LORN: “ARRAYED CLAWS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 072017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by the Italian band Lorn, which has just been released by I, Voidhanger Records.)

Black metal has rarely achieved that truly evil, blasphemous, horror sound that many bands have aspired to. It wasn’t until the style took a more melodic, progressive, and esoterically melodic approach that I started to care about it in the early 2000s or so. I don’t like Burzum, Bathory, or Darkthrone. Emperor was where my taste for the music started, and in following suit, all of my favorite black metal comes from that Emperor school of thought… until recently.

I suppose I couldn’t help but feel that first-wave and some second-wave black metal was just rather cartoony or something. I couldn’t take it seriously. I always wanted to hear an album or EP from this genre that truly succeeded in capturing the sound of a pit of hell opening up, or being trapped inside a dank chamber with a bunch of banshees torturing you with non-stop blood-curdling shrieks until you were incapable of knowing peace, sanity, or anything but the endless wail.

Lorn has done that. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DIGIR GIDIM — “I THOUGHT THERE WAS THE SUN AWAITING MY AWAKENING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Feb 072017
 

 

As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t agree to host premieres of music at our site until we have first listened to the music and concluded that it’s worth recommending to you, according to our own twisted tastes. When I began listening to what you’re about to hear, the band’s name was new to me and I had no clear idea what to expect. What I heard left me gasping and unnerved, emotionally stretched taut, and wide-eyed in wonder at what this mysterious duo had achieved. I felt myself enthralled by the unsettling sorcery of masters practicing a very dark but transportive art.

The band is Diĝir Gidim (whose location is unknown), and the title of the album is I Thought There Was the Sun Awaiting My Awakening. It will be released by ATMF on March 31, 2017. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST: ANNOUNCING THE FIRST ROUND OF CONFIRMED BANDS

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Feb 072017
 

 

On June 15-17, 2017, in the Emerald City of Seattle, Washington, No Clean Singing will be partnering with the tireless Terrorfest honcho David Rodgers and Invisible Oranges to present the first edition of Northwest Terror Fest, and today we’re leaking the names of the first group of confirmed bands. Actually, this is the second leak, because yesterday David disclosed through an interview with Metal Injection that Warning from the UK will be headlining the final night of NWTF, with Young And In the Way also appearing on that closing night of the fest.

The appearance of Warning is big news, made even more special by the announcement that they will be performing their 2006 comeback album Watching From A Distance in its entirety. Warning’s NWTF performance will follow shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco that we’re also co-sponsoring.

But today we’re announcing the names of 13 more bands whose NWTF appearances have been confirmed, including another headliner: the mighty Cephalic Carnage from Denver, who will be playing their experimental 2002 sludge/doom EP Halls of Amenti in its entirety, in addition to other songs from their head-wrecking discography.

Here are those names in alphabetical order, followed by more details about NWTF and the people involved in making it a reality: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THREE TRACKS BY STENCH OF PROFIT

 Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 072017
 

 

It’s not unusual for us to premiere new music. It is unusual for us to premiere three tracks from the same release at the same time. But that’s what we’re doing today — and it will take you a grand total of two minutes to hear them. However, if you’re like me, you’re going to spend more time listening to them again, and again. Once is not enough.

The names of these three tracks are “Mental Depravation” (28 seconds), “Know Your Shit Or Live In Ignorance” (71 seconds), and “The Dance of Deceit” (21 seconds). They are three of 18 tracks by the Venetian band Stench of Profit that will appear on a forthcoming split entitled New Doomsday Orchestration with fellow Italian destructors Mindful of Pripyat. The split will be released by Everlasting Spew on March 1.

You may remember the name Mindful of Pripyat, because we premiered two of the tracks from their side of the split in mid-January. Those songs were damned destructive. So are these three. Continue reading »

MURDERING MONDAY: SINISTER, SVART CROWN, POSSESSION, DOEDSVANGR, MORBID FLESH, THE NEGATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Feb 062017
 

 

I decided to give the “Seen and Heard” caption a brief rest, but that’s basically what this post is — a round-up of new songs and videos. It just happens that everything in this round-up is the sound of slaughtering, though translated through difference metallic prisms. In essence, we’ll do a death metal/black metal back-and-forth, though you’ll hear differences even within those broad genre umbrellas, and the boundaries blur as well.

SINISTER

Over the weekend Sinister released an official video (created and directed by Sebastiaan Spijker) for a song called “Neurophobic” off their new album Syncretism, which will be released on February 24 by Massacre Records. This is the 13th studio album by these Dutch death metal veterans, and judging from the new song, it’s going to be lethal. Continue reading »

WARCRAB: “SCARS OF AEONS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 062017
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the latest album by the British band WarCrab.)

Over the course of 2016 I managed to successfully cover a host of fantastic bands from the UK (often, but not always, under the “Best of British” banner) spanning a wide variety of metallic sub-genres, from the pitch-black perfection of Wode and the doomy proggery of King Goat, to the unfathomable brutality of Unfathomable Ruination, the knee-cap shattering aggression of Venom Prison, and the grandstanding gallop of Wretched Soul… and beyond.

But even with all these, there were still several bands whose works went uncelebrated, and chief amongst them were the mighty WarCrab and their titanic second album Scars of Aeons. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DDENT

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Feb 062017
 

 

The Parisian band DDENT began as the creation of multi-instrumentalist Louis Lambert and drummer Marc Le Saux. They released their debut EP Chien Noir in 2014. With Louis Lambert continuing as the sole composer of the music and the guitarist, DDENT has now expanded into a full four-person band, and on February 13 will release a debut full-length with a title in Arabic — آكتئاب — which means ektiheb, referring to melancholy, depression. Today we bring you a full stream of this new album in advance of its release.

The names of the eight album tracks are derived from Arab psalms, with words such as “Habouz”, “Arzel”, and “Houri” describing “the melancholy and depression of a horseman, a poet”. Continue reading »

MECHINA: “AS EMBERS TURN TO DUST”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Feb 062017
 

 

(Chicago’s Mechina released a new album on January 1 and, continuing a long tradition, DGR reviews it.)

The idea of a band creating their own lore occupies a special place in my heart, a place where admiration and hilarity co-exist in the case of Mechina. The ambitiousness of trying to set up a universe and tell a multiple-release-spanning story is incredible, in an age of music that is quickly devoured and disposed of, reserved exclusively for streaming and set up to run in the background. Going beyond the usual goal of “let’s make a really good disc” and into one that seeks to create a musical space opera that pulls from equal parts miltiary sci-fi and exploration segments, that is where my admiration comes to fruition.

That the Mechina crew have doggedly sought to create this saga on a yearly release schedule, with the occasional single release ahead of time, has felt like an exercise in insanity. The hilarity, for me at least, has been in the part where year afer year I have to describe this to what may be a new audience not feel like I’ve fallen into a feedback loop of repeating myself. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PERFIDIOUS — “ANCIENT VOICES OF THE PAST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 052017
 

 

In less than 10 days Death Metal Industry will release Malevolent Martyrdom, the debut album of the death metal band Perfidious, whose members are based in Milan and Novara, Italy. Today we bring you the premiere of a track from this vicious album named “Ancient Voices of the Past“.

With a cavernous voice roaring and howling like an unearthed monstrosity that has been storing up hate for centuries, the rest of the band deliver an intensely infectious battery of jolting riffs and punishing rhythmic grooves. With guitar leads that seethe, slash, and shriek, the music has a sinister aura that becomes increasingly poisonous… even as it gets the listener’s head moving even more forcefully as it charges ahead. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HIDEOUS DIVINITY, FIRESPAWN, WOLFHEART, FUOCO FATUO, ZEAL AND ARDOR, EXOCRINE, SEPULCHRAL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Feb 042017
 

 

It’s been a crazy week for this half-witted editor. Interferences by my fucking day job coupled with interferences by my non-blogging personal life prevented me from posting any news and new-music round-ups all week. That means I’ve accumulated an enormous list of things since last weekend. Unfortunately, I still won’t have time to catch up this weekend.

I’ve got work I need to do today for an annual event I’m attending tonight with my spouse, and based on past experience, I’ll be in no condition to write anything on Sunday morning. I’ve agreed to post one premiere tomorrow, which I’ll get ready today, but there probably won’t be anything else on the site tomorrow. Maybe the coming week will be less crazy and I can do a delayed Shades of Black thing and/or a “That’s Metal!” post after the new week begins.

Okay, enough with the excuses. On to a regrettably small but diverse collection of new things I noticed last week.

HIDEOUS DIVINITY

When I first started using the title “Seen and Heard“, it was because I intended to include both news about, and artwork from, new albums, even when there was nothing yet to hear, as well as streams of new songs. And I have items in both categories to recommend today in this large collection, beginning with the artwork at the top of this post. Continue reading »

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