AN NCS EP PREMIERE: FEEDING — “IN HELL”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 262018
 

 

This music is meaner than a junkyard dog, crazier than a shit-house rat, as grim as a lung cancer diagnosis, as brutal as a crowbar to the back of the neck. It screams murder, and then delivers. It’s a good thing it’s an EP; a full album might put listeners in the hospital.

I’m referring to In Hell, by a band of marauders from Edmonton, Alberta, who call themselves Feeding. The EP will be released on February 2nd, shortly before the band go out on tour, but we have a full stream for you today. Continue reading »

IN VAIN: “CURRENTS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  6 Responses »
Jan 262018
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Norway’s In Vain, which is being released today by Indie Recordings.)

If you’ve been paying attention to the Metal blogosphere over the last few months, chances are that you’ll have stumbled across either (or both) of the new singles from Norwegian Prog-Metallers In Vain, released in advance of their new album Currents (out today on Indie Recordings).

What might surprise you, however, is the revelation that these two tracks are. arguably, the worst on the album. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 3): STORMBANE, VÄKI, VARATHRON, VURVARAT, WALDEINSAMKEIT, WYRMWOODS, BLACK REAPER

 Premieres, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Jan 262018
 

 

This is the last installment of a three-part post I began on Wednesday, focusing on new and recently discovered metal in a blackened vein. I packed a lot of music into this tripartite post — including a pair of video premieres today — in part because I failed to get a SHADES OF BLACK column finished in time to post in its usual place last Sunday, but also because I won’t get one done for this coming Sunday either. The weekend is going to be an unusually busy one for me, and if I can manage to get anything done at all for NCS, it will be a continuation of our Most Infectious Song list… because time is rapidly running out on that.

When I started this post two days ago I had a list that I alphabetized by band name before dividing it into thirds. I did say that I might discover something else to add that would screw up the alphabetic ordering, and so I have.

STORMBANE

Stormbane (from Melbourne, Australia) have explained that they recorded their debut album Eldritch Devotion in 2014 but only released it on January 1 of this year “due to explosive bowel movements and disagreements”. It also appears to be a posthumous release — Metal Archives now classifies the band as “Split-up”. Too bad. But at least the band decided to discharge this explosive movement before they themselves exploded. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 13): JUPTERIAN, FORGOTTEN TOMB, GLOSON, HATE, MARTHYRIUM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  2 Responses »
Jan 262018
 


Jupiterian

 

As you can probably tell, I’m beginning to feel the pressure of time running out. If I’m going to finish this list by the end of January I may have to do more of what I’m doing today — packing more songs into each of these posts than I’ve been doing. Although I doubt I’ll have time to add five each day, I’m able to do that today.

And the key word for today’s installment of the list is “crushing”.

JUPITERIAN

There’s heavy, and then there’s HEAVY.  As metals go, Lead is heavy, but Iridium is twice as heavy as lead. As metal bands go, Jupiterian is the Iridium of heavy music. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 12): ADVENT SORROW, A HILL TO DIE UPON, AETHERIAN, DEVILGROTH

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  3 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Another day, another edition of our Most Infectious Song list, with a trio of black metal tracks and a song that might be a bit of a cheat.

ADVENT SORROW

With their 2015 debut album, As All Light Leaves Her, Australia’s Advent Sorrow made a beneficial change in their sound. As Andy Synn wrote in his review, they “shed the symphonic grandeur that permeated their debut EP in favour of an all-round darker and more desperate form of borderline DSBM-style sonic despair… resulting in an album of bleak, harrowing melody and torturous metallic agony that errs closer to the sound of Infestus or early Shining than it does the more dramatic Dimmu Borgir-isms with which the band first made their name”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SKJULT — “INTO THE VOID”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Cuba is home to the black metal band Skjult, through which its lone member Conspirator channels his dark and devilish creative impulses. 2016 brought forth Skjult’s first album, Within the Flesh, and on February 21st of this year Satanth Records and Black Metal Propaganda Deutschland will jointly release the second one, a 41-minute assault entitled Progenies Ov Light.

The new album, which consists of seven songs and a bonus track that appears as a tribute to Trond Alastor Nefas (Urgehal/Beastcraft), reflects changes in Skjult’s musical direction as compared to the first album. Two songs have appeared so far in the run-up to the album’s release, and today we bring you a third one: “Into the Void“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SPIRITUAL DECEPTION – “SPIRITUAL DECEPTION”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

It should be evident by now that many Italian death metal bands have undergone gene-splicing experimentation, introducing the speed of cheetahs and the ferocity of wolverines into their DNA, along with cybernetic augmentation that enables machine-like precision in the execution of their jet-fast musical assaults. But if more evidence were needed, we present for your consideration the debut self-titled EP of Spiritual Deception from Milano, which is being released today.

The EP’s eye-catching cover art by Chebakov (who also created the art for Hideous Divinity’s Adveniens album, among other works) ought to be sufficient inducement for you to lend the EP your ears, but I’ll try to provide further temptation. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HUMAN SERPENT, KAVYK, THE KRYPTIK, LIVING ALTAR, NIPHREDIL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Yesterday I posted the first Part of this three-part collection of new or recently discovered black metal. If the rest of my life will cooperate, I should be able to post Part Three tomorrow. As previously explained, I arranged all the music in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into thirds. And so tomorrow’s music comes from bands whose names follow the letter N — unless I find something else I want to tack on, or forget how to alphabet.

HUMAN SERPENT

My comrade DGR pointed me to For I, the Misanthropist, the third album by the Greek band Human Serpent. I don’t think we’ve written about Human Serpent before, although in preparing to write this post I saw that the band’s last release (just a few months ago) was a 20-minute collaboration with Isolert, who I have tried to expose to our readers on a couple of previous occasions. That’s a release I need to listen to (and you can listen to it here as well). Continue reading »

REPLICANT — “NEGATIVE LIFE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

(We present a guest review of the new album by New Jersey’s Replicant, written by Stephen Matthew Schwegler, a member of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores.)

Being a songwriter in a vastly under-appreciated but densely populated genre, the importance of a strong identity seems, to me, paramount. To be fair, I am biased in the case of the band Replicant. I love single-word band monikers. I love brutal and atonal slamming death metal. I love Pete/Mike/Matty as individuals, and my band has played shows with them numerous times now.

That being said, the creature that is Replicant inhabits a long-missed niche in death metal for me. Concise and elegant, their simplistic namesake tells you everything you need to know about the band before ever hearing the music. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 11): PARADISE LOST, GOATWHORE, ZIGGURAT

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  3 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

Welcome to Part 11 of this list. Without further introductory verbiage, let’s proceed with three more tracks.

PARADISE LOST

Medusa was one of those albums that popped up repeatedly in the Top 5 of year-end lists published by print zines and “big platform” web sites that we included in our year-end LISTMANIA extravaganza. Some of the albums in the upper reaches of those rankings were suspect, having the whiff of big-name pandering. But not this one… this one deserved all the honors it got (and of course it appeared on many of our own year-end lists).

To paraphrase something that Andy Synn wrote in his review of the album, it was almost shocking to realise that somehow, almost thirty years on since the release of their debut, Paradise Lost were right back at the very top of their game. As Andy also opined, Medusa is “utterly monstrous” — “one of the darkest, heaviest, and doomiest albums of their career”. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries