OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 2): SEPTICFLESH, TEMPLE OF VOID, ACEPHALIX

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  4 Responses »
Jan 132018
 

 

No sooner than I started this series and quasi-promised that there would be a new installment every day than I missed the second fucking day. Let it serve as a reminder that this NCS gig isn’t a job for any of us here, just a passion that occasionally gets de-railed by other obligations and distractions.

Anyway, welcome to the second installment of our list of Most Infectious Songs from 2017, the length of which is now unknown, but which I hope will be fun for you to experience, even if neither I nor you quite knows where it’s going.

SEPTICFLESH

“Portrait of A Headless Man” was the first song I heard from the 2017 album from SepticFlesh. Since I’ve made a point of not showing my own head in social media photos, the title had a certain immediate appeal. But the appeal of the song went well beyond its title. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017 WRAP-UP

 LISTMANIA 2017  6 Responses »
Jan 122018
 

 

There’s a possibility that at this late date I might still receive a year-end list or two that I’ve forgotten were coming, but with those possible exceptions our 2017 edition of LISTMANIA has concluded — or at least close enough that I’m ready to provide this wrap-up.

Once again, we had an extensive series of year-end lists. As usual, some of them were re-postings of lists that appeared at “big platform” web sites and print magazines, and others were prepared by our own stable of stable geniuses. But once again the largest group of list posts came from invited band members and assorted other guests, including fellow metal bloggers/writers. Plus, we’ve also received valuable, extensive lists in reader comments on THIS POST (and new lists are still being added there).

In this article I’m collecting links to all of the 2017 year-end lists that we published, divided into categories and listed within each category in the order of their appearance. For people who are looking for the best metal that 2017 had to offer, these lists provide a tremendous resource, as they have in past years.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to 2017 LISTMANIA and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together. Continue reading »

PANPHAGE: “JORD”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 122018
 

 

(The solo artist behind the Swedish black metal band PanPhage has declared that the new album Jord will be the last Panphage record (for reasons discussed in this interview). It is being released today via Nordvis Produktion, and here we present Norway-based Karina Noctum’s review.)

 

Panphage is a Black/Folk one-man band from Sweden. Jord, the latest album, and the last one, comes two years after the release of the full-length Storm. The cover picture of Jord is from some Swedish autumnal landscape. The title of the album translates to “soil”. Most of the song titles are related to the soil/earth theme, e.g. (as translated), “Silent mountain ridge”, “Unsown shall the fields grow”, all revolving around heritage and the earth’s cycle of life and death.

The beginning of “Odalmarkerna” (cultivated fields) reminds me a bit of Iron Maiden actually. But as the album develops, the folk elements become more and more blackened. The album has an atmosphere, an old one. Especially the guitar and drum sound bring the ’90s black metal feeling back quite often. The Bergen scene comes definitely to mind here. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM STARKWEATHER (RENNIE RESMINI)

 LISTMANIA 2017  4 Responses »
Jan 122018
 

 

Editor’s Note:  starkweather vocalist Rennie Resmini is not only a very talented music-maker, but also a man with tastes that match up unusually well with may own inclinations… and he has a way with words. I’ve been following him on Facebook (here) for a while and I see what he recommends, and he also sends me recommendations from time to time. As you know if you read my round-ups of new music regularly, he has been a source of great discoveries.

For all those reasons, I asked him if he would be willing to provide a year-end list for publication here. For those who follow him on FB, you know that he posted extensive separate lists of albums, EPs, demos, and splits. For us, he whittled those down considerably to the 15 titles you will see below, using as one factor what he listened to the most. As he told me, “Here it is, quick and dirty so I don’t overthink… though by tomorrow I’ll have changed my mind”.

If you’re not familiar with starkweather’s music, go here — and get ready for something new from them in a few months’ time… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCAPHISM — “MALAPROPOS CARDIECTOMY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 112018
 

 

A medical dictionary tells us that a cardiectomy is an excision of the heart, while “malapropos” refers to something that’s untimely or inappropriate. And so now perhaps you have a bit of introductory insight into the ripping new song from Boston’s Scaphism that we’re premiering in this post.

“Malapropos Cardiectomy” is one of eight tracks on Unutterable Horrors, the new Scaphism album that’s headed our way with an imminent January 12 release via Horror Pain Gore Death Productions. It’s the band’s first album since their 2012 full-length debut, Festering Human Remains, and it’s apparent that during this five-year interval between releases Scaphism have become, if anything, even nastier and more savagely adept at their chosen form of death metal butchery. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 1): DYSCARNATE, POWER TRIP, DUMAL, KAWIR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  4 Responses »
Jan 112018
 

 

And so it begins. Just as we’re approaching the end of our 2017 LISTMANIA series, we’re beginning another list — and it’s the only one for which your humble editor is personally responsible. I don’t have the mental ability or emotional maturity to make my own list of best albums, but I do force myself to make the list that begins today, though as you’ll discover, it’s not an easy process for me (though it does make for a lot of fun listening).

In fact, as in every year when I’ve done this, I’m starting the rollout of this Most Infectious Song list without having finished it — which means I don’t know how long it will be or when it will end. As in past years, I’m making it up as I go along. I’ll do my best to post 2 – 4 songs every day until I arbitrarily decide to stop, though I might miss a day here and there. My goal is to finish by the end of January, but no promises.

If you think this is a ridiculously inept way to make a list, you might consider that between the list of candidates I sporadically made for myself as 2017 rolled on, plus the lists provided by our readers (here) and by my NCS colleagues, I have a master list that includes almost 700 songs. It’s a mix of big names and very obscure ones from across virtually every metal sub-genre you can think of. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GALVANIZER — “MOOD FOR THE BLADE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 112018
 

 

If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool metalhead, you gotta love the title of this song. The band’s name is definitely well-chosen, too; it’s a completely fitting description of what their music does to your nervous system. And that album art (which is a bit Demilich-esque, and for good reason) is going to catch some eyes as well. In other words, this is an enticing package for sure.

But even better, the song itself is a killer.

What we have for you is the premiere of “Mood For the Blade“, the first single to be released from Sanguine Vigil, which is the debut album of the Finnish death/grind band Galvanizer. It’s set for a February 28 CD release by Everlasting Spew Records, with a vinyl edition coming later this year via Me Saco Un Ojo. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PALE HORSEMAN — “PHANTASMAL VOICE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 102018
 


Some very strange and horrible things are going on in the video we’re presenting today… things involving mysterious coins made of mysterious (and ghastly) substances by a devilish creature with the aid of a bride under his sway, coins that seem to have their own sinister and seductive appeal as they circulate…

There’s a band in the video, too, a quartet of sludge/doom crushers from the Chicago area who call themselves Pale Horseman, and their song “Phantasmal Voice” is the neck-wrecking track that provides the soundtrack to this strange short film. It’s the closing track from the band’s latest album, The Fourth Seal, which is out now via Black Bow Records. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: BRUTALITÖPIA’S TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2017

 LISTMANIA 2017  8 Responses »
Jan 102018
 

 

(Our annual LISTMANIA series includes re-posts of lists from “big platform” music sites and selected print zines, but we usually don’t re-post lists from other metal blogs because that truly would make this long series virtually endless. But we’ve again made an exception for Brutalitopia, because through a variety of MDF hijinks over the years, the NCS crew has become fast friends with the miscreants behind Brutalitopia — Tom, Mick, and Durf. The following is a Top 10 synthesis they compiled of their individual lists originally published at their site.)

 

Hello No Clean Singing! Brutalitöpia is back again to bombard you with more lists; assuming you can take any more since Andy Synn, DGR, and many others have scorched your eyeballs with enough of them recently. All that petty nonsense aside, we think we have some different opinions about different albums than you probably do, because you know that’s, well… different!

We again did our own lists here, here and here but if you want an aggregate of 3 dudes that benefit from the 2 best cities in the country (Chicago and NYC for those not from THIS country), then you are in luck because we’ll do the work because this is the USA in 2017 after all and research (read: clicking) is for the weak. Facts don’t matter, only opinions. Read on for some takes hotter than Tomi Lahren’s on snowflakes! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GATECREEPER, IRON REAGAN, RITES OF THY DEGRINGOLADE, KNELT ROTE, IRON FLESH, EEVIOMORFIA, HIGH COMMAND, SCORN OF CREATION, MINORS, SCHIERMANN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 102018
 

 

There’s a megaton of explosive stuff in this mid-week round-up of recommended new sounds, so I’ll dispense with an introduction and just move right to the music.

GATECREEPER AND IRON REAGAN

Gatecreeper’s debut album Sonoran Depravaton was so damned good, a true highlight of 2016 and the source of a song (“Craving Flesh”) that I put on our list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Their EP from last November, Sweltering Madness, was also damned good, a meshing together of dismal, stomping brutality and maniacal, earth-shaking obliteration. And so when I saw that Gatecreeper had released a new song yesterday I nearly soiled myself in my haste to listen to it. Continue reading »

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