AN NCS PREMIERE: GOATBLOOD — “GASMASK TERROR DEVASTATION”

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Sep 152017
 

 

There is little risk that you will be deceived about the music we’re about to present. The band’s name is Goatblood. The demo is named Gasmask Devastation Terror. The artwork depicts a bullet-draped demonic form shrouded in eldritch energies and fire. Biohazard and radiation warning signs would probably have been superfluous.

As fears of nuclear devastation rise again after decades of dormancy, the release of Gasmask Devastation Terror is perhaps an example of being in the right place at the right time. On September 18th, thanks to Dunkelheit Produktionen, we can begin practicing for incineration. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: B R I Q U E V I L L E – “AKTE VI”

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Sep 152017
 

 

In June I came across a song named “AKTE V“, which appears on the second album (titled II) by a doom/post-metal band from Temse, Belgium, named B R I Q U E V I L L E (or Briqueville, as I’m going to type it from here on), and the song floored me (as I explained here). It appears that the album was digitally released by the band in February, but it has since been picked up by Pelagic Records, who will be releasing it in LP and CD editions on September 29.

To introduce the album to a wider audience, a video for that song “AKTE V” was premiered by DECIBEL in late August, and today we’re helping spread the word about a new video for another song off the album named “AKTE VI“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KARTIKEYA, IN-DEFILADE, DOM ZŁY, GASSED, NIHIL EYES, THREAT SIGNAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 152017
 

 

It’s another Friday, and what are people feeling? No one answer, I’m sure. Some people are looking forward to a blow-out Friday night or just a soft weekend to clear the head. Others have jobs that will just keep on surging through the weekend, so no relief in sight (but maybe better-than-average tip hauls). And others, out of work, are just experiencing another day of hard-scrabbling and gloom.

For me, I’m looking ahead at a wedding of one of my wife’s nieces on our property, with the bride wearing a sword, and Samoan blessings before and after the ceremony, and great volumes of Mexican food and tequila, and people playing Magic after the vows have been exchanged. It’s going to be different, but I have a feeling it will be a blast.

Beyond that, I’m feeling like playing you some metal, just skimming the surface of what I’ve collected over the last 48 hours, and maybe continuing the round-up tomorrow if I get going before all the visiting family members crawl out of bed.

KARTIKEYA

On October 19th, 10 years to the day after the release of their debut album, the Russian band Kartikeya will deliver unto us a new album named Samudra via Apathia Records. We are told that the release date is also “27 Ashvina 5119 of Kali Yuga, the holy day of Diwali, on the day of the Victory of Good over Evil, by the fire of the divine light”. And we are further told that it signifies “the decimal foundation of the Hindu universe and the symbolism of Trimurti – the three highest creator-gods, the ternary power of creation, preservation and destruction”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZUD — “A WILDERNESS LEFT UNTAMED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 142017
 

 

ZUD’s A Wilderness Left Untamed is a big album, and not just in its nearly hour-long length. It’s brimming with ideas and bursting with energy. It’s fiendishly clever, but never comes off as calculating or manipulative. It’s ambitious, but not in the sense that, in the case of some other bands, could mean overreaching or even pretentious. It’s just hugely effective in tapping into primal urges in the untamed way that the best of the devil’s music always does, and it does that in very distinctive fashion.

The music is also damned catchy, damned adrenalizing, damned filthy, and… just plain damned. From minute to minute you can alternately rock out, careen about like a crazy person in a delirious frenzy, drift off into hallucinogenic reveries, engage in a lusting orgy, feed like a vampire, and let your freak flag fly like it’s 1969. And on top of all that, the band also rise up in moments of epic, luciferian majesty.

In a nutshell, with October fast approaching, you’ve just found the perfect accompaniment to Devil’s Night. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HIGHRIDER — “ROLL FOR INITIATIVE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  7 Responses »
Sep 142017
 

 

Highrider prove themselves to be sonic alchemists of a very high order on their debut album Roll For Initiative, creating an alloy of metal and rock ingredients that gleams like a rare jewel. The album will be released on September 15th (tomorrow!) by The Sign Records, and we have the great pleasure of sharing a full stream with you today.

The vibrant mix of styles in Highrider’s formula is fascinating. You can readily pick out the influences as you make your way through the album, but what you probably couldn’t have predicted is how creatively and seamlessly Highrider blend them together in every song. The music is thus both pleasingly familiar and marvelously unique — and it’s also massively infectious. Continue reading »

IMPETUOUS RITUAL: “BLIGHT UPON MARTYRED SENTIENCE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 142017
 

 

(Norway-based writer Karina Noctum, who usually brings us interviews, brings us another enthusiastic review, this time focusing on the 2017 album by Australia’s Impetuous Ritual.)

Even though it is coming out a bit late (sorry for this), I decided to write this review anyway. But before I attempt to describe this beauty of an album, I would like to tell you that Impetuous Ritual have nothing to do with Portal. If you thought they did, they deny this, even though it seems that pretty much everyone says so. Their mystical Roman-numeraled personas are to remain unknown, and that’s fine. Now we have lots of musicians called I, II, III, IV, and so on in BM. Someone should start using binary codes just to make a difference.

Back to the music. I think this is absolutely one of the best albums this year. It is very Australian! I adore the sound. True madness, darkness, and old-school feeling. The band show their cumulative experience in a piece that may seem raw, but is technical and well-produced. The album shows that it is absolutely possible to combine those qualities. This is the kind of album that leaves others with no excuses. Bad production and poor musical skills are by no means what makes something raw. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOCTURNES MIST — “DIABOLICAL BAPTISM”

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Sep 132017
 

 

Though I’ve grown into quite an intense fan of black metal over the last decade, I’m still constantly discovering bands with significant histories that I’ve never encountered before, and Australia’s Nocturnes Mist is one such late discovery. Their inception dates back to 1997, though their first album, As Flames Burn, didn’t arrive until 2009. Two more albums have followed that one, including last year’s March To Perdition and Diabolical Baptism, which we are premiering today in advance of its September 15th release by Seance Records.

From what I’ve read, the earlier works were a form of symphonic black metal in the style of early Emperor, Satyricon, Abigor, and Nazxul, but the band’s Satanic inspirations (including the creation of a song based on the film score of The Omen trilogy of movies) have led them away from that on this most recent album and turned them more toward the raw, rapacious, and feral energies of early ’90s black metal.

And yet, there is still a symphonic quality in the music despite the deployment of keyboards in only rare instances, and by that I mean there is an inherent drama and enormous power in this music, and a grandiosity that befits the album’s devotion to its titanic and diabolical subject matter. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AT THE GATES, PERIHELION, NEKRASOV, FORGOTTEN TOMB, CLOAK, PLAGUE CROSS, LARES, BILLY BOY IN POISON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 132017
 

We’ve arrived at the middle of the work week and I find myself in the mood to round up and share with you a couple of news items and six new songs, two of which are accompanied by videos that are well above average. I’ll cut this introduction short and just dive right in…

AT THE GATES

Three years ago At the Gates returned with their first new studio album in 19 years. The reception seems to have stoked the fires even further, because they’ve written 11 new songs that they plan to begin recording soon. And according to their announcement from earlier this week, they are feeling “more inspired than perhaps ever before”. They also allege that the new record will be “by far the most comprehensive album of the band to date, and will span all the way across the different elements of the band’s sound”. Continue reading »

GIGAN: “UNDULATING WAVES OF RAINBIOTIC IRIDESCENCE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 132017
 

(Andy Synn reacts to the new album by Gigan, out September 15 on Willowtip Records)

Last year I wrote a column attempting to delineate the reason (or, more accurately) reasons, why I listen to Metal.

But some bands are so weird and wonderful, so damnably difficult to pin down, that they defy explanation.

So I can’t necessarily tell you WHY I like Gigan… only that I do.

And maybe, just maybe, you will too. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: TOMBSTALKER — “CHAOTIC DEVOTION”

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Sep 122017
 

 

We have some history with Tombstalker, starting with a post back in 2012 about metal in Kentucky (here), following that the next year (here) with a review of their self-titled EP, and then including some commentary in 2015 about their fine and ferocious debut album Black Crusades. And here we are, two years later, gleefully helping spread the word about a new Tombstalker EP named Chaotic Devotion.

This latest offering is a two-track electrocution set for release by Boris Records on September 19 as a 7″ vinyl and as a digital download, and it’s a hell of a ride. Continue reading »

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