QUICK HITS: SENZAR AND ONTOGENY

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

I really wanted to end this week with a big fat juicy round-up, overstuffed with new songs and videos that I’ve latched onto over the past week but couldn’t cram into other round-ups over the last two days. Alas, I’ve run out of time. But rather than just scuttle morosely out of sight, head down and small tears dribbling down my cheeks, I thought I’d at least give you a couple of quick hits.

SENZAR

Today the Irish band Senzar, which rose from the ashes of Coldwar and embraced a name reportedly based upon the works of different philosophers, including Ernst Cassirer and Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky, released their first EP, which has their name on it but has no title, through Hostile Media.

After seeing a press release I had made a note a few days ago to check out a new video the band had released, but it wasn’t until receiving encouragement from starkweather’s Rennie today that I did so, and then moved from there to the EP as a whole. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRAGHKAR — “THE ENDLESS HOWLING ABYSS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

After releasing a 2017 demo and a pair of 2018 splits on the Blood Harvest label (with Desekryptor and Ossuarium), the Los Angeles-based death metal trio Draghkar are now just one week away from the release of a new EP, appropriately named The Endless Howling Abyss. It’s a four-track effort that will be available digitally, with a CD release by Craneo Negro Records and a cassette tape release by Nameless Grave Records, but we’re giving you a chance to stream the EP today.

While Draghkar’s first release spawned references to old school, cavernous death metal in a kindred spirit to such modern practitioners as Grave Miasma and Tomb Mold, the new EP is a more violent and hard-charging affair that draws influence from early Greek black and death metal, as well as the likes of such other old-school progenitors as Molested and Mercyful Fate. The music on this outing displays a kind of wild, ecstatic savagery, with a feverishness that matches its cruelty. Continue reading »

AUSTIN TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 2)

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

The second annual installment of Austin Terror Fest took place in the heart of Texas on June 15-17, 2018, proudly co-sponsored by NCS. It featured performances by 30 bands from around the U.S. (and outside it). It was a great event, and we’re already anxious for ATF 2019 (and yes, work is already under way to present the third edition of the festival next year). We were very fortunate that New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor was there to document the fest through her lenses, and to share her photos with us so that we, in turn, can share them with you.

On Wednesday we presented photos from the first day of the festival, and today the focus is on the performances that took place on the second day, with sets by a dozen bands alternating between indoor and outdoor stages at Barracuda in Austin. And without further ado, here’s our selection from the many great images that Teddie captured during these performances: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLIGHT HOUSE — “IMMACULATE REJECTION”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 192018
 

 

Frank Owen Gorey is not a well person. Frank Lloyd Blight is not a well person either. Physical illness provided the genesis for their collaboration. Mental illness has kept it going.

There must be swamps in Southern Rhode Island, where these two live. I wouldn’t know. Maybe it was only the basement where F.O. Gorey was quarantined with a fever in 2014 that was swampy. We’re told that when the fever broke after days of misery, spasmodic riffs recorded in bouts of febrile dementia were left behind, and the fractured, worm-riddled foundations of Blight House had been laid, the cracked edifice thereafter completed with F.L. Blight’s assistance.

They self-released a self-titled EP of nasty, grinding death metal, but that didn’t purge the festering freakishness to which they’d given free reign. And so now there’s a new Blight House album, Summer Camp Sex Party Massacre, which will be released by Nefarious Industries on Friday, August 3rd. For fear of what might happen to us if we said no, we agreed to premiere a song from it named “Immaculate Rejection“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SCORCHED, PREZIR, BOSSE-DE-NAGE, ROTTING CHRIST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 192018
 

 

Continuing where I left off in Part 1 of today’s round-up (and I do plan on yet another round-up tomorrow, by the way), I’ve selected four more tracks that really can’t be grouped in any kind of logical order, and there’s really almost nothing that any of the songs have in common other than their appeal to yours truly. I’ve again kind of up-ended my usual tendency to move from better-known names to lesser-known names.

SCORCHED

This Delaware band is certainly better-known than they used to be, due in part to 20 Buck Spin’s release of Excavated For Evisceration earlier this year, which compiled the band’s non-LP material in one place, but they still need to become a lot better-known because THEY’RE SO GOOD! I have a feeling that will happen when the same label releases their new album on September 28th. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): UNIFORM, ANAAL NATHRAKH, VREID

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Jul 192018
 

 

Well, my fine fiends, yesterday was a very interesting day (and no, I’m not talking about the bizarro-world mind-fuck of American politics at its zenith of gob-smacking grotesquery). I’m talking about the flood of new metal, at least one wave of which proved to be crashingly controversial, and I’ll get to that.

Damned hard to figure out what to shovel into this round-up, which is a big reason why it’s so voluminous, but really not voluminous enough even though it comes in multiple parts today. As usual, I just let my mind percolate a bit, and trusted that whatever twisted thing lurks within it would make the right choices.

UNIFORM

I have a tendency to organize these posts in order from bigger names to lesser names, and sometimes because my subconscious mentation perceives a certain pleasing flow from one to the next, but this time I’m starting with a song by Uniform because last night it pounced on me like a wolf appearing in Aisle 9 in the grocery store — about that surprising, and about that effective in triggering a fight or flight response. The video is a mind-fuck too. Continue reading »

DRAWN AND QUARTERED: “THE ONE WHO LURKS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 192018
 

 

(This is as much a testimonial from the heart as it is a review, and it comes from our friend Vonlughlio, recently transplanted from the Dominican Republic to the U.S.)

This time around I’ve been given the opportunity to do a review for Drawn and Quartered’s new opus The One Who Lurks, and forever will be grateful for this opportunity, for this is a band that has been releasing amazing albums for over 20 years and that in my humble opinion should be more recognized for their musical contributions.

I recall the first time I found out about this band as a teenager back in the Dominican Republic, alongside many other greats (Incantation, Immolation, Death, Deicide, and many more). The impact it had is still present and clear today in my late 30’s. So why do I mention this, you might ask? Let alone name the other classic bands? Because, for me, those bands and this one are at the same level, and Drawn and Quartered have been consistently releasing music that has only gotten better in time, while maintaining their signature sound. Continue reading »

AUSTIN TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 1)

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 182018
 

 

On Monday of this week we completed a three-part post providing photographic memories of Northwest Terror Fest 2018, thanks to the artistic eye and skilled technique of New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor. Today we begin another three-part photo retrospective featuring Teddie’s photos, and this time the focus is on another NCS co-sponsored festival that took place earlier this year — Austin Terror Fest — whose organizers and staff also played integral roles in helping us successfully put on the second edition of NWTF in Seattle.

The second annual installment of ATF took place in the heart of Texas on June 15-17 and featured performances by 30 bands from around the U.S. (and outside it). A small number of those overlapped the line-up of NWTF, but most did not. By all accounts, it was a great event, and the energy comes through in Teddie’s photos. Work has already begun on the 2019 edition of this Texas-based festival.

Teddie’s westward trip from New Orleans took longer than expected, and so the following montage of her pics from ATF’s first day includes only the final four bands who played on June 15th, at the Lost Well venue. We’ll have complete photo spreads of the second and third days in the following days here at NCS. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENNUI — “THE WITHERING PART I – OF HOLLOW US”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 182018
 

 

Ennui from Tbilisi, Georgia, are an old favorite of this writer, sort of like a fondly but frighteningly remembered ghost that lives the attic, an ancient and towering haunt that’s itself deeply haunted and that occasionally emerges from its sunless gloom to blot the sun from our own changing seasons. As Ennui say in a statement about the mammoth new song we’re hosting today: “None of us will ever see the gleams of light in silent dawn. None of us will even know, that our shadow was already gone.”

Three years on from their very fine last album, Falsvs Anno Domini, the Ennui duo of David Unsaved and Serj Shengelia are ready to emerge again, once more to draw us inexorably into their own deep shadows with a new album named End Of The Circle, which is set for a September 5 release by Non Serviam Records.

Ennui never hurry through their songs — their withering spells take time to unfold, to deepen, and to flourish, and especially so on this new record, whose three sagas range in length from 20 minutes to more than 30. And two of those are parts of a conceptually unified musical tale. “The Withering Part I — Of Hollow Us” is what we have for you now. Continue reading »

SKELETONWITCH: “DEVOURING RADIANT LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Jul 182018
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Skeletonwitch, which will arrive on Friday of this week via Prosthetic Records.)

By this point, with the album’s release but a few scant days away, you’ll likely have seen and read a number of different reviews and opinion pieces about the new Skeletonwitch, some of it positive, some of it negative, some of it… a little hard to follow.

But if all that confusing, back and forth coverage has got you turned upside down, to the point where you just don’t know what to think, then fear not! I’ve got you covered with what promises to be the definitive take on the album. Continue reading »

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