ALGEBRA: “PULSE?”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 102019
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by the Swiss band Algebra, which will be released on September 30 by Unspeakable Axe Records.)

Progressive thrash metal has always been a tricky sub-genre to tackle, mostly because a lot of the time it just ends up not being thrash anymore. It usually tends to become more like traditional heavy metal with some experimental stuff in it or it becomes death-metal-influenced and looks to bands like Death, Pestilence, etc., to derive its progressive tendencies. Finding progressive thrash metal that’s thrash, while being progressive, while also maintaining the adrenaline mainline intensity and riffing intricacies of the genre, is actually pretty difficult.

For the record, my definition of progressive is not the “power metal but long songs and instrumental virtuosity” brand like Dream Theater, etc.  I think many people would agree that progressivism in metal tends to manifest itself with… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RANK AND VILE — “KILLDOZER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 092019
 

 

The band is Rank and Vile (a nice play on words). The name of the song is “killdozer.” — intentionally lowercase, the period intentionally inserted at the end, just like all the song titles on their new album redistribution of flesh. (same with the album title). Regardless of punctuation choices, the song title is absolutely accurate. It is an audio killing machine, as heavy as a bulldozer, but capable of moving with the speed and agility of a big cat chasing prey on the savanna.

This death-grind unit from Portland, Oregon, only came together last year, but the newcomers aren’t tyros. And they already seem to have a very clear vision for their music, which pulls influence from the sounds of bands such as Entombed and Gatecreeper, Rotten Sound and Megrudergrind, and Black Breath. The results of their work turn out to be savagely mauling experiences, and big adrenaline triggers. Continue reading »

DAWN RAY’D: “BEHOLD SEDITION PLAINSONG”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 092019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Liverpool-based black metal trio Dawn Ray’d, which will be released on October 25 by Prosthetic Records.)

It’s a bold move for a band to wear their politics loudly and proudly on their sleeves these days.

Actually, scratch that… it’s always been risky for bands to speak openly about their political allegiance, be it left, right, or otherwise, despite Metal’s long history – from “War Pigs” to “Suffer the Children” to “Toxic Garbage Island” – of speaking out against militarism, corruption, and other societal ills.

After all, politics (along with religion) is one of the things that seems to bring out our most tribal instincts, often in the worst possible ways.

The risks for any band are, therefore, quite obvious. The more political you get, and the more polemical you become, the more you risk dividing and alienating your potential audience, and most artists, at some point in their careers, find a way to balance their musical ambitions with what they want to communicate so as to reach as many listeners as possible.

But, of course, where Dawn Ray’d are concerned, such compromise clearly isn’t an option. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BARBARIAN SWORDS — “[CENSORED]”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 092019
 

 

The album Worms by the Spanish band Barbarian Swords was a late-year discovery for us in 2016, made possible by a request from Satanath Records and Cimmerian Shade Recordings that we host a premiere of the album stream. Not knowing what awaited me, I explored the music before giving an answer — and was blown away. In an attempt to describe the music in the review that accompanied the premiere, I wrote:

“In its predominant forms, Barbarian Swords traffic in a twisted but very compelling hybrid of doom and black metal — nihilistic and barbaric, moldering and mesmerizing, and frequently unnerving. And there are massive headbang triggers lurking like landmines in the album, too.”

I put one track from the album, “Outcast Warlords”, on our list of 2016’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, and later we premiered the lyric video for another potent (and addictive) track from the album — “Pure Demonology“.

Since then these Spanish blasphemers have participated in a three-way split (Tetrarchia Ex Bestia), which was released in June of this year, but they’ve also cooked up a new eight-track release entitled “[Censored]” that will be presented on October 18th by Third I Rex. The name of the release isn’t really the word “Censored”. The name is… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOATBURNER — “VORTEX OF CHAOS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 092019
 

 

Unless Goatburner are clairvoyant they probably couldn’t have known, when this premiere was arranged, that their song “Vortex of Chaos” — which is about the obliterating power of an immense hurricane — would be released barely one week after the monstrous Hurricane Dorian absolutely destroyed portions of the Bahamas, leaving more than 70,000 people homeless and a death toll of 44 (at this writing) before moving on to ravage the Outer Banks of North Carolina and now far-eastern Canada.

On the other hand, their debut album Extreme Conditions thematically focuses on the extreme and unpredictable weather events that are increasingly plaguing the current world. If Hurricane Dorian had not followed the completion of the album, some other horrific extratropical or tropical cyclone undoubtedly would have. But this Finnish duo composed of Keijo Niinimaa (Rotten Sound, Morbid Evils, Age of Woe) and Jaakko Forsman (Ratface, Skulmagot) are aware of Dorian now, and Keijo provided this comment not long after that hurricane’s tragic destruction in the Bahamas: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HIDEOUS DIVINITY, CATTLE DECAPITATION, NILE, PEDOPHILE PRIESTS, HELLRUNE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 072019
 

 

I’m always reluctant to do what I’m doing in this post, i.e., just inserting videos and song streams without any commentary.  Trying to describe music I want to recommend, and to explain why I’m recommending it, is a continuing challenge, but I must admit it’s also fun for me (and cathartic to get my feelings about the music  off my chest). Unfortunately for me, if not for you, I don’t have time for that today. Still, I think there might be some value in the filtering/selection-process itself, and in alerting people to things they might have overlooked on their own.

Even though I’m keeping quiet, I hope you’ll feel free to share your own reactions in the Comments. And with that, here we go… Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: “ARCTIC SLEEP”

 Interviews, WAXING LYRICAL  No Responses »
Sep 072019
 

 

(For this week’s edition of his series on lyrics in metal Andy Synn reached out to Keith D., the main man behind the Wisconsin band Arctic Sleep, whose latest album Kindred Spirits was released in July.)

The new Arctic Sleep album, Kindred Spirits, is easily one of the most rewarding records of the year.

This isn’t just an opinion, it’s empirical fact, supported by research done by some of the world’s top scienticians. Cough…

Ok, so maybe it is just my opinion, but it’s still a fantastic album, full of rich textures and lush melodies and positively brimming with heartfelt emotion (and you can read more about it here).

Even better, you’ve now got the chance to learn even more about the band’s music courtesy of the following interview with main-man Keith D. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: DIKASTERION — “STAVELOT 1597 / ROME 897”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 062019
 

 

Building on the strength of their slaughtering 2018 debut demo, the Belgian black/death band Dikasterion have escaped Hell again, and brought much of Hell with them in a new two-track release coming our way via Amor Fati Productions on September 9th — next Monday. If you think those references to hellish power were exaggerations, just listen to Stavelot 1597 / Rome 897 (which we’re giving you the chance to do a bit further on in this post).

Only two songs long, this is the kind of pull-no-punches barbarity capable of leaving a listener mind-mangled but crackling with electricity and wishing it were longer. Make no mistake, it’s a cruel and ugly assault on the senses, not any kind of experience for the faint of heart. But as toxic, brutish, and maniacal as the music may be, these sulfurous, diabolical assaults get the pulse pounding with primal power. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WELLS VALLEY — “PLEROMA”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 062019
 

 

Music can cause us to move and shake, to throw our heads back in joy or hammer them like ecstatic pistons, caught up in the thrill of being alive. Music also has the capacity to fire the imagination, to cause our minds to spontaneously conceive unbidden images and experiences that never actually happened, to carry us away to places we’ve never visited and that may not actually exist, to create spells that may haunt us for reasons we might not be able to readily identify.

Both kinds of music — the fun kinds and the more profound and mysterious varieties — can stay with us, but the latter often seem to settle in more deeply and to make mental and emotional connections that are longer-lasting. It’s fair to say that the new Wells Valley track we’re presenting today is of that variety, an immersive and spellbinding experience that sends the mind’s eye off into realms of the imagination while also evoking powerful emotions that might not be anywhere near the surface of your feelings when the song begins.

Because “Pleroma” is that kind of experience, it’s entirely fitting that this Portuguese band has presented it through a transfixing video (directed by Guilherme Henriques) that is itself a flight of the imagination, a sequence of surreal visions that sometimes seem to lurk at the edge of reality, reminiscent of sights that sometimes seem familiar but are bent from the normal frames of reference, but sometimes seem utterly alien — and frightening. Continue reading »

MGŁA: “AGE OF EXCUSE”

 Album Reviews  43 Responses »
Sep 062019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Poland’s Mgła — and some personal reflections on controversies that have swirled about the band and how they have affected reactions to the music.)

Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing. We see what we want to see, we hear what we want to hear, we believe what we want to believe.

It’s possible to be aware of it, and to guard against it to an extent, but none of us are entirely immune to it.

It’s a very human thing after all, based on the availability of information, the heuristic shortcuts we use to analyse it, and an inescapable egotism which leads us to prioritise what we agree with/what agrees with us, over what runs contrary to our current worldview.

And nothing has crystallised this quite as much in recent times as the surprise release of the new Mgła album earlier this week. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries