NO CLEAN SINGING

VIDEOGRAPHY (PART 2): DAWN OF DEMISE, SÖNAMBULA, MAIRU, CHILDREN OF BODOM, THE KRONK MEN

Mar 032019

This is the second Part of a round-up of new videos that I began yesterday. The usual Sunday SHADES OF BLACK column will be coming a bit later today.

DAWN OF DEMISE

We’re about 2 1/2 years down the road from the last Dawn of Demise album, and on April 19th we’ll get to see what these Danes been up to since then, because that’s when Unique Leader Records will release their fifth album, Into the Depths of Veracity. We have an early glimpse of what they’ve been up to through the first item in this collection, a lyric video for the first advance track from the album, “In Silence He’ll Arise“. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY (PART 1): TRUTH CORRODED, BESTA, BEWITCHER, MIST OF MISERY

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Mar 022019

I wasn’t able to post any SEEN AND HEARD round-ups of new music last week, mainly because of a work-related trip to Texas from Wednesday through Friday that barely left me enough time to post what you saw on our site over those three days. I did continue to make lists of new things I wanted to check out as soon as I had time, and I found that time this morning, due in part to the fact that I woke up at fucking 3:45 a.m. I guess I was still on Texas time, but that can’t be the only reason. Maybe those lists were calling to me in my sleep like sirens.

Anyway, I went on a big metal binge this morning. It turned out that a lot of the new music I liked came packaged with music videos, which themselves ranged from decent to very good. So I decided to prepare a two-part round-up that consists entirely of videos. Part 2 will come tomorrow, in advance of the usual SHADES OF BLACK column (I’ve got a shitload of ideas for that, too).

TRUTH CORRODED

I guess Australia must have its fair share of race-baiting right-wing political assholes, just like the U.S. does. That’s certainly the impression I get from the new video for a song by the Australian death/thrash band Truth Corroded called “Victims Left Lepers“, which includes the faces of certain political figures grotesquely morphing into Nazis and standard-bearers of the KKK. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 38): THE AGONY SCENE, OUTER HEAVEN, RITES OF THY DEGRINGOLADE

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018 1 Response »

Mar 012019

The Agony Scene

As I explained in the preceding installment of this list, posted earlier today, I wimped out in deciding which songs to pick here at the bittersweet end by letting Andy Synn make the final choices. For that preceding installment he picked songs from three of the albums he featured in his “Best of British” series of reviews last year. The three you’ll find in this final Part of the list for 2018 are more “general purpose extreme and nasty songs”.

For those of you who’ve been following this seemingly endless (but now ended) list, we appreciate your support and your patience. On Monday I’ll post a wrap-up that includes the complete list and links to all the installments, and to a Spotify playlist created by one of our readers that also includes all of them. Continue reading »

MISERY INDEX: “RITUALS OF POWER”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 012019

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Misery Index, which will be released on March 8th by Season of Mist.)

Where exactly does one start with a band like Misery Index?

From their humble (well, relatively humble) Death-Grind beginnings, the band have grown into a veritable Death Metal institution, one with five (soon to be six) full-length albums and innumerable EPs and split releases to their name, not to mention a not-insignificant amount of critical and cultural influence under their belt, all of which makes it difficult to find something new to say about the ongoing work of Messrs. Netherton, Jarvis, Kloeppel, and Morris.

But while it may be difficult to find a new angle from which to approach the band’s music these days, that doesn’t mean that the band themselves have run out of things to say, and their newest album continues their long-established tradition of raising their fists and kicking against the pricks as loudly, and as angrily, as possible. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 37): BLACK TONGUE, HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN, LEECHED

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018 No Responses »

Mar 012019

Black Tongue

Today is the final day of the roll-out of this list. As I’ve said more than once, the closer I’ve come to this day, the more conflicted I’ve become about which songs to choose before reaching the end. To resolve that consternation, I took the coward’s way out: I let someone else choose for me.

My NCS colleague Andy Synn usually makes no recommendations to me for this list, perhaps because he usually writes an article about his own favorite songs from the preceding year. He didn’t do that his year, but he did agree to make choices for the final installment of the 2018 list after looking through what I had already picked in the preceding 36 Parts. So these are his three choices.

Actually, he made six choices. These three are “Best of British” picks, named after the series of reviews that he has traditionally written as the year goes on which focuses on releases by UK bands. The other three are just “general purpose extreme and nasty songs”. Without asking permission, I’ve decided to get all six of them on the list, and so there will be a Part 38 today, in addition to this Part 37. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 36): GOROD, MARSH DWELLER, ABRAHAM

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018 1 Response »

Feb 282019

In thinking about what to pick for the penultimate installment of this list I was kind of wildly scrambling through the hundreds of songs on my master list of candidates, nearing mental lock-up as I tried to figure out what to do. Despite how many songs I’ve already selected, the decision process has gotten harder, not easier… because time is about to run out.

As a result, there’s no organizing principle in today’s collection. The music is all over the place, stylistically. But I sure do like all three of these picks, and hope you will too.

GOROD

This year, as usual, the bands whose music I’ve chosen have been a mix of old favorites and newcomers. Gorod falls into the camp of old favorites because they’ve been so consistently good (and so consistently interesting) over such a long stretch of years. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SACRIFICIAL SLAUGHTER — “THE SEPARATION OF INNOCENCE”

Premieres No Responses »

Feb 282019

Last November Horror Pain Gore Death Productions released an utterly decimating three-way split called The Hate Divide, which included a total of 13 tracks by Coathanger Abortion (Tennessee), Rottenness (Mexico), and the band that’s the subject of today’s video premiere — California’s Sacrificial Slaughter.

Sacrificial Slaughter‘s four tracks on the split (all of them new original songs) add to a discography that now includes three full-length albums dating back to 2002 and a collection of shorter releases, the most recent of which was the Generation of Terror EP in 2017.

What we have for you today is a lyric video for a breathtakingly ferocious track from the split entitled “The Separation of Innocence“. The subject matter deals with a horrid subject that has been dominating the headlines in recent weeks, and discharges the kind of explosive fury that the subject matter demands. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 106): ALETHEIAN

THE SYNN REPORT No Responses »

Feb 282019

(Here’s the February 2019 edition of THE SYNN REPORT, and this month Andy reviews the collected discography of the Pennsylvania technical death metal band Aletheian.)

Recommended for fans of: Death, Atheist, Extol

According to my most recent count I’ve got close to 100 potential entries for The Synn Report lined up, some of which deal with current bands whose back-catalogues I think deserve a second look, some of which look at bands who are no longer active but who are well worth checking out all the same, and some, like today’s entry, which feature bands whose situation is currently unknown.

For the February 2019 edition I’ve elected to go back in time a little bit and touch on the short, but oh so sweet, discography of one of Technical Death Metal’s most underappreciated artists, Pennsylvanian riff-wizards Aletheian.

Formed in 1997 under the name Crutch, only to change their name in 2003 following some major line-up changes, the band currently have three albums to their name, each of which err towards the more cerebral and progressive end of the Tech-Death spectrum, with a particular emphasis on complex song-structures and creative melody rather than frantic fretwork fireworks.

And while not much has been heard from the group since then, there were some rumblings a few years back that a new album was in the works, so while this may be the first you’re hearing about the band for some of you, hopefully it won’t be the last! Continue reading »

LORDS OF CHAOS (THE MOVIE)

Movie Reviews 7 Responses »

Feb 282019

(By now, surely every metalhead knows about the Lords of Chaos movie directed by Jonas Åkerlund, and written by Åkerlund and Dennis Magnusson based on the 1998 book of the same name, focusing on the Norwegian black metal scene of the early ’90s. In the following post, Wil Cifer shares his reactions to the movie — and we welcome your own in the Comments if you’ve seen it.)

I know it’s a vulgar concept, but let’s pretend for a moment that movies are pure entertainment. There are some filmmakers like David Lynch and Lars Von Tier who transcend the fluff of your typical popcorn sellers, but they are the exception to the rule.

If you are looking mindless fun, draped in corpse paint, then your expectations of Lords of Chaos might be reasonable. If you are looking for the definitive history of Norwegian Black Metal, then you might be better off with the 2010 documentary Until the Light Takes Us. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MALPHAS — “FLOODS (AN ACT OF GOD)”

Premieres No Responses »

Feb 272019

A bit of demonological internet sleuthing reveals that Malphas is a Great Prince of Hell, a fallen angel second only to Satan, with forty legions of demons under his command. According to the lore, he was the 39th of the 72 Spirits imprisoned by King Solomon — but mistakenly freed by the Babylonians. He is a builder of great citadels, and deceives those who sacrifice to him in hopes of obtaining his intervention on their behalf. He is accompanied by crows and sometimes appears as a raven himself.

That information seems relevant in interpreting what you will see in the animated lyric video from the band Malphas that we’re presenting today, a video for the song “Floods (An Act of God)“, which is the third track on this Philadelphia band’s debut album The 39th Spirit, released last October by Via Nocturna. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries