NO CLEAN SINGING

BEST OF GERMAN (PART 2): NOCTE OBDUCTA, BETHLEHEM, ULTHA

Nov 252016

(Andy Synn prepared this trio of reviews for new albums by three German bands.)

Synchronicity can be a strange thing indeed. Case in point, coming hot on the heels of my recent (and surprisingly well-received) column on “Black Metal” here we have a triple-header feature on three bands who all sit somewhere under the big black umbrella, but whose actual adherence to the term “Black Metal” varies pretty drastically.

Not only that, but they all just happen to be German in origin, which means I can collect all three groups under the “Best of German” banner which I first used (here) back in May, and pretend like this whole thing was part of some grand plan of mine, rather than a completely random sequence of events that just happens to have lined up in a way that appears to be thematically significant.

But I’ll take what I can get, because these three albums are all absolutely hervorragend… Continue reading »

A THANKSGIVING FEAST: NIDINGR, ENDALOK, DARKREVERIE, GRAVECOVEN, ECHELON, REVULSION, SLECHTVALK, TENGGER CAVALRY, MROME, MARIANAS REST, ID, HUKUTUS

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 11 Responses »

Nov 242016

Here in the good old U.S. of A. it’s Thanksgiving Day today, and so to all of our American readers, I want to wish you a happy fucking Thanksgiving. And if you’re puzzling over what to be thankful for, I have some new metal for you. You’re welcome.

That’s right, while the rest of the miscreants in U.S. metal blogdom are acting like normal, reasonably well-adjusted people and taking the day off, I’m still here like a good samaritan at the soup kitchen, feeding you nourishing metal so you won’t think no one cares about you, at least for today. As usual, I’ll also post something new on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this long “holiday” weekend, not because I’m better than anyone else but because I obviously have an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Because it’s Thanksgiving, this holiday edition of what we normally call Seen and Heard is overstuffed, which is the condition of most Americans by the end of this day. So get ready to gorge yourself through the earholes with music from a dozen bands. Continue reading »

DESTROYING THE DEVOID: “PARAMNESIA”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Nov 232016

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Destroying the Devoid, the solo project of Deeds of Flesh guitarist Craig Peters.)

So… I’m going to have to confess something here.

I really dislike the Unique Leader style of death metal.

I know that’s heresy since they are a popular label now for the genre (and one whose bands NCS has featured regularly), but I’ve never been able to get into the super-machine-tight, super-technical, turned-up-to-11 all the time brand of death metal they are known for pushing. It just isn’t my thing, which is a shame because one of their flagships, Deeds Of Flesh, are obviously a great band — I’ve just been unable to fully appreciate them. I do have great respect for that band’s guitarist and composer Craig Peters, who has immaculate technique and does write interesting riffs from a guitar player’s standpoint.

I will also admit, though, that the subject of this review is making me consider going back and checking out Deeds Of Flesh’s discography in its entirety. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MICHEL ANOIA — “LA TERREUR D’EXISTER”

Premieres 1 Response »

Nov 232016

(Austin Weber brings us another premiere, this time a video for a song from the new album by Michel Anoia.)

Way back in the early days of 2016, our esteemed editor Islander premiered a song called “Two Mountains” by the mind-boggling metal force from Lyon, France known as Michel Anoia. As he often does, he then tipped me off to the group, figuring it’d be right up my alley. He couldn’t have been more correct, as their new album Plethora has become one of my all-time favorite albums for the entire year. Now, as usual, things somehow strangely have come full circle as we unleash an exclusive music video premiere for one of the songs on Plethora called “La Terreur d’Exister”. Continue reading »

LISZT: DANTE SYMPHONY (1857)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Nov 232016

(We welcome a guest writer known as Lonegoat, a name many of you will recognize as the Texas-based necroclassical pianist behind Goatcraft, whose latest album Yersinia Pestis was released earlier this year by I, Voidhanger.)

Liszt crossed the boundaries of both romanticism and modernism, and it’s futile to cast him into a specific period of classical music because he was driven by his will to impose himself beyond the categorical spheres of the music at the time. His ingenuity in composition was matched only by his virtuosic abilities which gained him much fanfare, much like how the surface aesthetics of something draws the bystander in and wows them, and with subsequent discernment, reveal a world to discover that’s seemingly beautiful and terrifying.

It can be said that Dante’s Inferno was created to scare the beejezus out of people by thrusting their intellects into hellish landscapes, and Liszt did indeed grant it a power to do so even more. The man was his own full symphony on piano, and when he spent his time on his symphonic works, a logogenesis emerged. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: NEGATIVE SYMBOLS — “WITHOUT VOICES”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 232016

Berlin-based Benedikt Willnecker has performed on stage as the bassist for Der Weg einer Freiheit and was also bassist and songwriter for Ära Krâ, both of them bands we’ve praised repeatedly at our site, but he has now struck out on his own with a solo instrumental project called Negative Symbols. On November 30, Negative Symbols will release its debut album Without Voices, and we have a full stream of this riveting new release for you today.

The album is a substantial 47 minutes in length, but it’s so engrossing that the pace of time seems to change as you listen, passing in a flash or perhaps even standing still. Stripped of vocals and lyrics, it evokes direct emotional responses in an interplay between the changing moods of the music and the experiences that have shaped where you live in your own head. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, HIDEOUS DIVINITY, CROWHURST, VOIDTHRONE, CRYPTICUS

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Nov 222016

I bet you thought we were finished posting for this Tuesday. Nope, I just got waylaid by my day job on the way to finishing this thing, but now having surmounted those obstacles, I give you this round-up.

This collection a bit different from the norm, in that I’m including a couple of items that aren’t hot off the presses. But we’ll begin with two that are, and then conclude with a new Megamix treat from Crypticus that you probably won’t hear anywhere else.

MORS PRINCIPIUM EST

The artwork up there is by one of my favorite metal artists, Berlin-based painter Eliran Kantor. I’ve already posted it on our site’s Facebook page and made it the cover photo on my personal page. How could I not put it here as well? The artist describes it as “an apocalyptic homage to Vermeer’s ‘The Astronomer'” — and here’s what that famous work (completed in 1668 and on display at the Louvre in Paris) looks like: Continue reading »

ONI: “IRONSHORE”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 7 Responses »

Nov 222016

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album by the band Oni.)

Some of you old-timers might remember that I was super-hyped on Black Crown Initiate. I enthusiastically reviewed their debut EP and while I didn’t review their first album, I absolutely loved it. 2016 rolled around, and Selves We Cannot Forgive rolled around and it was… not the BCI I was hyped on. The album was a complete disappointment in fact, and I was extremely, extremely dismayed that the band had already seemingly fallen off the horse. We’ll see what the future holds, but as to what made me lose faith in the band, it was their conversion to a rather directionless, meandering style of songwriting combined with riffs that were barely riffs.

Oni are poised, already, to kick Black Crown Initiate off their own throne where they once brandished a distinctive brand of technical, groovy, yet poppy and melodic progressive death metal. The two bands share many similarities, but with Oni taking it a step further and adding even more influences and elements. I don’t think you can say Oni sound like BCI, but to my ears they have definitely taken the BCI formula and brought it to the next level, whether doing so consciously or not. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SITHTER — “CHAOTIC FIEND”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 222016

Chaotic Fiend is the name of the new album by the band Sithter from Tokyo, Japan, and it’s also the name of the album’s opening track. The song, in the band’s words, is “our invitation from hell”. And so it is.

While rooted in the traditions of sludge/doom bands such as Grief, Eyehategod and Buzzoven, Sithter push their music into realms where psychosis, violence, and psychedelic hallucinations reign. They’re bone-breakers and conjurors, equally capable of bending necks and administering psychoactive poisons straight to the bloodstream. The album’s title track, which we’re bringing your way, is a good example. Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “SHRINES OF PARALYSIS”

Album Reviews 12 Responses »

Nov 222016

(DGR reviews the new album by New Zealand’s Ulcerate.)

There’s a certain sort of apocalyptic reverie one takes on as a state of mind when reviewing an Ulcerate disc. The now long-running New Zealand-based death metal three-piece have made a career out of creating music that sounds tailor-made for the end of the world. When the Earth’s crust is rended asunder and magma comes shooting up into the air, Ulcerate are one of the groups that I am expecting to provide the mood music, like the band playing on the Titanic, on a planetary scale.

Keeping in mind that among the group’s discography are albums with names like Everything Is Fire and The Destroyers Of All, you can see why that description might feel apt. Ulcerate play a deafening form of death metal, one that is largely cavernous and often cataclysmic in its impact. They have grown in popularity over the years and have become a cultural landmark in the death metal scene as a whole. They are able to channel utter destruction in their sound and have done so for quite some time.

Only a few groups out there get to name a song “Weight Of Emptiness” and have it feel like it was built to fit that song, not just because it sounded cool. The same goes for Ulcerate’s newly released album Shrines Of Paralysis, which came out at the tail end of October, three years after the release of their last album Vermis. Shrines continues Ulcerate’s trend of auditory destruction, a slow death march to oblivion, and over the course of an hour it’s hard not to feel like there is some sort of darkness spreading through your veins. Continue reading »

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