SEEN AND HEARD: EVOKEN, BENIGHTED, KĀLA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 232018
 

 

After three premieres today, we’re nearing the end of our normal posting hours, and I find myself with just enough time to quickly assemble a shorter-than-usual round-up. Tomorrow will probably be a fairly barren day around here, because I’m leaving home at about 4:15 a.m. to begin the journey to Sea-Tac airport, and from there to a top-secret location in Wyoming where I’ll be meeting with world leaders in a training session I call “How To Pull Your Head Out Of Your Ass Even If You Have the IQ of A Ground Squirrel, With Apologies to Ground Squirrels Everywhere.” I expect the event will be well-attended.

Despite the awfulness of my departure time from home tomorrow, I do hope to get at least something short completed to start the day before I sleep tonight, and I do have a review in hand from one of our contributors, and perhaps something else will show up unexpectedly.

EVOKEN

Six years is a long time to wait for a new album when the band in question is as immensely talented as Evoken, and a long six years it has been since Atra Mors. But this morning’s e-mail arrivals brought a press release announcing that on November 9th Profound Lore will release a new Evoken album named Hypnagogia. And as an added bonus, it features cover art by Adam Burke. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLOOD OF SERPENTS — “IN DARKNESS, BROTHERHOOD”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 232018
 

 

The song you’re about to hear is such a wild, vicious, blazing torrent of sound that it’s hard not to think of it as a shock-and-awe campaign, or perhaps as a cyclonic Sirocco scourge blasting from the open gates of Hell. The name of the track is “In Darkness, Brotherhood“, and it comes from Sulphur Sovereign, the explosive new album by the Swedish black metal band Blood of Serpents.

This new track isn’t the first one to be divulged from the album in advance of its September 25 release by Non Serviam Records. Earlier this month we were assaulted by the song “Devil’s Tongue“, which was so striking that we were moved to write about it immediately, before we had any inkling we’d be invited to host today’s premiere. The sheer electrifying effect of that song’s blinding speed and warlike vehemence (and the scalding savagery of the vocals) were gripping, and the high, soaring, delirious grandeur of the melody at its core made it even more riveting. And now we’ve been riveted again. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFESTUS — “THRON AUS TRÜMMERN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 232018
 

 

Infestus may have reached the point when it is no longer fair to characterize the music as black metal, because as diverse as that genre of music has become, the term connotes limits that no longer seem applicable to this German band’s extravagantly multi-faceted new album, Thrypsis. Even Debemur Morti Productions, who will be releasing the album on October 5th, now refers to the music as Dark Metal — which is the amorphous banner we tend to hoist over music that we can’t easily (or accurately) categorize with more familiar metal labels, no matter how many hyphens they might include.

The further progression of ideas reflected in the music of Thrypsis will not come as a shock to those who experienced the stunning tapestry of desolation, malevolence, and bleak beauty rendered in the last Infestus album, 2014’s The Reflecting Void, yet it’s abundantly evident that Infestus has climbed to dizzying new heights on this new record. The song we’re helping to premiere today, “Thron aus Trümmern” is powerful proof all by itself. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ROTTEN EVISCERATION — “ASCENDING FROM THE PUTRID GRAVE”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 232018
 

 

All of the outward trappings of the Perúvian death metal band Rotten Evisceration suggest an experience of depraved, gore-splattered, blunt-force horror — from their name, to the cover art for their debut album Ancient Grave Ascension, to the titles on the album’s track list. All these outward signs might lead some to conclude that their music is entirely devoted to brutal bludgeoning and mindless mayhem, and that’s not far from the truth, but it’s definitely not the whole truth, as you’re about to discover.

It’s our putrid pleasure to announce the details of this release, along with that ghastly cover art: Ancient Grave Ascension will be released by Blood Spattered Axe Records in conjunction with Guts ‘N’ Blood Records on November 1st of this year. And we also have for you the premiere of the breathtakingly destructive but tremendously electrifying title track from the album, delivered through a lyric video that revels in the terrors of the cover art. Continue reading »

MANTAR: “THE MODERN ART OF SETTING ABLAZE”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Aug 222018
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the German duo Mantar, which will be released by Nuclear Blast on August 24th.)

There comes a moment, in every band’s career (ok, not every band’s career) when they need to decide whether to “go big or go home”.

And it looks like that time has finally come for Mantar, as The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze is easily the biggest, boldest, and most shamelessly bombastic, album of their short but celebrated career, and is practically crying out to be performed on bigger stages and in front of even bigger crowds. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BEDSORE — “AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Aug 222018
 

 

I feel compelled to begin the introduction to this premiere with an uncalled-for comment about the band’s name: Don’t be fooled by it.

At one time or another we’ve all been bedsore, waking up cranky and achy. But sleeping poorly and moving slowly upon rising is such a drab, mundane experience, one you just want to banish with the aid of a gallon of coffee. But there’s nothing mundane about the song you’re about to hear, nothing dull or forgettable. To the contrary, it’s a big eye-opener, an unexpected bolt from the blue that proves to be both mystifying and harrowing, a labyrinthine excursion through a nightmare realm. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR: THE BEST NU-METAL RECORD OF ALL TIME?

 Album Reviews, THE REARVIEW MIRROR  11 Responses »
Aug 222018
 

 

(Our Rearview Mirror series, which used to be an NCS fixture on Sundays, has been eclipsed by black metal, but has been temporarily revived today as a vehicle for this retrospective by TheMadIsraeli.)

This is one of my favorite albums of all time.  I’ve never heard anything like it, not before it and not after it.  Nu metal was a weird, kooky-ass genre but it produced some gems, and this is one of them. For me personally, this is probably the best record ever made during nu metal’s reign.  The passion and the weird inter-sectional nature of the elements involved made this album, for me, basically perfect.

American Head Charge themselves are a weird band, releasing a 1999 debut (an underground, very rare release that mostly had songs from this album with much worse production and less fleshed-out sounds), this album where they hit an unreal stride, followed by a detour into just… kind of plain nu metal.  I’m not sure why they didn’t continue what they did on this album; it’s a mystery that bugs me to this day, but I genuinely do believe that The War Of Art is one of the best albums made in metal’s history, in addition to being the best of its entire sub-genre. Yeah, I said it. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: IMPERIAL DOMAIN, HITWOOD, LA PETITE MORT, RANCORUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 222018
 


Imperial Domain

 

I’m in between things at the moment. Got home later than usual last night, lungs choked and eyes watering from the thick smoke shrouding the Puget Sound region all day yesterday, and the forests here aren’t even the ones burning, though they seem to be the only ones in the West that aren’t on fire (yet). I slugged a few fingers of Scotch and hit the rack without dinner, and without getting anything ready to go for NCS today.

My brother Mr. Synn tells me he’ll be sending in a Mantar review at some point this morning, TheMadIsraeli has given me a review as well that I need to get ready to go, and I have a premiere slated for later today but haven’t written it yet. I’m feeling antsy about the page just sitting here with nothing new at a time when we normally have something new, so here’s this thing for you.

As I listen to new music I make lists of things I think might go well together. Sometimes I get around to pulling them together in a round-up; more often I don’t. What you’ll find here is one such list I made a couple of weeks ago. You’ll figure out why I thought these four songs would go well together. Actually, you’ll have to figure out everything about them for yourself, because in order to get this posted before more of the morning disappears, I’m dispensing with my usual commentary. Hope you enjoy. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HADAL MAW / IRON FLESH / TAKEN BY THE TIDE

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 212018
 


Hadal Maw

 

(In this post Andy Synn has assembled three reviews of three new EPs that deliver diverse forms of metal extremity.)

Not much of a preamble today, I’m afraid, apart from affirming that you should really check out these three EPs if you’re after a short, sharp fix of sonic savagery.

‘Nuff said. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ULVEN — “DEATH RITES UPON A WINGED CRUSADE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 212018
 

 

We’re so spoiled, those of us with a taste for the bitter, biting salts and the boiling acidity of black metal. We lift the old vintages to our lips, and the new ones; we feel the sting of sulphur in our nostrils and see the pale beckoning hands or the charging cavalries of death in our minds; we might feel transported to nether dimensions that seem poised to swallow and sever us without a backward glance of regret. Satiety can lead to cynicism for some, and even for the never-sated but not easily impressed among the rest of us, we do tend to greet new black metal with the same demand that became the motto of Missouri: Forget the rhetoric, you’ve got to show me.

The PR rhetoric around Ulven’s new album was that it would be “based on the worship of death and reaching beyond the shadows of the deep abyss”, and that as compared to Ulven’s first album, the sounds of this new one — Death Rites Upon A Winged Crusade — “have shifted and morphed to become an entirely new and unholy creature.” Okay, I thought, show me. And Ulven did.

And now we’ll show you, too. There’s a full stream of the album at the end of this post; the album will be released on August 24th by Fólkvangr Records on tape and CD, with a vinyl edition coming from Death Kvlt Productions. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries