AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WHYTHRE — “STILLBORN WORLD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

If your ass has been dragging, beaten down and disgusted by the daily grind, strapped for sleep, short on cash, and your reservoirs of hope running low as well, we’ve got a sure-fire antidote for most of those ails. Granted, it won’t put any cash in your pocket (though it won’t demand any from you either), but it will make you feel a whole hell of a lot better. And if you’ve got a bellyful of rage you’d like to get out of your system, what you’re about to hear will provide some catharsis for that, too.

What we’ve got for you is a premiere stream of Stillborn World, the explosive new EP by Whythre, which is being released today as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp. It really will make everything better, at least as long as you’re listening to it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EYE OF SOLITUDE, AKROTHEISM, INCANDESCENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 052019
 

 

I’m kind of scrambling due to interferences from my damned day job, but I didn’t want too much time to pass before sharing with you a few items of interest — the first of which is an exclusive piece of very exciting news.

EYE OF SOLITUDE

Those of you who’ve been following the site for a while will probably be aware that we’re big fans of Eye of Solitude and their fearsome brand of funereal death/doom. We’ve been writing about these Romanian/British doom lords for well over six years now, and have featured articles on their work a number of times (such as here, here, here, and here), as well as one of Andy Synn’s Waxing Lyrical interviews of the band’s main man Daniel Neagoe (here).

Eye of Solitude’s most recent album, 2018’s Slaves of Solitude, presented (in Andy Synn’s words) “some of the best music we’ve heard from the band since their career-defining Canto III“, and was definitely one of the year’s doom metal high points, successfully achieving “that rare feat of providing a listening experience which is both utterly devastating yet eminently re-listenable.”

And now we are delighted to report that this year Eye of Solitude will be returning with another album named Godless, and to reveal the album’s cover art (above). Continue reading »

WRETCHED FATE: “FLESHLETTING”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

(Here’s Todd Manning‘s review of the debut album by Sweden’s Wretched Fate, released on February 22nd by Redefining Darkness Records.)

When Old School Death Metal made its initial comeback, there was a welcome focus on the kind of Punked-up, hyperprimitive violence as best exemplified by Autopsy and their ilk. This particular approach is certainly fruitful and, for many, will never grow old, but it’s great to see other acts dive into other Death Metal discographies and come up with material that, while not technical the way the term is used today, is certainly more accomplished than the aforementioned OSDM acts.

One such band bringing their particular brand of pain is Swedish killing unit Wretched Fate on their album Fleshletting, which just came out on Redefining Darkness. At first glance, this album reeks of their Swedish heritage in the best possible ways. Furious d-beats, check. HM-2 distortion, check. Graveyard stench, check. But there’s more to this concoction than just rehashing old Dismember and Entombed records. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “WHEN A SHADOW IS FORCED INTO THE LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

(DGR reviews the newest album by Finland’s Swallow the Sun, which was released on January 25th. All photos accompanying this review were made by Jussi Ratilainen.)

Of all the reviews that are currently piling up on this end of the internet spectrum — and every year there will always be a handful in this situation — Swallow The Sun‘s latest album When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light (released at the tail end of January) is one of those which has taken the longest to write — and not because you’re viewing the result of a drunken bet to see how many words we can fit onto a page.

There’s a whole swath of reasons for that: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONG: THE COMPLETE LIST

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  3 Responses »
Mar 042019
 

 

Last Friday I ended the roll-out of our annual list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It was an arbitrary halt, because I could have kept going, but it seems like by March we really should be looking forward all the time instead of continuing to reflect on the past.

Although many more songs could easily still be added, I do think the list, as it is, provides a decent snapshot of both the quality and the diversity of metal in 2018. And I think that’s true even though I only focused on the most “infectious” songs (some of the best songs and albums released in 2018 weren’t really “infectious”, as I’ve defined it, but were stunning listening experiences nonetheless). Continue reading »

SINMARA: “HVÍSL STJARNANNA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 042019
 

 

(On this day, when Icelandic Sinmara have revealed a full stream of their new album in advance of its March 8 release by Ván Records, we present Andy Synn‘s review of the record, along with that stream of all the music.)

For such a (relatively) small, but (undeniably) influential, scene, Icelandic Black Metal seems to already have more than its fair share of disciples and detractors, elitists and evangelists, all ready and willing to monopolise any conversation about the various merits of the bands involved with self-righteous, navel-gazing discussions about who is “true”, who is “false”, and who deserves to be praised or punished for conforming to/transgressing against the unspoken rules of what is, or isn’t, acceptable in Black Metal.

Which is one reason why it’s going to be ever so interesting reading, and hearing, the reactions to Sinmara’s highly-anticipated and long-awaited second album. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RINGARË — “UNDER PALE MOON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  7 Responses »
Mar 042019
 

 

Ringarë is the name of a project that was started 14 years ago by Chaos Moon‘s mainman Esoterica. A debut album was recorded, but never released. Instead, half the music from that recording session became part of Chaos Moon‘s second album, Languor Into Echoes, Beyond (2007). The other half is now going to be released on March 8th by Iron Bonehead Productions with the title Under Pale Moon.

“Pure worship of synth-ridden black metal of the early ’90s” is the way the music is described in the press sheets. “Moonlit magick” is another phrase that appears in the album’s promotional material, and that description is spot-on. While the shrieked vocals are mind-abrading and the drum and bass rhythms have a way of hooking into your pulse, it’s those mystical midnight melodies and ethereal keyboard notes that will carry you aloft into cold and starry skies, mesmerized.

The album consists of four tracks and 40 minutes of music, and today we have a full stream for you, preceded by a few more thoughts about the dark and delirious enchantments of this experience. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABDUCTION — “PRAYER OF ELECTROCUTION”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 042019
 

 

Abduction is a one-man UK black metal band whose ravaging debut album To Further Dreams of Failure we reviewed (in part) in March 2017. The band also released an album last year, A Crown of Curses, and now they’ve already got a third one geared up for release on March 29th via Inferna Profundus Records.

All Pain As Penance is the name of the new one, and “Infinite Ancient Hexes” was the first track made available for streaming a couple of weeks ago. It seized attention immediately. On that track, as on all the others, A|V handles everything except drums, which were performed by session member EG. His drumming on that first song to be revealed from the album is physically powerful, driving the pace in a plundering fury while delivering neck-cracking fills along the way. Meanwhile, the riffing creates a dismal and poisonous atmosphere, a thick, desolating miasma of sound, parsed by chiming chords that are still moody but also hypnotic, and by an incendiary solo.

It made for an absolutely explosive, irresistibly head-moving herald for this album, notwithstanding the music’s aura of pestilence and wretchedness. It rocks as well as ravages, and it’s easy to get addicted to it very quickly. But there is so much more to come from this album, and now it’s our pleasure to present a second excerpt, a song called “Prayer For Electrocution“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): MEPHORASH, STELLAR MASTER ELITE, PA VESH EN, PHOBONOID, LODGE OF THE EMPTY BED

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Mar 042019
 

 

As explained in Part 1 of this post yesterday, I made some especially difficult choices about what to cover this week because I had found so much I wanted to recommend. Splitting the column into two parts in order to include more music helped some, but wasn’t a complete solution. The task was further complicated when I discovered even more yesterday. The first selection below is one of those late discoveries, but it turns out that it fits very well with the music of the first three bands I’d originally chosen to begin this Part 2, and that now comes after it.

MEPHORASH

Yesterday Mephorash released an official video for the third track to surface so far from their fourth opus, the 74-minute Shem Ha Mephorash, which is based on the Kabbalistic 72-fold explicit name of God and now has a release date of April 18th. Before yesterday the band had revealed “777: Third Woe“, which was released as a single last year, and “King of King, Lord of Lords“, which was disclosed last August. We’ve provided reactions to both of those, and now to this new third piece. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): NORDJEVEL, AKASHA, MURG, SORES, NEO NOIR

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Mar 032019
 

 

Man, this was tough, trying to decide what to write about in this Sunday’s SOB. I mean, it’s always tough, but harder than usual this week. Maybe it was because I didn’t have time to prepare a round-up of new songs last week, which might have shaved a few black metal entries off my lists. Yesterday I narrowed it down to 18 choices (you see what I mean?).

Clearly, I needed to make this a two-parter, but still had to make hard choices. For example, I decided not to include the new album by Popiół (here), or the new Aoratos song (here), because I’ve written about both bands in other posts recently, and although I’ve been very impressed with the new releases by Aara (here), Ancient Flame (here), and Herzegovinian (here), I haven’t spent enough time with them to write even half-assed introductions.

I’m still wrestling with some other decisions I’ll need to make in order to keep Part 2 from becoming bloated. Whether I succeed or fail, you’ll see Part 2 at NCS first thing on Monday.

NORDJEVEL

The following video begins with a rape, followed later by the victim’s delivery of the horrid fruits of her violation. Much other nastiness ensues, all of it filmed and edited with skilled hands (by Grupa 13 Production). It has the look and feel of a mythic saga, but I haven’t recognized which saga it might be, nor have I found any info about the origins of the story in press materials we’ve received. Whatever is going on here, the visuals are riveting (and NSFW). So is the music. Continue reading »

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