AN NCS PREMIERE: SEROCS — “SCP-106”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 292018
 

 

The multi-national collective known as Serocs, whose line-up now includes members of First Fragment, Chthe’ilist, Funebrarum, Benighted, and Sutrah, have a new album headed our way. Under the title The Phobos/Deimos Suite, and adorned by an eye-catching painting by Nicola Samorì, it will be released on October 26th by Everlasting Spew Records.

We have a lot of information to share with you about this new album, as well as the premiere of the first single, but we’re going to depart from our usual practice of leaving the song stream to the end and get right to it — preceded only by a piece of cautionary medical advice: If you don’t have an oxygen mask with a fully charged canister nearby, you might try hyperventilating before you listen to this track. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PHLEBOTOMIZED

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 292018
 


photo by Josefien Hupkes

 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with Tom Palms, founding guitarist of the Dutch death/doom band Phlebotomized, whose last album was released in 1997 , who have revived after an extended absence, and whose first new album in 21 years is now on the horizon.)

As you probably know, the Netherlands’ avant-garde death-doom and whatsoever metal legends Phlebotomized  didn’t stop working after their sudden resurrection in 2013. The band actively forged their sound in the early ’90s, moving from pretty brutal death metal toward a new direction through experiments which took place on their full-length album Immense Intense Suspense and the absolutely different sophomore record, Skycontact.

It’s now 2018, and Phlebotomized are on Hammerheart Records and at work on their third album (the first one in 21 years!) under the title Deformation Of Humanity, which should come to light soon.

The only remaining original Phlebotomized member, Tom Palms, helped me to learn more about the band’s history and reveals a few things about the new stuff. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PILLARS — “SWARMS FROM THE SWAMP”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Aug 282018
 

 

Imagine a sudden, seismic shift in your reality. You find yourself alone on a vast, humid plain, shrouded in mist and littered with bones. Before you looms a giant monolith of granite, a gargantuan tombstone of broken hopes that blots the sun — and it’s disintegrating, with boulder-sized fragments cascading down in a slow-motion avalanche of black destruction. You want to run, but the earth has turned to tar beneath your feet, and begins to heave as the boulders strike like bombs.

It’s an ugly, nightmarish dream from which you awaken in a cold sweat, haunted and shivering. It’s one way (my way) of imagining the visions created by the song you’re about to hear, the name of which is “Swarms From the Swamp” by the French band Pillars. It comes from their debut album, aptly entitled Onwards to Nothingness, which will be released on September 28th by Seeing Red Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GILLIAN CARTER — “…THIS EARTH SHAPED TOMB”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 282018
 

 

Nor for the first time, Adam Burke‘s cover painting was the first source of intrigue about this album. The intrigue deepened when I listened to what was publicly available at the time I first saw the painting. The music in many ways was pretty far afield of what we usually cover at this site, and maybe that was part of its attraction — the allure of something stylistically different, and yet in its own way just as dark, as bone-bruising, and as emotionally super-charged as the metal extremity that takes up most of our time here. Little did I know, even then, how intensely involving the complete album would be.

The album in question is …This Earth Shaped Tomb by the Florida band Gillian Carter. It’s their fifth full-length, a 15-track, 35-minute affair that proves to be a constantly changing and perpetually surprising juxtaposition of sounds and moods. It will be released on August 31st by Skeletal Lightning in North America and Moment of Collapse Records in Europe — and we have a full stream of it for you right now, preceded by bunch of spoilers. Continue reading »

KRISIUN: “SCOURGE OF THE ENTHRONED”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 272018
 

 

(Here’s Vonlughlio‘s write-up on the new Krisiun album, Scourge of the Enthroned, which will be released on September 7th by Century Media.)

As I started to write this small review for Krisiun‘s new album Scourge of the Enthroned, I found myself thinking that this band needs no introduction. They have been active since 1990, releasing crushing Death Metal from their homeland of Brazil.  After this many years of activity, some bands tend to reduce the intensity and fury of their music, evolving into something more, or something less. Sometimes change is good, at other times not so much.

In the case of this band, they seem not to have aged one bit, still combining that fury and precise execution that I discovered back in my country. The year was 1996, and in the Dominican Republic this type of music was hard to get. But fortunately, there was a guy there who somehow got all the music (or knowledge) and would burn tapes, and one of those was Krisiun’s debut album. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MALIGNER — “ATTRACTION TO ANNIHILATION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Aug 272018
 

 

The Swedish death/thrashing power trio Maligner wear their late-’80s and early-’90s influences on their sleeves, blasting ahead in the footsteps of such bands as Sadus, Dark Angel, and perhaps most especially Human-era Death. But it’s one thing to draw influence from bands like those and it’s quite another to execute on a vision with the kind of supreme confidence and jaw-dropping skill displayed by Maligner on their debut album, Attraction To Annihilation.

They waste no time establishing their credentials, opening the album with a track (“Oath-bound”) that’s an explosive adrenaline-surge powered by lightning-fast fret-work and agile, rhythmically dynamic drumming with a propensity to turn on a dime. Serving up an array of blaring chords and frenzied riffs, this trio explode through the song in a way that’s surgically precise but capable of channeling bonfires of chaos. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 100): ANCESTORS

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Aug 272018
 

 

(We have arrived at the glorious 100th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, which Andy started back in January 2011 with a retrospective about Astarte. In this month’s column, he reviews all the albums released to date by L.A.-based Ancestors, including the just-released Suspended In Reflections.)

Recommended for fans of: Yob, Devin Townsend, Anathema

Selecting what bands to include in the “Recommended for fans of” section of each of these columns is sometimes really easy, sometimes really hard, and sometimes… a little more complicated.

In the case of Progressive Stoner-Doom sorcerors Ancestors it’s really not sufficient to like just one of the bands recommended above, you have to appreciate all three of them – the gruff vocals and expansive grooves of Yob, the dynamic soundscapes and soul-stirring riffs of Devin Townsend (particularly circa-Terria), and the melancholy moods and soaring melodies of latter-day Anathema – and be keen to hear what a crossover between these artists might sound like.

You also need to be open to some calmer, more introspective experiences, particularly since their two most recent albums – 2012’s In Dreams and Time, and the just-released Suspended in Reflections – find the group pushing even further down the Prog/Post-Rock pathway.

But if all that sounds intriguing… then this will definitely be the band for you. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MEPHORASH, DALKHU, DYSYLUMN, NIGHT CROWNED, DARVAZA

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Aug 262018
 

 

The thick blanket of smoke that’s fallen over the part of Wyoming where I’m currently vacationing has diminished the attractiveness of outdoor activity, and that in turn led me to do what I usually do on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings — listen to recent offerings of music from the darkest realms.

Strong winds seem to be creating some clearing in the noxious fog from burning forests, so I probably won’t be writing a second part for this column, though I have more than enough new songs and full releases to justify it. I’ll have to content myself with the following five selections.

MEPHORASH

Last week brought us the second single from the fourth album, Shem Ha Mephorash, by the Swedish band Mephorash. The first single, “777: Third Woe“, was released way back in November of 2017, and it prompted me to marvel at its pitch-black devotion — music that was reverential, grandiose, and fearsome in its conjuring of majestic and sinister power (and also quite memorable). Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR: ARKHAMIN KIRJASTO

 THE REARVIEW MIRROR  No Responses »
Aug 262018
 

 

I keep coming up with reasons to talk about this band, despite the fact that they haven’t released any new music in more than five years. The last time I found an excuse was almost exactly one year ago, in exactly the same place where I am now (Jackson, Wyoming), after playing the song to exactly the same group of people I was hanging out with last night.

Arkhamin Kirjasto have recorded 19 songs so far, in the eight years they’ve been together, but I continue returning to one song, because it has such tremendous primal attractiveness that it rises up from my memory in a way that few songs do. And it did again last night, and that’s all it took for me to find one more excuse to put the stream on our site. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NIGHTGRAVE, SCORCHED, ABYSSOUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 242018
 

 

As I mentioned in yesterday’s last post, I’m leaving my home for a short vacation this morning (in fact, by the time you read this, I will have already left), and that probably means we won’t have the usual number of posts today. I’m not 100% sure that I’ll be able to put together our usual Sunday post either.

But before vanishing for two or three days, I did want to contribute something, and this short post is what I’ve done. It consists of a grand total of three songs that surfaced during the last 24 hours, and only three, but they’re very good and I hope you’ll dig ’em.

NIGHTGRAVE

Nightgrave ought to be a familiar name to you if you’ve been a patron of that regular Sunday column mentioned above, SHADES OF BLACK, because I’ve written there frequently about this one-man Indian band, the work of self-taught musician and vocalist  Sushant Rawat. But rather than hold my thoughts about his newest music until Sunday, I thought I’d provide them now, in the hope of catching the ear of some new listeners. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries