NO CLEAN SINGING

HAAR AND UR DRAUGR: A SPLIT

Oct 112016

Sometimes the best split releases are those that juxtapose differing musical styles of the participating bands while finding common ground between them in sometimes unexpected ways — and the new split by Scotland’s Haar and Australia’s Ur Draugr is one of those. It was released on October 7 by ATMF and it includes three songs by Haar and a single 20-minute monolith by Ur Draugr. I’ll share some thoughts about each side separately, along with a conclusion about the powerful combined effect of the split’s complete experience, and a stream of all the music.

HAAR

Following the appearance of two well-received EPs in 2010 and 2012, Haar released their hour-long debut album (also through ATMF), The Wayward Ceremony, in 2015. We premiered a full stream of the album in May of that year, along with a review in which I wrote:

“If you had to force the album into a genre category, I suppose black metal would be the name of the game, but the album resists simple classification. Atmospherically, it is unquestionably dark and threatening, casting an aura of horrors hidden in the shadows and the relentless approach of an all-consuming hunger. And there are bursts of ravaging black metal aggression, complete with blasting drums and raking/jabbing riffs…. Continue reading »

TARNKAPPE: “WINTERWAKER”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Oct 112016

Black metal has morphed into many different shapes since the term was first coined on the cover of Venom’s second album. Even the now-classic albums released by Norwegian bands in the early ’90s are referred to as the “second wave” because the changes had already begun, though those albums could justifiably be considered the ones that created the genre as most people now know it, far more than the prototypes of the ’80s. Of course, the morphing has continued with increasing speed from then straight up to through present.

The Dutch band Tarnkappe have little apparent interest in all the spinoffs and mutations that have transformed “black metal” into a genre term of such breadth that it no longer provides much specific guidance about the sound of bands who use it. Their new album Winterwaker (“Guardian of Winter” in English) is firmly rooted in the early ’90s — and it thrives in that cold black soil. Yet Winterwaker still has its own vivid and dynamic personality. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRÉATURES — “À L’ORÉE DU MAL, LE PACTE”

Premieres 1 Response »

Oct 112016

Le Noir Village by the French project Créatures is an unusual and ambitious album in numerous ways. Créatures is the solo project of a man who uses the name Sparda. The album (which is Créatures’ first full-length) tells the story of a twelfth-century countryside village that is attacked by terrifying monsters. As in an opera, all the characters in the story are enacted by different vocalists who act as first-person narrators to help tell the tale. The digipack version of the album will be accompanied by a 16-page booklet that includes, in addition to the cover painting by Simon Hervé, a different drawing in a medieval style for each of the album’s six songs along with the texts of this musical horror play.

But the album’s ambitions go further still. Sparda, who composed the music and also plays one of the vocal roles, performs not only guitars and bass but also piano, organ, ocarina, dung chen, singing bowls, gong, and the sounds of singing choirs. And he was aided in the production of the album not only by the 9 other vocal artists but also by other musicians (including drummer Ehrryk) who perform a further array of instruments that includes cello, violin, trumpet, darbuka, and more.

And if you’re not interested in hearing the music by now, that would be surprising. But what you hear may be even more surprising. We have the premiere of a shortened version of the album’s fourth track, “À l’orée du Mal, le Pacte“. Continue reading »

MORPHEUS TALES: “SECULAR NOIR”

Reviews 1 Response »

Oct 112016

(In this post we bring you two songs from the forthcoming reissue of the debut album by the unusual Greek band Morpheus Tales, along with the following review by Greek guest writer Chrysostomos Tsaprailis.)

Black metal and space have been closely intimated throughout the genre’s history. Not so much as the last frontier for humanity, but rather as an approximation of the Unknown, space exhibits close ties with the genre’s uncanny essence. The noir art genre on the other hand, though somewhat close aesthetically to black metal, has never been much associated with it, mainly due to the former’s emphasis on human emotions and relations, something undoubtedly contrary to the black metal thought-form. Still, the Greek experimental black metal band Morpheus Tales assume the difficult task of presenting a cosmic noir tale in their aptly named debut Secular Noir.

The album was first released independently on digital format in 2014, and two years after, it will finally see a physical release via the new Greek Arcane Angels label, firstly on tape as a taste of what’s to come, and then on both vinyl and CD editions. All physical releases will sport new cover art and band logo, created by Arcane Accidents, a sub-division of Arcane Angels, which will be responsible for the artwork of several other releases of the label as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KINGDOM — “FORSAKEN TRIBE”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Oct 102016

On October 28 Godz Ov War Productions will release the third album, Sepulchral Psalms From The Abyss Of Torment, by the Polish blackened death metal power trio Kingdom. Today’s it’s our pleasure to present the premiere stream of the album’s third track, “Forsaken Tribe“.

A song like this warrants a warning: If you have body armor handy, it would be wise to strap it on, and stretching your neck muscles would be a good idea, too. “Forsaken Tribe” is a megaton crusher, and when Kingdom really shift into rampaging gear at the 0:40 mark, it becomes a hell of a headbang trigger, too. Continue reading »

NOCTEM: “HAERESIS”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Oct 102016

(DGR reviews the new album by Spain’s Noctem, which was released on September 30 by Art Gates Records and Prosthetic Records.)

Spain’s Noctem have kept themselves to a pretty tight every-two-years-put-out-a-new-album schedule, something made more impressive by the fact that the group have had some pretty consistent — though small — lineup shifts in between each album. In the case of Noctem’s new disc, that isn’t the case anymore, as the band’s current lineup features three new members, with the change made official in 2015.

Noctem are one of those groups who have drastically refined their sound with each release, as they trim whatever fat they find, or make a shift in sound. In the case of the group’s 2014 release Exilium, Noctem wound up a fairly sleek, blackened death metal band with a penchant for going at hyper-speed for most of the album; they sounded like a hyperbasting death metal band with just a slight bit of recent-era Kataklysm guitar shred tossed into it. The songs were of the shock-and-awe-assault type: no time to build, just starting at a million miles an hour and accelerating from there. Whatever wasn’t destroyed by the initial blast still had to weather three-plus minutes of the band roaring at you.

Haeresis is Noctem’s fourth full-length disc and it stays pretty close to its siblings Divinity, Oblivion, and Exilium in terms of run time at about ten songs and forty-five minutes in length. Barring Oblivion, which is an outlier with a last track running thirteen minutes long, Noctem have at this point found a pretty concrete formula in terms of just how many songs they want and how long an album needs to be. They’ve found that a sleek forty-some-odd minutes tends to work for them, and with Haeresis, the band do that without any instrumentals in the mix, meaning that all ten songs on Haeresis are Noctem at their most vicious. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MADDER MORTEM — “BLOOD ON THE SAND”

Premieres 7 Responses »

Oct 102016

(Our old friend KevinP has been absent from our pages for an extended hiatus. What brought him back? He’s about to tell you….)

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE: Madder Mortem is one of those clean-singing bands we talk about here because they are just so damn worthy of it. Vocalist Agnete M. Kirkevaag may have some of the most tender whispers, but that’s balanced out with violent screams.

Back on June 11, 2015, we featured a 176-second teaser clip of the new album, Red in Tooth and Claw. And now, FINALLY, we have a release date: October 28, 2016. The first single and lead track to that album, “Blood on the Sand“, is available for your listening pleasure below. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): KYY, HORN IMPALER, SURTR, ETERNAL SAMHAIN, TRISTE TERRE

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 5 Responses »

Oct 092016

This is the second installment in a big collection of mostly new black metal that I listened to yesterday, making my way through a list of music I had compiled during the last week as I saw things in our e-mail and my Facebook feed. The following collection includes further tracks from some releases I’ve written about before in this column, plus two new discoveries — one for a forthcoming release and one that appeared earlier this year. To listen to the music collected in Part I of this post, click this link.

KYY

Two Sundays ago I wrote about a 2015 EP named Travesty of Light by the Finnish band Kyy, plus excerpts from a couple of tracks that will appear on their forthcoming debut album Beyond Flesh – Beyond Matter – Beyond Death, which is due for release on November 4 through Saturnal Records. Now we’ve finally got a full track stream to share with you from the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SORGUINAZIA’S DEBUT DEMO

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Oct 092016

On their debut demo, Sorguinazia demonstrate impressive skill in conjuring visions of chaos, horror, and inescapable doom. In the space of only three songs, they immerse the listener in maelstroms of dense, violent, suffocating sound while casting dark and mesmerizing spells at the same time. You can easily imagine that the membrane between our own reality and a dimension inhabited by monstrous wraiths is being torn asunder, and we are being inexorably pulled into the vortex where they dwell.

Sorguinazia consists of two members — Axczor (vocals, bass, drums) and Xolaryxis (guitars, vocals). Their location hasn’t been revealed. Their self-titled demo will be released on tape by Toronto’s Vault of Dried Bones on October 31, and today is a good day to spread the word about it, because all three songs have just been made available for listening on YouTube, and we’re bringing all of them to you at the end of this review. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ASH BORER, LASTER, DEUS MORTEM, IGNIS GEHENNA

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 6 Responses »

Oct 092016

Over the last week, as I sporadically checked our e-mails and scanned my Facebook feed, I made a growing list of new black metal songs and a few full releases that I wanted to check out this weekend as candidates for this Shades of Black series. As seems to happen fairly often, I found so many excellent tracks when I worked through the list that I couldn’t bring myself to leave many of them behind. And so I’ve got another two-part Shades of Black for you. It’s a grey, dank day outside here in the Pacific Northwest, so the odds are that I’ll be able to get Part 2 written and posted later today.

ASH BORER

Four years on from their last album Cold of Ages, California’s Ash Borer (whose members have also kept themselves busy with many other musical projects) now have a third one on the way. The new one is The Irrepassable Gate and it’s set for release by Profound Lore on December 2, adorned by excellent cover art created by Glyn Smyth (Stag & Serpent). Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries