UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: DÖ / HELA / PÉNITENCE ONIRIQUE

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Dec 122019
 


DÖ

 

(Before the year wraps up, Andy Synn is continuing to help spread the word about 2019 albums to which we haven’t devoted sufficient attention — with three more given the spotlight in this post.)

Depending on what time, or what day, you’re reading this, there’s a chance I’ll either be onstage, setting up, or in transit, as this week we’re playing a short run of shows supporting Hour of Penance and Dāmim.

That’s not an attempt to brag, by the way, even though it is very cool, just an explanation as to why this will probably be the last thing you read from me this week, and why I’ll probably be even slower than usual at responding to any comments or questions.

What I’m going to leave you with is another triptych of meaty metallic morsels for you to sink your teeth into, including the psychedelic Cosmic Doom of DÖ, the gloomy glamour of Hela, and the blackened brilliance of Pénitence Onirique. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KAWIR — “TYDEUS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 122019
 

 

It seems that every time I write about Kawir, over a span of many years, I feel compelled to introduce them anew, because although they’ve been around since the early ’90s and were as important to the character of Greek black metal as bands such as Rotting Christ, Varathron, and Necromantia, I worry that they still don’t get the high level of recognition they deserve. And despite their longevity, Kawir are one of those rare bands for whom long years haven’t diminished the blaze of their creative fires.

I was a huge fan of their last album (reviewed and premiered here), 2017’s Εξιλασμός (Exilasmos), and now Kawir are following that wonderful record with a new album named Adrasteia, which is set for release on January 10, 2020, by Iron Bonehead Productions. As usual, Kawir have drawn upon Greek mythology for their inspirations and lyrical themes, and they’ve also enlisted some notable guests — Macabre Omen’s Alexandros on all clean vocals, Norwegian vocalist Lindy-Fay Hella on the song “Colchis,” and Melechesh’s Ashmedi performing a guitar solo on “Danaides.”

We’ve previously commented (in glowing terms) about the album’s first track, “Lemniades“, and today it’s our good fortune to present a second one — “Tydeus” — named for a mythic hero, a prince of Argos by marriage into the fanily of King Adrastos, and one of the “Seven Against Thebes”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DAWN OF SOLACE, TURIA, TOMBS, AINSOPH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 122019
 

 

It’s been another of those weeks when the rest of life has rudely intruded on my NCS time, and so I haven’t been keeping up very well with new songs and videos. Haven’t even had time to add to my list of things to check out based on what has popped up in the various sources I use. Still, I did pay attention to the following four new songs, and the attention was rewarded.

Be forewarned: If you come to NCS expecting us to rigidly adhere to the site’s title, today’s collection includes a couple of exceptions — two of four.

DAWN OF SOLACE

Fourteen years is a very long time between albums. And in the case of Dawn of Solace, there was no reason to expect a follow-up to The Darkness (released in 2006), because in 2013 the band’s alter ego Tuomas Saukkonen announced the interment of all of his previous bands and projects, and the decision to replace them all with Wolfheart.

But now there will be a second Dawn of Solace album, the title of which is Waves. It’s set for release on January 24th by the new label Noble Demon (who will also be releasing the debut album of Night Crowned, for which we hosted a song premiere last week). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2019: ROLLING STONE’S LIST OF THE 10 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2019

 LISTMANIA 2019  9 Responses »
Dec 122019
 

 

Here’s another entry in the part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy where we re-post lists of metal from “big platform” web sites and print zines — the kind of places that get a lot more eyeballs on them than festering little metal-only hovels like ours.

Rolling Stone magazine should need no introduction, so I’m not going to provide one. Not long ago they published their list of The 50 Best Albums of 2019. The sub-headline for the article reads as follows:  “From ‘Lover’ to ‘Cuz I Love You,’ ‘Death Race to Love,’ and beyond, here are the records that defined the year”. The list didn’t exactly define the year for metal. In fact, I didn’t spot even one metal album on that list. Not one.

However, more recently Rolling Stone published a separate list of The 10 Best Metal Albums of 2019 (presented by Mercedes-Benz, because of course that’s the brand preferred by most metal bands when they’re throwing around their big piles of cash). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEAD WOMAN’S DITCH — “HRAEFN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 112019
 

 

Time dims memories. Two-and-a-half years is not an eon, but long enough that I managed to lose track of where the name Dead Woman’s Ditch came from. It was that long ago that we premiered a song from this UK band’s debut album, Seo Mere Saetan, subsequently released in August 2017 by Third I Rex. When I re-read that earlier post, the explanation chilled my skin all over again. To repeat: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SOLOTHUS

 Interviews  1 Response »
Dec 112019
 


Solothus 2019 – Photo by Jami Kallioväli

 

(Today we present a new interview conducted by Comrade Aleks, and this time he has talked with Kari Kankaanpää, vocalist of the Finnish band Solothus, who have a new album coming our way in 2020 via 20 Buck Spin.)

Usually I try not to bother bands with questions about the origins of their names, and use Google to find the answers. It was a hard task to dig out what Solothus means, so their vocalist Kari Kankaanpää has explained it to me: “In ancient Finnish folklore there is this creature called “solothus” which comes in the darkest winter nights to bring diseases to households. Only way to satisfy the spirit is a blood sacrifice.” Nice story for a start!

The band itself has performed macabre yet quite epic death doom metal since 2017. They weren’t that fast –their debut Summoned From The Void was released in 2013, about six years after they started — and you could skip it indeed, but no one could ignore Solothus’ 2016 sophomore work No King Reigns Eternal, a healthy example of the band’s development towards thicker and more thoughtful sound. The gents finished their third album a few weeks ago, so let’s try to find out from Kari more details about Solothus’ career. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SLAVE ONE — “LIGHTLESS PERSPECTIVES”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 102019
 

 

The old year is fast rushing to a close, and the new one will be upon us before we know it. 2020 will be given an explosive start thanks to Dolorem Record‘s January 24 release of a new album by the French death-dealers in Slave One. This new full-length, which adds to a discography that already includes a pair of well-received EPs and the band’s impressive 2016 debut album (Disclosed Dioptric Principles), is entitled Omega Disciples, and today we present an album track named “Lightless Perspectives“.

References to such bands as Cynic, Pestilence, and Gorod may help prepare you for the experience of this music, but the song’s obliterating brutality and its mind-exploding instrumental mania are so riveting that it’s unlikely you’ll be capable of thinking about anything else but becoming rapidly enslaved to Slave One. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ARKONA — “AGE OF CAPRICORN”

 Premieres  9 Responses »
Dec 102019
 

 

Three years ago we had the privilege of premiering a complete stream of Lunaris, the sixth album by the long-running Polish black metal band Arkona. Today we’re fortunate to host the premiere of Arkona‘s seventh album, Age of Capricorn, in a career that’s now more than a quarter-century long. If this were to become a tradition, we would be quite happy, because Arkona have once again demonstrated, in astonishing fashion, that the fires which set them ablaze so long ago have not diminished in the least, but seem to be reaching new heights of extravagance

The band’s particular formulation of black metal is by now well-established, and their devotion to it is unswerving. Their music, as manifested so powerfully in this new record, set for release on December 13th by Debemur Morti Productions, disdains the mundane and the commonplace. Delivered with dominating supremacy, it combines unchecked ferocity, emotionally powerful melody, and an atmosphere of terrible, otherworldly grandeur and shattering bleakness. It seems to embrace death and to manifest visions of what lies beyond the pathetic scrabbling of daily existence. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLOODTRUTH — “INNER RESURRECTION”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 092019
 

 

In August of last year, little more than one month before the release of the new album by Bloodtruth (entitled Martyrium), we had the good fortune to premiere a scorcher of a track from the new record — which we introduced in this way:

“As a general rule, generalizing is fraught with risk. For every sweeping statement, someone will come up with a hundred exceptions. Yet there’s more than a kernel of truth in the observation that Italian death metal tends to live in the fast lane. It often seems like the Autobahn of death metal, in which bands with adrenaline for blood race so fast and furiously that the wheels leave the ground, trailing flames. Bloodtruth is a prime example of this phenomenon — and the explosive extravagance of their highly accelerated attack is indeed phenomenal. Witness this new song we’re bringing you today through a lyric video.”

And now here we are, more than a year onward from the release of Martyrium by Unique Leader Records, and we again find ourselves in the fortunate position of hosting the premiere of a new Bloodtruth video. This one, handsomely crafted by filmmaker Guglielmo Sergio, is for a song from Martyrium named “Inner Resurrection“. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: CARONTE / IAPETUS / NAGA

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 092019
 

Caronte

 

(Andy Synn prepared this collection of reviews, covering three excellent 2019 albums to which we haven’t previously devoted sufficient attention.)

Despite promising to take some time off after last week’s orgy of lists here I am, back again, with more bands/albums for you to check out.

My plan, as it stands right now, is to spend the next week or two, if/when I can, catching up with a few bands who either missed out on last week’s year-end round-up, or who made the lists but haven’t received a full write-up here as of yet.

The reviews themselves may be a little shorter than usual, simply due to time constraints on my end, but hopefully they’ll prove just as insightful as ever. Cough…

Anyway, today we’ve got some groovesome Satanic Doom, some progressively inclined Melodeath, and some nasty Blackened Sludge, so there should be something for (almost) everyone to discover. Continue reading »

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