WAKE: “MISERY RITES”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 282018
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the new album by Wake from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.)

 

Some albums take a while to review. On a personal note: I’ve always been the type to really want to listen to a disc a ton, really learn what each song is about, how it flows, get a general sense of what informed the disc, before writing about it.

Going from a first glance often feels like criminally short-changing bands sometimes, although by that same token the first impression can also be an immensely valuable take on things in a world where time is incredibly limited, and some — like many of our readers here, given the constant refrains about how much music we post — have limited listening time. So it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of immediacy in the delivery.

And therein lies the opposing side of the “album that takes a while to review”. You have the ones that are so up-front, so immediate, the kind that grab you by the throat and ragdoll you around the room so quickly that you can’t help but almost immediately lock-in with the group’s chosen sense of ferocity. The urgency with which the material is delivered becomes the driving force behind it.

Those album’s don’t take nearly as long, because as a listener you can recognize every aspect and every weapon deployed from moment one, and from there the experience becomes more about how a band uses them and with what amount of lethal auditory force. And that brings us to the recently released Misery Rites, by Canadian noise-heavy grinders Wake. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TWILIGHT’S EMBRACE, BEYOND GRACE, HINAYANA, ÂQEN, ORACLE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Feb 272018
 

 

I’m beginning today’s round-up with two recent videos, which are quite different both visually and musically but which share two common features: Both were directed and produced by the same person (Eric Revill-Dews of Bigger Boat Film), and both include the voice of our own Andy Synn, in all its increasingly varied range of tones.

And then I’m following those two wonderful videos/songs with a selection of other recently discovered releases that also helped make my listening session last night a real joy.

TWILIGHT’S EMBRACE

Until watching this first video for the song “Dying Earth” I had no idea that any place in England could look as vast, as inhospitable, or as starkly beautiful as Derbyshire in the wintertime. Until reading the credits I assumed that the three grim-visaged gentlemen in Twilight’s Embrace had smuggled themselves on board a flight to Scandinavia (though of course I’ve never been there either). Apart from teaching me something new about the landscape of England, the video also proved to be a wonderful match for the music… which is itself as powerfully moving as the vision of those snow-covered reaches. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GALVANIZER — “SANGUINE VIGIL”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Feb 272018
 

 

Let us speak first of the tones of the music on Galvanizer’s debut album, Sanguine Vigil, because they are so delicious. Two of them are prominent.

The first is the deep, gut-rumbling, smoke-spewing, chain-sawing grind of the guitar. You know that tone. It sounds as if you could set the speakers next to a block of concrete and watch with a smile as the music vibrates it into a pile of gravel. You might also imagine it sending a web of fine fractures through your skull, like the appearance of a windshield that’s been crazed by an errant rock kicked up from the highway in front of you.

The second prominent tone in the music is the snap and crack of the snare drum. It’s as sharp and hard-edged as the guitar tone is murky and corroded. It sounds like an ax biting into wood, or the rapid fire of a handgun. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHAOS INVOCATION — “MENSKINDRUMS OF DOOM”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 272018
 

 

The invocation of chaos is a pillar of black metal — not the only one, but perhaps the central one, at least for those bands whose music is fueled by Luciferian flames and created in glorification of the Adversary. Yet the freedom granted by chaos has different dimensions, and so does the vast array of black metal that attempts to channel it. There is a difference, for example, between “music” that is itself simply chaos (and thus doesn’t merit the term “music” because it becomes painfully unlistenable) and compositions that cut the chains which bind us to a drab existence in ways that not only make connections to primal emotions but are also… interesting to hear. The song we present today is in the latter category.

The German black metal band Chaos Invocation proclaims its mission in its name. As time has passed, it has become more and more adept (and increasingly interesting) in the fulfillment of that mission. The progress becomes evident as you move from their second album, Black Mirror Hours (2013), and onward to the band’s 2017 split with Thy Darkened Shade (Saatet-Ta Apep) and now the new third album, Reaping Season, Bloodshed Beyond, which will be released by W.T.C. Productions on March 10th.

One example of Chaos Invocation’s increasing strength was revealed through DECIBEL’s premiere of a track from the new album (“Calling From Dudail“) earlier this year, and the one we have for you now — “MenSkinDrums Of Doom” — is a further impressive sign. Continue reading »

DAGON: “BACK TO THE SEA”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 272018
 

 

(Michigan’s seafaring Dagon have set sail again after seven years ashore, and DGR follows along in their wake like a gleeful porpoise with this detailed review.)

 

Few albums out there start with a song quite as victorious as Dagon’s Back To The Sea does. Its title track is an anthemic opening number, leading off the lengthy excursion back into the world of nautically themed melo-death from the Lansing, Michigan based group after a seven-year absence. Holding more thinly veiled symbolism than one might expect from a band who’ve made their headway in the metal scene by pulling tales from mythology, the history of piracy, and general apocalyptic tales of the ocean, the song “Back To The Sea” quickly throws aside all pretention in favor of a quick-moving guitar part and a constant refrain of “going back, back to the sea!”, which is an event that has been a long time coming for fans of the band.

The comeback disc is a hard trick to execute, but after a succesful crowdfunding campaign (which we posted about here, mostly to get folks some foam shark fins because the merchandising opportunity amused us) the group, who had developed a bit of a cult following after the release of their 2009 album Terraphobic and its followup EP, 2011’s Vindication, have managed to do just that. Back To The Sea contains 13 songs of hydro-powered, lead-guitar-charged melodeath led by a combo of cat-shrieking highs from drummer Truck and hefty low growls from bassist Randall, and while it’s not exactly breaking the mold genre-wise, it proves to be a whole hell of a lot of fun. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SIXES — “METHISTOPHELES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 262018
 

 

There’s no typo in the title of this post. Methistopheles is indeed the name of the debut album by the Southern California band Sixes. Think for a moment about such a union, about the scourge of meth joined to a conception of Lucifer not as a fallen angel but as the master of eternal tortures. Imagine desperation, derangement, and pain without end.

To be clear, I don’t know if that’s precisely the linguistic suggestion that Sixes had in mind when they coined the album title. My imagination could simply have fallen prey to the influence of the album’s music, which draws from poisoned wellsprings of sludge, stoner doom, and black metal to express abject misery in particularly devastating but perversely entrancing ways.

The music may turn your imaginings in other directions… none of them very pretty or comforting… but the best way to find out is to listen to the album. And you can do that now through our premiere of the record a few days before its March 1 release by Black Bow Records. Continue reading »

ANCST: “GHOSTS OF THE TIMELESS VOID”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 262018
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the German genre-benders in Ancst, which will be released on March 2, 2018.)

 

There are certain albums which hit you hard immediately, with a violent, whiplash-inducing punch right to the face. Then there are albums which deliver a slower, deeper, longer-lasting burn.

But the best albums are the ones which manage to do both, smacking you upside the head and knocking you flat on your ass, while also leaving the sort of heavy bruising which guarantees you won’t be forgetting the experience any time soon.

Now Ghosts of the Timeless Void, the second album by German blackened ‘core-collective Ancst, is most definitely one of the former… but only time will tell if it’s also the latter. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TOWARDS ATLANTIS LIGHTS — “GREETING MAUSOLUS’ TOMB”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Feb 262018
 

 

The debut album by Towards Atlantis Lights, Dust of Aeons, consists of four tracks thematically tied together in a narrative that plumbs the subconscious to reveal a magical remembrance of civilizations long dead and wisdom long forgotten, a discovery shrouded in the pain of loss and pointing toward the embrace of death. The music itself is as magical, as dramatic, and as heartbreaking as these tales brought forward from history’s depths in a dream.

The skill with which the album captures and conveys such powerful moods comes as no surprise, given the array of talents who have joined forces in this new group. The multinational quartet consists of vocalist/keyboardist Kostas Panagiotou (Pantheist, Landskap), bassist Riccardo Veronese (Aphonic Threnody, Dea Marica, Arrant Saudade), guitarist Ivan Zara (Void of Silence), and drummer Ivan Olivieri. Employing the tools of funeral doom and death metal, they’ve crafted music that’s beautiful, bereft, and wholly immersive.

The four songs on the album are significantly different in their durations. The opening song, “The Bunker of Life“, for example, exceeds 30 minutes, while the closer — which is the song you’re about to hear — is less than five minutes long. Yet although “Greeting Mausolus’ Tomb” is the shortest of the four tracks, it’s nonetheless spell-binding. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNBIRTH — “TUMULTS OF COLLECTIVE ANGUISHES”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 262018
 

 

The connoisseurs of extreme metal brutality at New Standard Elite are poised to detonate an obliterating new destructive device, in the form of the second album by Italy’s Unbirth. Entitled Fleshforged Columns of Deceit, the album is projected for release in April, but we have an electrifying burst from the album today through our premiere of the record’s opening track, “Tumults of Collective Anguishes“.

This new song is a fine example of Unbirth’s capacity to mount sonic assaults that are both savagely brutal and technically eye-popping. Flying at rocket-fast speed and with razor-sharp precision, the band create a feeling of heartless, frenzied viciousness, combined with skull-fracturing explosions of power. Continue reading »

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