AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CÉNOTAPHE — “EMPYRÉE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  7 Responses »
Feb 142019
 

 

When we encounter new music, it is the quality of the compositions and performances that always comes first, and remains paramount, but when a new release has been conceived and crafted with a deep guiding aesthetic that permeates the spirit of the music and the lyrics in a heartfelt way, especially when that aesthetic is an unusual one, it inspires even greater admiration. That’s what we have before us in Empyrée, the superb new EP by the French black metal duo Cénotaphe (multi-instrumentalist Fog and vocalist Khaosgott).

We have learned that in creating this new work, Cénotaphe drew inspiration from “a constellation of 19th-century French literary and artistic figures, such as Aloysius Bertrand, Théophile Gautier, Charles Beaudelaire, and the painter Odilon Redon,” but most especially from the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. As I am unfamiliar with Mallarmé’s writing, I’ll quote from the press materials announcing this new EP: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INTER ARMA, THEORIES, SEREN, CIRITH GORGOR, HECATE ENTHRONED, BLIND MONARCH, SINS OF THE DAMNED, PERIPHERY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 142019
 

 

Happy Valentine’s Day. Here’s a bouquet of black roses for you. Careful with the thorns.

I had originally planned to post this round-up yesterday but ran out of time, so most of the songs and videos I’ve selected have been out in the wild for a couple of days. But you still might have missed them, so I’m forging ahead anyway.

The number of items in this collection is also large enough that normally I would have divided it into a two-part post, but I was so pleased with the stylistic variety represented in what I’d chosen that I decided to keep it all together in one place. Just take a deep breath (or maybe hyperventilate), and try to get through all of it — I bet you’ll find at least one new song you’ll really enjoy.

INTER ARMA

In not much more than three months from now, NCS will present the third annual edition of Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. We announced the full three-day line-up on New Year’s Day, but of course, as always seems to happen, since then we’ve had a few bands drop out due to circumstances beyond our own control. One of those was scheduled to headline a night at one of the two main stages, but we got lucky and were able to secure a great replacement — Virginia’s Inter Arma, who happen to have a new album coming our way this spring. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WIRED ANXIETY — “HEAVILY SEDATED”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 142019
 

 

On a superficial level, the title of Wired Anxiety‘s song “Heavily Sedated” is ironic, because, as you’ll soon discover if you haven’t heard the song before, there’s nothing sedated about the music or about the effect it will produce on your nervous system. In fact, the opposite is true. Among the antonyms for “sedated” are “aggravated”, “agitated”, “disturbed”, and “excited”. Some or all of those adjectives would be suitable.

And so, while the title of the song makes sense in the context of the narrative portrayed by Wired Anxiety‘s EP, The Delirium of Negation — which revolves around the concept of mind-controlling monsters who develop a race of subservient humans — as a piece of death metal the track might have been more accurately titled “Heavily Excited” (or any of those other words, but “heavily” definitely belongs as well).

The Delirium of Negation, which includes this song as one of four, was released in 2016, but to help spread the word about it and about Wired Anxiety, today we’re premiering, as a Valentine’s Day present for lovers of death metal, a guitar playthrough video of the track that features the performance of guitarist Naval Katoch. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2018: AGRYPNIE / SOM / SOUL GRIP

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Feb 142019
 

 

(Andy Synn prepared this trio of album reviews, catching up on recommended albums from last year.)

With a small (and rapidly closing) window in my schedule of upcoming reviews/releases, I’ve decided now is the perfect opportunity to cover three artists/albums from last year that, for various reasons, I didn’t get a chance to cover at the time.

So, without further ado… Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 26): MAJESTIC DOWNFALL AND ALTARS OF GRIEF

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  5 Responses »
Feb 132019
 

 

Yesterday I leaned into black metal in adding to this list, and today I’m favoring doom — though these two songs are very different formulations of misery and gloom, both beautiful in their own way, and both emotionally wrenching, but there are at least as many differences as similarities. And of course I think both of them are intensely memorable.

MAJESTIC DOWNFALL

The new Majestic Downfall album was one I eagerly anticipated, and eagerly embraced once I heard it. As I wrote in a review on the day it became available for full streaming in early December, the four long songs of doom/death and one brief interlude that make up Waters of Fate are staggeringly intense and atmospherically immersive, and the melodies are powerfully alluring, but the music should also appeal to listeners with a taste for crushing heaviness and soul-splintering sorrow. There is tear-stained beauty to be found in the music, and passages of epic yet bleak grandeur, but this is an album that will dash your fondest hopes and smother your budding joys in their crib. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VÉHÉMENCE — “PAR LE SANG VERSÉ”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  19 Responses »
Feb 132019
 

 

Par le Sang Versé is one of the most thoroughly entrancing and gloriously vibrant metal albums I’ve heard in years, regardless of sub-genre. It seizes ancient folk traditions and hurls them forward into the modern age, but without letting go of the intense devotion to the centuries-old well-springs of inspiration that gave birth to this record. I do think it’s impossible not to be moved in some significant degree by this fervent music, and likely that most listeners will simply be swept aloft and carried away, as I’ve been.

I wrote the preceding paragraph as part of an introduction to our premiere two weeks ago of a single song from this new album by the French medieval black metal band Véhémence. Since then, my conviction has only grown stronger that this record is a rare and marvelously multi-faceted achievement. At the time of that previous premiere, three other tracks were also available for listening, but today it’s our great pleasure to present a stream of all the music in advance of its February 18th release by the French label Antiq Records. Continue reading »

DISGRUNTLED ANTHROPOPHAGI: “VIOLENTLY EXPUNGED”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 132019
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the new album by Disgruntled Anthropophagi from Pittsburgh PA.)

 

This time around I have the opportunity to recommend Disgruntled Anthropophagi‘s sophomore album, Violently Expunged, to be released via Lord of the Sick Recordings on March 15th.

I was lucky enough to discover the band in 2015 with the release of their debut album, entitled Rampage of Misanthropic Purge, which was a slab of the raw power of BDM with complex changes in the song structures.  I became a fan right from the first listen, convinced by the violent energy they put into those 11 songs with such pure non-stop force. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 25): PANOPTICON, KVALVAAG, WAYFARER, NEVERENDING WINTER

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  No Responses »
Feb 122019
 

 

As you can see, I decided to really load up today’s installment of the list, with four songs instead of two or three, and I also decided to lean into black metal for this one. I also thought these songs fit together in a way that would make for a good playlist, in addition to each of them being deserving presences on this list. As a bonus, two of these songs were performed at the Fire In the Mountains festival last summer outside Jackson, Wyoming, and I’ve included quality video of both of those, thanks to (((unartig))), as well as the album tracks.

To check out the previous installments of this still-expanding list, you’ll find them behind this link, and to learn what this series is all about, go here.

PANOPTICON

Without advance fanfare, or any preceding reviews, last April Panopticon released the extraordinary double-album The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness (I and II), one half devoted to atmospheric metal and the other half focused on Americana (though the division isn’t a rigid one, with some bleed-over going both ways). Austin Lunn shared the album with me in advance of its release, and I wrote a review, holding onto it (at his request) until the release date — and then I never posted it.

I felt that I owed the music something better than the words I’d cobbled together, which struck me as more emotional and stream-of-conscious in their ramblings than they should have been. And then, with the music out in the world, I just never got back to the drawing board in the hope of crafting a better homage. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OLDD WVRMS — “CODEX TENEBRIS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 122019
 

 

As the title of Oldd Wvrm‘s new album suggests, the music is an exploration of dark and obscure dimensions, dimensions that seem beyond the perception of a mundane mind grounded in what passes for “reality”. It carries our imaginations into a desolate and haunted dream world where shape-shifting avatars of misery dwell, in the company of wraiths that have lost their memories, and any path that might lead them to another, more welcoming, place.

The album is composed of five unusually long tracks, and as might be expected of such extensive journeys, the feelings in the music change over their courses, revealing both moodiness and mounting tension, inconsolable grief and aimless anger, glimmering wistfulness and extravagant, even magisterial, anguish. The power (and volume) of the sound also ebbs and flows — dramatically, but fluidly — but never really shows you a way back to the waking world.

Codex Tenebris will soon be released (on February 15th) the Irish label Cursed Monk Records, but you won’t have to wait ’til then to become ensorceled by the album, because we have a full stream for you now. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OWL (CHRISTIAN KOLF)

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 122019
 

 

(Comrade Aleks is back! And he brings with him this interview of Christian Kolf from the German band Owl, whose most recent album, Nights In Distortion, was released last fall by Temple of Torturous.)

Owl is the Bonn-based project of Christian Kolf (vocals, guitars, synth) who created it together with Patrick Schroeder (drums, percussion) in 2010 in order to explore death-doom territory that he hadn’t crossed yet in his progressive death-doom band Valborg. Christian is pretty prolific. He also played atmospheric progressive sludge in Woburn House, some prog metal in Island, not not long ago he joined the black metal crew Absolutum, and he gained some experience in a few other acts as well.

Owl’s a strange creature, more so that owls seem to be. Their first two full-lengths, Owl (2011) and You Are The Moon, I Am The Night (2013), were experiments in the field of pretty proggy death-doom metal with quite complex and aggressive compositions, and the following EPs — Into The Absolute (2014), The Last Walk (2014), Aeon Cult (2015), and Orion Fenix (2018), show Owl’s development in another direction. The latest result of the band’s inner changes is the Night In Distortion album (Temple Of Torturous, 2018). It’s tagged as ambient doom metal, and this description is partly close to the matter.

I was impressed by this material and got in touch with Christian to ask him a few questions about Owl’s past, present, and future. Continue reading »

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