HOUR OF PENANCE: “CAST THE FIRST STONE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jan 242017
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Italy’s Hour of Penance, which will be released on January 27 by Prosthetic Records.)

There is a temptation when writing reviews to believe that everything needs to have some sort of deeper meaning attached to it — especially when it comes to music, because the idea of describing sound with words is one that can paralyze a person. So whenever something is pretty much exactly what it says on the box, you can often find yourself spinning endlessly.

Italy’s long-running Hour Of Penance have made a name for themselves in the brutal death scene since their full-length starter in 2003 as one of the forebears of the hyperblasting death metal bands who now seem to extrude out of that country like few others. Since 2010’s Paradogma, Hour Of Penance have really found a sound for themselves, a relentless battering of metal that is driven almost entirely by a wall of hellfire-belching guitars and drumwork that exists somewhere between Gatling gun and machine gun in terms of speed. Continue reading »

ODD LOGIC: “EFFIGY”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Jan 232017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli is the author of this review of the new album by Odd Logic.)

I always try to put some serious thought into why an exception to the rule should be an exception to the rule here at NCS. I confess that sometimes it really comes down to the fact that I just like the album, and fuck the rules and the site and blah blah blah, but for the most part I believe there is an integrity that the NCS brand, as it were, has an obligation to maintain. I’ve basically boiled it down to three things that help me decide what a good exception to our rule is. Any one, or a combination, of these three:

A:  The music is sufficiently heavy without extreme metal vocals.
B:  The music is extreme in either virtuosity, progressiveness, pretentiousness, or eccentricity, despite the absence of harsh vocals.
C:  The writing of music around clean vocals offers definitively different avenues of instrumental expression. Any band that really understands and gets this on a transcendent level is an exception.

Tacoma-based Odd Logic are B and C but not A. Effigy is their 7th record. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SCORDATURA — “SERVANTS OF ENTRAPMENT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 232017
 

 

The knife-wielding horrors of Pär Olofsson’s imagination stare out at you from the cover of Self-Created Abyss, the new album by Scotland’s Scordatura that’s set for release by Gore House Productions on March 24, but those blood-chilling visages still don’t adequately prepare the listener for the barbaric savagery and explosive destructiveness of the music. It’s an electrifying (and electrocuting) experience, and we have a sample of it for your tender ears as we premiere the lyric video for a monstrous track called “Servants of Entrapment“.

The song hits with typhoon-strength power, the massive grinding riffs eviscerating and disemboweling at a high rate of speed, matched by the clatter and boom of spitfire drumming. With hoarse growls and incinerating shrieks as vocal accompaniment, the sound is merciless and marauding. It’s like being teleported into the munitions frenzy of a war zone. But that feeling of utter mayhem is only part of the sensations of the song. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORN — “TURM AM HANG”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 232017
 

 

Turm am Hang is the new album by Germany’s Horn and it’s a unique experience. “Unique” is an overused and misused word, but here it’s not hyperbole. The album is so distinctive that it defies comparisons — as you’re about to discover for yourselves, because we’re presenting the premiere of a full album stream in advance of the record’s release on January 27.

The work of Horn’s lone creator Nerrath, Turm am Hang is Horn’s seventh album and, among the ones I’ve heard, the most successful. It was inspired by a variety of historical subjects, as well as by an appreciation for ancient valor and an animating spirit of tribalism. Continue reading »

INSOMNIUM + BARREN EARTH + WOLFHEART — LIVE AT MAMA ROUX’S, BIRMINGHAM, 16/01/17

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 232017
 

 

(As part of his continuing effort to make his NCS colleagues jealous, Andy Synn attended the performances of Insomnium, Barren Earth, and Wolfheart in Birmingham, England, on January 16, 2017, and files this tardy report.)

Last week I managed to snag myself a guestlist slot on the Birmingham date of the Insomnium/Barren Earth/Wolfheart tour. And a good time it was indeed.

But why has it taken so long for me to get this write-up together?

Laziness. Pure laziness. Or, you know, some other reason. Take your pick.

Either way, better late than never, right? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WARBRINGER, BLASPHEMER, GRAVE PLAGUE, DISCHORDIA, AMTHYST, OLD SCRATCH, AREA, SUPREMATIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 232017
 

 

This will be one of those Mondays when I’m afraid we’ll be doing our best to drown you in music, beginning with this large collection of new discoveries (which includes one item from Austin Weber along with my own picks).

I thought about titling this post “Galloping Madness!” Everything in here flies, but in particular there’s a heavy thrash influence in a lot of the music at the start and the finish, with some brain scramblers sandwiched in the middle. But as you’ll discover, the thrash influence manifests itself in very different ways.

WARBRINGER

The first item is a video for “Silhouettes”, from the new album Woe to the Vanquished by California’s Warbringer. This is their fifth full-length, and it’s slated for a March 31 release through Napalm Records.

“Silhouettes” premiered at DECIBEL last week, where vocalist John Kevill gave this explanation about the song: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AUTHOR, WITHERED, SON IN CURSE, SECOND TO SUN, TANAKH, ASAGRAUM, RIFTWORM

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Jan 222017
 

 

I have a large and broad array of music in this Sunday’s Shades of Black collection. In some instances I’ve stepped outside the usual boundaries of this series, mainly because I didn’t want to wait for an arguably more appropriate way to feature the music. Hopefully, this playlist will prove interesting to you, even if you came hear expecting nothing but black metal.

AUTHOR

Earlier today we premiered a song from a band on the Naturmacht label, and the first music in this collection also comes from Naturmacht. It’s a complete album released on January 8 called Lopun Alku, by the Finnish project Author. The photo that comes next shows a full live band, but on the album one man (J.V.) did almost everything — vocals, lyrics, guitars, bass, keyboards, all music — with session drums performed by J.W. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (MISERY’S OMEN)

 THE REARVIEW MIRROR  No Responses »
Jan 222017
 

 

Almost exactly nine years ago Misery’s Omen released their debut album Hope Dies . . . and have released nothing else since then, although they seem to be dormant rather than dead. The album is very good, which perhaps should be expected, given that this Australian trio’s members have participated in numerous other bands including Mournful Conregation, Martire, Sacriphyx, Johnny Touch, and Cauldron Black Ram.

Hope Dies is almost an hour long, and it begins with the title track, which tops 11 minutes and is the album’s longest track by a significant margin. It’s also a remarkable song, and that song alone is the subject of this Sunday’s Rearview Mirror column. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRIMA — “THE MOON AND ITS SHADOWS”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 222017
 

 

Tales of the Enchanted Woods is the second album by the Siberian atmospheric black metal band Grima, and it is now set for release by Naturmacht Productions on February 25. Today we bring you the premiere of the album’s second track, “The Moon and Its Shadows“.

Grima is two-person endeavor (Velhelm and Morbius) that has existed since 2014 as a studio-only project, with a pagan ethos “based on the worship of the elder forest, its power and magic, where the Grima is a supreme god… a powerful spirit, who protects only those who live in a forest, and punishes everyone who does not respect nature”. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2016’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 15): CENTINEX, ABNORMALITY, VOLTURYON

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2016  2 Responses »
Jan 212017
 

 

For the 15th installment in our Most Infectious Song series I decided to create a death metal immersion, with three songs that all have old school flavors, the first most strongly of all, but are all different from each other in interesting ways, too. I’ll also mention that all three of these tracks were recommendations from my comrade DGR, who has a thing about speed and a certain kind of drumwork, although a couple of these songs were also on my own list of candidates that grew as 2016 rolled along.

For those who might be joining this rollout only now, you can browse the previous 14 parts by clicking this link.

CENTINEX

After eight albums going back to 1992’s Subconscious Lobotomy and a dozen shorter releases, Sweden’s Centinex disbanded in 2006 — but they crawled out of their grave in 2014 and released a comeback album named Redeeming Filth, which was a hell of a comeback. And I put a deliciously morbid track from that album (“Moist Purple Skin”) on my 2014 Most Infectious Song list. In 2016 they released a killer follow-up with Doomsday Rituals, which is the source of the first song in this installment of the 2016 list. Continue reading »

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