AN NCS PREMIERE: ETHIR ANDUIN — “MEANINGLESS EXISTENCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 072018
 

 

I’ve observed more than once in our pages that creating purely instrumental metal in compositions of unusual length is a challenge fraught with risk. Even a song of more than 10 minutes that includes voices puts demands on the attention of discerning listeners that are difficult to reward, and when the additional sonic textures and emotional energies that can be contributed by a good vocalist are subtracted from the equation, the dangers of drifting attention are magnified.

Of course, we can all think of at least a few examples of musicians capable of surmounting such challenges, whose lengthy compositions and instrumental performances grab hold of our heads and don’t let go until they’re ready to. And I think we have a new example of such prowess for you here, in the track we’re premiering from the new album by the Russian band Ethir Anduin. The song’s name is “Meaningless Existence“. Continue reading »

DEVOURING STAR: “THE ARTERIES OF HERESY”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 072018
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Finnish band Devouring Star, which was released on October 26th by Dark Descent (U.S.) and Terratur Possessions (E.U.).)

Whether you call it “Black Metal” or “Blackened Death Metal” (I prefer the former in all honesty, although, given how obnoxiously heavy the band’s sound can be, I suppose I can see the argument for the latter too) it should be obvious that Devouring Star is one of the absolute best at what it does, as both the band’s debut album (Through Lung and Heart) and its similarly blistering companion EP (Antihedron) can already attest.

You probably won’t be surprised then to hear that The Arteries of Heresy continues this tradition of providing some of the best Metal (Black or otherwise) you’re going to hear all year, all delivered without concession or compromise. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MONTES INSANIA — “AKTO DE METAFIZIKO”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 062018
 

 

And now for something completely different.

What we are about to premiere is a lyric video for a composition by Montes Insania entitled “Akto De Metafiziko” from a forthcoming concept album named Fikcia Erao. The words, like the titles, are in Esperanto — an abstract modern language intentionally chosen because it is free of any cultural or historical connections, intended to help tell a musical story that is also unrelated to any existing culture, a story “about illusions and metaphysics, about chaos, emptiness and the struggle of man in an aimless universe”.

The music, which has some kinship with black metal, is as abstract and as confounding as the language. And while Fikcia Erao is described as an appeal to Johann Sebastian Bach, and appropriates the sounds of organ, strings, and horns, Montes Insania insists that “this is not symphonic metal, but antisymphonic, metasymphonic, in which academic parties are turned inside out, not smoothing sharp corners, but on the contrary, filling the composition with rigidity and perversion, known only at the dawn of music”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ASTAROTH INCARNATE — “RE-CREATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 062018
 

 

Toronto’s Astaroth Incarnate aren’t hidebound by genre convention, incorporating ingredients into their hellish musical extremity that range from death to black metal, from doom to groove. But in “Re-Creation“, the song featured in the video we’re premiering today, they thrash up a storm — a very sinister and cyclonic storm.

“Re-Creation” is the closing track on the band’s latest EP, Omnipotence – The Infinite Darkness, which was released by CDN Records in September of last year, and this new video combines close-ups of the band members kicking out the jams on stage and wider angles of shadowy figures cavorting to the sensations of the song’s orgiastic demon frenzies. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CORPSESSED, SKELETHAL, NARTHRAAL, SKALLBANK, THE HU, TENGGER CAVALRY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 062018
 

 

I know there was a ton of new music released yesterday. I can tell just from rapidly scrolling through the 130 e-mails that hit our in-box between 12:55 a.m. and 10:35 p.m. yesterday (yes, I counted them). But (with two exceptions) I had already decided what I wanted to put in this round-up before any of those e-mails arrived, and I decided to just go with these and defer figuring out what Monday might have brought until another day.

The first of the two exceptions is one of the five recommendations I received yesterday from my Norwegian friend eiterorm. I suspect at least a few of the other four will also find their way into another round-up later this week. And that one exception led to a second. Most of the the rest of what I’ve collected below came out late last week or I discovered them last week.

CORPSESSED

More than four years ago, our former contributor Leperkahn introduced his brief comments about Corpsessed’s Abysmal Thresholds with these words: “I’ve been seriously hungering for some absolutely cavernous death metal, the kind of stuff that sounds like it was recorded in a Lovecraftian studio at The Mountains Of Madness”. And he found what he was looking for in this Finnish band’s debut album: “To put it succinctly, these guys play death metal that sounds straight out of the abyss. Since putting it on I’ve had to check a few times to make sure Cthulhu isn’t looming behind my back”. Continue reading »

DAMNATION FESTIVAL 2018

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 062018
 

 

(On November 3rd the Leeds University Union hosted the star-studded 2018 edition of Damnation Festival, and our own Andy Synn was there again, and files this video-adorned report.)

Now, let’s get one thing straight right away – I love Damnation Festival. Alongside Inferno Festival and Maryland Deathfest it’s part of my annual triumvirate of awesome events which I do my absolute best to attend every single year.

One thing that bugs me, however, not about Damnation itself, but about the coverage afforded to the fest (and, by extension, to many other festivals too), is how much of it reads almost like it was written without even attending the event – every band is awesome, every performance is great – with little to no attempt to be critical or to give the reader a sense of the specific flavour and atmosphere beyond generic platitudes which could have been pulled straight from each band’s bio.

So this review isn’t going to be one of those. Because not every band I saw on Saturday evening was awesome, and not every performance was great… and while there were no downright terrible showings, several of the bands put in what I thought was a sub-par effort.

Thankfully, however, the good (and the very good) hugely outweighed the bad, and I think (and hope) you’ll still get a kick out of reading this review and watching the accompanying videos. Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “CONSTELLATION OF THE BLACK LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 052018
 

 

(DGR reviews the latest album by an NCS favorite, Finland’s Wolfheart, which was released by Napalm Records on September 28th.)

A quick preface for this one: We’re still hacking away at backlogs here and in case you missed out, that’s meant quite a few ‘shorter’ review archives with a handful of grouped bands together. This review was born of that experiment but unlike the Beyond Creation/Chthonic/Benighted jam that I unleashed upon the world last week, we were quickly able to recognize that the length of the next multi-band review collection was getting out of control, and so we’ve carved this one out to stand alone.

Increasing wordiness tends to happen when it’s a band you enjoy, and even though the short gap between this group’s most recent releases can look scary at first, Wolfheart manage to stick to a very consistent level of quality this time around. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BEYOND GRACE — “BLACK MATH RITUAL”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 052018
 

 

As most of you will know by now, one of our longest-tenured writers, Andy Synn, is also the frontman of the UK “omni-dimensional death metal” band Beyond Grace. Their debut album, Seekers, was released in July 2017, and while the group are now hard at work on a second album, they’re giving us a reminder of the music on Seekers through a play-through video that we’re happy to premiere today.

The song chosen for this new video is “Black Math Ritual“, and the performers featured in the video are the current Beyond Grace guitar duo extraordinaire of Tim Yearsley and Chris Morley (the latter of whom joined the band after the recording of Seekers). Continue reading »

OAK PANTHEON AND AMIENSUS: “GATHERING II”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Nov 052018
 

 

Both Amiensus and Oak Pantheon are from Minnesota. Both bands are long-time favorites at our putrid site, and we’ve been following both since very early days in their development. And now both of them, today, have released a new split named Gathering II.

As the name suggests, this isn’t their first collaboration. Five years ago to the day, they jointly released another split named Gathering. It included one track by each band, and so does Gathering II, but the new release also includes a third track that’s a true musical collaboration in which both bands participated. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): DET EVIGA LEENDET, TRACTATUS, KĀLA, HUMM, NEFASTU

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 042018
 

 

I’m racing against the clock to finish the second part of today’s SHADES OF BLACK column, because I’m going to join about 65,000 other loud drunks watching a bunch of grown men engage in feats of athletic derring-do (and beating the crap out of each other) at Seattle’s Century Link Field. Fortunately, I have an hour more than I thought I would have to finish today’s two-parter because I forgot about that ridiculous thing I was supposed to do with my clock last night. Still, if this comes off as a bit hurried, now you know why.

DET EVIGA LEENDET

I ended Part 1 of today’s column by writing about a band I hadn’t heard of (Andeis) before listening to a track off their new album that was included on a great Fallen Empire sampler released in mid-October. And now I’m beginning Part 2 in a similar way.
Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries