AN NCS PREMIERE: UNDERSAVE — “PEACEFULLY FLOATING IN PROSPEROUS ABYSS”

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Oct 022017
 

 

Fans of extreme metal know quite well that over time death metal has mutated and multiplied like a virus, and is now a vast ecosystem of aggressive life forms. Some are more disease-ridden, deranged, and destructive than others. Others have even managed to become beautiful as well as barbaric. The Portuguese band Undersave channel the cold, inhuman, voracious cruelty of death in their music — a terror beyond reason that can’t be stopped. Or at least that’s what I imagined as I listened to the song you’re about to hear.

Undersave have an out-of-the-ordinary way of naming their songs, This one, for example, is called “Peacefully Floating In Prosperous Abyss“. A previously released single from their new album is entitled “Press With Both Hands, Hold Your Breath and Collapse“. You’ll find the complete list of song titles below. The album, their second one, is named Sadistic Iterations…Tales of Mental Rearrangement. Continue reading »

AMENRA: “MASS VI”

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Oct 022017
 

 

(Wil Cifer reviews the new album by the Belgian band Amenra, which will be released on October 20 by Neurot Recordings.)

Here is an album that reminds us distortion alone is only as heavy as the emotion being poured into the songs. This Belgium sludge band returns with another piece of despair. Gone is the Neurosis worship, which has been washed away from a more lush sound with thicker atmosphere. The emotional depth can be heard in anguished howls of the vocals. The layers of accompanying guitar have a droning sense of melody and carry an inner darkness.

The album opens with the brand of aggressive sludge you expect, with an almost hardcore-tinged anger. When this dies down the band float out into something more fragile and intimate with vocals sung in an almost androgynous Sigur Rós-like whisper, but then throw themselves back into the tormented screaming. One thing this album has going for it is the fact that the sung vocals are not used to create a MySpace Metal good cop/bad cop routine. Instead they build a dynamic in a less contrived fashion. Continue reading »

SOROR DOLOROSA: “APOLLO”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Oct 022017
 

 

(Music writer Konstantin, who in past years has written for Serbia’s Nocturne Music Magazine, rejoins us with this review of the new album by the French band Soror Dolorosa, which was released by Prophecy on September 15.)

The last 15 years have put France mainly “under the light” of the black metal scene and created a solid number of followers worldwide. Completely justified, one could say, taking into consideration the impact that French bands have created on extreme metal in this period. At the same time, several other good bands have come out, but have received drastically less attention and fewer fans.

The birth and death of French cold wave happened almost three decades ago, and you could count on the fingers of one hand the bands that have lasted for more than just a few years. A certain revival was finally seen in the debut album of Soror Dolorosa in 2011. At last, we are now able to see and hear their third LP, four years after their solid sophomore release No more heroes. There wasn’t much to hear from them in this period. They played only a handful of concerts, but at least now we know the reason. And the reason is excellent – Apollo is finally out and they have made their best record so far. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ARCKANUM, HEXIS, BELUS, IKU-TURSO, CEPHEIDE, GGUW

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Oct 012017
 

 

This is the second part of today’s collection of new black and “blackened” metal (Part 1 is here). Even with a two-part article, I’ve still had to leave material behind, including a few full releases that I need more time to digest. I’m hoping I’ll get to those in the coming week.

There are some full releases included below as well. As is becoming typical, time constraints have prevented me from writing proper reviews, and instead I’m singling out individual tracks as a way of giving you a guide, and hopefully inducing you to explore further.

ARCKANUM

Four years after the last album, Arckanum has returned with a new one named Den Förstfödde (“The Firstborn” in English), but alas, Arckanum has made clear that this will be the final one in a career that dates back to 1993. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): SUMMONING, AORLHAC, GREAT VAST FOREST, HYRGAL, EVIG HAT

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Oct 012017
 

 

One thing led to another. I knew I wanted to start this SHADES OF BLACK post with the Summoning news, and then as I made my way through my seemingly endless list of new or newly discovered black metal, the thoughts of that band influenced the other choices. I don’t mean to suggest that any of the other four bands in this collection sound quite like Summoning, but they do all create visions in the mind that don’t seem real, invoking either vistas of a distant past or perhaps mythic narratives of a past we wish had existed.

Having gathered these particular songs together, I was left with a bunch of others that didn’t seem to fit the flow I was looking for. And so my aim is to gather those in a second installment. I know it’s dumb of me to forecast something that isn’t finished yet, since Mondays always seem to disrupt my plans (but I never learn)… and for that reason I’m going to try like hell to wrap up Part 2 today.

I found a couple of the items in this collection myself, but for the rest I’m again indebted to my Serbia-based source of underground intelligence, Miloš.

SUMMONING

The last album by the Viennese wizards in Summoning was 2013’s Old Mornings Dawn. In early August Summoning updated their profile picture on Facebook with a new image suggestive of new activity, but without comment or explanation. Their Facebook page has only existed since late June, and there have been few posts since then, but one in mid-August included these words: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: RADIATION, REDENIK, LETHVM, DEADSMOKE, DEATHFUCKER, PEACE IS JUST A BREAK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 302017
 

 

September ends today. If history is a useful guide, we’re only about six weeks away from the point at which year-end lists will begin appearing (DECIBEL’s is the first high-profile one that I usually see, in mid-November). And yet, while a lot of people will soon be looking backward, we still have a full three months of new metal ahead of us.

Fortunately, those of us here at NCS have undergone body modification so that we have eyes in the back of our heads as well as those gazing forward. Using the latter pair, I’ve spied four forthcoming releases from which I’ve selected song streams in this round-up. Using the backward-looking orbits, I’ve also chosen some music from a pair of other releases that have already come out, though very recently. I’ve arranged the music so that we’ll start fast, slow down, and then ramp up again.

RADIATION

Bratislava, Slovakia, is home to the death/thrash band Radiation, whose debut album The Gift of Doom will be released by Witches Brew on October 17. I would like to draw your attention to a pair of songs from the album now streaming on Bandcamp, “Praise the God of Nuclear Fusion”, and the title track. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 89: INGURGITATING OBLIVION

 THE SYNN REPORT  1 Response »
Sep 302017
 

 

(Andy Synn presents the 89th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, and on this occasion reviews the collected discography of Ingurgitating Oblivion from Germany.)

Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Ulcerate, Immolation

One of the great joys of the modern Death Metal scene is the sheer variety of different forms and flavours available to tantalise our musical taste buds. These days if you’re not enjoying what you’re currently being fed it’s barely the work of a moment to find something else to dig your teeth into.

The subject of this month’s edition of The Synn Report, Germany’s own Ingurgitating Oblivion, have been plying their trade in the murky sub-corner of Dissonant/Atmospheric Death Metal since 2001, and have produced three increasingly fearsome full-length albums in the years since then, the most recent of which, Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light, was released in April of this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRYPTIC FOG — “THE GRAND BERATOR WALKS AMONGST THE HALL OF MISERY”

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Sep 292017
 

 

As we near the year’s final quarter and thoughts begin turning to end-of-year lists amid a mad rush through the fall and winter holidays, we should still keep our eyes peeled for new releases, and the one that’s the subject of this post shows signs of being one of the final quarter’s best surprises — the debut album of Cryptic Fog, which will be released by Sweden’s Blood Harvest Records on October 27.

At the time of this recording, Cryptic Fog was a two-man operation based in the U.S. midwest consisting of guitarist/bassist Dave Bennett and drummer/vocalist Dan Klein. The name of the album is Staring Through the Veil. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CURSED MOON — “CREATURES OF THE NIGHT”

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Sep 292017
 

 

The first song I heard from Rite of Darkness, the debut album of Cursed Moon, was “Rise of the Antichrist“. When it began playing I thought I’d been transported back to the ’80s, when I listened (and danced) to my fair share of gothic new wave and post-punk. And then the vocals kicked in, and it became evident that an evil incursion had occurred in the dead of night.

“Deathwave” is the name that Cursed Moon has given to this hybridization of genres. As the project’s sole creator, Los Angeles musician Sal “Hellraiser” Yanez, has explained: Continue reading »

FOREVER PLAYING CATCH-UP (PART 3): PSUDOKU, VMTHANAACHTH, FELIX MARTIN

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Sep 292017
 

 

(This is Part 3 of Austin Weber’s ongoing series devoted to reviews of 2017 releases we haven’t previously covered. More installments will be presented next week.)

In spite of what the naysayers will tell you, I’m of the opinion that there’s an absolutely ridiculous amount of good metal releases coming out all the time, many of them coming from new groups or independent groups that we’re just now catching onto for the first time.

This lengthy round-up has been in the works for awhile, but I kept adding more and more to the list of what I wanted to cover, and that delayed it until now. The focus here is on releases that dropped in 2017 that haven’t been covered at NCS yet. We’ll run through a boatload of harsh and unorthodox black metal, mountains of mathcore, death metal of all stripes, a few technical grindcore acts, a ton of different prog-metal bands, some sick instrumental metal jams, and a whole lot more. Hopefully you will find something new you enjoy in each installment.

PSUDOKU – DEEP SPACE PSUDOKUMENT

Cult favorite weirdo grinders from Norway, Psudoku, are back again with a new release of strange grindcore from an alternate timeline. This isn’t the first time I’ve covered them at NCS, having previously highlighted them in a 2015 article regarding their prior album, Planetarisk Psudoku. Somehow the group continue to push their already out-there songs into ever-stranger territory on their new 2017 album, Deep Space Psudokument. Continue reading »

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