LIMBONIC ART: “SPECTRE ABYSM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 122017
 

 

(Norway-based NCS contributor Karina Noctum usually brings us interviews, but this time it’s a review — of the eighth Limbonic Art album, the first one in seven years.)

Limbonic Art is a Norwegian Black Metal band formed in 1993 that blends melody with the melancholic pace and ambient elements of Funeral Doom. It is now the solo project of Daemon (Zyklon) project, and one of my favorite one-man bands.

I discovered Limbonic Art 15 years ago. I was drawn to the cover of Moon in the Scorpio, a beautiful artwork, at the music store and ever since then I’ve been following every new release. I like the fact that it is melodic but not the kind of annoying melodic that wears you off.

Every release has a distinct nature that keeps it interesting, from the devastating, relentless, tight, and fast-paced music of Ad Noctum – Dynasty of Death to the more experimental and varied sound and ambience of In Abhorrent Dementia. Every album is different and yet each one carries the Limbonic Art mark.

Their latest album Spectre Abysm is perhaps one of the albums that remind me the most of the band’s first album, Moon in the Scorpio. The grandiose dark and ritualistic ambience of the early days is combined with excellent guitar and bass work and awesome layered vocals, all firmly framed in the Norwegian BM style. Continue reading »

SELBST: “SELBST”

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Jul 112017
 

 

Yesterday the two-man black metal band Selbst, originally from Venezuela and now based in Chile, released their self-titled debut album through Sun & Moon Records. This follows the band’s striking 2015 EP, An Ominous Landscape, which I briefly reviewed here. The new album is a substantial work, nearly 48 minutes long, and it confirms the considerable promise of the band’s previous shorter releases. More than that, it’s a gleaming ice-blue nova in the midnight vault of 2017 black metal.

Augmented by a spectacularly powerful production, the music is titanically heavy, potent enough to rumble your core, with many of the elaborately textured sounds reverberating as if recorded in a quartzite cavern (because the music shines as well as thunders) — from the spine-rattling drumwork to the penetrating, otherworldly guitar melodies that shimmer, swirl, and soar through blanketing storms of abrasion.

But it’s the kind of album that immaculately marries atmosphere to explosive physicality, and it also achieves a rare, knife-edge balance between the ensnaring repetition of gripping patterns and the head-spinning intricacy of progressive flourishes. The songs are in near-constant motion, in the sense of movement between differing shades of darkness, different tempos, moments of unsettling calm and terrible conflict. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GREY AURA — “1: GELIGE, TRAUMATISCHE ZIELSVERRUKKING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jul 112017
 

 

We all have our metal comfort food, the genres we go to even when the performers aren’t doing anything too different from what’s been done for decades. And to be sure, a band doesn’t have to break any molds, or even chip them, to be worth hearing. Yet to varying degrees, we all have our antenna up for something that does break molds, but doesn’t simply leave you with a pile of shards, as if to proclaim nothing more than, “You see? We can break things!”

The demo you’re about to hear is indeed something that sounds very different from anything you’re probably accustomed to, and its ambitions go beyond the music itself. The explanation will take a few paragraphs, but I encourage you not to skip past them, because it’s a story that will explain and deepen the appreciation for what you’re about to hear.

And what you’re about to hear is 1: Gelige, traumatische zielsverrukking by the Dutch “post-black metal” band Grey Aura, along with the spoken recital of the first chapters of a book, in advance of its Bandcamp release tomorrow (July 12). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEVENTH GENOCIDE — “ASTRAL BLISS”

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Jul 112017
 

 

“Post-black metal” is a slippery term, calling up different sounds and moods to different people, and sometimes used simply for want of any better term to characterize music that’s not easily classifiable, but includes blasting drums and tremolo buzzing. Within the musical ambit of that label, it’s always best to listen when you can. And fortunately, we have some listening for you.

This song was crafted by a band who wear the “post-black metal” brand, but with the outlines blurred and blending into other influences as they put their own stamp on their creations. The song is “Astral Bliss” by the Roman quartet Seventh Genocide.

Let’s reverse the usual order of things and provide some impressions of the sound before laying out any further details about the band or the new album that includes this track. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SVARTSYN

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Jul 112017
 

 

(On June 9th Agonia Records released In Death, the latest album by the Swedish black metal band Svartsyn. As always, it was all the work of Ornias, this time aided again by the drummer Hammerman. Norway-based Karina Noctum was able to put questions to Svartsyn, and she brings us the results of the dialogue here today.)

 

Svartsyn is a Swedish one-man band that started in 1991 under the name Chalice, renamed Svartsyn three years later, and ever since it has stayed true to the cold and dark Black Metal sound. Svartsyn is at the lifeless heart of Black Metal.

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I think Svartsyn style is kind of trance-inducing, pretty dense. How do you achieve this sound?

I follow my instinct of how I want my sound. I work very hard to achieve this sound. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCALPEL — “THE WOODSMAN (PART 2)”

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Jul 102017
 

 

“Death Metal is a visceral art that is dependent upon the extreme dedication of its loyal fans. We have no other purpose but to deliver a version of this art to those same fans like us, whose lives have been claimed by the likes of SUFFOCATION, CARCASS, and DEATH. It is in this vein that we construct our own brutal dirges, devoid of genre restriction and eager to explore the darker realms of music.”

And with those words, the flesh-eating New England morticians who call themselves Scalpel introduce their second album, Methods To Delusion, which was engineered by none other than Colin Marston (Gorguts) at the esteemed Thousand Caves Studios. It will be released by the band on July 25th.

Thematically, the album could roil strong stomachs, painting imagery of “crusted severed toes nailed to walls; humans covered head to toe in needles administering horrific psychoactive chemicals; an infant’s head being turned to apple sauce on a kitchen counter’s edge”, and other macabre grotesqueries. As for the music, we have some samples for your not-so-tender ears, including our premiere of “The Woodsman (Part 2)“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOD ROOT — “SALT AND ROT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 102017
 

 

While each of the four tracks on the new album by Philadelphia’s God Root could have a nerve-wracking and even devastating effect on your emotional well-being if heard alone, Salt and Rot was quite clearly planned as a unified piece of music, a single well-orchestrated descent into madness. Part crushing death ritual and part hallucinatory fall into a lightless abyss where there’s very little to hold onto, where fear and emotional breakdown are the fracturing orders of the day, the album is staggeringly powerful, stunningly bleak and disorienting, and also unforgettable. Before you know it, it has you in its clutches and pulls you into its calamitous and narcotically vaporous vortex, extinguishing the will to resist.

Salt and Rot will be released by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions on July 11th — tomorrow. To help pave this now-very-short path to its advent, we have a full stream today. My best advice is to set aside 33 minutes for uninterrupted listening, and then the rest of the day for recovery. Continue reading »

TEHOM: “THE MERCILESS LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 102017
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by the Swedish band Tehom, released in April by Blood Harvest.)

Despite my best efforts I haven’t managed to write as much as I’d hoped to over the last few weeks. My job has been keeping me pretty busy during the day, and my evenings have largely been taken up by booking/prepping/practicing with Beyond Grace, and it’s likely that this state of affairs is only going to get worse over the next week or two, as we kick off the first leg of our album release tour this Thursday.

Thankfully I’ve already got a series of interviews lined up to cover my upcoming absence next week, and should have just enough time over the next couple of days to review a handful of albums which I feel have been woefully overlooked here at NCS.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the unbearable grimness of Tehom, and their debut album The Merciless Light. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OLDE (CORY MCCALLUM)

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Jul 102017
 

 

(After a hiatus in which Comrade Aleks was writing a book about doom, he returns to NCS with this very engaging interview of Cory McCallum, bassist of the Canadian band Olde, whose new album is headed our way next month.)

Olde (first known as Corvus) have provided their crushing down-tuned rumble since 2014. Olde’s place of origin is Malton of God-blessed Ontario… The band is big, they play as a quintet: Doug McLarty on vocals, Chris Hughes and Greg Dawson (who’s known also as a sound producer) play guitars, Cory McCallum is the bass player, and Ryan Aubin is the drummer, coming from Sons of Otis.

Their first record is a full-length album named simply I. Hypaethral Records released it as a 12” vinyl on November 12, 2014. Olde’s debut was a damn focused, tight, and fierce blend of doom and stoner with violent sludgy vocals. They kept well the balance, but they don’t identify the band with any of those things (though their songs contain elements of each). They just tried to write heavy riffs, heavy parts, heavy songs. They aimed for that, and they got it…

Olde’s second full-length Temple is going to be released by STB Records in August (it follows the band’s Shallow Graves EP, released last August). We made a decision to do this interview with Cory McCallum to bring you much information about this release. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PROFUNDIS TENEBRARUM, VOID RITUAL, MYTERI, AKATHARSIA, WHORE OF BETHLEHEM, NEVERENDING WINTER, KALABIRA

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Jul 102017
 

 

Though laid low by an injury over the past week, I recovered well enough this weekend to do lots of catching up on what I missed. I suppose that’s obvious, given how much music I recommended in the Saturday and Sunday NCS posts, but I’m not finished. Here are recommended songs from seven more bands (I ran out of gas before posting these blackened offerings in their usual place on Sunday).

Some of the music in this post comes from full albums or EPs that have already been released, and with one exception I’ve only sampled a few tracks from each of those so far — but I like what I’ve heard. So, rather than risk not mentioning them at all, I’ve selected one song from each of those full releases to include here. The rest are advance tracks from forthcoming albums.

PROFUNDIS TENEBRARUM

This Spanish black metal band from Valencia released their first demo in 1997, and on July 1 the French label Egregor Records released the group’s fourth album, Disciples of Venomous Death. The track I selected to begin this collection of music appears third in the running order and its name is “Exsanguination Smell” Continue reading »

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