SEEN AND HEARD: BATUSHKA, KOLOSSUS, MORDBRAND, KALMANKANTAJA, DARK PLAGUE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 202019
 

 

Wow, 16 days since I posted the last of these new-music round-ups. And that one came 10 days after the one before it. Not a good track record, but my job has been a jealous mistress lately, or more like a starving wolverine hungry for my flesh. It’s unlikely things will improve in the near future, but for different reasons.

In two days, for the 6th year in a row, I’m flying to Baltimore with a bunch of Seattle friends to take in Maryland Deathfest. My NCS comrades Andy Synn and DGR will be there, too, and I doubt they’ll be spending their free time banging out content for NCS either. And then the week after that I’ll be spending a shitload of time helping to put on the third edition of the NCS-sponsored Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. My day job probably won’t leave me alone over the next two weeks either.

So, it won’t surprise me if another 16 days pass between today’s round-up and the next one. Or maybe I’ll throw together a round-up that just consists of one new song. Or maybe two, if I skip showers and breakfasts. But today I have five, because I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (HGD EDITION): WALLFAHRER, FERRITERIUM, SATURNUS TERRORISM, JUBAL, SARASTUS, NEIGE ET NOIRCEUR, MESARTHIM

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
May 192019
 

 

(NCS reader, commenter, and frequent source of musical recommendations, HGD, has graciously stepped in to prepare this week’s SHADES OF BLACK column, as he has done before, given that our regular columnist (that would be me) is again unable to do so because of interference from the job that pays the bills around here.)

With Islander being swarmed with work over the last few weeks, I felt the need to step up and do my part to relieve his burden, if only a little. I’m pleased to present today’s Shades of Black column and hope all our regular and not so regular readers find something here that warms their blackened hearts. — HGD Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: MESHUGGAH AND THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER (LIVE IN ATLANTA, MAY 6, 2019)

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
May 172019
 

 

(Our Atlanta-Based contributor Tør attended the performance of Meshuggah and The Black Dahlia Murder on May 6th at Buckhead Theater, and provided us with these impressions and many of his photos of the performances, most of which follow the text below.)

It is a rather peculiar scene: a bunch of metal fans lined up on the sidewalk of one the trendiest parts of the city waiting for Meshuggah and The Black Dahlia Murder to perform. The Buckhead Theater is a wonderful venue for all kinds of live music and I am glad I can finally catch a show there for the first time after six years of living in Atlanta. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ODYSSEY — “HIVE MIND”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 172019
 

 

(How long has it been since Professor D. Grover the XIIIth, he of The Number of the Blog, graced our pages with his presence? I could look it up, but how depressing would that be? Better to simply welcome back our old friend, who provides this introduction to an excellent premiere.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. It takes something special to break me out of me semi-retirement as it pertains to writing, and for the two or three of you who remember my older works, you might recall my love of Odyssey, the instrumental prog-metal trio from Spokane. Guitarist Jerrick Crites, bassist Jordan Hilker, and drummer Lukas Hilker have been going for over ten years now, despite remaining a mostly regional act, but one of the miracles of the internet is that even a smaller local band can reach a wide audience around the world.

I bring this up because, if the title of this article wasn’t already enough of an indicator, Odyssey have a new song, ‘Hive Mind’, to premiere from the forthcoming new album The Swarm. I have a full review of that coming in about a week, so I’ll save my thoughts on how ‘Hive Mind’ fits into the overall flow of the album, but I can still offer my perspective on the song itself. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INTOTHECRYPT — “SI MAS VER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 172019
 

 

Old adages aren’t wrong just because they’re old and you’ve heard them over and over again. Take this one for example (attributed to Will Rogers): You never get a second chance to make a first impression. You get one chance, so you’d better make it count.

Intothecrypt’s first chance came when they released the first single from their hour-long debut album, Vakor, about a month ago. And man, did they make a strong impression with “Leti, Voy Nash!“. On the other hand, it wasn’t shocking that the song was so good, given that the Intothecrypt trio were all members of the Russian cult band Scald, whose lone 1996 album Will of Gods Is a Great Power is still spoken of with reverence in doom circles.

Today we’re premiering another song from Vakor in advance of its June 21 release by Ordo MCM that only deepens the strong impression that the band have already made. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INERT — “VERMIN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 172019
 

 

You’re about to witness one of those lyric videos (less common than we might hope for) that provides enjoyment for the eyes as well as the ears. Like many such videos, it’s based upon the album art, and in this case the cover artist Enric Sant has provided some great material to work with, but Scott Ruud did his usual masterful job and turned that wonderfully realized art into a film that grips the eyes, as the vividly rendered words flash by.

Of course, as good as the video is, it is mainly a well-crafted stage-set, and what really counts is what the performers give us. Here, the performers are the Spanish band Inert, whose members are split between Stockholm and Barcelona, and the music is the title track to their debut album, Vermin.

Despite the band’s name, the new album represents change — Inert have expanded from the original duo to a quartet, and the style of the music has shifted as well, and the results are powerful, and exciting, as you will soon discover. Continue reading »

INTER ARMA: “SULPHUR ENGLISH”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 162019
 

 

(This is Evan Clark‘s review of the new album by Virginia’s Inter Arma, which was released by Relapse Records on April 12th.)

There are few pleasures like that of rediscovering a beloved band through a new release. In 2016 I discovered Inter Arma through their then-new album Paradise Gallows and I was quickly swayed and enamored with their unique take on blackened metal. I am remiss to say that I did not spend much time digging into their back catalog, but that may have to change. With Sulphur English, the band’s fourth full-length, the Virginian quintet return to bludgeon listeners with another sample of dour, unhinged, and apocalyptic metal. Precision, beauty, and the juxtaposition of those two traits with sheer destruction were the defining qualities of that earlier record. On Sulphur English, the band have taken those qualities to new levels, and have left a trail of misery in their wake. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LUX NIGRUM — “BURNING THE ETERNAL RETURN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
May 162019
 

 

It’s fair to say that most of our premieres, even for genuinely underground bands who are seeking neither fame nor fortune, are arranged by PR agents and labels — but certainly not all. Our mission is only to spread the word about metal that makes a strong and positive impression, music that moves us and that we think might move you, regardless of how we learn about it. Here is an example of that, which came our way via a message from the band itself, and which we then sought permission to premiere.

The band is Lux Nigrum (“black light”), which is the work of Chilean solo artist Azerate, aided by session drummers. On this new EP, Burning the Eternal Return, the drums were performed (with extraordinary skill) by Holycaust, the man behind the Chlean black/thrash band Morbid Holocaust. Conceptually, the EP is about “the destruction of the cosmic order imposed by false gods through the sacrifice of the Ouroboros (when you can recognize it’s representation as a tyrannical form of eternal emptiness and absurd repression) putting an end to the cycle of life and death”, and thus it concerns “rejecting the life given (not denying it) and dissolving the ego that binds us in an earthly way, to accept the return to the Primordial Chaos”. Continue reading »

A TRIO OF REVIEWS: ADVENT SORROW / IRON FLESH / WARFORGED

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 162019
 

 

I was chatting with DGR recently (yes, we do in fact keep in touch outside of the site) and we both agreed that we’ve now reached that point of the year (and it comes every year) where our list of potential/possible reviews has become so massive and unwieldy that we’re just going to have to cut our losses, accept that some of the stuff we’d dearly love to write about isn’t going to get covered, and focus instead on doing our best for those artists/albums which we do get a chance to write about.

So, in that spirit, here are three new albums, one from an old favourite, one from a current favourite, and one from a potential new favourite, all of whom are well worth checking out if you haven’t done so already. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE — ANTAGONY’S “KIP AND MITCH” — AND A REVIEW OF “ASHES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 152019
 

 

It’s not uncommon for bands and labels to re-release older records. It’s less common, but still not unheard-of, for bands to re-record older songs in a way that burnishes their sound or updates them in other ways. Sometimes these things work, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes die-hard fans will grab up re-releases and re-recordings for the sake of having a complete collection, or because they’re so die-hard that they’ll reflexively seize on anything their idols might do, even if the music sounds like a relic of a lost age. For more discerning and less slavish listeners, whether such projects are worth the time (and money) depends on how well the music has held up over the passing years.

The Bay Area band Antagony, who carved their place in the history books of metal over the decade from 1999 to 2009, have embarked on just such a revival project. Older, wiser, and (it must be said) more skilled as performers, the original line-up has come back together again after a decade spent in other projects since Antagony’s disbanding. On their new album Ashes, they’ve re-recorded a selection of tracks that all date back to demos and EPs released from 1998-2000, plus one new song that shares the title of the album. Having listened to the album (which will be released on May 24th), the verdict for this writer isn’t a close call: This is one of those revival projects that is an extravagant success. Continue reading »

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