DYING FETUS: “WRONG ONE TO FUCK WITH”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jun 272017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli review the new album by Dying Fetus, which is out now on Relapse Records.)

I’m just going to say it. If you don’t like Dying Fetus, nay, LOVE Dying Fetus, you don’t like death metal. I can think of no other band that has better personified the sonic violence, technical excess, genuine anger, uncompromising legacy, and lack of pretension that death metal is all about than Dying Fetus.

John Gallagher has been at this shit now for TWENTY-FOUR YEARS. He’s the godfather of the messy, grimy, seizure-inducing style of tech death, and his sound and approach to songwriting have never been successfully emulated, although no one really even dares to try. Who else is mixing technical death metal, grindcore, NYHC, and slam so well right now? Nobody that I’m aware of, and especially nobody who does it so organically, honestly, and with such passion and dedication. Continue reading »

HERESIARCH: “DEATH ORDINANCE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 272017
 

 

(New Zealand-based writer Craig Hayes (Six Noises) returns to NCS with this review of the new album by his countrymen in Heresiarch, which will be released on July 7 by Dark Descent.)

 

So here it is, Death Ordinance, the long-awaited full-length debut from New Zealand black/death wrecking machine Heresiarch. It’s no exaggeration to say that Death Ordinance is one of the most anticipated releases in the annals of Antipodean metal, and fans of belligerent and bestial metal the world over have been counting the days until the album’s release. That’s because Heresiarch deliver a singularly brute force audio onslaught –– aka everything you want in an obliterating war metal juggernaut.

Heresiarch are militant, violent, and ruthless; and hell, there’s even a whiff of spurious controversy about them too. All of that’s fuelled the band’s defiant mythos, which Heresiarch reinforce by delivering some of the most remorseless underground metal around. Continue reading »

A DGR SEEN AND HEARD: DISTASTE, LENG TCH’E, ABORTED, THE HAUNTED, SAMAEL, THE RITUAL AURA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 272017
 

 

(DGR once again takes over round-up duties at our metallic fortress, presenting news and new music from six bands.)

This weekend was glorious if you were in a death grind sort of mood, as it felt like Friday was the first crack in a dam about to burst from a small handful of bands. Austria’s Distaste put out a new EP entitled Todt (which is curently name-your-own-price), and Belgium-based grinders Leng Tch’e and their fellow countrymen in the restless Aborted both began streaming new songs from their upcoming releases.

In fact, in compling this roundup I felt I had to temper the blade a little bit by tacking on something that wasn’t just raw fury from front to back, so Samael find themselves paired up alongside an EP announcement for Australian tech-death wonders The Ritual Aura and an ambient teaser that, were we not aware of just how heavy those guys can get, would be fairly calming. So, if you were looking to start your day without a massive pile of non-stop guitar batterings, relentless drumming, and vocals fired at the speed of a machine-gun, my friend…you’ve come to the wrong place. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, WOMAN IS THE EARTH, LEPRA, HELLEBORUS, ULVEN, EORONT, PALE HANDS, AMERICAN, BARBARIC HORDE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Jun 262017
 

 

Yesterday, in the first part of this week’s SHADES OF BLACK, I recommended five recently released albums and throttled my tendency to put my own impressions into words. In this concluding part I opened the throttle, sort of. The music of nine bands is included here, ranging from individual advance tracks or singles to full albums or EPs. I know it’s a lot, but you’re men and women of steel, you can handle it… probably.

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT

Most of us here were enormous fans of this German black metal band’s last album from 2015, Stellar. My friend Andy went so far as to call it in his review “a near-perfect snapshot of the genre. Its power and its potential. Both what it is, and what it can be.” And on August 25 we’ll have another album from this band, one entitled Finisterre. Continue reading »

SOMNIUM NOX: “TERRA INANIS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 262017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Australia’s Somnium Nox, released last month by Transcending Obscurity Records.)

When you say the words “Atmospheric Black Metal” what most people seem to think of these days are the shimmering soundscapes and ethereal melodies characteristic of the so-called “Post-Black Metal” scene.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually a fan of many of those bands who fall under that vaguely defined “Post…” umbrella, but when I think about the term “Atmospheric Black Metal”, I think of bands like Wolves In The Throne Room and Altar of Plagues, bands for whom atmosphere is about more than just the simple juxtaposition of ambience and dissonance, it’s about texture and tension, mood and momentum.

It’s something that isn’t painted in broad strokes, but which is built up, painstakingly, piece by piece, into something altogether greater than the mere sum of its parts. Continue reading »

DARK HARDCORE (PART III): RECOMMENDATIONS FROM NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 262017
 

 

(About 14 months ago Neill Jameson began a series for our site in which he recommended music in the vein of dark and negative hardcore. We posted a second installment in the series a few months later (here), and after that Neill compiled other lists of recommendations in different genres, including black metal. You can find all of these previous lists via this link. Now we’re fortunate to have Neill back with us for a third collection of negative hardcore.)

 

A year or so ago I started with the project of forcing my tastes unto others through these lists and in the spirit of having two ouroboros tattoos I figured I’d circle back to the first subject, which was dark and negative hardcore. I’m fitting one extra in from my usual format because I think this will probably conclude this genre, at least for the moment. So with that fascinating introduction let’s just jump into it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALEMORT — “STATE OF COLLAPSE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 262017
 

 

Malemort was born in Rouen, France, in the month of August 2015, with a line-up of experienced musicians from the French underground whose other bands you would know of (including but not limited to Ataraxie, Mhönos, and Sordide). A year later the band recorded a debut album that will be released by Prison Tatt Records in time for a release show in Paris on the night of Wednesday, August 16th. The album’s name is Individualism, Narcissism, Hedonism.

The album consists of four tracks and about 50 minutes of total music. Today we have the good fortune of premiering one of those four powerful songs, which happens to be the one that brings the album to a close: “State of Collapse“. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST 2018: FIRST ROUND OF BANDS ANNOUNCED

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jun 262017
 

 

The 16th edition of Maryland Deathfest will take place in Baltimore on May 24-27, 2018. Today, MDF announced the first round of confirmed bands for the festival, and it’s a list that palpitates my heart:

-(16)-
Abhomine
Bloodbath (Sweden)
Blood Incantation
Broken Hope
Coven
Chthe’ilist (Canada)
Destroyed in Seconds
Dead Infection (Poland)
Durian
Enemy Soil
Evoken
Eyehategod Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: A FEW ALBUM REMINDERS (VULPUS, KAFIRUN, VONNIS, TIME LURKER, CHAMBRE FROIDE)

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Jun 252017
 

 

As everyone who writes for our site has remarked from time to time, we just don’t have enough time to write reviews of every new album, EP, and split that catches our fancy, no matter how fine we think they are. I have no doubt we would still fall short even if we all did this as a full-time occupation instead of a part-time un-paid labor of lust.

I also have no doubt that we could throw more good music at your head if we truncated or eliminated our verbiage and simply installed music streams and yelled, “LISTEN TO THIS MOTHERFUCKERS!” Or maybe, “LISTEN TO THIS PLEASE AND THANK YOU”. But where’s the fun in that? Maybe more fun for you, but less fun for us… and that might lead some of us to spend more time playing with ourselves and less time playing with you.

Nevertheless, I’m admitting defeat to the hands of time in this post. There are a handful of recently released new albums in a blackened vein that I’m simply urging you to hear. Please. And thank you. Motherfuckers. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERTHEBRAL — “BEYOND THE GARDEN OF CREATION”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 252017
 

 

Prepare yourselves for a death metal rocket-ride that may leave your eyes rolled back in your head, your teeth bared in your frothing mouth, your head banging in a fury, your body convulsed in a seizure.

Okay, that may be overstating things a bit — but it’s not much of an overstatement, because Verthebral are already a ferocious, turbocharged machine despite their relatively young ages, and based on their debut album Regeneration, Verthebral’s future looks very bright.

To help spread the word about these death-dealers from Paraguay, we’re premiering a track from Regeneration named “Beyond the Garden of Creation” in advance of the album’s fast-approaching release by the triumvirate of Satanath Records, More Hate Productions, and Final Gate Records. Continue reading »

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