KRODA: “SELBSTWELT”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Apr 022018
 

 

It seems that more and more bands (though still a small number) have been springing their albums by surprise, with little advance notice and no preview tracks, and the Ukrainian powerhouse Kroda did that at midnight last night, launching a new album named Selbstwelt on Bandcamp (though I confess that I was given an opportunity to hear the album in advance of that release).

Selbstwelt (The Land of Selbst) is Kroda’s seventh full-length studio album and joins a discography that also includes EPs, live recordings, and compilations. It follows a live album, Kälte Aurora – Live In Lemberg II, and is the band’s first studio release since 2015’s Навій схрон (Navij Skhron) (reviewed here), which was a significant departure from most previous Kroda releases, consisting of six ghostly and chilling ambient-music tracks and three black metal songs (including an electrifying cover of a song by Kroda’s countrymen Nokturnal Mortum), each different from the others and all still different in some ways from the pulse of Kroda’s past music.

Selbstwelt can be understood as both a return to earlier times and as a culmnation up of the band’s career so far. In Kroda’s own words: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INISANS — “TRANSITION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 022018
 

 

When many of us think about Swedish metal of death, what often comes to mind first is rotten, old-skull, chain-sawing morbidity, a mix of lurching ghoulishness and juggernaut plundering. Inisans are from Sweden, and they play death metal, but their music is a kind of incinerating lunacy, a form of shocking and electrifying violence that tends to leave listeners bludgeoned black and blue and gasping for air.

Those tendencies are rampantly on display in their debut album Transition, which will be released by Blood Harvest Records on April 6. But you won’t have to wait until the 6th to find out just how explosive the album is, because we have a full stream for you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HERON — “OF GODS AND GOATS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 022018
 

 

The wail of an air-raid siren ends the song you’re about to hear, but it comes too late — by then, the bombs have already fallen, the damage has been done, and it’s damage on a cataclysmic scale.

The name of the song is “Of Gods and Goats“, and it’s the opening track from A Low Winter’s Sun, the new full-length album by the Vancouver sludge/doom band Heron, which will be released on Friday the 13th of April. The album follows on the heels of two Heron EPs, their self-titled debut in 2015 and Fire Twin in 2016. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OAK LIVE AT CASTELO DE SANTIAGO DA BARRA

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 022018
 

 

In the far northwestern corner of Portugal in the town of Viana near the Lima river estuary is a 16th-century fortress whose name is Castelo de Santiago da Barra. On the night of March 24th, in a chapel within the old castle, two talented funeral doom bands put on a memorable performance. One was Seattle’s Bell Witch, whose name has become well-known far and wide. The other is a Portuguese duo whose name is just beginning to spread. But what might now be only whispers about the band are likely to rise to an enthusiastic clamoring once more people discover their music.

That Portuguese duo, who have taken the name Oak, are both members of Gaerea, a tremendous black metal band who themselves have a new album on the horizon (you can hear the first single from the album at this location). Not long ago we had the pleasure of premiering a video for a live studio recording of an Oak composition called “Sculptures“, and today we present a professionally shot video of their set on March 24th at Castelo de Santiago da Barra. Continue reading »

BARREN EARTH: “A COMPLEX OF CAGES”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 022018
 

 

(The fourth album by Finland’s Barren Earth was releasd by Century Media on March 30, and TheMadIsraeli gives it a very positive review here.)

 

What IS metal exactly? Or rather, what is metal as expressed on a metaphysical level? I’ve always felt that metal is consistently the expression of the beauty, the angst, and maybe the anger that come with the nihilistic realities of life. This powerful music exists as a product of man’s attempts to transcend the complacent, but also to lash out at those who are comfortable with the mundane, or even worse, who seek to enslave or oppress others to maintain their mundane complacency and to satisfy their own whims. In a sense, life should ultimately be beautiful, and the truest anger and despair is directed at that which seeks to prevent, snuff out, or degrade that beauty however nebulous it may be.

Barren Earth have always been a band who’ve followed very intensely in the footsteps of one of my musical heroes, Dan Swanö. Their music is dedicated to a nihilistic fusion of past, present, and future metallic complexity and bite, ’70s progressive melodic ambitions, and a sense of despair and anger that seems timeless, future-bound forevermore. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GAEREA, KŁY, APOGNOSIS, PACT, GOAT DISCIPLE

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 012018
 

 

As usual, I had a rough time trying to decide which songs to pick for today’s SHADES OF BLACK column; as usual, there was a lot to choose from. If I’d known when I made the selection that (as announced here) this would be the last NCS post after 8 1/2 years of effort, it would have been a whole lot rougher.

GAEREA

I thought the self-titled debut release by the Portuguese black metal band Gaerea was one of 2016’s best EPs.. We featured music from it repeatedly at our site, both before and after its release (including a post in which we named “Void of Numbness” to our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“, and our premiere of a bonus track that appeared on the vinyl edition).

Not surprisingly in light of all that, I have very high hopes for Gaerea’s follow-on release, a debut full-length named Unsettling Whispers. Based on the first single from the album, it seems likely those hopes will be fulfilled. Continue reading »

THE END IS NIGH

 Metal News  27 Responses »
Apr 012018
 


photo by Max Rossi (Reuters)

 

The Pope says there is no Hell. Or so reported 93-year-old journalist Eugenio Scalfari of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Thursday after a private conversation with Francis, both of whom have become friends with each other. “Souls are not punished,” the Pope was quoted as saying in the Repubblica piece. “Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell — there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”

The Vatican tried to walk this back, but some words can’t be unspoken, especially from such an authoritative source on Heaven and Hell. And for some of us in the metal community, the denial of eternal hellfire comes as a crushing blow. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AT THE GATES, KATAKLYSM, LIGHT THIS CITY, WOMBBATH

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Mar 312018
 

 

A few of my NCS comrades have been nudging me to do a round-up that includes the latest songs revealed by At the Gates, Kataklysm, and Light This City. I didn’t have time to do this yesterday when I got that nudging, but decided to do it today even though Andy’s latest Waxing Lyrical post would have given me an excuse to check out from NCS writing for the day. And since I decided to pull those three songs together, I added one pick of my own.

AT THE GATES

I suppose you’d have to be living under a rock not to know that At the Gates have a new album headed our way. For you under-rock dwellers, To Drink From the Night Itself will be released by Century Media on May 18th. Yesterday brought another single from the album, packaged with a wonderful video created by Costin Chioreanu of Twilight 13 Media. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: TURBID NORTH

 Interviews, WAXING LYRICAL  3 Responses »
Mar 312018
 

Photo by Maciej Pieloch Photography

 

(Continuing with his Saturday Waxing Lyrical series, Andy Synn questions vocalist/guitarist Nick Forkel about his approach to the writing of lyrics for Turbid North.)

 

As you may know, Turbid North’s fantastic Eyes Alive was one of my outstanding favourite albums of 2015, and I’ve been singing the band’s praises ever since, and trying to get as many of my friends (and even a few of my enemies) to listen to this three-piece’s unique blend of devastating Death Metal riffage, megaton metallic grooves, and psychedelic progressive melody, as possible.

Unsurprisingly I was quick to get in touch with the band’s vocalist/guitarist Nick Forkel when I first decided to pursue “Waxing Lyrical” as a regular column, and he was kind enough to furnish me with the following information regarding how he first fell into the role of lyricist, and how he’s developed as a writer over the years. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OMINOUS ECLIPSE — “SINISTER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 302018
 

 

Fourteen months ago we premiered a barbaric battle song named “The Horde” by the extreme metal band Ominous Eclipse from Ottawa, Ontario. Since then another single from their forthcoming album Sinister has surfaced, one that spiraled into insanity last fall at DECIBEL’s site. And today we bring you one more, and it’s the title track from Sinister, accompanied by a video of the band’s performance.

In that previous premiere we observed that as the evolution of Ominous Eclipse has progressed, the band have hybridized a seething core of death metal sound with elements of thrash, black metal, and melodic death metal, and with “The Horde” they reached for new levels of monstrous and electrifying destructiveness. Electrification, destructiveness, and rage are also on display in “Sinister” (the song), along with a heavy dose of body-moving grooves and scintillating guitar lunacy. Continue reading »

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