NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY — “FUNERAL DREAMS”

Jun 202016

Harakiri For the Sky’s last album Aokigahara, released in 2014, was a revelation — a powerful amalgamation of black metal and atmospheric post-metal that was both blisteringly cathartic and achingly beautiful. To borrow the words of my comrade Andy Synn, “With an undeniable ear for bleak, evocative melody, an impressive array of gleaming lead guitar refrains, and a keen grasp of stellar songcraft, on record the group are a truly immersive experience.” No wonder that this Austrian duo’s new album III: Trauma has been one of our most highly anticipated 2016 releases.

The first advance track from the new album, “Calling the Rain”, was a sign that, if anything, the band may have exceeded the heights reached on Aokigahara. The song is an intense experience, a memoriam to the suicide of an old friend. It’s also intensely memorable, earning all of its 11+ minutes and somehow still ending too soon. And today we bring you the premiere of a lyric video for another song — “Funeral Dreams” — which is further proof that, as fine as Aokigahara was, III: Trauma is even better. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: WICKED INQUISITION (NATE TOWLE)

Interviews No Responses »

Jun 202016

(Comrade Aleks presents what appears to be one of the last interviews of Minnesota’s Wicked Inquisition.)

This cool band from Minnesota is going to split up, and their last gig will be held next week. It’s s sad fact ‘cause I liked their self-titled album released just one year ago – this doom metal in the vein of Pentagram and Witchfinder General has a lot of hooks and pleasant tunes, though it’s traditional to the core.

The fate of Wicked Inquisition’s members is blurred except for the band’s founder Nate Towle; it’s already known that he took the place of the second guitarist in the anarchic band Satan’s Satyrs. So I had a brief conversation with Nate, and we need to hurry while Wicked Inquisition is still here. Continue reading »

BE’LAKOR: “VESSELS”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Jun 202016

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Australia’s Be’lakor.)

With so much of its musical territory cannibalised in the boom and bust of the Metalcore bubble, and with so many of its originators/innovators either breaking up or shifting their sound (for better or for worse) into pastures new, it’s been a rough decade or so for the style known as “Melodeath”, particularly since most of its adherents seem to have long since settled into a comfortable rut of rehashing and reusing the same old riffs and the same old melodies, ad infintum, ad nauseum.

Heck, there’s practically a cottage-industry these days dedicated to churning out a stream of generic-brand Insomnium clones, as if the masses of faceless At The Gates rip-offs and soulless In Flames copycats weren’t already diluting the genre enough as it is.

So perhaps you can understand that, as much as I was looking forward to hearing the latest Be’lakor album, my expectations were tempered somewhat by my general dissatisfaction with the state of the modern Melodeath scene, and my still somewhat lukewarm feelings towards 2012’s solid, but unspectacular, Of Breath and Bone.

But blow me down and call me Shirley if the Aussie quintet haven’t stepped up their game on this one. Continue reading »

ACYL: “AFTERMATH”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 2 Responses »

Jun 202016

(Our long-time New Zealand supporter and occasional guest writer Booker reviews the new album by the Paris-based band Acyl.)

Back in 2012, Islander put out a request for fellow readers to pitch in a review or two while he was otherwise occupied. One of the belated efforts I offered was a review of Acyl’s Algebra album, which I’d been cranking on high rotation since randomly discovering it some months earlier in the nether regions of the internet (it’s amazing what you’ll find back there!). That post was one of my first here at NCS, and just like a bad case of herpes I’ve kept coming back ever since. So long, in fact, that Acyl have had time to tour, hit restart on the writing process, orbit the sun a few times, and record and release a follow-up album: Aftermath, which came out at the start of the month. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ASTROPHOBOS, MAAHLAS, MAJESTIC DECAY, VERDORVEN, PRAGNAVIT

Album Reviews, Metal News, SHADES OF BLACK 8 Responses »

Jun 192016

In today’s Shades of Black installment I’ve collected reviews and streams of three EPs, a new album, a new song, and a new video that I’ve been enjoying lately. As usual, all of the music is in a blackened vein, though all of the bands are distinctively different from each other in their musical approach. I hope you’ll find that one or more of them suits your tastes.

ASTROPHOBOS

Astrophobos is a Swedish black metal trio from Stockholm who released a debut EP in 2010 named Arcane Secrets and a debut album in 2014 bearing the title Remnants of Forgotten Horrors. I really enjoyed that debut full-length, although I only managed to write about a video for one of the songs. Now they have a new EP (Enthroned in Flesh) due for release in August, and this past week DECIBEL premiered an excellent new song from it called “Blood Libation”, which is now up on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (SORHIN)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 11 Responses »

Jun 192016

Although the focus of these Rearview Mirror posts is music from metal’s past, in my case it has also become a vehicle for discovery. Instead of writing only about songs and albums I’ve known about for years, the series has also given me an excuse to dig into albums I’d never heard (or even heard of) before, and that’s again true of today’s installment in the series.

Sorhin are a Swedish black metal band whose first demos were released in 1993 and 1994. Along with other short releases, Sorhin’s discography includes two albums, a debut full-length in 1997 named I det glimrande mörkrets djup and the remarkable album I’m featuring today, Apokalypsens Ängel from 2000. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 77: GATECREEPER, CELTEFOG, EGGS OF GOMORRH, OCULTUM, 0N0, LIFE WASTER

MISCELLANY 4 Responses »

Jun 182016

My helpful WordPress blogging software tells me that I started writing this post on March 30, 2016, and then I got sidetracked — repeatedly. I’m so tightly wound that I nag myself about things that I start but don’t finish. My life is full of self-nagging. Sometimes, however, that incessant buzzing in my head produces a result. Hence, this post.

This MISCELLANY series is one of several that I started at NCS in the early days, but it has become very irregular in recent years. So a refresher on the MISCELLANY game is probably worthwhile: On a fairly random basis, I pick releases I’ve not heard before, usually by bands I’ve not heard before; I listen to a song or two (usually without much advance idea of what the music will sound like); I write my immediate impressions; and I then stream what I heard so you can make your own judgments.

GATECREEPER

In my “refresher” above, I forgot to add that I sometimes violate the rules of the MISCELLANY game, and for this first item I’ve done that because I knew something about Arizona’s Gatecreeper before listening to this song. Two years ago I featured one of their videos in a round-up, and after that I grabbed the EP that included the song in the video. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VOLTURYON, DECREPIT MONOLITH, PSYCHOTIC PULSE, BLACK CROWN INITIATE, REVOCATION, NAILS, DEATH I AM, THE LUNA SEQUENCE, WITHERSCAPE

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Jun 172016

(DGR takes over round-up duties today, featuring commentary and a wide array of recent song, video, and album streams. This would have been posted much earlier in the week if our editor weren’t so lame.)

If you’ve been reading the site recently you’ve no doubt noticed that quite a few of us shirked work and decided instead to go out to Maryland for the Maryland Deathfest shindig that the internet likes to talk so much about. However, the internet doesn’t take time off like we do and quite a bit of stuff came out during that period that despite our best efforts slipped right by us.

On top of that, since we’ve been playing catch-up for the last two weeks, a veritable pile of new music landed on top of us as well. And so I find myself opening my great maw wide in order to capture as much of it as possible — as well as using this as an opportunity to share some stuff that flew right past us long before we had MDF as an excuse for being terrible people.

Contained in this here news roundup is a veritable smorgasboard of new music, some of which came to us by the bands themselves and other times was discovered whilst I was spinning in circles on the internet. Either way, there’s a ton of stuff what floated down the river here — only to be captured by my net/boat/if only there was some sort of metaphor or object I could compare my news capturing ability to… ah well, maybe next time. Let’s get on with it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORPHALIS — “ENCASED IN A HIGHER INTELLECT”

Premieres No Responses »

Jun 172016

Orphalis hit the death metal scene in Germany in 2010 and since then have released a debut EP (2011’s Watchmaker Analogy) and a debut album (2012’s Human Individual Metamorphosis). On August 12, the band will return with their second album, The Birth of Infinity, and we have for you the premiere of a lyric video for one of the new songs: “Encased In A Higher Intellect“.

So that you might prepare yourself for what you’re about to receive, we will disclose that Orphalis are highly adept at delivering a very stimulating beating. Continue reading »

VIRUS: “MEMENTO COLLIDER”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Jun 172016

(We present this guest review of the new Virus album, written by Chrysostomos Tsaprailis, who also writes for Avopolis Music Network, Metal Invader, and for his own Industries Of Inferno blog.)

It’s really quite remarkable how a music genre, normally considered rather “off-limits” for a certain audience, can become accepted by it, if introductions are handled by a recognizable and trusted (by the particular audience) artist. In the case of experimental avant-garde rock, the Trojan horse in question, responsible to a large degree for its acceptance by the black metal audience, is one of the most congenial members of the Norwegian extreme music scene, namely Carl-Michael Eide, or Czral as far as his Virus persona is concerned.

He was certainly not the only one responsible for the embrace of unconventional (for the scene) music by a large part of the scene’s fans; remember that during the years around the millennium’s turn Norway teemed with experimentation. Still, Carl-Michael, firstly with the short-lived but ultra-influential Ved Buens Ende, and afterwards with Virus, managed, with an almost extraordinary casualness, to engraft the mind of a seemingly stiff audience with components that on a first level appeared incompatible with it. What is more, he managed that without losing any of the listeners’ respect, most probably due to his simultaneous participation in more traditional acts. Continue reading »

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