THE BEST OF BRITISH, 2017 (PART 6): KING LEVIATHAN / PTEROGLYPH / SORROW PLAGUES

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 072017
 

 

(Andy Synn brings us a new installment in a series that focuses on recommended new releases from the U.K.)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the UK Metal scene is in rude health right now.

Across the board, across a multitude of styles and sub-genres, my British brethren are kicking ass arse and taking names and working hard to remind the world that we have more to offer than just trend-chasing Pop-Metal groups and second (or third) hand copycats of American bands.

That’s not to say that things are perfect of course. There’s still a tendency in some areas to celebrate comforting mediocrity over anything with a more distinctive/challenging/interesting sound, and the occasional dominance of certain cliques still, in my opinion at least, has a slightly deleterious effect on our ability to make a serious impact outside of our own borders.

But, for whatever reason, sifting through the more generic and middle-of-the-road acts to find the ones worth my time seems to come more easily to me these days.

Maybe I’ve just become more discerning/cynical. Or maybe it’s just a sign of the cream rising to the top. Continue reading »

WIL CIFER’S TOP 10 OF 2017… SO FAR

 Listmania  5 Responses »
Jul 072017
 

 

(NCS contributor Wil Cifer has compiled this list of his 10 favorite releases from the first half of 2017.)

Where has 2017 gone? It seems like the year has passed us by in a cloud of internet hatred and bickering. So with that comes the need for heavy music. Now that we are over halfway through 2017 here’s a look at which albums have stuck with me thus far this year.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that it doesn’t matter how much hype an album gets if the music doesn’t inspire me to listen to it more than once. Black Metal, Doom, Death Metal, and Thrash are all represented to some extent in this list. The Number One slot was determined by what Last Fm said I listened to the most. So far, only the top five still maintain their spots in my Ipod, though that is not to say I won’t go back and give the others more listens. You should give all of these albums a listen if you have yet to check them out. Continue reading »

COLD INSIGHT: “FURTHER NOWHERE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jul 072017
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of the complete version of Cold Insight’s debut album, released on June 28 of this year.)

The subject matter territory that heavy metal covers is vast. When you view heavy metal as a filter through which all musical aggression seems to come through, you have a recipe for just about anything and everything being screamed, growled, shrieked, yelped, barked, and even sung about.

Heavy metal still has its staples; longtime readers will of course recognize the holy trinity of body horror in mutilation, gore, and murder — the various possibilities inflicted upon corpses has long since been the foundation upon which death metal is built. You also have Satan so ingrained throughout heavy metal that almost everything has a thin veneer of Lucifer spread on top of it, and then… then you also have the void.

We in heavy metal specialize in the void, the empty, and the abyss — we’re void worshipers and watchers, we claim to see things in the emptiness, and the abyss is where we seem to record half of our early musical releases until we can afford some proper production work.

The most analogous thing to all three, of course, is space. It doesn’t take a short logic leap to see that we exist quite literally in a Big Empty — where on a map, two planets can look close together, until you are informed that it takes years to travel between them. “Cold” and “empty” are often descriptors we apply to music, especially doom, so of course we have now wound up in space.

From that, we draw upon science fiction with its space-opera overtures and something that has found its way into heavy metal more and more, especially as a visual component. In part, this helps explain the sci-fi aesthetics of Cold Insight’s newly released debut Further Nowhere. Continue reading »

BRO-COUNTRY FOR NO MEN: AUTHENTIC COUNTRY ARTISTS FOR METAL FANS

 Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Jul 072017
 

 

(We have a little-used category of posts that, for want of a better term, we call “Off Topic”. This is one of those “not metal” posts. But it also fits in another category of posts — “That’s Music — But It’s Not Metal” — which is too complicated to explain in detail, but basically refers to music that isn’t metal, but also kind of is “metal”. I’ll shut up now and let Grant Skelton take it from here.)

I used to loathe country music. Going to college near Nashville, the Mecca of country music, probably didn’t help. Metal was all I wanted to hear. That is, until I discovered late greats like Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt.

Whole libraries have been written on each of those two. And even among metal fans, Cash and Van Zandt seem to occupy something of a sacred place. Late last year, Islander gushed over Panzerfaust’s cover of Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” referring to Cash as, “the most black metal country singer you can find.” Neurot Recordings has released two compilations (Volume I and Volume II) of Townes Van Zandt covers by Scott Kelly, Wino, Mike Scheidt, and Steve Von Till. Dorthia Cottrell of Windhand recorded her creepy rendition of Van Zandt’s song “Rake” for her self-titled 2015 solo album The much-hyped upcoming outlaw country cover album from DevilDriver (whether you hate that idea or love it) further underscores my point.

Don’t get me wrong, the country music you’ll hear on the radio is nothing more than the foul ordure of red-state identity politics. The songs aren’t songs, they’re lists of ideals and symbols that perpetuate a mythical, illusory way of life. But this article isn’t about that. It’s about artists whose music, while not metal in the slightest, I believe will still be meaningful and enjoyable to readers of our site. On my honor, here you will find no songs about girls in trucks. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: ETHER — “THERE IS NOTHING LEFT FOR ME HERE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 062017
 

 

Some people are tough, some are fragile… or so we think, though it’s closer to the truth to say that everyone is tough and fragile, alloyed in different degrees, and varying with our changing circumstances. And no one would deny that the human condition is perilous, given to challenging our toughness and sometimes breaking us apart when we least expect it.

Sludge isn’t the only metal genre that grapples with these low points, but as a vehicle for expressing the crushing blows that life can deal out and providing a catharsis for their emotional impacts, it can be among the most powerful. Ether’s second album, There Is Nothing Left For Me Here, is in that category. It is also full of unexpected musical textures, and also glimpses of beauty within the desolation and sense of abandonment that hang heavy over the very heavy songs.

The album will be released tomorrow — July 7th — and we have a full stream of the music for you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: PARTY CANNON — “PERVERSE PARTY PLATTER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 062017
 

 

Perhaps you remember the Scottish band Party Cannon from our premiere of a song exactly one month ago. They sometimes spell their name PaRtY-CaNnOn. Their logo looks like something you might find on a child’s lunch box. They refer to their music as “Party Slam”. And the name of their new EP is Perverse Party Platter (it will be released tomorrow — July 7th — by Gore House Productions).

If you listened to our premiere of “Keg Crusher“, you know that all of this is a bit of a misdirection. As I wrote then, that song is a “seriously ruinous piece of mayhem, a blast of death/grind and slam that’s hard and heavy enough to cause blunt force trauma and viciously destructive enough to leave the rooms in your mind lying in a smoking rubble.” “I mean, sure, it’s a lot of fun, too, but the kind of fun cats have playing with mice before biting down on their skulls and devouring their brains.” Continue reading »

RAPID FIRE RECOMMENDATIONS: WRATH OF BELIAL, EZERATH, MALKAVIAN, SUNLESS, THE FUROR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 062017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli compiled this group of recommendations, with brief rationales and lots of music streams.)

There’s too much good metal coming out in 2017, and frankly, for me to attempt to review everything that catches my ear with the frequency at which good things are arriving would be madness. I’ve decided to start a new every-now-and-then series to offer either brief reviews or simple recommendations of albums that would get full length-reviews if the time or energy were there for me to do so. Most of these will be things that’ve already been out for a bit, but some will be records that aren’t out yet. With that said, let’s get started.

 

Wrath Of Belial – Bloodstained Rebellion

One of the best melodic death metal albums released this year. Fast, intensive riffing, very emotive with more brutal vocals than the genre commonly is associated with nowadays. Think of a mix of Kataklysm, The Black Dahlia Murder, and The Arcane Order. These guys are fucking sick. Continue reading »

VALLENFYRE: “FEAR THOSE WHO FEAR HIM”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 062017
 

 

(DGR prepared this review of the third, and reportedly final, album of a consistent favorite of our site — Vallenfyre.)

In what will likely be the understatement of the year, you could easily say that Vallenfyre’s career has been one intertwined with death.

At face value, they’re a death metal band. Two out of their three album covers have prominently featured skulls, Vallenfyre’s genesis story is rooted in a tribute to founder Gregor Mackintosh’s father after he had passed, and the musicians who have taken part in the project have been death and doom metal luminaries — including longtime guitarist Hamish Glencross, formerly of My Dying Bride.

If you wanted to be reductive you could say that Vallenfyre have started to sound a lot like the groove-heavy side of Napalm Death, and now we’re faced with the prospect of the “death” of the band itself with Gregor giving interviews saying that he views the Vallenfyre releases as a trilogy and would be happy to leave it there. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIST OF MISERY — “BROKEN CHAINS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 062017
 

 

Last August we premiered a full stream of the second album by the symphonic depressive black metal band Mist of Misery from Stockholm, Sweden. As I wrote then, Absence, is a multi-faceted trip of changing moods and varying energies, managed with a sure hand, “creating a blend of haunting ambience, symphonic power, and blackened ferocity, while repeatedly displaying a knack for driving home their penetrating and memorable melodies as they move among these changing shades of darkness.”

Black Lion Records released Absence, and on August 31st of this year Black Lion will release Mist of Misery’s follow-up recording, an EP named Shackles Of Life. This will be the first of two connected mini-albums, with a second one coming later under the title Fields of Isolation.

Shackles of Life includes seven songs and features guest vocals by Paolo Bruno of Thy Light, as well as cover art by Russian artist Alex Tartsus. Today, we’re helping to premiere a stream of the album’s third track, “Broken Chains“. Continue reading »

SEMINAL EMBALMMENT: “SEMINAL EMBALMMENT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 062017
 

 

(We welcome back Vonlughlio, with another recommendation of brutal death metal for our readers.)

So this time around I have the opportunity to write about one of my favorite BDM bands from Australia. No, it’s not Disentomb (which I do love), it’s a band from Adelaide, South Australia, named Seminal Embalmment.

Formed back in 2006 under the moniker Five Finger Disintegrator, they changed their name in 2011 (glad they did).  Two years later they signed to New Standard Elite and released their EP Stacked and Sodomized, material that displayed amazing riffs with well-executed drums and great song structures. If I had made a top EP list that year, it would have been included. The only aspect of the music that I did not enjoy as much was the vocals; they were not bad, but they did not seem to go hand-in-hand with the music. Continue reading »

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