SEEN AND HEARD (HGD EDITION): DEICIDE, CARNATION, BAEST, INNUMERABLE FORMS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 162018
 

 

Editor’s Note: NCS patron HGD, who has been kind enough to send us recommendations of new music in the past, prepared the following round-up of new music, which we’re presenting here with his own introductory comments, and with our thanks. As he wrote, “The overarching theme here is death metal of the old school variety, but having said that there are still significant differences from song to song.”

DEICIDE

Deicide are the highest profile group amongst the bunch included here so it’s best to start with them. NCS has already covered the announcement of their new album Overtures of Blasphemy, due out September 14 on Century Media. The first single from that album, “Excommunicated“, was released last Friday. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PSILOCYBE LARVAE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 162018
 

 

(Comrade Aleks brings us this interview of Vitaly Larv, guitarist/vocalist of the Russian band Psilocybe Larvae, who released a new single just last week.)

Psilocybe Larvae was born in the Russian underground about 22 years ago. Mixing black and death/doom metal, they came through their searches to an extreme progressive mix which is hard to define sometimes, but the band tagged it “manic depressive metal”. Their fourth album Labyrinth Of Penumbra was released in 2012, the band’s line-up changed, and who knows what happened during the period since then!

However, Psilocybe Larvae have returned with a new single, “The Fall Of Icarus“, so it’s time to remind our readers about the band and try to sort out what’s been going on. The band’s founder Vitaly Larv (guitars, vocals) takes the floor. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): SVARTKONST, CROWS OVER BRÁVELLIR, WALSUNG, BLUTFAHNE, TATANHAMMER, WITCH KING

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
Jul 152018
 

 

The four bands whose music I collected in Part 1 of this post don’t really sound alike, but I found all of the music explosive and emotionally intense, and that had something to do with why I packaged their music together in that opening installment. There’s probably even less connective tissue between the songs in this second installment, and I’m not sure I’ve even succeeded in organizing them in a way that would make for any kind of appealing flow from one to the next. But I really do like everything here a lot… a WHOLE LOT.

SVARTKONST

Devil’s Blood, released on June 29th, is the debut album of the one-man blackened death metal band Svartkonst, the work of Swedish musician Rickard Törnqvist, who mixed and mastered it as well as composing and performing all the music. It hooked me immediately with the opening track “Black Light Burning“, and I stayed hooked for the next nine tracks. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): DAUÞUZ, INSIGNIUM, LYKAIONAS, ILDARUNI

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jul 152018
 

 

It’s always difficult to choose songs for these Sunday columns, not because the pickings are slim but because of the constant abundance of music from the black realms that catch my fancy every week. This week I thought I might have time to make the choosing a bit easier by making more choices. I haven’t written Part 2 yet, and it’s conceivable that I won’t finish it in time for posting today before I have to turn to other activities. But if not today, then you’ll see it on Monday.

DAUÞUZ

Before we turn to the music of this German duo, let’s have a small lesson about the band’s name and its pronunciation. “Dauþuz” is a Proto-Germanic or Norse word for death. In its spelling it includes a letter (þ) from Old Norse called thorn, which (as The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us) originated from a rune found in Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems. That rune is called Þurs in Old Norse (“Thurs”) or Þurisaz (“Thurisaz”) in its Germanic variant, and it appeared in the old rune poems as a name for giants.

The letter thorn (or þorn ) survives in only one modern language — Icelandic — where it’s pronounced something like th as in the English word thick, but not exactly. And so now, when you tell your friends how amazed you are by this band’s music, you’ll be able to do so without mutilating the pronunciation of their name by sticking an unwelcome “P” sound in the middle of it. But you probably knew that already. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: HIDEOUS DIVINITY

 Interviews, WAXING LYRICAL  5 Responses »
Jul 142018
 

 

(In this week’s edition of Andy Synn’s series on the creation of metal lyrics, he elicits thoughts from lyricist/guitarist Enrico Schettino of the Italian death metal band Hideous Divinity.)

If you’re not already familiar with Italian blastmasters Hideous Divinity then stop whatever you’re doing now (which I suppose is reading this column) and head on over to their Bandcamp page straight away and listen to their facemelting third album Adveniens, which our very own DGR described as:

“…an atomic blast that never seems to stop expanding ever-outward from moment one, never losing momentum, and leaving nothing but ash, dust, and mutation in its aftermath.”

And then, once you’re done with that, make sure to come back here and read this new edition of Waxing Lyrical, where the band’s guitarist Enrico Schettino discusses where his lyrics come from, where they’re going, and the method behind the band’s particular brand of metallic madness! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DESCENT — “SKINWALKER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 132018
 

 

Have you ever wondered what it might feel like to plant yourself, chained to something sturdy, in the face of a Category 5 hurricane? Or to be caught defenseless in the path of a jet-propelled carpet-bombing campaign? Or to be scorched to a crisp by the blast of a military-grade flamethrower? Well of course you have — haven’t we all?

There’s no need to wonder any more, or to be left with the emptiness of fervent desires for self-destruction gone unanswered. You just have to listen to “Skinwalker“. Even a single solitary listen will do the trick.

“Skinwalker” is a track off the debut album by a band from Brisbane, Australia, named Descent, whose members come from the ranks of such bands as From These Wounds, Scumguts, Dire Wolf, Coffin Birth, The Fevered, and Siberian Hellsounds, most of whom we’ve written about here at one time or another. Entitled Towers of Grandiosity, the album is pegged for release by Redefining Darkness Records on August 31st. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SLOTH HERDER — “SACRED COWARD”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 132018
 

 

If you look at Sloth Herder’s Facebook profile, you’ll see that they’ve chosen “Power-slob” as the description of their musical genre, and “abandon pop sensibility” as the summing up of their band interests, which is pretty funny. And in a way, it kind of makes sense — because trying to pin down the band’s music is a bit like trying to pin a glob of mercury to the dashboard of a moving car. Elsewhere, I’ve seen it described as “demented avant-death/grind”, “blackened doom/grind”, and “a dynamic clusterfuck of seething brilliance”. Their debut album, 2017’s No Pity, No Sunrise, spawned comparisons to such wide-ranging acts as Antigama and Pyrrhon, Yautja and Gaza (among many others).

I myself have resisted the temptation to whip up some kind of genre descriptor in my previous writings about the band, because I don’t like the convulsions that happen when my brain knots up. I’m content just to whip up some adjectives in an effort to capture the convulsing effects of Sloth Herder’s music. Speaking of which, we do have some new Sloth Herder music to present. It’s a track named “Sacred Coward“, which is one of two tracks on a new single that the band will be releasing through their Bandcamp page on July 20. Continue reading »

CENTAURUS-A: “MEANS OF ESCAPE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 132018
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Germany’s Centaurus-A, their first after a nine-year absence.)

Is nine years a sufficient break between releases to call Means of Escape a “comeback” album? Answers on a postcard, please.

Whether it is or it isn’t though, it’s still a significant enough gap that I think most fans (myself included) had essentially accepted that Centaurus-A’s impressive debut, Side-Effects Expected, was going to wind up as one of those underappreciated underground classics whose impact and influence was destined to be appreciated solely by a few lucky listeners who just happened to have been in the right place, at the right time.

And yet, almost out of the blue, the Centaurus-A machine suddenly came back online in April of this year with the announcement that news of their demise had been greatly exaggerated, and that a brand new album was set to be released very soon… a new album which eventually dropped on the 13th of June, exactly one month ago today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: ENGULF — “GOLD AND RUST”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jul 132018
 

 

Today, the very lucky 13th of July, is the release date for Gold and Rust, the new EP by the one-man, New Jersey-based death metal project Engulf. It comes adorned with a wonderful cover created by Misanthropic-Art, which by itself should be an irresistible invitation to explore this music even if you weren’t already aware of Engulf‘s capabilities, as first revealed through last year’s Subsumed Atrocities EP (which also featured an eye-grabbing cover by the same artist). And those capabilities continue to be strikingly impressive.

All credit goes to Hal Microutsicos, who again proves himself to be a guitar wizard, but one who uses his sorcerous talents in the service of genuinely ferocious death metal onslaughts that get  pulses racing and skulls fracturing, even as they get eyes popping wide over his technical proficiency. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BONEHUNTER, HATE, HORRENDOUS, INFERNAL COIL, MESARTHIM, SOREPTION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 132018
 

 

This is obviously a big end-of-week round-up. Today the size of the round-up will be in inverse proportion to the volume of words in my descriptions of the music, because I have three premieres to write and there would have been more except I exercised some rare restraint and started saying No.

What is it about this day that makes it so popular for premieres and releases? Could it be that there is only one other Friday in 2018 like it (and that one occurred three months ago)?

I arranged the music in alphabetical order by band name because I couldn’t think of a more logical way to stitch these sounds together.

BONEHUNTER

This time Bonehunter chose to keep the rampaging bear’s penis less prominent on the magnificent cover of their new album (rendered by Joe Petagno), to the disappointment of some and the relief of others (as long as they don’t look to closely at that tongue). But how does the music on Children of the Atom compare to the tunes on this Finnish band’s more prominently erect last record, Sexual Panic Human Machine? Continue reading »

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