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

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 122018
 

 

For the second year in a row, NCS was proud to co-present Northwest Terror Fest, which took place this year on May 31 – June 2 in Seattle, Washington. Several of us in the NCS family helped organize and present the fest, and I guess that makes us a bit biased, but we’re not the only ones who thought it was a fantastic event. The feedback from bands, fans, and the venues has been uniformly very, very positive — so much so that we and our co-conspirators are already at work planning the third installment of NWTF for 2019.

We will of course be bringing you news about next year’s fest when the time is right, but we now want to take one more look back at NWTF 2018. And to do that, we’re fortunate to be able to present some of the amazing photos that New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor took while the festival was in progress. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DRAWN AND QUARTERED — “RAVAGE THE CADAVER”

 Metal News, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 122018
 

 

I suppose I ought to confess at the outset that as a resident of the Seattle area for a couple of decades, I became a devoted fan of Drawn and Quartered long ago. Because they’ve been long-time fixtures in the Seattle underground for a couple of decades themselves, that means I’ve been able to watch them perform on numerous occasions, and have always left with a sore neck and a crooked, fiendish smile on my face. It therefore won’t surprise you to learn that I’ve had their new album The One Who Lurks high up on my radar screen since it was first announced — especially since six long years have passed since their last one, Feeding Hell’s Furnace.

That confession, by the way, wasn’t intended as an acknowledgment of any kind of bias. This band earned my loyalty (and that of many others, both here and around the globe) because they’re just really damned good. I say it only because I was prepared to like the album, based on history, before I ever heard it.

But I will say that, even with that history of enjoying records and performances, this new full-length still surprised me. It proves not only that Drawn and Quartered have plenty of gas left in the tank, but that they’ve tapped into some kind of eldritch fuel source that ups the octane even further beyond the premium juice that has driven the pistons of this savage death machine before. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NACHASH — “VORTEX SPECTRE”

 Metal News, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 122018
 

 

Some weeks it seems I find a new favorite band as often as the sun rises. Today, that band is the Norwegian trio Nachash. And in their case I have no doubt they will keep a hard grip on my loyalty for many sunrises to come. This new song we’re about to present from their debut album Phantasmal Trinunity (due for an August 10 release by Shadow Kingdom) is a prime example of why that is. Its name, which is an immediate clue — but only one clue — to what the music delivers, is “Vortex Spectre“.

Combining elements of black metal and death metal, the music is decidedly supernatural in its atmosphere, but the band also display a keen grasp on the irresistible pull of propulsive rhythms and hook-laden heavy-metal riffing, and the result is a track that’s powerfully addictive. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ASKESIS — “BLACK ONTOLOGY”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 122018
 

 

Roughly two years ago we had the pleasure of premiering The Path To Absence, a very impressive first EP by the Venetian band Askesis, which moved me to write: “The songs are dynamic and usually straddle the smoking crevasse between occult death metal and black metal, with a strong stench of doom in the mix as well. When the music is moving at full threshing speed, or bounding with punk-influenced rhythms, it gets the blood pumping… but the sense that something in the shadows hungers for your blood is never far away.”

Now it’s our good fortune to present a new Askesis EP, the name of which is Black Ontology, and it’s even more impressive than the previous one. The two women and two men in this band have succeeded in establishing their own distinctive “personality”, crafting a sequence of songs that continually brings the word “sorcerous” to the mind of this writer. It’s packed with physically arresting (and constantly changing) rhythms, yet it also creates atmospheres of brooding menace and of fiery infernal celebration, like the accompaniment to witches and warlocks cavorting around a pyre whose extravagant flames spear upward into the night sky. Continue reading »

HATALOM: “OF SORROW AND HUMAN DUST”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 122018
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the just-released new EP by Hatalom from Québec City, Québec, Canada.)

So I’ve decided that this week is going to be a Tech-Death focussed one for me, beginning with my review of the new Obscura disc on Monday, and continuing today with this quick run-down of the debut EP by Canadian quartet Hatalom. Continue reading »

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

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 112018
 

 

For the second year in a row, NCS was proud to co-present Northwest Terror Fest, which took place this year on May 31 – June 2 in Seattle, Washington. Several of us in the NCS family helped organize and present the fest, and I guess that makes us a bit biased, but we’re not the only ones who thought it was a fantastic event. The feedback from bands, fans, and the venues has been uniformly very, very positive — so much so that we and our co-conspirators are already at work planning the third installment of NWTF for 2019.

We will of course be bringing you news about next year’s fest when the time is right, but we now want to take one more look back at NWTF 2018. And to do that, we’re fortunate to be able to present some of the amazing photos that New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor took while the festival was in progress. Today we’ve got a selection of pics from the first day — and Teddie managed to shoot every band that performed; that’s one good thing about the rotation of bands between two stages, with no overlap. You can see every minute of every show as long as your energy holds out (and that hasn’t been a problem, given the caliber of the bands who’ve thrown themselves into their NWTF performances).

So, without further ado, here are Teddie Taylor’s photos from Day 1 at NWTF 2018. Continue reading »

WHERE DOOM MEETS DEATH (PART 2): ORGAN, TEMPLE OF ABANDONMENT, DISPIRIT, DESCHAIN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 112018
 

 

On Monday of this week I began a two-part collection of music whose title was intended to have a dual meaning. Some of the music I chose was recognizably death/doom metal. Other tracks had very little to do with death metal, yet death loomed large in their atmosphere, even envisioning the extinction of all human life.

In this concluding part of the post, doom is still (in widely differing degrees) a through-line in the music, and visions of extinction still uncoil in the mind as the sounds flow through it. But as in Part 1, there’s considerable variety in the music.

I’m indebted to HGD, a faithful reader and a frequent source of recommendations, for urging the last three of these selections upon us, and for allowing me to use his own words as brief introductions to the streams. But we’ll begin with one choice of my own.

ORGAN

Eterno, the new three-track EP by this Italian band presents enormous contrasts of sound and mood. It is usually slow, and as heavy as anything I’ve heard this year — heavy enough to shatter granite boulders as if they were tiny brittle pine cones leached of moisture by the sun… massive, mountainous, megalithic music, and equally immense in the scale of its bleakness. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOCRATAI — “MISERIA 6.66 MHZ”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 112018
 

 

Nearly 20 years have elapsed since Nocratai was given birth as a solo industrial black metal project under the construction of an individual who took the number “4” as his identification. It continued as a solo project until 2008, when it became a full band, and in that year released an EP named Camera Chiusa. Three years later the band recorded their first album — Tormento — but it remained un-released until now.

And now, or rather on July 24th to be precise, it will be revealed through the cooperative efforts of GrimmDistribution (Belarus), The Ritual Productions (Netherlands), and Black Metal Records (USA).

We present for you today a track from Tormento named “Miseria 6.66 MHZ“, which on the one hand is cold and oppressive, but on the other, is a head-moving display of menace and madness. Continue reading »

DEAFHEAVEN: “ORDINARY CORRUPT HUMAN LOVE”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jul 112018
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer’s review of the new album by Deafheaven, which will be released on July 13th by Anti Records.)

Like everything after Roads to Judah this new album is going to offend metalheads, especially considering how this time it weighs more heavily on their post-rock side.

The first time I saw these guys they were opening for Alcest and blew them off the stage. The energy seemed very genuine, though it felt more like a hardcore show than a black metal one. I am not going to debate how troo or cvlt they are, but focus on what is actually going with their music as it’s being delivered to us in 2018. Continue reading »

SALTAS — “DEATH SPIRIT CONTINUUM”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 112018
 

 

It’s fascinating how just a few slowly picked notes on a guitar or bass, when tuned a certain way, corroded with distortion, and allowed to reverberate like a tank-sized Geiger counter, can so quickly create a sickening feeling of dread. That’s how “Death Spirit Continuum” begins, and it only gets more unsettling as it moves forward, revealing buzzing and moaning riffs, the clatter of demented snare patterns, the emergence of a persistent double-bass rumble, and long, blood-freezing howls and guttural roars. These ingredients combine to create a deepening, and almost suffocating atmosphere of disease, decay, and desolation.

Your head will also move… and your pulse will also quicken when the drummer kicks the energy up… and the continuing toxic reverberations of that opening note sequence may lead to blood poisoning. And somehow — paradoxically and magically — this thoroughly queasy and emotionally unsettling song becomes hypnotic as well as unnerving, which is an impressive accomplishment. Continue reading »

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