DEADSPACE: “THE GRAND DISILLUSIONMENT”

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Aug 162019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Australian black metal band Deadspace, which was just released today.)

It’s been both a pleasure and a privilege to observe the musical progression of Australian DSBM collective Deadspace since I first stumbled across their Gravity EP in 2016, watching with ever-increasing interest as the band shifted, slowly but surely, away from the goth-inflected anguish of their early days towards a much more aggressive, much more “pure”, Black Metal approach in recent years.

However, it seems like the group’s steady transition away from their gothic/depressive roots has caused some consternation in their fanbase, to the point where they took the unexpected step of releasing a lengthy statement alongside their new album explicitly stating that they’d outgrown or moved beyond the “DSBM” label of their youth, and that The Grand Disillusionment shouldn’t be considered or judged as such.

Which is a little ironic when you realise that there are moments on TGD where the group hearken back towards the DSBM side of things more than they have done in quite some time… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TRIPLEMURDER — “CRAWL”

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Aug 162019
 

 

The Ottawa band TripleMurder pride themselves on not being too beholden to any one genre of metal, but definitely devoted to putting big jolts of electricity through their followers, running them ragged, and leaving them black and blue as well. Integrating death metal, groove, and -core elements, along with a taste for accents of melody, they’ve completed a six-song debut EP named Pre-Meditated that will be released on September 20. Today we bring you the second single from the EP, which provides a good example of the band’s multi-faceted strategies.

The name of the song is “Crawl“, but it doesn’t crawl — far from it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COME BACK FROM THE DEAD — “JUGULAR I – HERETIC IMPALER”

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Aug 162019
 

 

Two years ago we had the sadistic pleasure of premiering a heavy dose of foul, festering death metal off the last EP (Caro Data Vermibus) by the Spanish band Come Back From the Dead. Now we have the opportunity to present another premiere by the same group. This one comes from their new album The Rise of the Blind Ones, which like the previous EP will be released by Transcending Obscurity Records.

This new song — “Jugular I – Heretic Impaler” — is the stuff of horror. It makes it very easy to imagine macabre abominations lurching through the dark, shrouded by the putrescent stench of rotting flesh. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TALES OF THE TOMB — “NINE ELEVEN”

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Aug 152019
 

 

“Every town has stories to caution or warn, every police officer has a seen a crime that keeps them awake at night, and every coroner has seen death in ways that the rest of us could never imagine. Murder, conspiracy, supernatural horror, and real-life terror are stains on the cutting room floor where Edmonton-based group Tales of The Tomb paints their canvas. Unified by the desire to have the grotesque power of 90’s era death and murder metal, Tales of The Tomb started as a thought that grew into an insatiable need to make extreme music.”

It seemed sensible to begin this introduction with the band’s own introduction to their genesis and inspirations. Originally formed in 2013 by guitarist/vocalist Corey Skerlak as a vehicle for carrying forward the kind of murder metal associated with Macabre, the band grew and reached the point of releasing their 2015 debut EP, Volume One: Morpras. Now the band have completed work on a second EP, Volume Two: Mendacium, which will be released on September 27th. As its title suggests, the EP concerns deception practiced in the context of destructive real-world events — “a collection of narratives surrounding government cover-ups, national lies and the heinous crimes committed amongst the shadows”.

One of those real-world events, and the ravaging warfare that followed it, are the subjects of the lyric video we’re premiering today for one of the songs on the new EP: “Nine Eleven“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WALLOWING — “PHOSGENE”

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Aug 152019
 

 

Wallowing’s Orwellian vision of the future, as rendered through their new album Planet Loss, is harrowing. Constructed as a politically charged narrative of a small rebellion against an oppressive ruling regime which results in the end of civilization, the album is a single 32-minute piece of music divided into six sub-tracks — and they are every bit as harrowing as this UK band’s apocalyptic tale.

The album will be released on September 13th by Sludgelord Records and Black Voodoo Records. References are made, like a musical GPS, to Indian, Primitive Man, and Slabdragger. Further locational guides to Wallowing’s place in the underground include references to blackened sludge, grindcore, and noise. Where all those coordinates lead is a nightmare wasteland rendered through sound, where the physical demolition of civilization’s proud edifices is still in progress, and where sanity has already become a casualty. Continue reading »

SHOKRAN: “ETHEREAL”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Aug 152019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the third album by the Russian band Shokran, which was released in February of this year.)

There are a couple of reasons I selected the third album from Russian quartet Shokran as my second review of the week.

Firstly, switching out the grimness and grime of Shadow Tentacles in favour of the polished, melodically-stylised sounds of Ethereal makes for some welcome contrast, both for me and (hopefully) for the reader, and forces me to switch up my writing a little in a way that that doesn’t just involve googling additional synonyms for “dark” and “brooding”.

Secondly, it’s been a while since I threw a major curveball at the site, and the amount of gleaming, hyper-emotive clean-sung melody scattered liberally across the length and breadth of this record certainly makes it a bit different in that regard! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LIGHTNING BOLT, BLACK MAGIC, CLIPPING, BATS, CHELSEA WOLFE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 152019
 

 

By last night I had accumulated 63 new songs or complete releases that I wanted to check out, almost all of which had surfaced over just the previous 48 hours. Ridiculous, but that’s the rate at which new music is arriving these days. It would be easier to keep up if my tastes weren’t so wide-ranging, but it would be tough even if I were solely focused on just one micro-genre.

Obviously, I didn’t listen to all 63 of the items on my list. I was more interested in some items than others, and then just kind of randomly skipped around until stumbling to bed, bewildered. It happened that some of what I decided to listen to wasn’t metal, or it was only metal in part. That doesn’t happen very often, because I try to stay focused on the genres that NCS focuses on. But curiosity got the better of me, and I eventually decided to group together some of those off-the-beaten-path selections for this post.

Some of this is really waaaay off our usual beaten paths, but don’t despair if you’d rather just stick with extreme metal. I have another grouping of stuff that’s more in our wheelhouse, though I probably won’t get that other round-up written until tomorrow.

LIGHTNING BOLT

Lightning Bolt have a truly fascinating history, and an equally fascinating artistic bent (if it’s a new name to you, check out what The Font of All Human Knowledge has to say about ’em. I know I’ve dabbled in their music in the past, and I’m not sure I can explain (even to myself) why I’ve only dabbled. I decided to dabble again after seeing a friend link to this first song on Facebook along with a story about how they played in a street near downtown Seattle when too many people showed up to fit into the tiny art space where the show was scheduled. The flock of people blocked streets in all directions, 10 cop cars showed up and just waited for the show to end… different times for sure. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GORILLA WIZARD: “MAPLE CRUNCH”

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Aug 142019
 

 

The outward trappings of the sludge/stoner band Gorilla Wizard from Long Island, New York, almost dare you not to take them seriously, perhaps most especially the white-bearded, wizard-capped gorilla costume in which guitarist Bertrum (the Gorilla Wizard himself) performs while his bandmates Mikal (Bang Boom), Ry (Slap Bap), and Gabrel (Howl) kick up a ruckus around him. And no doubt, they’re having a shitload of fun with those outward trappings, and with the music itself. But don’t be misled: Although the music definitely is a raucous kick in the head, it’s far from silly. The songcraft is excellent, the performances are razor-sharp, and when you hear the band’s debut album, Tales from the Cauldron, you’ll understand why this fearsome foursome chose a name like Gorilla Wizard.

Two songs from the record have surfaced so far, and today we’re bring you a third one in advance of the album’s August 23 release date. The name of this new one is “Maple Crunch“. It will crunch your bones and wreck your neck, and it proves to be as addictive as a sugar high. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SOPHIST — “BETROTHAL TO THE STONE: CONCEPTION OF MEPHISTO”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 142019
 

 

Edmonton-based musicians Davis Hay and Michael Sparks joined forces only a few months ago under the name Sophist with the aim of creating a hybrid of black metal and grind, drawing inspiration from the disparate antecedents of such bands as Napalm Death and Rotten Sound as well as Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Darkthrone, and Anaal Nathrakh. The first fruits of their collaboration is an EP called Betrothal To The Stone: Conception of Mephisto, with lyrical themes drawn from a text called “Hermaphrodite Child of the Sun and Moon”. The EP will be released on August 16th, but we have a full stream for you today.

The EP consists of three complete songs, as well as instrumental-only versions of those same three tracks. As presented in the YouTube stream below, the songs tend to flow from one to the next, creating a sense of being hurled further and further into a hellish occult realm where the listeners senses are under constant assault. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRUICKSHANK — “CRUICKSHANK”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 132019
 

 

The four men behind Cruickshank don’t advertise their resumes, though they’re definitely not newcomers to heavy music. They’re Canadian, but probably don’t dwell in Iqaluit, Nunavut, despite what their Bandcamp page says. They obviously don’t feel confined by genre boundaries in their music, nor by any commitment to orderly song structures. In fact, the tracks on their self-titled debut album are so riotously unchained that it’s hard to imagine how they were conceived and planned out, and almost equally hard to imagine how they were executed so immaculately.

As the album blasts its way through your skull like an unstoppable juggernaut, you can grasp elements of sludge, doom, hardcore, grind, noise rock, punk, and probably some other ingredients, if you’re interested in trying to locate the songs in a genre grid. But good luck trying to come up with a hyphenated genre descriptor that you could rattle off your tongue without getting your tongue twisted. Even just trying to meticulously follow the path of the songs would be a twisted exercise. It’s better to just abandon any temptation to dissect the songs or figure out what inspired them. Turn off the rational calculator in your head and just allow yourself to be bludgeoned and bamboozled. Continue reading »

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