AN NCS PREMIERE: SÜHNOPFER — “L’HOIRIE DE MES ANCESTRES”

 Metal News, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 142019
 

 

It might be a good idea for you to take many deep breaths before you begin listening to the song we’re streaming below — because for more than 10 minutes you’ll be breathless. Eye drops wouldn’t be a bad idea either, because the music is also capable of leaving a listener wide-eyed and unblinking for just as long.

The song in question is “L’Hoirie de mes Ancestres“, and it comes from the stunning new album by the French black metal band Sühnopfer, which is the sole creation of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ardraos. Entitled Hic Regnant Borbonii Manes, it will be released on May 10th by by Debemur Morti Productions, which describes the music (quite accurately) as an amalgamation of “regal Bourbon madness with quintessential black metal fury”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SCHATTENFALL, CRITICAL EXTRAVASATION, MALIGNANT ALTAR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 142019
 

 

Here’s Part 2 of today’s new-music round-up. Hope you dig what I’ve chosen.

SCHATTENFALL

I paid attention to (and wrote about) the 2017 debut album (Schatten in Schwarz) of the multinational band Schattenfall because their line-up included two former members (Vladimir Bauer and Yurii Kononov) of the band White Ward, whose brilliant debut album Futility Report I had the pleasure of premiering earlier that year. The third member at the time of that debut was vocalist/lyricist Ole Heidenblut. Now Schattenfall have finished a second album, Melancholie des Seins, on which Bauer and Kononov are joined by a new vocalist, Stefan Traunmüller (who also contributes additional solo guitar), whose work I’ve admired in Golden Dawn, Rauhnåcht, and Wallachia (among other groups). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): KAMPFAR, MORD’A’STIGMATA, APPALLING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 142019
 

 

I have more than enough new songs and videos to recommend to your eyes and ears to justify two installments of this Thursday round-up, and (barely) enough time to introduce them. So let’s get right to it:

KAMPFAR

It’s been a long four years since the arrival of Profan, long enough for the Norwegian black metal band Kampfar to be almost out of sight and out of mind, but not buried so deep in the memory that a new song wouldn’t provoke a sharp burst in the pulse at the mere mention of their name. After all, they’ve been plying their trade for almost a quarter-century so far, and filling that time with seven albums of substantial worth. And now an eighth one has been announced. Continue reading »

FALLUJAH: “UNDYING LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 132019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Fallujah, which will be released on March 15th by Nuclear Blast.)

Addressing the obvious elephant in the room up-front, what most people will immediately notice about this album is the higher-pitched, more emotive snarl of new vocalist Antonio Palermo, which straight-away presents quite a contrast to his predecessor’s guttural grumble.

But while I’m sure that Palermo’s sharper, more Hardcore-inflected bark (and, even more controversially, occasional use of clean vocals) will have certain reactionary-types screaming “METALCORE!!!” like poor Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (google it), once you get past the vocal switcheroo you’ll find that Undying Light isn’t a major departure for the group (despite the actual departure of long-time guitarist Brian James).

At the same time, however, that doesn’t mean it’s a simple carbon-copy of what’s gone before either. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AMONG VULTURES — “COFFIN OF THE UNIVERSE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 132019
 

 

After 20 years and more than 300 live performances operating under the name Attack Vertical, the Swiss quintet who are the subject of this premiere began 2019 by adopting a new name — Among Vultures — and readying the release of a new album which shares that name. It will hit the streets on March 29th via Tenacity Music, and today we’re presenting a video for the record’s hard-hitting opening track, “Coffin Of The Universe“.

Over those two decades of work, the music of Among Vultures has evolved, now manifesting itself as a ferocious amalgam of hardcore and death metal that’s bruising, battering, and guaranteed to put a high-voltage charge straight down your spine. Continue reading »

LAHMIA: “RESILIENCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 132019
 

 

(Here’s TheMadIsraeli‘s enthusiastic review of the new album by the Italian melodic death metal band Lahmia, which was released on January 18 of this year by.)

 

I’ve been intensely busy and my attention diverted elsewhere, which sunk my original review plans.  Expect multi-reviews in the future for catch-up purposes.  However, I want to highlight today’s subject in particular.

I think it’s pretty hard for any sane metalhead to hate Amon Amarth. They are one of metal’s most consistent darlings; their brand of Viking-themed melodic death metal has been a staple of the genre for quite some time. Although, with that said, I think most people who like Amon Amarth aren’t Amon Amarth FANS who like the band’s whole discography from beginning to end.

When most people think of the band, there are probably many who first remember their run of albums from 2002 to 2008 — that being Versus The World, Fate Of Norns, With Oden On Our Side, and Twilight Of The Thunder God.  A lot of the band’s live-set staples, the majority, come from these four albums, and it’s the sound we most often associate with them.

There’s definitely a collective sense that Amon Amarth have been running out of gas since then.  Surtur Rising, Deceiver Of The Gods, and Jomsviking, while all good, didn’t hit the inspired, firing-on-all cylinders feeling that the previously mentioned albums did.  I’m not putting too much blame on the band for this — Amon Amarth is TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, and fatigue of their own sound and diminishing returns are bound to set in. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TOTALITARIAN — “LIBERATORS”

 Premieres  11 Responses »
Mar 122019
 

 

Between about 1930 and 1945, in an area of Europe that included eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic republics, approximately 14 million innocent people were shot, gassed, or intentionally starved to death. As if in the most grotesque competition imaginable, Stalin and Hitler shared responsibility for the mass slaughter, and more than half of it occurred outside the Nazi gas chambers and death camps, often in more obscure circumstances, in villages and the countryside. Both Jews and non-Jews were shot to death by the millions, simply penned like animals and deprived of food, or otherwise forced into famine. The scale is unimaginable; in Belarus alone, one quarter of its population were killed as a result of the convergence of these two brutal, totalitarian regimes.

The details of these mass  exterminations were gathered together by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in a well-reviewed and award-winning 2010 book named Bloodlands – Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. To write it, he assembled an enormous mass of fresh research on Soviet and Nazi murder, much of it emerging from archives once sealed behind the Iron Curtain, and some of it his own, in order to produce, as one reviewer put it, “something like a final and definitive account” of these terrors. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PUTREVORE AND GRIM FATE

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 122019
 

 

The corroded iron gates of a cavernous stinking crypt have been wrenched open, releasing into our world a hideous spectacle of shambling ghouls and hungering horrors, revealing visions of suppurating decay and blood-lusting mayhem. Ancient avatars of death metal darkness have been given new life again, and this time we have Putrevore and Grim Fate to thank for a renewal of our odious pleasures.

The first of those names has been reverberating in the dank caverns of the underground for more than a decade, combining the talents of people whose fame is older still, while the second name is new but destined to spread quickly by word of mouth. They have joined forces in a new 7″ split release that Dawnbreed Records and Seed of Doom Records will discharge on March 15th, and it would be hard to think of a better gift on the Ides of March for addicts of monstrous death metal. You’ll discover that for yourselves right now, because we have a stream of both tracks below. Continue reading »

CEREMONY OF SILENCE: “OÚTIS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 122019
 

 

(Vonlughlio prepared this review of the new album by the Slovakian blackened death metal band Ceremony of Silence.)

It’s been quite a bit since my last small write-up and I was planning on something else, but I needed to write about Ceremony of Silence‘s debut album Oútis, to be released via Willowtip Records on April 5th.

The project is guitarist Vilozof and drummer Svjatogor – both already deeply-rooted in the Slovakian underground metal scene – who formed Ceremony of Silence in 2015. The duo spent countless hours immersed in freeflowing, improvised jams and writing sessions. As they continued, they developed the 7 chapters of this effort, which can be described as death metal with a dissonant/atmospheric feel that is evident, with blast beats that emerge rapidly out of nowhere and riffs that are in constant motion and very addictive. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GRYLLE, KALA, DREAMS OF THE DROWNED, DISPYT, THREE DEAD FINGERS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 112019
 

 

There might be one or two people out there who landed on the second part of yesterday’s SHADES OF BLACK column within the first 60 seconds after I posted it, before I realized I’d forgotten to delete links to the music of two more bands I had intended to include in that segment. I ran out of time yesterday before I could write about those other two releases, but I’ve decided to go ahead and do that now, on this Monday morning.

And, because most of you probably don’t live by black metal alone, or at all, I’ve added a couple of other things I’ve been meaning to recommend from other genres. But before we get to all that, I couldn’t resist beginning this round-up with something I discovered at the last minute. Perhaps you’ll understand my impulsiveness once you’ve heard it.

GRYLLE

Fans of medieval black metal (of which I’m one) have a lot to be thankful for this year, though we haven’t even reached springtime yet. February brought us Par le Sang Versé by the French band Véhémence, which I described in my review and premiere as “one of the most thoroughly entrancing and gloriously vibrant metal albums I’ve heard in years”, and in May Debemur Morti Productions will release an exceptional new album by Sühnopfer (if you pay attention to us this week, you might get to hear something from it). And in April the same label that released Par le Sang Versé (Antiq Records) will bring us a new album by Grylle. Continue reading »

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