a small review, and this time around I’m taking the time to write about the band Slave One and their sophomore effort Omega Disciples, to be released via Dolorem Records. To be honest, I was not aware of this French band’s existence until I heard a single from this album, and was hooked. So, I decided to check out their previous work.

There, this Death Metal outfit incorporate various elements within their song structures, displaying both brutal and tech elements as well as melodic inputs in some of the sections that create a dark atmosphere that is quite appealing. But when I heard the the promo of the new record I was blown away with the musicianship on display within the 8 chapters of this current offering.  The continuous growth from their first EP to now is evident, and that is something I always look for in a band. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THOREN — “EGLADHRIM”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 222020
 

 

Hold onto your heads. You might want to use both hands, and possibly tether it to your torso with bungee cords too — because otherwise the song we’re about to present could spin it clean off and spiral it up into the stratosphere like one of these things, except moving about 10 times faster.

“Egladhrim” has no vocals, and once you hear it the reason is obvious: A normal human voice couldn’t possibly keep up with the rocketing pace of the music, nor contort vowels or syllables in a way that would match the blinding exuberance and mercurial morphing of the music. It’s difficult enough to imagine that human beings are performing the instruments — easier to imagine the sudden appearance overhead of an alien hive swarm furiously constructing a devilishly intricate device that, when ready, will burn a hole straight through the planet.

But we’re assured that the music is indeed the creation of humans, despite all outward evidence, and they’ve chosen the name Thoren — a name that will surely be familiar to many of you as a result of their first two albums, Brennenburg (2016) and Gwarth I (2018). Their latest full-length, which is home to this track we’re premiering today, is Gwarth II, and it will be released by Drylands Records on February 7th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MEDIUM — “SKULLCOMET SORCERY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 222020
 

 

It’s early days yet, but if you’re keeping track of the best metal song names of 2020, “Skullcomet Sorcery” absolutely must go on the list. And in addition to being a fantastically evocative name, it turns out to fit the music like a finely tailored suit.

This song, which we’re delighted to present today, comes from the self-titled debut album by the Argentinian band Medium, which will be released on March 6th by Transcending Obscurity Records. That album presents an electrifying amalgam of grindcore, crust, punk, and death metal that’s capable of leaving a listener battered and bruised, but does more than deliver physical assaults with palpable fury — as “Skullcomet Sorcery” ably demonstrates. Continue reading »

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