AN NCS PREMIERE: IGNIS GEHENNA — “BALEFUL SCARLET STAR”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

ignis-gehenna-baleful-scarlet-star

 

Much of metaldom is swimming in year-end lists and either reflecting upon or exploring the glorious flood of music that engulfed our heads in 2016, but there are already plenty of signs that the flood will only continue in 2017. Our calendar for January is already marked with hotly anticipated releases, and one of those (circled twice in red) is the debut album by the Australian project Ignis Gehenna. The album’s name is Baleful Scarlet Star, and it’s scheduled for release on January 9 by the Australian label Séance Records.

During the first week in October I came upon the opening song on the album, “Serpent Oracle”, and wrote about it in a Shades of Black post at our site. I was initially drawn to the music by the fantastic album cover created by Vhan Artworks, and then the song turned out to have an equally striking effect. The intro is mid-paced and dramatic, and it remains grand and bombastic even after the eruption comes. There’s magnetic bass work in the song, as well as extravagant vocal viciousness, and the savage riffing is heart-swelling stuff with a triumphant, panoramic sweep. The fallen angel rises in terrible glory through this track.

Today we’re fortunate to bring you the album’s title song, which immediately follows “Serpent Oracle” in the album’s running order. It’s just as powerful and multifaceted as its predecessor. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JONNY PETTERSSON (WOMBBATH, HENRY KANE, ASHCLOUD, JUST BEFORE DAWN)

 LISTMANIA 2016  7 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

 

(Jonny Pettersson is a busy man, with leading roles in such groups as Wombbath, Ashcloud, Just Before Dawn, and Ursinne, as well as his excellent new solo project Henry Kane. Fortunately, he found time to graciously accept our invitation to share a year-end list of favorite releases.)

 

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1. Brutally Deceased – Satanic Corpse (Death metal)

This album had me blown away. It’s the perfect mix of buzzsaw death metal and blasting brutality.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: IMMOLATION, ENGULFED, TOMB MOLD, EKPYROSIS, SHADES OF DEEP WATER

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

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For this mid-week round-up of new discoveries I have news about the next Immolation album, excellent advance tracks from three albums coming out early next year, and a full stream of one fine album released yesterday. This collection of items is heavy on the death metal, and it’s also heavy on eye-catching cover art.

IMMOLATION

In a September interview Immolation’s Ross Dolan explained that the band’s new album was finished except for the mixing, that the artwork was done except for a few inside pieces, and that the album would be released early in 2017. I haven’t seen any official announcements about the album since then, but yesterday Bristol Deathfest (here) and UKEM Records leaked some news and the cover art (above) by Pär Olofsson: The name of Immolation’s new tenth studio album is Atonement, and the release is expected on February 24, 2017. Continue reading »

2016 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GREAT ALBUMS

 LISTMANIA 2016  56 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

listmania-2016

 

(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists continues with his personal list of 2016’s Great Albums. Yesterday we posted his list of Good Albums, and the list before that dealt with Disappointments.)

Well, well, well… if you’re still with me now you must be in this for the long haul, so to show my appreciation I’m going to treat you to my list of 2016’s “Great” albums, the ones which I felt were just that cut above, and that little better put together, than the ones which made up yesterday’s list of the “Good” albums.

FYI, this is also the list from which I’m going to choose my “Critical Top Ten”, which is going to be published tomorrow. However, I’ll try my best not to give away any surprises (though the eagle-eyed of you may be able to spot a few clues). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: YOUDASH — “FORCE GUIDE”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Dec 132016
 

youdash-astrophobia

 

December 16 is the date set by Deformeathing Production for the release of the debut album Astrophobia by the Polish band Youdash. What we have for you today is a stream of the album’s next-to-last track, “Force Guide“, as well as a collection of other songs from the album that have debuted previously.

You’ll discover from listening to the songs that the music of Youdash isn’t easy to pigeonhole, though it’s quite successful in rattling and scrambling your head in interesting ways, and sometimes fracturing it, too. Take “Force Guide” as an example. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN LUNN (PANOPTICON)

 LISTMANIA 2016  21 Responses »
Dec 132016
 

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(We are again fortunate to present another year-end list we eagerly await each year, from an immensely talented musician and a damned fine human being — Austin Lunn of Panopticon and Seidr.)

 

I have to apologize in advance for the length of this list. It has been a great year for metal in my opinion… many, many releases to enjoy and as a result my list is super-long. I cut some stuff for the the sake of brevity… and speaking of brevity, I will do my best to keep the accompanying blurbs short this time around.

This has been an intense year for me, and many of these albums will forever be the soundtrack for those memories in my mind…. so here goes: Continue reading »

2016 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GOOD ALBUMS

 LISTMANIA 2016  54 Responses »
Dec 132016
 

listmania-2016

 

(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists continues with his personal list of 2016’s Good Albums. Yesterday’s list dealt with Disappointments.)

So now we’re really starting to get into the meat of things.

Unlike tomorrow’s list of “Great” albums, the list of “Good” albums covers a bit of a wider range in terms of overall quality.

Some of these albums are ones I consider to be so good as to be almost “Great”, but which are perhaps held back from true greatness by one or two inescapable flaws.

Some of them are undeniably “Good” in the sense that we’ll all doubtless be coming back to them for a long time, but probably (if we’re being honest with ourselves) with some understanding that they don’t quite hit the highest possible standards.

And some of them… are just “good enough”. They’re certainly not bad albums and are more than enjoyable enough, but they’re probably not going to be winning any awards (apart from Revolver awards, but those don’t really count).

Of course your mileage may vary. Some of these albums you may think are the bee’s bollocks (that’s the phrase, right?) and deserve to be considered “Great” albums in their own right. And some of these albums you might actively despise and not understand why anyone could consider them to be “Good”. But I hope you know that I’ve tried to be as objective as possible here, and feel like I’ve given all these releases a fair hearing.

So why not click onwards, brave traveller, and see if anything in this list strikes your fancy? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): EMPTINESS, HYPERDONTIA, ZOLOA, WIZARD UNION

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Dec 122016
 

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As the title says, this is the second part of a round-up of new music I thought was worth sharing to begin this week. As often happens, in between posting Part 1 and this Part 2 I came across some more new songs I thought were very good, and I’ve added one of them at the beginning of this post.

As explained in Part 1, this particular Seen and Heard includes more minutes of new music than usual because of the presence of numerous full EPs — three of which are to be found below.

EMPTINESS

This morning brought the premiere of yet another track from the new album by Belgium’s Emptiness. I’ve enjoyed all of them so far, but I think this one is my favorite. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NYN — “EMBRACE ENTROPY”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Dec 122016
 

nyn-embrace-entropy

 

(TheMadIsraeli brings us this premiere of a song from the new album by NYN.)

In the interest of full disclosure, the man behind the NYN project (Noyan) is both a fellow blogger (he’s a heavy hitter over at Heavy Blog Is Heavy) and a very good friend — but he’s also an insanely talented death metal maestro. Under the NYN alias he’s put out two albums so far. I keep meaning to write a feature on him and maybe I will sometime soon, but today I’m bringing you a song titled “Embrace Entropy” from NYN’s next album. The album itself is called Entropy: Of Chaos and Salt.

Both the song and the new album feature two notable collaborators, one being lead guitarist Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger, who was also a lead guitarist on Obscura’s latest album Akróasis, as well as the man behind Fountainhead, and Jimmy Pitts of Eternity’s End and Pitts Minnemann Project on keyboards. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

 LISTMANIA 2016  6 Responses »
Dec 122016
 

Neill Jameson

 

(We’re happy that for another year Neill Jameson (Krieg) succumbed to our entreaties to share with us a year-end list of metal.)

2016 has been a strange year. Not just in terms of the cultural shifts that occurred, or the copious amounts of deaths in the arts community, or even Antifa stepping over the line and using violence towards bystanders. It’s also been an unusually shitty year for a lot of our private lives as well, it seems. We weren’t able to make it a week without news that our friends were burying someone or worse, we were planning a funeral ourselves. But this time of the year is one bound by tradition so I’m back for my yearly review of music released in 2016 that you need to check out.

For me personally I didn’t buy a lot of new records this year. I don’t have any excuse, really, I just spent more time digging into older records or following some of my favorites without really checking out anything truly new this year. Did I miss out? Probably, but I don’t really care. I also tried to use only Bandcamp links where I could so that you actually buy some of this, instead of putting it on a YouTube playlist, which’ll lose its atmosphere when you can’t skip ads for Valtrex. Continue reading »

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