DEVIN TOWNSEND: “EMPATH”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Mar 112019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of Devin Townsend‘s new album, which will be released on March 29th by InsideOut Music.)

As much as we like to think of ourselves as being a cut above the average consumer of “popular” music, the truth is that the Metal scene is just as vulnerable to the same trends and biases, the same prejudices and predispositions, as any other style of music.

One of the most obvious (and most egregious) is our collective tendency to buy into the pervasive “cult of personality” surrounding certain artists, and become unwilling/unable to offer or accept even the slightest criticism of their work, sometimes to the extent of responding to even the mildest suggestion of fault with the sort of overblown outrage that serves mainly to remind people that the term “fan” is derived from the word “fanatic”.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that there’s no requirement that if you like a band/artist that you have to like everything they do.

But, as long as it’s done well, with honesty and integrity, you should at least be able to respect it.

Which, coincidentally (or not), is exactly the position I find myself in with Empath. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: VAN GIMOT (AGOS, VIRUS OF KOCH)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Mar 112019
 

 

(More than two years have passed since Floridian NCS contributor KevinP last delivered to us an episode of his series of brief interviews, which he calls “Get To the Point“. But today he revives the series in a conversation with Greek musician/vocalist Van Gimot, the creative force behind both Virus of Koch and Agos, two entities whose music blends black and death metal, and other ingredients, in different ways.)

 

K:  So people might know you from Virus of Koch.  But the last few years you’ve worked on Agos almost exclusively.  Why?

V:  Regarding my music, I tend to go with the flow. I don’t force anything. I focused on Agos simply because it inspired me and let me channel my creativity and thoughts at this particular time. Agos and V. O. K. are two distinctive entities in my mind serving different needs of expression. Currently, I am working on V. O. K. material as I feel the time is right. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HORCRUX, AT DUSK

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Mar 102019
 

 

The first Part of today’s column focused on individual advance tracks from forthcoming albums. This second Part includes brief reviews of two complete albums. There’s a full stream of the first one included below, and half of the songs from the second one. Both records display the more depressive colors of the black metal spectrum, though they’re more similar in mood than in sound — and both are gripping achievements.

HORCRUX

Released on March 8th, Loss and Grief is the second album by the Dutch black metal band Horcrux, but my own first exposure to their music. Actually, I should say “his music”, because it appears to be a one-person project.

As the album’s title suggests, the music is suffused with shades of gloom, which range from throes of painful turmoil to a kind of dismal, glowering hopelessness, from the tension of despair to the moaning exhalations of bereavement. as well as moments that betray a soulful yearning. Horcrux creates those moods through music that cross-breeds a range of styles — black metal of course, but also doom, sludge, and atmospheric post-metal. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): DEIPHAGO, SXUPERION, CALYX, VOËMMR

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Mar 102019
 

 

I didn’t lose an hour of sleep last night. I just feel less moronic because I woke up at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning instead of 3:30 a.m. Thank you Daylight Savings Time.

Of course, I’ll still feel like shit when it hits me around mid-afternoon that I only got 5 1/2 hours of sleep on one of the few nights of the week when I could have gotten 8 or 9. On the other hand, being awake so early does mean that I have extra time for this Sunday column, enough extra time that I can write a two-parter before having to deal with the rest of my life. Hopefully, my moronic misery becomes your savage pleasure.

DEIPHAGO

Deiphago describe their music as “Experimental Hyper-speed Satanic Bestial Metal” — and every word of that is true. As I’ve written before, their music doesn’t sound like anything else you’re likely to find in the realms of black metal or black/death. It viciously shoves us out of our musical comfort zones; it’s likely to leave most listeners bewildered and bedazzled (or at least severely unbalanced). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, MARTYRDOD, GOMORRAH, CIRITH GORGOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 092019
 

 

I had a weird 24 hours that began Thursday night and ended last night. Not weird enough to be entertaining if described in detail (though it did involve me never making it home until Friday morning), but weird enough that it left me frantically scrambling just to write the two premieres I’d committed to do yesterday, and no time for anything else NCS-related.

Saturday morning arrived with no ideas about what I might do for a Saturday post (and no Waxing Lyrical from Mr. Synn), but it turned out that my NCS comrades had left various exclamatory pieces of news at our on-line meeting ground, and another friend had enthusiastically fired off a link in my direction, and all of that proved quite sufficient for this round-up.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

It would go too far to say that we are primed to reflexively shower every Fleshgod Apocalypse release with praise. We have pointed out a few mis-steps by the band here and there. But it’s also true that we get pretty excited whenever something new surfaces (years and years ago there was a running joke at the site that as soon as I finally received the great mountains of gold that Nigerian princes were offering me via e-mail, I would bribe FA to become the NCS house band and play at my home whenever I wanted, which might prove to be every other day). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASHEN HORDE — “PARITY LOST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 082019
 

 

The last time we featured the music of Ashen Horde in these pages was almost exactly two years ago when we premiered the band’s two-track EP, The Alchemist, which was intended to pave the way to the band’s third album. Now, that album has been completed, with the title of Fallen Cathedrals — and today we’re hosting another Ashen Horde premiere, a breathtaking track off that new record named “Parity Lost“.

For those who might be encountering Ashen Horde for the first time, it began as the solo project of Los Angeles-based musician Trevor Portz. Working alone, he released a handful of EPs and two albums since 2013. Beginning with The Alchemist, he joined forces with vocalist Stevie Boiser, known for his work with such tech-death heavyweights as Vale of Pnath, Inferi, and Equipoise, and both are in harness again for Fallen Cathedrals. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBSCURING VEIL — “DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE KNIFE I USED?”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Mar 082019
 

 

Consider these names, and try to imagine what might happen if they joined forces in a musical enterprise devoted to channeling their own creative madness and simultaneously assaulting the sanity of their listeners:

Matron Thorn (Ævangelist, Præternatura, Benighted In Sodom, Devil Worshipper, ex-Bethlehem)
H.V. Lyngdal (Wormlust, Guðveiki, Martröð)
Mories (Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak Of Altering, De Magia Veterum, Aderlating)
Jarle Byberg (Urgehal, ex-Craft, ex-Shining)
Kabukimono

This isn’t an idle thought exercise. These individuals have in fact collaborated under the name Obscuring Veil, and their first album, Fleshvoid To Naught, will be released on March 22nd by I, Voidhanger Records. We are fiendishly pleased to present a stream of a track that asks the question “Do You Want To See The Knife I Used?“ Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHALICE OF SUFFERING — “LOST ETERNALLY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 072019
 

 

Much like the vistas of fog-shrouded trees and snow-cloaked mountains you’ll see in the video we’re presenting for the title track to the new Chalice of Suffering album, the music is itself cold, bleak, and yet wondrous, even in the near-abyssal depths of its loneliness and despair. Like those same visions, “Lost Eternally” is hypnotic and haunting, yet possessed of a craggy, mountainous weight, and its emotional resonance of misery is also staggering.

The seven-track album that shares the song’s name will be released by Transcending Obscurity Records on April 19th, and it makes for a supremely powerful follow-up to this Minnesota funeral doom band’s 2016 debut album, For You I Die. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EARTH, HELEVORN, QUALLUS, INTER ARMA, THE MODERN AGE SLAVERY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 072019
 

 

Last night, as I made my way through a batch of new songs that I noticed yesterday (almost all of which actually surfaced just yesterday), a pattern began forming in my mind, a bit disjointed at first, but then everything fell together as I began rearranging the pieces (one of the pieces that fell into place came my way via NCS contributor Grant Skelton, who also furnished some words to accompany it). The result is what you now have before you.

In an effort to present this musical pattern in a way that has the pieces falling into place for you as you go along, and because I’m short on time, I changed the usual format of this round-up. You’ll see what I mean (but if you like the usual format, don’t worry, the change isn’t permanent). Continue reading »

VENOM PRISON: “SAMSARA”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Mar 062019
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Venom Prison, which will be released on March 15th by Prosthetic Records.)

So this weekend just gone I had the pleasure of seeing Bryan Adams playing to a packed out arena full of people, performing tracks from across his fourteen(!)-album back catalogue with all the verve and vitality of a man who has built his career, and his life, around a simple love of music.

On the surface, of course, the former’s uplifting pop-rock anthems have very little in common with the hideously abrasive assault of Venom Prison, whose second album is arguably an even more aggressive, no-holds-barred barrage of Death Metal fury than their first, but I find it interesting all the same to see how the basic building blocks of both artists’ music – guitars, bass, drums, vocals – are basically the same, yet the execution and end result are so strikingly different.

One thing that the two do have in common, however, is that their music undeniably comes straight from the heart (pun intended)… although in the case of Samsara it does so in a much more bloody and brutal way than anything which the (in)famous groover from Vancouver has ever released! Continue reading »

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