SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HUMAN SERPENT, KAVYK, THE KRYPTIK, LIVING ALTAR, NIPHREDIL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Yesterday I posted the first Part of this three-part collection of new or recently discovered black metal. If the rest of my life will cooperate, I should be able to post Part Three tomorrow. As previously explained, I arranged all the music in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into thirds. And so tomorrow’s music comes from bands whose names follow the letter N — unless I find something else I want to tack on, or forget how to alphabet.

HUMAN SERPENT

My comrade DGR pointed me to For I, the Misanthropist, the third album by the Greek band Human Serpent. I don’t think we’ve written about Human Serpent before, although in preparing to write this post I saw that the band’s last release (just a few months ago) was a 20-minute collaboration with Isolert, who I have tried to expose to our readers on a couple of previous occasions. That’s a release I need to listen to (and you can listen to it here as well). Continue reading »

REPLICANT — “NEGATIVE LIFE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

(We present a guest review of the new album by New Jersey’s Replicant, written by Stephen Matthew Schwegler, a member of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores.)

Being a songwriter in a vastly under-appreciated but densely populated genre, the importance of a strong identity seems, to me, paramount. To be fair, I am biased in the case of the band Replicant. I love single-word band monikers. I love brutal and atonal slamming death metal. I love Pete/Mike/Matty as individuals, and my band has played shows with them numerous times now.

That being said, the creature that is Replicant inhabits a long-missed niche in death metal for me. Concise and elegant, their simplistic namesake tells you everything you need to know about the band before ever hearing the music. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 11): PARADISE LOST, GOATWHORE, ZIGGURAT

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  3 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

Welcome to Part 11 of this list. Without further introductory verbiage, let’s proceed with three more tracks.

PARADISE LOST

Medusa was one of those albums that popped up repeatedly in the Top 5 of year-end lists published by print zines and “big platform” web sites that we included in our year-end LISTMANIA extravaganza. Some of the albums in the upper reaches of those rankings were suspect, having the whiff of big-name pandering. But not this one… this one deserved all the honors it got (and of course it appeared on many of our own year-end lists).

To paraphrase something that Andy Synn wrote in his review of the album, it was almost shocking to realise that somehow, almost thirty years on since the release of their debut, Paradise Lost were right back at the very top of their game. As Andy also opined, Medusa is “utterly monstrous” — “one of the darkest, heaviest, and doomiest albums of their career”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AVSLUT — “PESTILENS”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

In 2016 the Swedish black metal band Avslut released a very promising debut EP named Vanskapt, and now comes the time for their first full album, Deceptis, which will be released on February 23rd by Osmose Productions. Two tracks from the album, “Deceptis” and “Terra Mater”, have previously appeared, demonstrating that Vanskapt was no fluke, and today we have a third one for you.

“Pestilens” is a good demonstration of Avslut’s ability to integrate moving, atmospheric melody, of the kind that fires the imagination, gripping rhythmic propulsion, and blood-rushing savagery. Osmose proclaims that “Avslut is a weapon”, and you’ll get no argument here, but they are more than that, as “Pestilens” proves Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BIND TORTURE KILL — “VISCÈRES”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

There are no tender mercies on Viscères, the new album by the French maulers in Bind Torture Kill. There is no mercy at all, no prisoners taken, no glass-half-full outlook on the future. But there is staggering power, frightening intensity, and the kind of visceral impact that usually triggers a fight-or-flight response in the average human.

Viscères will be released on January 26th by WOOAAARGH. The label describes the music as “chaotic blackened hardcore”, a charred form of Converge or Trap Them that should also appeal to fans of Baptists, Employed To Serve, God Mother, and The Rodeo Idiot Engine. You can judge for yourselves, because today we present a full stream of the album — preceded by some thoughts of my own. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ACHERONTAS, ALGHAZANTH, BASALTE, CLARET ASH, COVERED IN FLIES, DRUDKH, GOAT SEMEN

 SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

Because of an event-filled out-of-town trip last weekend I wasn’t able to prepare a SHADES OF BLACK column for Sunday, or anything for Saturday. Fortunately, DGR stepped in with a 3-part SEEN AND HEARD round-up that launched on Saturday and continued through Monday. Now I’m going to do something similar, with this column’s usual focus on black metal. I’ve amassed a substantial collection of new music and a few news items that also interested me. I’ve organized them in alphabetical order and divided the list into three parts, with the goal of posting Parts 2 and 3 tomorrow and Friday.

Of course, in the meantime the odds are that I’ll find something else I’d like to include, which may necessitate screwing up the alphabetized ordering.

ACHERONTAS

I’m beginning Part 1 of this collection with the first of a trio of enticing news items I’ve included here. As announced today by Agonia Records, the Greek occult black metal band Acherontas (whose gear is pictured above) will be releasing a seventh studio album this spring. Yes, it’s true that Acherontas released an album only last year — Amarta अमर्त (Formulas of Reptilian Unification Part II) — but that’s no reason to be any less excited to receive a new one.

As for why this new one is appearing so quickly on the heels of the last one, the press release we received included this statement by the band: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PISSED REGARDLESS — “TRUST NO PULSE”

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Jan 232018
 

 

The very name Pissed Regardless tells you some of what you need to know about this San Diego band, but there’s also more going on in their music than head-battering expressions of rampant rage and disgust, as you’ll find out when you let “Trust No Pulse” run roughshod through your cranium.

That’s the name of the song we’re helping the band premiere today. It comes from a new 7″ EP named Feed the Birds, which will be released by Oakland-based Creator-Destructor Records. It follows the band’s two full-length releases, 2013’s self-titled album and 2015’s Force Fed Gods. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 10): SATYRICON, WOLFHEART, HAVUKRUUNU

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  6 Responses »
Jan 232018
 

Oslo 05072017. Photo: Marius Viken

 

I guess it’s not a bad time to take stock of where we are in the rollout of this 2017 edition of our Most Infectious Song list, since this is the 10th Part. With the three songs I’m adding today, we’re up to a total of 32 tracks. I had planned to finish the list by the end of this month, so we can finally close the book on last year (or mostly close it) and focus our time more exclusively on the flood of new metal that’s been coming our way in 2018. If I follow through on that plan, it really just means I’ll be calling an arbitrary halt… because I’m still just figuring this out as I go along.

I suppose if I really feel that calling a dead halt on January 31 would leave too many gems behind, I might edge into February, but on the other hand, that could become a very slippery slope. I do have 8 days left in the month, and if I knock out an average of three tracks per day, I can make it to 56 songs… which would be about 20 fewer than usual for this series. We’ll see. Continue reading »

CROW BLACK SKY: “SIDEREAL LIGHT: VOLUME ONE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 232018
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the new album by Crow Black Sky from Cape Town, South Africa.)

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of writing about music (and that’s a big “if”), it’s that you should never completely write a band off, as they can always surprise you.

Such is the case with South African quartet Crow Black Sky, whose debut record, 2010’s Partheion, proved to be a not-unenjoyable slab of highly melodic, keyboard-inflected Black Metal in the vein of Kolossus-era Keep of Kalessin and early Dimmu Borgir which, despite its obvious merits, largely failed to set the music world on fire, and was soon lost in the shuffle.

Eight(!) years later, however, the band have returned with a new sound, a new outlook, and a brand new album which completely blows its predecessor out of the water. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CULTUS PROFANO — “UNDER THE INFERNAL REIGN, OP. 10”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 232018
 

 

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that there is a paradox in those musical strains of black metal that have their roots in the sinister, nocturnal emanations spawned in the ’90s. The new Los Angeles band Cultus Profano embraces those traditions with a fierce devotion, conjuring “a pure form of blasphemy that evokes hatred and darkness”, to quote Debemur Morti Productions, who will release this duo’s debut album Sacramentum Obscurus on February 23rd. And yet the song from the album that we’re helping to premiere today — “Under the Infernal Reign, Op. 10” — powerfully evokes other moods.

From the hate-filled scowls of their corpse-painted visages to the Satanic mysticism that inspired their song titles and lyrics, the band fuel their creations with loathing and abhorrence, seemingly guided by visions of fire and plague, and of the ascendency of evil and the triumph of sin. But the mood of the music, at least to these ears, is one of intense sorrow and desolating despair. Continue reading »

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