SEEN AND HEARD: BELL WITCH, SUMMONING, INCANTATION, OBITUARY, BOLT THROWER, BLASPHEMY, SXUPERION, SERPENTS LAIR, FIREBREATHER, ORBSEVEN

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 082017
 

 

This is, obviously, a humongous round-up of things I’ve recently discovered. I’ve organized it in this way:

First up there are two news items that feature imagery and info about eagerly anticipated new releases but no music. Then I’ve got new videos and music streams by (or related to) a quartet of venerable and revered bands, followed by new advance tracks from two younger favorites who are returning with new releases this year. And then I’ll close this out with music from two bands whom I’ve just discovered.

BELL WITCH

On most days I post a piece of usually dark or surreal artwork on our Facebook page. I keep an archive of what I’ve posted over the years, as a way of trying to avoid repeating myself. In that archive I’ve counted 22 paintings by the Polish artist Mariusz Lewandowski that I’ve posted over the years since I began doing that, which I think is proof of how strongly I like his creations. But as far as I can recall, he has never created artwork for the cover of a metal album… until now. And his cover for the new Bell Witch album will surely stand as one of the best album covers of the year, if not THE best. Continue reading »

IRRELEVANT LISTENING (VOL. 3)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 082017
 

 

(Last year TheMadIsraeli posted the first two installments in this irregular series, and now brings us a third one.)

Another installment of irrelevant listening where I share albums in my rotation lately that aren’t current. Let’s get started.

Killswitch Engage – Alive Or Just Breathing: Top-Shelf Edition

Alive Or Just Breathing is the melodic metalcore album that in my mind has never been topped. Even the band themselves admitted in an interview, I think it was this year, that this is STILL their best album. I’ve written about this album before on the site and stumbled upon the so-called “Top Shelf” expanded edition (released in 2005) some time ago. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ENSLAVED, BATTLE DAGORATH, WHEN BITTER SPRING SLEEPS, VANVID, PROFANE ORDER, BÜTCHER, THE DARK RED SEED, NYSS

 Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Aug 072017
 

 

You might have noticed that I didn’t post a SHADES OF BLACK article yesterday — or anything else, for that matter. I was in Wyoming with my spouse from Thursday through Saturday attending a wedding, and spent Sunday getting home. On the airplane rides there and back I plowed through the NCS in-box and did some other web surfing. Found a ton of new stuff I wanted to listen to, and managed to find a couple of hours here and there over the weekend when I did do some listening, just enough to find the selections I’ve collected here, though not enough time to write anything.

The music below is a mix of full new releases and advance tracks from forthcoming albums… and I’ve included one song stream that isn’t black metal… or maybe even metal at all… except in its spirit. But I’m beginning with a news item hot off the presses.

ENSLAVED

In early July I gleefully reported the news that Jens Bogren had finished mixing and mastering the new 14th studio album by Enslaved, an album that Grutle Kjellson described as “a little re-boot, a fresh start so to speak”. Today the album art (above, hand-painted by the Norwegian artist Truls Espedal) was unveiled, and we received more details about the album, which I’ll quote here from the press release: Continue reading »

BLACK METAL (PART 6): A COLLECTION CURATED BY NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG, POISON BLOOD)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 072017
 

 

(Last year we were fortunate to present five installments in a series by Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) recommending black metal releases from years past. Neill now brings us (and you) a further installment collecting music from six more bands. To get a look at previous editions of the series, click this link and scroll down. If we’re lucky, more will come our way in the future.)

For some reason people seem to like talking to me, especially the ones I don’t want to talk to. And inevitably in these conversations I get poked and prodded about current black metal because the vacant look in my eyes isn’t speaking loudly enough. And most of the time I try to shrug it off because I’m terrible in social situations and also I don’t have a lot to say about many modern bands. Like fresh out of the womb modern with a demo in one hand and a fistful of dreams in the other, not new projects with veteran members or anything like that. Jesus this got confusing.

What I’m trying to get at is (1) I’m old and boring, and (2) it’s incredibly difficult for me to constantly keep up with modern shit when there’s still so much to be mined from an earlier age. Which is why I like to dip back into the well that was supposed to be a three-part series that’s now on its sixth iteration with no real ending planned.

Dedicated for those of you who complain about people being stuck mining the past while spending an absurd amount of money to look like you were an extra in one of the original Mad Max films. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR: A LIFE ONCE LOST (AND MIND POWER AND OLDBONES)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, THE REARVIEW MIRROR  10 Responses »
Aug 072017
 

 

The original idea for The Rearview Mirror (credit to DGR) was to give us a quick and easy way to begin Sundays at our site when we had nothing else ready to go. It was supposed to be quick and easy because all we’d do would be to post a song stream from fondly remembered releases from the past, as opposed to our usual constant focus on new and forthcoming albums, EPs, and splits. Yesterday would have been a good day for that since I was on a mini-vacation and had nothing ready to go. Of course, I forgot.

It didn’t take long for the original idea to morph. “Wordiness” is our middle name, and so our Rearview Mirror posts expanded into essays and took almost as much time to prepare as everything else around here. Which is probably why the series eventually melted away. It might come back on a regular basis since I’m now thinking about it, or it might not. But I am reviving it at least for today… since I don’t have anything else ready to go on this Monday morning (things are in the works, just not finished).

But this post still doesn’t follow the original Rearview Mirror idea. Wordiness still reigns (though in this case I’ve cribbed from some things we’ve written in the past). Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’s TOP 10 SONGS OF 2016

 LISTMANIA 2016  9 Responses »
Aug 052017
 

 

(Andy Synn makes amends for a year-end 2016 oversight — and gives us a good excuse to revisit some of last year’s highlight tracks..)

I recently made a terrifying discovery… I never actually finished my regular series of End of Year lists!

That’s right, somehow, through negligence or indolence on my part, I completely forgot to publish my list of my Top 10 Songs of 2016.

Thankfully it turned out that I’d already made a shortlist – which I’ve now whittled down to the ten items below – so this egregious wrong can finally be made right! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GAEREA — “ENDLESS LAPSE”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

Last November Everlasting Spew Records released one of 2016’s best EPs, the self-titled debut release by a Portuguese black metal band named Gaerea. We featured music from that EP repeatedly at our site, both before and after its release (including a post in which we named “Void of Numbness” to our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“).

As promised last fall, Everlasting Spew is now releasing Gaerea in a vinyl edition — and the vinyl includes a bonus track that doesn’t appear on the earlier CD and digital versions. That track is “Endless Lapse“, and it’s our privilege to premiere not only the song but also a riveting video through which the music is presented. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXOCYTOSIS — “A LABORIOUS DIGESTION (MORSEL 1)”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

If you don’t know (and I certainly didn’t), exocytosis is a process by which cells expel certain molecular substances outside the cell membrane and into the extracellular environment. Exocytosis is also the name chosen by a band of miscreants from Höör, Sweden, as the vehicle by which they expel their own twisted conceptions into the auditory canals of unsuspecting and ill-prepared listeners.

The band’s new EP is named Endogenous Organism. It will be excreted into the world on August 25, and we are aiding in the transmission of the disease through a premiere of the EP’s opening track, a mad piece called “A Laborious Digestion (Morsel 1)“. Continue reading »

DVNE: “ASHERAN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  7 Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by the Scottish band DVNE, released on July 28 by Wasted State Records.)

You know what really grinds my gears?

Seeing/hearing people bleat on about how “there’s just no good new music out there anymore”, when, in truth, it’s never been simpler or easier to find something that caters to your specific tastes.

It’s a particularly frustrating attitude when you consider that the discovery of new music, whether on purpose or by accident, can be one of life’s great joys, and seeing people make such sweeping, and ill-informed statements – blithely dismissing, through their own ignorance/arrogance the absolute wealth of impressive, imaginative, and downright inspiring artists and albums out there – just pisses me off no end.

Of course I can kind of understand it if you’re used to simply passively consuming whatever you’re spoonfed by tv or radio – there’s only so much of the same shit that you can swallow after all, and only so many times you can regurgitate the same pre-chewed “opinions” before you actually make yourself sick – but the fact remains that it only takes about five minutes these days to find something new and exciting online.

Heck, sometimes it’s not even that hard. Sometimes you just stumble upon something that blows you away entirely by accident. Like I did a few months ago when I came across DVNE. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS — “LICKING A LANDMINE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 032017
 

 

There’s a particular alignment of talents on display in the song you’re about to hear, and the successful execution of a strategy that usually attracts fans of metal extremity like iron filings to a magnet, but seems to repel (or at least mystify) more tender listeners: “Licking A Landmine” combines a staggering level of brute-force destructiveness with a brain-twisting brand of freakishness, and yet it manages to be catchy. At least to people like us, even after this landmine goes off and converts the listener’s head to smoking rubble, you want to lick it again.

“Licking A Landmine” is a track from Modern Adoxography, the second album by New Zealand’s Blindfolded And Led To The Woods. It’s set for release on Friday the 13th of October, timed to closely precede the band’s performances in Wellington on October 24th and Auckland on October 25th in support of the final New Zealand tour by The Dillinger Escape Plan. Continue reading »

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