Oct 092018
 

 

Many of the more adventurous and steel-nerved among you will have already discovered the terrible wonders to be found in the music of Pa Vesh En. After all, in 2018 alone this remarkable black metal project from Belarus has already released through Iron Bonehead Productions the Dead Womb demo, a two-song 7″ named A Ghost, and a split album with Temple Moon. But all of those recordings were preludes to what you’re about to hear, a debut album named Church of Bones that Iron Bonehead will release on October 12th.

As the album’s title might suggest, these seven tracks sound as if they were recorded in a vast sepulcher far beneath the surface of the earth, all the shuddering and shattering tonalities drenched in reverb, the music profoundly haunting and deeply oppressive in the weight of the desolation it conveys. The album is sweeping in the scale of its apocalyptic grief and shattering in the intensity of the pain it channels into sound — an expression of emotional collapse that’s so profound it begins to seem majestic, an intense and immersive experience so all-consuming that it swallows up the listener, as if engulfed by the maw of a leviathan. Continue reading »

Oct 092018
 

 

As we reported last month, long-time NCS favorites Oblivion are returning with a new, self-titled album that’s currently slated for release on January 21, 2019. Also last month, the band released the new album’s first single, “True Awakening“, which was written (as they explained) “from the subjective perspective of the emerging ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) as it is first awakening and becoming aware of its powers and the world it inhabits”. Fittingly, the song’s long introductory passage exudes an aura of ominous foreboding as it methodically piston-pounds the listener’s skull and swirls about like artificial neurons growing and seeking connections.

“True Awakening” proved to be an explosive lead-in to the album, its rhythms eventually shifting into a galloping gear, the music surging, battering, and thundering, with ghastly vocals augmenting the music’s atmosphere of blistering and brutish violence, and a solo at the end, both queasy and questing, leading into one final obliterating onslaught.

Oblivion has planned to release further singles every month from now up to the release date, and we’re getting to help spread the word about the second one today. The name of this one is “Forgotten Brotherhood“. Continue reading »

Oct 092018
 

 

The time has again arrived for us to check in with Nordland, the one-man black metal band from the damp east coast of England, whose distinctive musical contemplations of a pagan past and looming death have gripped our attention in past releases, the last of which was the excellent European Paganism album in 2017. Not one whose creative inspirations go dormant for long at a time (or maybe ever), Nordland’s creator Vorh has recorded a new album named The Dead Stones which will be released on October 24th by the Russian labels Satanath Records and More Hate Productions.

I wrote of the music on the last album that Nordland had “succeeded in maintaining connections to some of black metal’s most revered (and most copied) traditions, while also embellishing and changing the methods of expression in ways that stand out from the pack”, creating music that was “so complex, so intricate, and so kaleidoscopic in its changes that it also merits adjectives like ‘progressive’ and ‘avant garde'”. Nordland’s propensity for crafting ever-changing musical expressions that take listeners outside of themselves into a different imagined world is on display again in the song from The Dead Stones that we’re premiering today — “The Roots Impale the Dead“. Continue reading »

Oct 092018
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by the Greek death metal band Carthage, which was released on October 5th by Amputated Vein Records.)

I don’t know about you guys, but I am absolutely swamped at the moment, with various issues in both my personal and professional life constantly competing for my valuable time, which is leaving me with surprisingly few opportunities to put digital pen to electric paper and get some damn writing done!

Ok… breathe… phew… anyway…

Despite all of this, however, I’m going to endeavour to get as many pieces published this week as I can – including a mix of big names and new contenders – starting with the debut album from Greek Death Metal duo Carthage. Continue reading »

Oct 092018
 

 

I’ve chosen so much new music to feature in this stylistically eclectic round-up that I’m going to dispense with any further preface and just get right to it.

MAJESTIC DOWNFALL

“Veins” is the first track released (just yesterday) from Majestic Downfall‘s new album, Waters Of Fate, which will be released on December 7th by Solitude Productions and Weird Truth Productions in Europe and Asia and by Chaos Records in the Americas. If you couldn’t guess based on how much praise we’ve heaped on this Mexican death/doom band over the years, this album is one we’ve been eagerly looking forward to. If possible, I’m even more eager now that I’ve opened those Veins. Continue reading »

Oct 082018
 

 

It’s really hard for me to imagine that any died-in-the-wool fan of morbid, old school death metal won’t embrace the song we’re about to premiere by Invocation of Death — even the cold-hearted curmudgeons who sneer and sniff at anything recorded after about 1995. The song is just so brimming with gruesome life, and so packed with changing tempos and addictive riffs.

The song in question is “The Art of the Deformed“, and it closes Into the Labyrinth of Chaos, the debut album of this Salvadorian group (who originally called themselves Antares Death) which is set for release on October 18th by GrimmDistribution (Ukraine) and Morbid Skull Records (El Salvador). Continue reading »

Oct 082018
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the debut recording by The Heretics Fork, which will be released by P2 Records on October 31st., and whose name refers to this torture device used in the Inquisition.)

For me 2018 has been a good year in music, across different types of metal genres. As some of you know by now, I usually review albums in the BDM genre, though from time to time I do write about albums outside that genre. This time I’m about to speak of a band that took me by surprise, which I discovered through a FB post in a group I am part of.  The band is The Heretics Fork.

We don’t know where they are from or who the musicians are behind this project. The only thing we know is that they are signed to the P2 label from New York. This label serves as a distro as well. They were responsible for the release of Encenathrakh’s debut self-titled album (which Islander reviewed here) — one of the craziest BDM projects ever to be released. Continue reading »

Oct 082018
 

 

“Repulsion and Escapism” is a suite of torment and pain, agonized searching and bitter discovery. On the new album by the Italian band Noise Trail Immersion, Symbology of Shelter, the track is divided into two parts, and we have Part II for you today, presented through a lyric video that combines words, imagery, and sound into a powerful holistic creation.

If you managed to come across the first advance track from this album (“Mirroring”), which premiered at Invisible Oranges last month (or the band’s previous releases), then you already know the seriousness of NTI’s thematic focus, and the staggering intensity of their music, which IO accurately described as “infectiously visceral but, at times, utterly cacophonous”, with the album as a whole “play[ing] like one big emotional arcing narrative”. Continue reading »

Oct 082018
 

 

You may have noticed that we had no new posts at the site this past weekend — no Waxing Lyrical interview, no Shades of Black column, and nothing else. But rest easy — we are, in fact, still alive and well.

Mr. Synn played Mammothfest with his band Beyond Grace, and I spent the weekend in southern New Mexico at an annual outing of the business I work for when I’m not doing NCS stuff, and so neither of us had time to handle our usual weekend responsibilities. I guess I should have said something about these plans, in order to avoid the severe anxiety and heartbreak that our absence must have caused among the millions who looked for us and found nothing but the final post from last Friday.

My own activities not only prevented me from writing anything this weekend, they also prevented me from listening to as much new metal as I usually do on the weekends. I’ve got a shitload of catching up to do, which I’m thinking is a practical impossibility since I’m sitting here looking at the schedule of 11 song and album premieres I need to write this week, including the two coming today. But I will at least do this Shades of Black post, even if a day later than expected and even if the reviews are pitifully brief for music of such blazing power. Continue reading »

Oct 052018
 

 

Shades of red and black dominate the color scheme of the video we’re presenting, as the hooded, cloaked, and corpse-painted quartet in Kvlt of Eblis perform their musical conjurations, surrounded by candle smoke and skulls. This particular black spell is named “Portal Utérico“, and it’s the final track on this Colombian band’s debut album, Templo de la Serpiente Negra, which was released by Morbid Skull Records on August 31st.

As this coven of two women and two men immerse themselves in the performance of the song, it’s easy to become immersed in the sounds as well, especially when it becomes apparent that the shape of the music is changing as the minutes pass. Continue reading »