SHORT BUT SWEET: CLARET ASH — “THE GREAT ADJUDICATION: FRAGMENT ONE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 022017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new EP by the Australian black metal band Claret Ash, released yesterday via Bandcamp.)

Do you feel that? That faint, but growing, tingling on the back of your neck? That slowly developing sense of dread?

If you’re a writer/reviewer like me, you’ll recognise it almost immediately. That’s the sensation that time is running out, that the year is almost over, and yet there’s still so much left unsaid and unwritten.

And while I’m slowly starting to put together my usual yearly round-up to be published next month, I’m also still trying my hardest to award some coverage (and criticism) to as many albums and EPs as possible before the inevitable completion of the current solar cycle.

So, without further ado… here’s some rambling thoughts on the new EP by Aussie Black Metallers Claret Ash. Continue reading »

ANTIGAMA: THE PREMIERE OF “NOW” AND A REVIEW OF “DEPRESSANT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 022017
 

 

On November 10, Selfmadegod Records will release a new EP by Antigama, entitled Depressant, on CD (with an LP version coming soon). In this post we present a detailed review by DGR, as well as the premiere of an eye-popping video created by Chariot of Black Moth for a head-wrecking, bombing-run of a track called “Now”. You will find the video lurking in the midst of the review, which begins here:

 

It doesn’t feel like it has been that long since the cyborg Polish grind monsters of Antigama unleashed The Insolent (review penned by yours truly here) upon the world, and yet two years and a handful of months later, the band are returning with a sub-nineteen-minute, seven-track EP named Depressant via Selfmadegod. The group, ever busy in their time between full discs, found time since The Insolent not only to contribute to two different split releases, but also then managed to jam out seven songs of new music all wrapped around the concept of pill popping.

The songs are all tied together through a series of segues, and a strain of utter madness seems to run through the whole Depressant campaign. The opening first minute of the EP dedicates itself to a faux-infomercial alongside some smooth-jazz that is honestly not too out of place in an Antigama disc; the band’s methods of doing whatever the fuck they want quickly unfurling themselves as they kick into full obliteration mode after the infomercial promises to save us from “pain….pain….pain….pain”. Ever fueled by a rage that borders on utter annihilation, we are once again invited to go on a roller-coaster ride of music verging on warped instrument destruction via Depressant. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TONGUES — “THEOPHAGOUS WOUNDS OF EARTH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 012017
 

 

We are very happy to usher in the return of a distinctive Danish band — Tongues — three years after their first release, which was an enormous eye-opener. And we do that through the premiere of a track from their new album Hreilia, which will be released by I, Voidhanger Records on December 8. The name of the song is “Theophagous Wounds Of Earth“.

Tongues‘ debut, three long years ago, was the album-length EP Thelésis Ignis, which was also released by I, Voidhanger and from which we also had the privilege of premiering a track. It was so precocious and unusual that it sounded much more like the brashly creative and self-assured efforts of seasoned hands than anyone’s first outing. More than a year later we did come across (and wrote about) a track that was included on a compilation of disparate music by bands from Aarhus, but otherwise were left wondering what had become of the Tongues album that had been forecast as long ago as the time of Thelésis Ignis. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: FRAMEWORK — “WHERE WE DIVIDE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Nov 012017
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new EP by Framework from New Jersey and New York.)

Melodic death metal is a genre that’s arguably an endangered species as a stand-alone style. It started as something very distinct and apart from the rest of metal for sure, and some of the greatest metal ever made was recorded by bands operating under that label and with those stylistic leanings. However, I think it can be argued that the style has basically been devoured by the rest of metal.

More extreme bands began incorporating more melody into their music, and the melodic death bands who took notice of this started incorporating more extreme elements into their own music. This musical adaptation that’s happened, especially in the last ten years, make it worth asking if we should even be using the genre descriptor any more.

I reviewed Framework’s excellent record A World Distorted here at NCS previously, an impressive debut that incorporated all the best aspects of ’90‘s/early 2000s heavier melodic death metal in the spirit of At The Gates, Soilwork, Nightrage, etc. Framework have been underground for a good while since then, now three years removed from A World Distorted. And now I understand why, as the band have been busy re-tooling their sound, making that adaptation I spoke of earlier. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRYPTS OF DESPAIR — “PATH TO VENGEANCE”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Nov 012017
 

 

If you haven’t had a good solid headbang lately, we can fix that problem for you. And if you’ve been wondering what it feels like to suffer a cranial fracture and concussive trauma, we can take care of that, too. And we can supply both those needs in one fell swoop through our premiere of a track called “Path To Vengeance” off the debut album by Lithuania’s Crypts of Despair. Entitled The Stench of the Earth, it will be released on November 24 by those German specialists in death (metal) at Testimony Records.

Crypts of Despair first took shape in 2009, went into a hiatus in 2013, and revived in 2016, eventually assembling the revised line-up that recorded this new album, whose lyrical themes include “disgust and hatred towards humanity, death worship and the occult.” Continue reading »

A POST-HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST (PART 3): NEW MUSIC AND VIDEOS FROM INFERNAL BLAST, KHANDRA, SATYRICON, SHINING, VITRIOL, AND WATAIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 012017
 

 

As explained in Part 1 of this gigantic mid-week round-up, I’m trying to catch up on the flood of new videos and songs that were released on Halloween and the few days leading up to it (although a few of the items I’ve selected are a bit older than that).

Because there are so many things I want to throw at your eyes and ears, I alphabetized everything by band name, beginning with Apophis in Part 1, continuing through Heart Attack in Part 2, and now ending with Watain in this final part. And because I chose so many songs and videos for this round-up, I resorted to a tactic I’ve used occasionally in the past: Although I have dribbled a few words here and there, I’m mainly presenting everything with just basic release info and no reviews. Onward to Part 3:

INFERNAL BLAST

This is a French one-man project, and the song below (“Destruction Process“) comes from its debut EP. You can’t accuse this band of false advertising. “Destruction Process” is exactly the process of this song — kill everything, let dog sort ’em out. Continue reading »

A POST-HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST (PART 2): NEW MUSIC AND VIDEOS FROM CATTLE DECAPITATION, CENTURIES, CREST OF DARKNESS, THE FACELESS, GODFLESH, HEART ATTACK

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 012017
 

 

As explained in Part 1 of this gigantic mid-week round-up, I’m trying to catch up on the flood of new videos and songs that were released on Halloween and the few days leading up to it (although a few of the items I’ve selected are a bit older than that).

Because there are so many things I want to throw at your eyes and ears, I alphabetized everything by band name, beginning with Apophis and ending with Watain, and divided the list into three parts. I’m posting them as fast as I can get them ready to go. And because there are so many songs and videos, I’m resorting to a tactic I’ve used occasionally in the past: Although I may dribble a few words here and there, I’m mainly presenting everything with just basic release info and no reviews. Onward to Part 2:

CATTLE DECAPITATION

Cattle Decap put up a video for “Prophets Of Loss” last week, mostly a live performance video using a bunch of tour footage from the group’s recent European run. Great song from a great album. Random comment by my comrade DGR: “It looks like their bassist has cut his glorious mane of hair…. This is most unfortunate. RIP really tall bassist guy’s hair.” Continue reading »

A POST-HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST (PART 1): NEW MUSIC AND VIDEOS FROM APOPHYS, AUTOPSY, BIG DUMB FACE, BLOODWAY, BONGCAULDRON, BURY THE MACHINES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 012017
 

 

Halloween, and the few days leading up to it, always seem to be a hot time for the release of new metal, for obvious reasons I suppose. This year’s Halloween season sure as hell proved to be busy for hapless metal bloggers like me who were trying to keep up with all the new stuff rushing out into the world. Because I had a lot of premieres to write yesterday (which in themselves added to that Halloween torrent of new metal), I didn’t have time to compile a Halloween round-up. So I’m doing it today instead.

Now, you may well think this is ridiculous, but I have 17 new songs and videos to recommend. A few of them are 7-10 days old, but the rest were all released on the last couple days of October. Rather than trying to boil that list down to the size of an average SEEN AND HEARD post, I just decided, fuck it, I’ll throw ’em all at you.

Because there are so many, I alphabetized everything by band name, beginning with Apophis and ending with Watain, and divided the list into three parts. I’m going to post them as fast as I can get them ready to go. And because there are so many, I’m resorting to a tactic I’ve used occasionally in the past: Although I may dribble a few words here and there, I’m mainly presenting everything with just basic release info and no reviews. Here we go:

APOPHYS

We have some history with this band, whose line-up includes a lot of talented Dutch musicians with impressive resumes — I wrote no fewer than six posts surrounding the 2015 release by Metal Blade of their debut album Prime Incursion, including an interview and a track premiere. Now they have a new album coming out, and on Halloween they released the first single, “Retaliate“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VOËMMR — “NOX MALEDICTVS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 312017
 

 

We are told that Voëmmr recorded their debut album Nox Maledictvs during two nights in an abandoned farm in the Portuguese countryside. What we are not told, but may infer from the sounds they’ve created, is that they were not alone, but instead participated in a communion with spirits of the dead, assisted by witches, warlocks, and shape-shifting, void-dwelling entities stinking of sulphur.

This is an album both bewitching and toxic, bewildering and beguiling, haunted and terrifying. It is entirely fitting that we present a full stream of the music on Samhain, that liminal time when the veil between our world and the Otherworld is tissue-thin, that old festival of darkness when black magic most easily parts the veil. The album is being released today by Harvest of Death, a division of Signal Rex, and you may listen to all of it below.  Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: JUPITERIAN — “SOL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 312017
 

 

The name chosen by this masked Brazilian band has always seemed a brilliant choice, invoking not only the mythic and occult associations of Mesopotamian Neberu, Babylonian Marduk, Sumerian Enlil, the fourth sphere of the Kabbalah, and of course the bright father of the Roman pantheon, but also the crushing gravitational force of our solar system’s most gigantic planet, whose mass is two and a half times that of all the other planets in our system combined. In their music, Jupiterian create both haunting, otherworldly atmosphere and sensations of titanic physical force.

I’ve written about the band’s music frequently in the past. In attempting to describe their last release, an EP of cover songs, I referred to the band’s ability “to club a listener senseless” and to channel “pure evil — cask-strength and undiluted”, the “stark, desolate, and devastating” moods of their music, and the capacity of the vocals alone “to give any normal person a shivering case of the night terrors”. I’ve been anxiously awaiting their second album, and it will soon be upon us.

With the name Terraforming, it will be released by Transcending Obscurity Records on November 15, and continues the band’s collaboration with the brilliant Brazilian painter Caue Piloto. Three singles have been released so far, and today we present a fourth, entitled “Sol“. Continue reading »

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