SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): GARDSGHASTR, UNGOLIANTHA, GRIFFON, KRODA, VERWOED, VALARAUKAR

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Apr 212019
 

 

As you can see, the game plan for this Sunday is to throw more than one installment of this column at you. I’m sticking my neck out because I haven’t started writing Part 2, and will be racing to get it done before I run out of time. In my head, I actually have a line-up for a Part 3 because I’ve found so much black metal over the last week or two that I’d like to recommend, but the odds of getting that done are really intimidating.

For Part 1 I picked advance tracks from forthcoming albums, and one single that will surprise you. For Part 2 I picked some recent full releases.

GARDSGHASTR

We begin with music by a new group composed of known names — Swedish veteran Swartadaupuz of Bekëth Nexëhmü plus Chaos Moon members Alex Poole and Jack and Steven Blackburn, joined by vocalist Glömd. A song from their debut album named “Of Crimson Eyes” debuted in February, and the album’s title track — “Slit Throat Requiem” — surfaced more recently. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MAJESTIC DOWNFALL, FORLET SIRES, HYPERDONTIA, FATHER BEFOULED, GOD SYNDROME, NECKBEARD DEATHCAMP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 202019
 


Majestic Downfall – great photo by Luis Roa

 

I decided to begin this Saturday round-up with a rare news item (because it involves a band that’s a personal favorite) and then get into a bunch of new music. It’s not nearly enough new music to make up for the fact that I only managed one other round-up over the last three weeks, but it’s the best I can do for today. I siphoned off most of the black metal from my selections, and those will appear in the usual Sunday column, which is already shaping up to be a two-parter. Instead of Shades of Black, today’s picks could be called Shades of Death.

MAJESTIC DOWNFALL

Here’s the news item, which is a rarity because we’re really not set up to share the word about new tour announcements, since that would become a full-time job, and I’d rather spend the time writing about new music. But in this instance I made an exception, because it concerns Majestic Downfall, and in particular an excursion by that fine Mexican band into the provinces of The Great White North. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GRYLLE — “LES GRANDES COMPAGNIES”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Apr 192019
 

 

Just two days ago, in introducing another premiere, I remarked that 2019 was shaping up to be a banner year for medieval black metal. In the forefront of my mind when I wrote that was this extraordinary album by Grylle. It’s not the only example I had in mind, but it stands in front. And perhaps paradoxically, an album that has proven to be one of the best of any genre I’ve heard this year (or likely will hear), in the midst of so much metallic extremity, is one performed almost entirely with acoustic instruments — and very old ones at that.

Les Grandes Compagnies is not stingy in its sharing of marvels either. It presents 11 tracks and more than an hour of music. Becoming immersed in it is quite easy. Leaving it behind 65 minutes later is very difficult. In some ways it’s like a time-traveling journey many centuries into the past, but not exactly like that. Rather than a pathway into a long-gone world that once did exist, it’s perhaps more like being transported into a world of the imagination, an ingenious hybrid of the ancient and the modern that exists only there. Continue reading »

XAON: “SOLIPSIS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 192019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Swiss metal band Xaon, which was released on April 12th by Mighty Music.)

Somewhere along the way we’ve developed a bit of a reputation here at NCS as a site that primarily covers Black Metal (I suppose the fact that my last three reviews were for Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult, Skald In Veum, and Mephorash might have contributed to that a little).

So, despite the fact that I’m currently in Norway, the home of Black Metal, I decided it was about time to write about something of a less corpse-painted colour, in this case the new album from Swiss Symphonic Melodeath maestros Xaon. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PANZERFAUST — “THE DAY AFTER TRINITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 192019
 

 

The Toronto-based black metal band Panzerfaust are about to embark on a very ambitious project. With their fourth album, The Suns of Perdition I: War, Horrid War, they will begin a planned tetralogy of full-length releases devoted to some of history’s most awful events. This first chapter in that monumental effort, which will be released by Eisenwald on June 14th, takes as its subject matter many terrible occurrences of the past century, creating a synthesis that mirrors a vision of the future described by George Orwell as “a boot stamping on a human face forever”.

Today we bring you the first advance track from …War, Horrid War, a song of punishing physical power and brain-mangling intensity, yet one that proves to be as spellbinding as it is titanically ravaging. The band describe the inspiration for the song’s name, “The Day After Trinity“, in these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: POLYNOVE POLE — “ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 192019
 

 

This is a song dominated by two powerful voices, one male, one female. As you see and hear the lyrics in this video, you can interpret their interaction as a dramatic conversation that indeed happens on the edge of an abyss — one voice bitter, resigned, and hopeless, and the other offering earnest encouragement to go on. The hard-hearted among us may dismiss the encouragement as too earnest, and find the bitter resignation more familiar and realistic. But the music and the voices are so emotionally powerful that perhaps they will pierce even the hardest of hearts.

Obviously, that’s what happened to me, or you wouldn’t be seeing this premiere at our site. And it happened even though — or more accurately because — Marianna Laba‘s soprano voice is so clean and pure, which of course makes the song (in part) an exception to the “rule” in our site’s banner. It’s only an exception in part because that other voice is harsh and harrowing — and gargantuan in its gravelly tone. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: CHILDREN OF BODOM, SWALLOW THE SUN, WOLFHEART, SUMMONER’S CIRCLE — LIVE IN ATLANTA, APRIL 11, 2019

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 182019
 

 

(On April 11th our Atlanta-based contributor Tør returned to The Masquerade venue to take in Finnish-heavy performances by Children of Bodom, Swallow the Sun, Wolfheart, and local openers Summoner’s Circle. He sent us this report, along with a large batch of his own excellent photos from the show, most of which appear after the review.)

The traffic makes me want to ditch my car in the middle of I-75 and move to Europe. I get to The Masquerade customarily late but manage to catch a bit of the openers, Summoner’s Circle.

On their Facebook page the Knoxville outfit describe themselves as “a six-piece theatrical metal band that blends elements of doom, death, black and progressive metal into what they refer to as simply Epic Metal”. While genre-blending is not my cup of tea, I am pleasantly surprised by the solid display on stage. These guys are serious about what they do and the costumes and imagery match the grandiose sound they produce. Check out their first full-length, Tome, if you haven’t already done so. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEVOID OF THOUGHT — “COSMIC APOPTOSIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 182019
 

 

In October 2017 we premiered a demo named Astral Necrosis by the Italian band Devoid of Thought, whose name I thought would also describe the mental state of listeners exposed to the demo’s three tracks. The music was a whipsawing amalgam of death metal and thrash, with the kind of blazing instrumental performances and brain-spinning intricacy that might lead one to slap a “progressive” label on the ingredients as well — except the music seemed too maniacal and vicious for that word. It was insanely good, and also just insane.

Now Devoid of Thought are returning with a new EP, which proves to be just as severely destabilizing and perhaps even more ghoulishly fascinating than Astral Necrosis. Entitled Cosmic Apoptosis, it will be released on April 19th — tomorrow! — by Caligari Records, but we’ve got a full stream for you today. For those who’ve encountered  the earlier demo, you’ll have a decent idea of what’s coming. The following paragraphs are for everyone else — because it would just be cruel to expose newcomers to these three tracks without some kind of warning. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CEPHEIDE — “LUCIDE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 182019
 

 

Roughly 18 months ago I came across Saudade, the debut album of a French atmospheric black metal band who call themselves Cepheide. Though commenting about only the album’s first advance track here, I found that it was very easy to get caught up in the music’s wrenching passion, and to get carried away as it rocketed toward a glorious crescendo. Its atmosphere was a mix of depressiveness and delirium, an experience both mortifying and majestic, with a swirling, intense, symphonic melody that glimmered and soared, and rising choral voices mixed with scalding rasps.

The album as a whole proved to be just as gripping, and so it was exciting to learn that Cepheide would be participating in a new split release, especially because the other band on the split, Time Lurker, had also proved through their 2017 self-titled debut album to be such a formidable new force. We’ve already paid attention to one of Time Lurker‘s new tracks on the split, and today we get to present Cepheide‘s contribution, a thoroughly engrossing song called “Lucide“, in advance of the split’s release by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions on May 3rd. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HAUSTIÐ, M.S.D., PERMADEATH, PREMATURE BURIAL, VAGRANT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 182019
 

 

The last time I posted a round-up of new music (here) was 15 days ago. At the time I had 10 new songs I wanted to recommend, and no logical way to arrange them, given the diversity of the sounds, other than in alphabetical order by band name.  I got through five bands in the A-M range, with every intention of posting a second installment of five in the M-Z range by the next day. That didn’t happen, and I didn’t get it done by the end of that week, or the next week either, and now it’s Thursday of this week. My fucking day job has been killing me lately.

Of course, a ton more songs have been released in the last 15 days, but I’ve decided to stick with my original plan and finish that selection of 10 that I started more than two weeks ago, even though the music is no longer “hot off the presses”. I have made one change, because one of the songs I had chosen for the second group of five (by Misotheist) coincidentally wound up in eiterorm’s guest edition of SHADES OF BLACK last Sunday, so I made a substitution. Continue reading »

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