AN NCS PREMIERE: AUTUMNWIND — “LOST AND ALONE”

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May 102018
 

 

Autumnwind is the solo project of a Syrian musician named Abdulrahman Abu Lail, and the third Autumnwind album, Endless Fear, will be jointly released on May 20th by Symbol of Domination and More Hate Productions. An instrumental album, it draws upon the elements of atmospheric black metal to capture the sensations of terrifying panic attacks that struck its creator in the summer of 2017.

Of course, the effect of all music on any listener is the product not only of the inspirations, moods, and goals of the musician but also of the listener’s own mental and emotional states and experiences. Pain and terror may have been at the source of the music on Endless Fear, but to this listener the song we’re premiering today, “Lost and Alone“, is an entrancing as it is unsettling. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VALGRIND — “LAST ANGEL (INTO THE UNKNOWN”

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May 102018
 

 

On the 25th of May, Everlasting Spew Records will release Blackest Horizon, the third album by the Italian death metal band Valgrind (named for the ancient gate that stands before the great hall of Valhalla in Norse mythology), which follows the band’s tremendously good 2017 EP, Seal of Phobos. Last month we brought you the album’s victorious opening track, and today we present another. This one — “Last Angel (Into the Unknown)” — begins a trilogy of songs that end the album.

That song we shared previously — “Victorious” — launches the album in extravagant fashion, delivering a kaleidoscopic aural experience that’s hallucinatory, heart-pounding, mind-bending, savage, and exuberant to the point of madness. The one you’re about to hear is no less fascinating. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VELD – “GRAND DAY OF DEMISE”

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May 102018
 

 

Three years on from their eye-opening 2015 album Daemonic: The Art of Dantalion, the Belarusian blackened death metal band Veld are returning with a new full-length named S.I.N., which will be released in June by Listenable Records. In addition to the formidable talents of vocalist/guitarist Kiryl Bobryk and bassist Tomasz Wawrzak, it features the drumming of Romain Goulon (Benighted, Necrophagist) and a guest appearance by Karl Sanders (Nile).

We had the good fortune of premiering a track from the band’s last album, and now we get to do it again, presenting a ferocious head-spinner named “Grand Day of Demise“, which does indeed threaten your demise in grand fashion. Continue reading »

LYCHGATE: “THE CONTAGION IN NINE STEPS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 102018
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer’s review of the new album by the UK band Lychgate, released in March by Blood Music.)

If you show up for this album expecting black metal, it might be a jarring turn for you. The fact that it is not black metal but still manages to be just as dark and interesting made me willing to go along for the ride. Not every movement on this shifting landscape of angular chaos connects with me, but I approve of the sense of adventure and rebellion against the black metal status quo.

The atmosphere and melancholy of the first song make the angular math of the guitars more balanced, and they get into some proggy abstraction on “Unity of Opposites” to the point that it might be too much like free-jazz for even Deathspell Omega fans. Like it or not, the band has to be applauded for doing their own thing. Continue reading »

AT THE GATES: “TO DRINK FROM THE NIGHT ITSELF”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 092018
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the new album by some Swedish upstarts whose name will eventually be well-known if they keep doing stuff like this. It will be released on May 18th by Century Media.)

You’d be forgiven if, like your dear author here, the shock of At The Gates being an active band still hasn’t worn off yet. It’s been four years since the release of 2014’s At War With Reality, the group play shows and tour regularly, and yet every moment they’re around feels precious.

Recording an album that has transcended into a metal cultural landmark and leaving a near-twenty-year gap until the next one will do that to you, one guesses. Yet, here we are on the cusp of a second release from the group after that long hiatus in the form of their sixth album, To Drink From The Night Itself, and the first to feature new guitarist Jonas Stålhammar (whose own resume is pretty stacked and most recently played alongside vocalist Tomas Lindberg in their more old-school-focused The Lurking Fear).

In the lead-up to At War With Reality we all had a lot of fun pontificating on the many thought exercises of “What will a new At The Gates album sound like after the band has been gone for so long”, as the band had essentially watched and been part of a whole genre-explosion while its various members were involved in a slate of other projects. When the album was released, the answer was a pretty solid “it sounds like At The Gates” — which has to be one of the most frustratingly difficult things to pin down. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISCHORDIA — AN EXCERPT FROM “BINGE”

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May 092018
 

 

On June 15th the Oklahoma City progressive death metal band Dischordia will release a new two-track EP inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the title of which combines the names of the two songs: Binge/Purge. Each song is a long one; the two together provide just over 24 minutes of explosive and bewildering sound. The decision has been made to preview the music through excerpts of the music rather than through complete track streams, and today it’s our genuine pleasure to bring you the opening four minutes and nineteen seconds of the EP’s first track, “Binge“.

Dischordia’s last release, the Thanatopsis full-length in 2016, caught us a bit by surprise. As our own Andy Synn wrote in his review of the album: “With a sound reminiscent of both the old (Spheres-era Pestilence and Obscura-period Gorguts), and the new (Decapitated, Meshuggah) schools of Death Metal, the nine tracks which make up Thanatopsis find the band flexing both their mental and physical muscles more than ever before, while also curtailing some of the unfocussed ambition of their previous album and redirecting it down a darker and more progressive pathway”

Andy also proclaimed the album “undoubtedly just that much more ambitious – both in scope and in execution – and that much more vicious, than 90% of everything else that you’re likely to have encountered this year”. Little did we know that Dischordia’s ambitions and musical progressions weren’t anywhere close to being exhausted with that album. Binge/Purge takes what the band accomplished on Thanatopsis and pushes it to an even higher and wilder level. Continue reading »

DEADSPACE: “MOUTH OF SCORPIONS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 092018
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by the Australian band Deadspace, released on April 11, 2018.)

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that, no matter how purportedly mainstream or well-known a band is, every review (or interview, or article, etc.) is going to be someone’s first exposure to them.

Of course there are always going to be those who are keen to brag about how they knew so-and-so or such-and-such before everyone else, and crap all over anyone who doesn’t share their intimate connection with what they consider the “true” underground… but I try not to let this discourage me from writing about music I think people might find interesting, regardless of whether it’s considered to be “big” or “cool” or “kvlt” (though I’m not sure if anyone even uses that last one anymore).

Because in the end, that’s what we’re all here for. To find new (and sometimes not-so-new) music we might have missed elsewhere. To seek out new bands and new recommendations, to boldly go… sorry, sorry, got a little bit off-course there… anyway, all this is just a long-winded way for me to say I hope that at least some of you enjoy what you’re about to read/hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER) — “NO PREMATURE CELEBRATIONS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 082018
 

 

If you managed to catch the 5772 record released last fall by 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker), then you already know how difficult it is to describe the music of this band. I haven’t heard anything else like 5772… and I haven’t heard anything else like this band’s new LP either. They have boggled my mind again. “Visionary” seems like too pretentious a word, and “genius” might come off too strong, but it’s definitely ingenious — so bewilderingly creative that I’ve become transfixed by it.

The name of this new release is 一期一会 (Ichi-go ichi-e). That title is a Japanese idiom that can be translated as “for this time only, never again”. I’ve learned from The Font of All Human Knowledge that it is often associated with Japanese tea ceremonies, the characters often “brushed onto scrolls which are hung in the tea room”. “The term reminds people to cherish any gathering that they may take part in, citing the fact that many meetings in life are not repeated. Even when the same group of people can get together again, a particular gathering will never be replicated, and thus, each moment is always once-in-a-lifetime”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EYE OF THE DESTROYER — “VIOLENT BY DESIGN”

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May 082018
 

 

New Jersey’s Eye of Destroyer describe themselves as “horror movie obsessed party slam-aholics”, the kind of people willing “to get wasted with anyone, anytime, anywhere”. Without questioning the accuracy of that reputation, they also seem to have a taste for inflicting enough blunt-force trauma to keep an army of orthopedic surgeons fully stocked with patients.

They’re a busy group of barbarians, too. In addition to rampant gigging, they’ve churned out five releases since 2014, including an album and four EPs, the most recent of which was 2017’s Starved and Hanging. And now they have another EP headed our way, this one named Violent By Design. It’s our sadistic pleasure to bring you a stream of the title track today; be sure to have an orthopedist on speed-dial before you listen. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: WAYFARER, ATAVISMA, NATTVERD, THRONEUM, FINIS, 酸葬儀 ACIDFUNERAL, WITCHSKULL, HAMMERS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 082018
 

 

I had enough time last night to turn myself into a musical glutton. Just kept stuffing myself to the point of swelling up like a dirigible, hoping I’d come across something that wasn’t tasty before I exploded. That didn’t happen, so I had to summon the last vestiges of willpower and make myself stop.

So here’s a whole bunch of music, and only pithy impressions from me.

WAYFARER

Wayfarer’s third album, their first for the Profound Lore label, is described as “a reflection of the Rocky Mountains and high plains of their native Colorado”, “drawing influence as much from the dusty, dark Americana of the ‘Denver Sound’ and the scores of epic westerns as they do the fury and melody of black metal….” Continue reading »

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