OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20): WOLFHEART AND SARASVATI

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  2 Responses »
Feb 042019
 

 

This is another instance in which I consciously paired songs for this list because I thought they sounded good together. In fact, the second one helped me decide on the track I chose from the first band’s album (a choice that had become an intractable mental struggle).

To check out the previous installments of this still-expanding list, you’ll find them behind this link, and to learn what this series is all about, go here.

WOLFHEART

This really was a tough call for me. After listening to Wolfheart’s latest album, Constellation of the Black Light, I had no doubt that something from it would be on this list, I just didn’t know which track it would be.  The album came hot on the heels of 2017’s Tyhjyys, but as DGR noted in his review, it nevertheless continued the band’s impressive level of consistent quality, delivering a blend of fast-paced, explosive hammering and brooding, wintry melody with an often epic atmosphere. Continue reading »

DOWNFALL OF GAIA: “ETHIC OF RADICAL FINITUDE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 042019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new fifth album by Germany’s Downfall of Gaia, which will be released on February 8th by Metal Blade.)

One of the best, and most memorable, gigs/tours of the last several years for me was the absolutely mind-blowing co-headliner of Downfall of Gaia and Der Weg Einer Freiheit in 2015, which saw both bands putting on an absolute masterclass (not a word I use lightly) in power, precision, and raw emotion that still, even now, shines incredibly brightly in my memory.

It certainly helped, of course, that both bands were touring behind albums that were (and still are) widely considered to be the best of their career, with Aeon Unveils the Throne of Decay actually earning itself a much-coveted spot on my Critical Top Ten of 2014 (and Stellar only just missing out on the following year’s list).

But while neither band’s immediate follow-up was able to fully replicate the impact and intensity of their predecessor(s), I think you’ll be pleased to hear that Ethic of Radical Finitude comes pretty darn close to recapturing the pure magic of Aeon Unveils… even if that album still remains the band’s magnum opus. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE BLACK SORCERY — “WOLVEN DEGRADE”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Feb 042019
 

 

These dudes (The Black Sorcery) look like they mean business. And what kind of mean business do they mean? Take a clue from some of the song titles on their new album: “War Fangs”, Putrescent Infected”, “Angry Spit of the Witches Piss”, and the album title-track we’re premiering: “Wolven Degrade“.

Here’s another clue: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TELÜMEHTÅR — “THE WELL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 042019
 

 

Ten years ago the French one-man black metal project Telümehtår made its debut with a self-recorded and self-released demo named Blåck. Now, a decade later, Telümehtår has re-surfaced with a new album entitled The Well, which is set for release on February 16th. Today we present a full stream of its nine tracks, preceded by the following impressions.

Drawing inspiration from the spirit of such early black metal bands as Emperor, Darkthrone, and Ulver, but without slavishly aping them, Lord Telümehtår has created an extravagant, blazing tumult of moodiness and despair, creating the sounds of terrible madness born of pain, yet glorious in their devastation. In one sense, the songs are minimalist in their composition, yet they are wholly engulfing both in their sound and in their emotional impact, creating an air of scarring pageantry, like the surround-sound scores to mythic sagas of impassioned striving and inevitable, calamitous tragedy. Continue reading »

RIPARIAN: “RIPARIAN”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 042019
 

 

(Todd Manning wrote the following review ofthe impending self-titled debut EP by Pittsburgh’s Riparian, which will be released by Grimoire Records on March 1st.)

Not to split hairs, but in the sweet spot between Grindcore and Death Metal there seems to be a small niche of what one might consider Death-Grind, a movement that may have reached its apex in the early aughts and was best exemplified by such acts as The Red Chord, Misery Index, and Cephalic Carnage. Pittsburgh’s Riparian are mining this same vein of brutal goodness on their self-titled debut EP, due out on March 1st courtesy of Grimoire Records.

To be clear, the alchemy that Riparian utilize is a sound that might eschew the most technical corners of the Death Metal world, but also isn’t nearly as primitive as most Grindcore acts nor their OSDM counterparts. What we are left with instead is a pulverizing blend of grind beats and mid-tempo muscular riffing. Occasional solos and Doomier passages that also pepper the proceedings give the EP an unpredictable quality as well. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ELLENDE, MESZAROTH, OMINATION, ULTIO, SULDUSK, MALHKEBRE

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Feb 032019
 


Ellende

There’s quite a lot of new music I’m recommending in this Sunday’s column — three full EP streams (one of which is an EP-length single composition), plus advance tracks from three forthcoming albums. Coincidentally, four of the featured bands are essentially solo projects.

As usual, I picked these selections in part to provide some listening variety, though there’s certainly more than a fair share of melancholy and grandeur to be found herein, along with a fair share of ripping and tearing. I also positioned one selection to provide a bit of a diversionary interlude through its interweaving of Neo-Folk elements (and clean singing) among heavier sounds.

ELLENDE

I discovered this Austrian atmospheric/post-black metal band through a 2016 video of the title track from their 2014 EP, Weltennacht. I couldn’t get the song out of my head, and the video was hard to forget, too, since it included film of the 1987 public suicide of a Pennsylvania politician (Budd Dwyer) at a press conference he conducted the day before he was to be sentenced to prison following a conviction for bribery. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: MISERY INDEX

 WAXING LYRICAL  2 Responses »
Feb 022019
 


photo by Heidi Strengell

 

(In this week’s edition of Waxing Lyrical, Andy Synn posed his usual questions about lyrics to Jason Netherton of Misery Index, whose new album Rituals of Power will be released on March 8 by Season of Mist.)

Is it selfish of me to admit that, as much as I hope everyone is enjoying the series so far, one of the primary reasons for coming up with the concept of “Waxing Lyrical” was so that I’d get the chance to speak to, and learn more about, some of my favourite vocalists/lyricists?

Well, selfish or not, it’s the truth, and today’s edition is a particularly special one, as it features one half of one of my favourite vocal tag-teams, Jason Netherton of the mighty Misery Index. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 19): SVALBARD AND VISCERA///

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  4 Responses »
Feb 012019
 

 

The two songs I’ve added to this list today consist of one that I discovered very late in the year after neglecting the album for many months, and another that’s been stuck in my head since we premiered it in October.

As usual, I’ll be taking a break from the rollout of this list this weekend while I continue trying  to figure out what will come next. Decisions, decisions, and they’re not getting much easier even though 19 installments are now behind me.

SVALBARD

I confess that I didn’t pay close attention to this UK band’s latest album until near the end of the year. Even after reading Andy Synn‘s review of It’s Hard To Have Hope last April, which spoke of the album’s  “unbridled passion and unwavering integrity” and insisted that “Svalbard deserve all the support and attention they can muster going forwards”, I didn’t listen. I meant to, but it must have been one of those especially harried weeks around the NCS compound, and as time passed, so too the album passed me by. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ÚIR — “ÓENACH TAILTEN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 012019
 

 

Roughly two years after the appearance of their debut recording, Tein-Éigin, the Edinburgh-based atmospheric black metal band Úir are returning with a new EP named Óenach Tailten. It will be released by Pest Productions on February 18th, and today we present a full stream of its three shattering tracks.

“Shattering” is not an exaggeration. There is so much tension, torment, and pain in the music, and it comes through with such authentic passion and unwavering intensity, that it puts any sense of well-being a listener might have in dire peril. Yet paradoxically, there is an almost dreamlike quality to the music as well, a conjuration of haunting loss that crosses a dark border between flesh-and-blood and some intangible realm where ancient spirits still loom in twilight shadows. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE LUMBERJACK FEEDBACK — “THERAPY”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 012019
 

 

Two drummers, a pair of guitarists, a bass player, and no human voice at all. That’s the line-up of The Lumberjack Feedback, a group from the north of France whose motto is “Loud and Low”. Mere Mortals is the name of their new album, which follows by three years their impressive full-length debut, Blackened Visions, and what we have for you today is the crusher that opens the new record, a song named “Therapy“.

Deadlight Entertainment, which will release the album on April 26th, describes the music as “a hypnotizing, mesmerizing soundtrack to the apocalypse”, a “deep droning bass and primitive twin percussions as a roaring low-end thunder, ridden by dark melodies crafted by a pair of guitarists like silver surfers riding a tsunami” — “a weak beauty topping a tornado of devastating primal elements”.

I usually prefer to come up with my own linguistic formulations (and I will here, too), but I thought those were some nice turns of phrase, and they have the added advantage of being accurate. Continue reading »

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