NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUICIDE FOREST — “KINGDOM OF SOLITUDE”

Aug 162018

On October 2nd Ascension Monuments Media will release the self-titled debut album by Suicide Forest from Tucson, Arizona. The album is the work of 23-year-old multi-instrumentalist A. Kruger, although he is joined by other musicians for the band’s live performances.

Kruger’s choice of the name for this project suits the mood of the music, referring as it does to the sprawling Aokigahara forest northwest of Japan’s Mt. Fuji, reportedly the second most popular place in the world to commit suicide, after the Golden Gate Bridge. We’re told that in 2003, the last year when Japanese authorities released official numbers, 105 bodies had been found there, though no accurate count is possible, given the density of vegetation and the abundance of wildlife within that sea of trees. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): HATE ETERNAL, WOLFHEART, ANAAL NATHRAKH, OUTER HEAVEN

Aug 162018

Here we are, four whole days into the week without a round-up, which of course means there’s a whole hell of a lot to round up. So, we’ll have a two-parter today, along with a couple more premieres.

HATE ETERNAL

Well, of course I’m going to lead with Hate Eternal‘s new track, because of course I’m not going to squander the opportunity to put another Eliran Kantor masterpiece up at the top of our page. In fact, I’m going to do it again after the jump, this time with the album title and logo in place: Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: ALLFATHER / GARGANJUA / JØTNARR

Album Reviews No Responses »

Aug 162018

Allfather

(As he is want to do from time to time, Andy Synn has selected three new releases by three UK bands to spotlight in this collection of reviews and streams.)

While the main purpose of this column – to highlight and hype up some of the best and brightest bands in the UK Metal scene – is pretty obvious, the process has also forced me to take a long hard look at its many faults and failings at the same time, in particular its unfortunate tendency to favour familiarity and celebrate mediocrity over supporting bands who might actually have something unique or interesting to offer.

Now, unsurprisingly, statements like that are unlikely to endear me to the self-declared gatekeepers and “defenders of the faith” who interpret even the mildest criticism as a sign of disloyalty and grounds for instant excommunication… but then I’ve been considered persona non grata by a lot of them for a while now, so what else is new?

Of course every year there’s a handful of break-out acts who, through a confluence of fortunate timing and hard-fought graft, manage to win over the hearts and minds of the record-buying public without pandering to the lowest common-denominator, but these are definitely the exception, rather than the rule, and the number of painfully generic bands I’ve encountered attempting to (misre)present themselves as “the next big thing” – all without a single interesting or original riff to their name – vastly outweighs the number of artists out there who actually possess a real voice and vision of their own.

That being said, the three bands I’ve singled out here all definitely have that special “x-factor” which makes them stand out from the crowd, and it’s albums like these which makes winnowing through all the sound-alikes and also-rans worth it in the end. Continue reading »

REBEL WIZARD: “VOLUPTOUS WORSHIP OF RAPTURE AND RESPONSE”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Aug 162018

I have an ingrained habit when I’m listening to music that I’ve already decided I want to write about, probably not that different from anyone else who scribbles their thoughts about music for public dissemination: I make notes to myself as I listen (not the first time I listen, but the times after that). In my case, my notes take the shape of messages to myself, like one side of a conversation, or like a memoir — messages from a self that’s caught up in the immediacy of what I’m hearing to a future self that’s more considered and more calculating about how to express those thoughts to others.

The future self tries to turn such notes into something readable, and more reflective. On his best days, that future self tries to avoid the kind of track-by-track reactions that are there in those past messages, for fear that tedium would otherwise overcome the reader. The future self often fails in the effort to pull everything together in a way that’s concise and thoughtful; and even on the best days, words and phrases from the past self who was carried away by the songs survive.

But this time, for the first time I can remember in the 9 1/2 years I’ve been messing with NCS, I decided to just give you my notes, slightly cleaned-up, but still essentially the same words that poured out when I let this album rush through my head the second time I heard it. Why did I decide to do this, at the risk of losing all of you? Continue reading »

PLAGUEWIELDER: “SURRENDER TO THE VOID”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Aug 152018

By Plaguewielder’s own description, they’re “a three piece blackened sludge outfit from a decrepit mill town in Ohio”. As you might guess from that choice of words, the music on their new album Surrender To the Void is capable of descending to oppressive levels of torment and hopelessness, riddled with pain and a sense of bleak, hollow-eyed resignation. But that’s not all their music is about. It’s also fiery and fierce, with a bare-knuckled and bruising defiance in its sounds that’s capable of getting your heart racing and your head moving hard. And that still doesn’t exhaust where they take their songs, because there’s also something mystical about them, with strains of otherworldly melody that suggest visions beyond crumbling masonry, rusting equipment, and broken lives.

Plaguewielder’s success in creating such changing moods and musical textures in these seven tempo-dynamic, powerfully evocative tracks makes the album well worth hearing, and it’s one that does a great job keeping a tight grip on your attention throughout its running time. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZWARTE DOOD — “VAN KAÏN’S ZAAD”

Premieres No Responses »

Aug 152018

It makes sense that the first demo of Zwarte Dood (Dutch for Black Death, though this project is Belgian) ends with a cover of a track by the infamous Ildjarn (a track I haven’t been able to find anywhere). Like much of Ildjarn’s music, Zwarte Dood‘s demo is an exercise in brutally distorted, minimalist, and palpably hostile black metal romping and rampaging. It’s crude and punishing, hateful and harsh — and in places, powerfully hook-heavy and head-moving.

The opener, “Aanvang“, lasts less than a minute, a stage-setter consisting or eerie swirling and shining ambient music, punctured by the slow strumming of reverberating strings, and elevated by something like the sounds of an angelic choir. After that, before you reach the Ildjarn cover at the end, there are two main songs with another kind of interlude in between them. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: REBEL WIZARD

Interviews 3 Responses »

Aug 152018

This is an interview of NKSV, the Australian man behind both Nekrasov and Rebel Wizard, though the latter project was the focus of this discussion. The interview was conducted through a long chain of back-and-forth e-mails that lasted for several weeks, ending only yesterday when I forced myself to stop asking question because we’re only a couple days away from Prosthetic Records’ release of Rebel Wizard‘s new album, Voluptuous Worship of Rapture and Response.

I ought to explain that I swore off doing interviews more than a year ago after I finally accepted the reality that they consume time I don’t have, because I agonize too much in an effort to come up with non-standard questions that won’t bore the shit out of both myself and the person on the other end of the conversation. I made an exception here because, based on previous communications with NKSV, and because I’m such a big fan of Rebel Wizard, I thought it would be fun. And man, it really was.

This interview is also very long. VERY LONG. And sometimes it turned into a meeting of a mutual admiration society, which in retrospect might prove a bit embarrassing to both of us (though I don’t take back anything I said). If for those reasons, or others, you lose patience with this, I don’t need to tell you how to escape, though I do believe that this will prove interesting, insightful, thought-provoking (and fun) to a lot of readers despite its length — because, man, NKSV is an unorthodox wizard of a talker/writer, too. So maybe don’t pull the plug too soon?

One last word of advice before we begin: I think this conversation will make a lot more sense if you listen to Rebel Wizard’s first album (The Triumph of Gloom) and/or the new one (which premiered through a full stream at DECIBEL yesterday) before you begin reading, or while reading, or maybe even afterward. I’d encourage you to listen to those albums whether you read any further or not… and I’ll have some thoughts about the new one tomorrow in case we don’t completely exhaust your reading faculties today (you can get the new record here). Continue reading »

GOLDEN BATS: “RESIDUAL DREAD”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Aug 152018

Residual Dread is a titanically heavy album, steeped in a kind of gothic gloom, and so haunting in its laments that it threatens to split the heart even as it’s splintering bone. With both a persistently brutal punch and an emotionally devastating conveyance of grief and pain, the music repeatedly hits home with staggering force on multiple levels — all the way up until the final 4 minutes and 40 seconds of the album, when something unexpected and perhaps even more astounding happens. But I’ll come back to that in due course.

The album is the latest one by Golden Bats, the solo project of Australian musician Geordie Stafford (from Brisbane). It’s being released today, both digitally and on vinyl, by a label called Domestic La La, which seems a whimsical name for a carrier of such desolating sounds. Continue reading »

ABHORRENT DEFORMITY: “SLAUGHTER MONOLITH”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Aug 142018

(NCS contributor Vonlughlio penned this review of the new album by North Carolina’s Abhorrent Deformity, released on August 3rd by Comatose Music.)

This time around I have the opportunity to do a small write-up for the band Abhorrent Deformity’s sophomore effort Slaughter Monolith, released via Comatose Music. This project was formed back in 2013 and they are a local band (for me at least now) whom I discovered back when I lived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, after their first album Entity of Malevolence was released in 2015.

I have to say that although I heard a couple of songs from the first album and liked the music, I never listened to the full album (due to shortness of time on my behalf). But I did eventually, once I moved to their home State in the U.S., and I’m glad I gave it a listen since it showcased great musicianship and songwriting. Another aspect that caught my attention was how well they blended brutal death elements with progressive touches. Yes, dear reader, you read correctly. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AETHEREUS — “THAT WHICH IS LEFT BEHIND”

Premieres 1 Response »

Aug 142018

Back in mid-June we had the pleasure of premiering a lyric video for a song called “The Pale Beast” off the debut album by the Tacoma, Washington band Aethereus, whose progressive approach to death metal fluidly combines atmospheric, technical, and melodic aspects of the genre with compelling results. Back then, the release date for Absentia seemed a frustratingly long way off, but now it’s out, having hit the streets on August 10th via The Artisan Era. And to help spread the word, we’re again fortunate to bring you a video for another one of the album’s marvelous tracks, “That Which Is Left Behind“.

To put the song in context, “That Which Is Left Behind” appears sixth in a nine-track running order, within an album that (as the band explain) is “loosely structured around the Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance)”. Moved by the death of the band’s original bassist Shaun Hansen, the band chose to compose and arrange the album in a way that follows the stages of grief “and describes the experience of losing a loved one and the lasting impact that person’s absence has on an individual, a group, and life as a whole”. Continue reading »

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