NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: MAZE OF SOTHOTH — “SEED OF HATRED”

Nov 092016

Metal is mood music. Perhaps like all forms of music, you can use it either to suit the mood you’re in or to change your mood. But it can do either thing in ways more powerful and effective than most other forms of music. Take this next song for example.

What we have here is a track called “Seed of Hatred” by the Italian death metal band Maze of Sothoth. It’s from their debut album Soul Demise, which will be released by Everlasting Spew on January 9, 2017. If you’re current mood is vile, enraged, boiling with hate, and/or teetering on the brink of a violent outburst, “Seed of Hatred” will fit your mood like a fine Italian glove fits your hand — even when it’s curled into a fist.

And if you happen to be in a despondent funk, and want to find some vibrant energy that will shake you out of your gloom, the song can do that, too. Continue reading »

SHOCKED

Off Topic 103 Responses »

Nov 092016

“Anger trumped hope. Donald Trump’s astonishing victory over a heavily-favored Hillary Clinton on Tuesday is the greatest upset in the modern history of American elections – convulsing the nation’s political order in ways so profound and disruptive its impact can’t even be guessed at.”

And that’s how one article I read this morning began. There are tens of thousands of articles from around the world that in substance began the same way. We did not see this coming, and now many of us can’t see where we are going — or we think we can see it, and it’s a very dystopian vision of the future.

On days like this, it’s hard to go forward with a “business as usual” approach. As much as we love what we do here at NCS, it’s obviously dwarfed in importance by what happened at the polls in the early morning hours of this day, and what that outcome portends for the next four years and longer. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 18): SURTURS LOHE, HELLSPAWN, FAUSTIAN DRIPFEED, KHEPRA

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Nov 092016

( Norwegian blogger Gorger is back again, highlighting still more releases that we have overlooked. To find more of his discoveries, type “Gorger” in our search bar or visit Gorger’s Metal.)

Hot on the heels of the previous part, here’s another attempt at covering the tip of the iceberg of the occasional stream that NCS has missed out on in the otherwise overflowing river of metal releases. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HORN, HAXXAN, HERMÓÐR

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 3 Responses »

Nov 082016

One day I will learn not to forecast when I’m going to post things, because experience proves I’ve only got about a 50-50 chance of hitting the mark. This post, for example, I said I planned to post on Sunday notwithstanding the amount of time I spent on the revival of our “THAT’S METAL!” series that day. That didn’t work out, and yesterday we had too many other things scheduled for the day, and time ran out.

And so, two days late, here’s a small alliteratively named collection of diverse black metal that I’ve been enjoying recently, with all the songs drawn from forthcoming albums. I have more new music in this vein I’d like to share, and maybe I’ll get another small Shades of Black installment finished and posted before next Sunday’s large collection.

HORN

I finally discovered this German one-man band’s music through last year’s wonderful Feldpost album — even though five other albums preceded it. And now (because Horn has never allowed much grass to grow between releases), a new album is already on the way. This one is named Turm am Hang, and while Northern Silence has released the last two albums, Iron Bonehead will be releasing this one. Continue reading »

A ZHRINE TOUR DIARY (aka “THE EVERYTHING IS FINE TOUR DIARY”)

Metal News 5 Responses »

Nov 082016

Zhrine in Seattle

On November 2, the Shrines of Paralysis North American Tour launched in Los Angeles, headlined by New Zealand’s Ulcerate and also including the Icelandic band Zhrine, and Phobocosm from Montreal.

Zhrine was one of the biggest and brightest surprises at this year’s edition of Maryland Deathfest (as we discussed here and here, with photos), and now large numbers of other metal fans are getting the chance to discover what makes Zhrine so special. And so we count ourselves very fortunate to bring you the first in what we hope will be a series of tour reports from Zhrine’s manager Bogi Bjarnason (accompanied by his photos) — though as you’ll discover, it may be the last as well as the first.

You’ll also discover that this particular tour diary displays an articulateness and eloquence that’s rare in observations and musings about the highs and lows of metal tours. So read on, and enjoy. Continue reading »

DAMNATION FESTIVAL 2016

Concert Reviews 4 Responses »

Nov 082016

(Our man in the UK, Andy Synn, attended Damnation Festival 2016 in Leeds on November 5, and provides this report along with videos he made.)

Oh Damnation Festival how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

Whereas too many other events seem content to book the same big-name crowd-pleasers, year in and year out, buttressed by an interchangeable selection of generic sound-alikes and contrived gimmicks – all carefully selected purely for their mundane mass-appeal – the Damnation team seem to operate on an unwavering ethos of only booking the bands they truly like, bands (big and small) that they truly believe in, who have something unique or special to offer.

This is how every edition of the festival features an array of bands from multiple different styles, from Death to Prog to Doom to Hardcore to Sludge (and beyond), from across the length and breadth of the underground Metal scene coexisting under one roof and why, over the years, Damnation has seen everyone from Ahab to Asphyx, Carcass to Katatonia, Mono to My Dying Bride, playing to the sort of packed crowds that are a regular occurrence in Europe, but which only rarely seem to be achievable here in the UK.

This helps make Damnation Festival’s line-up a much more interesting affair than many of their peers, as the organisers seem to operate on the principal of “if you build it, they will come”, putting their faith in the belief that the UK scene doesn’t just want to be fed the same old bands and the same old performances, time and time again. And this year was no different, with a wide variety of different acts, of different styles, on display, coupled with a bunch of exclusive performances which practically justified the ticket price on their own! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MIST OF MISERY (MORTUZ, PHLEGATHON)

Interviews 4 Responses »

Nov 082016

Norway-based metal writer Karina Noctum brings us another interview, this time with members of Sweden’s Mist of Misery, whose new album Absence we premiered and praised in a review at our site here.)

So, you guys are by no means amateurs. Tell us about your other projects, and have any of you been to a school of music?

Mortuz: I have several other projects, such as Eufori and Soliloquium, and yes, I have been to a school of music, or rather a school of audio engineering several years ago.

Phlegathon: I also play guitar in Hyperion. For a while I studied various musical courses at The University of Stockholm, but I would not regard it as such a particularly serious undertaking. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: XOTH — “INVASION OF THE TENTACUBE”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 072016

In the distant future when the Tentacube invades our pitiful, beleaguered planet (by which I mean three days from now, on the other side of our ghastly election), the widely differing strands of extreme metal will be fused into a single, monstrous, throbbing tentacle groping for your pleasure centers. By which I mean that Seattle’s XOTH will release their debut album, Invasion of the Tentacube, which you will be able to hear in its entirety below.

It may be an exaggeration to claim that XOTH have fused together all of the divergent strands of metal into a single heavy chord, but it’s true that attempting to cabin this head-spinning collage of sounds within a few simple genre terms would be a fool’s errand. The part about the pleasure centers? That’s totally true. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: EVOCACIÓN — “EVOCACIÓN”

Premieres 1 Response »

Nov 072016

Prepare yourselves for an atmospherically oppressive and unnerving concoction of skull-splintering death-doom and pestilential black metal, because that’s what we’re about to bring you through our premiere of the debut, self-titled demo by a young band from Murcia, Spain, named Evocación. It will be released on tape by Caligari Records on November 11.

In a word, the music is horrifying — the stuff of hallucinations and nightmares, or perhaps smoke-shrouded rituals in which incantations are uttered, blood is spilled, and lives are lost. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MYLINGAR — “FRIHETEN”

Premieres 1 Response »

Nov 072016

You might think that when we agree to premiere new music by a mysterious new band, we would have at least some inside information about the musicians, their origin story, precisely where they are from, etc. But in the case of Mylingar, we remain in the dark — which is where their music dwells as well. We do know they are from somewhere in Sweden, and we have heard their debut EP Döda Vägar, which will be released in late November or early December by Amor Fati Productions. An excerpt of one song from the EP (“Såren”) was made public last month, and today we bring you a second track called “Friheten“.

Apart from the music itself, which sends bolts of lightning into your head, perhaps some further insight into the band can be discovered through the name they have chosen for themselves. As explained by Wikipedia, “mylingar” is a Swedish word that invokes a legend “about ghosts/spirits of unbaptized and/or unnamed children that have been forced to roam the earth until they could force someone to name and/or bury them, in fact ‘killing’ them for real so they can finally rest”: Continue reading »

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