Here are a couple of breaking news items that I suspect will be of interest to our readership.
MESHUGGAH
Not long ago Meshuggah posted a 16-second snippet on YouTube, with the words: “Fall.2016. Watch this space!” On Facebook, they embellished slightly: “Fall 2016 – new album, new tours.”
And isn’t that exciting? Continue reading »
(Our Russian correspondent Comrade Aleks, who usually furnishes us with interesting interviews, brings us a combined review and interview today.)
The Italian band Messa first saw the light of day in 2014, and I believe that this quartet will surprise you with their alchemical combination of doom, hard rock, drone, and prog music. The Aural Music label released Messa’s debut record Belfry on May 6, 2016; they promised obscure and evoking doom, “scarlet doom” as they say. Mark Sade (guitar, bass, ambient stuff), Sara (vocals), Mistyr (drums), and Albert (lead guitar) run this coven; all of them have different musical backgrounds and it directly reflects in their music.
The band’s name speaks for itself, and Marco tells why they picked up this one: “Basically we were looking for a name with a few characteristics: Italian, with a female touch and kind of gloomy. Messa in English means Mass and it means a lot for us and especially for our society around us”. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by South Carolina’s Enthean.)
Before we begin, I’d like to talk a little bit about Emperor, if I may?
Following the band’s dissolution in 2001 the two main songwriters behind the Norwegian legends — Vegard Sverre Tveita, a.k.a. Ihsahn, and Tomas Thormodsæter Haugen, a.k.a. Samoth – both embarked on new musical endeavours of their own, with Ihsahn pursuing his more progressive leanings under his own moniker, while Samoth elected to follow a more deathly path, first with the mechanoid menace of Zyklon and then, more recently, with the thrashier strains of The Wretched End (whose new album I’ll also be reviewing very soon).
Despite being repeatedly questioned about it, both men have long been adamant that a full Emperor reunion, one which would result in a new album (as opposed to the occasional live show), just isn’t in the cards, largely because they’ve both moved on – personally and musically – and simply aren’t in the same place to collaborate in that way anymore.
Why am I saying all this? It’s because South Carolina Black/Death dilettantes Enthean sound, in places at least, almost exactly how I’d imagine an Emperor reunion would… both for better and for worse. Continue reading »
I’m still significantly distracted from the mission of NCS these days for personal reasons that I’ve described in previous posts, and that will likely continue to be the case for at least the next week or two. But although the round-ups haven’t been coming as frequently as usual, I did manage to pull this one together over the last few days. All the songs (and one video) are fairly recent and all provide some very tasty flavors of death metal (lots of cool cover art in this post as well). For better or worse, I need to keep my own verbiage short and let the music speak for itself.
CENTINEX
That’s a hell of an album cover up there (created by Bahrull Marta of Abomination Imagery) for a hell of a band — Sweden’s Centinex. Their new album Doomsday Rituals is set for release by Agonia Records on July 8.
The band’s current line-up, which is different from the one that released eight albums prior to the disbanding of Centinex in 2005, is truly impressive: Martin Schulman (Demonical) on bass, Sverker Widgren (Demonical, Diabolical) on guitars, Alexander Högbom (October Tide, Spasmodic) on vocals, and Kennet Englund (Interment, Centinex 1999-2003). And so is the new song that premiered yesterday. Continue reading »
The Portuguese band Enlighten weave a special kind of magic on their new EP Illvmantithesis. The music is a species of black/death metal that’s more anguished and aching than poisonous and destructive, yet the music also conveys a sensation of chaos and creeping derangement. It’s a deft balancing act, a blending of enthralling, atmospheric melody and abrasive tumult. It’s the kind of dynamic and multifaceted creation that helps Enlighten stand out strongly from many of their peers.
The new EP consists of two songs, both of which we’re streaming for you below. It follows last year’s Phösphorvs Paramovnt EP and the band’s 2014 debut single, Svlphvr Bread, and will become available in June. Continue reading »
(Our friend Vonlughlio interviews vocalist Mallika Sundaramurthy of the Massachusetts death metal band Abnormality.)
This time around I have been given the opportunity of doing an interview with Mallika Sundaramurthy (vocalist of Abnormality) and to talk about metal and the band, amongst other things.
First of all, the band formed back in 2005, in Massachusetts, and since then have released a demo in 2007, the EP The Collective Calm in Mortal Oblivion in 2010, and their debut album Contaminating The Hive Mind in 2012. Last month on the 29th they released their sophomore effort entitled Mechanisms of Omniscience via Metal Blade Records.
I discovered the band in 2012 but don’t remember who sent me a YouTube link with one of their songs. I do recall that person saying that the band had a great BDM/Technical balance in their song structure and delivery and a woman as their vocalist. I must confess that I was skeptical at first, since up to that point I wasn’t familiar with women performing at the front of a band in this type of genre. Yes, shame on me, and once I heard the song I was blown away by the pure talent that all the musicians displayed. Long story short, their debut album ended up in my top 25 of that year: Continue reading »
(Wil Cifer reviews the new album by Youth Code from L.A.)
After the Alaric review, you might have guessed I am more drawn to heavy in all of its forms than being limited only to ingesting it as metal. You might be familiar with my work at Cvlt Nation; if so, my weird taste will make perfect sense.
This album has a great deal of metal influence lurking beneath the electronic beats. Youth Code is aggressive in a way that industrial music has not been in some time. Industrial music has lost a great deal of its menace over the years. It became enmeshed in EDM, with even the legends of the genre such as Skinny Puppy succumbing to coating their songs in a plastic sheen after The Greater Wrong of the Right. Youth Code has come to put the teeth back into industrial.
These kids are not just hipsters playing dress-up. They are the real deal. This aggression doesn’t require sampling riffs from ’90s thrash metal either; it is fueled into the buzz of their synths. Continue reading »
(We applied the squeeze to DGR and he coughed up not one, not two, but three reviews all at once…)
I’ve actually been taking a quick breather from the giant review slate that I’ve built up for myself at this lovely site. After the humongous swath of death metal (with a handful of releases to go, as well) and some upcoming more doom-flavored tracks, I figured I’d pull away from the names I’d recognized and try to find some stuff that we’ve never really crossed paths with before. One of the ways I’ll do that is to go fishing through our various social media contacts, because although there is a gigantic pile of music to work through, I’ve had pretty good luck in finding stuff.
Even though an absolute torrent of new releases is coming our way here over the next few months, I occasionally like to go back and sift through earlier releases to see if there is anything interesting that we missed. Often, it has usually boiled down to me surfing through our various messages to see if there have been any bands who have contacted us recently, and among the few of us at the site we start slowly filtering our way through them. So yes, this process does seem to take forever but it is also because I like to deep-dive into most things, rather than take a cursory glance at it and give it the up vote/down vote scenario.
That’s the case with this collection of music, as I found myself getting yanked and driven all over the globe. In this particular roundup, I have two bands that we’ve never covered before and one that should be intensely familiar to very seasoned NCS readers, but three very different styles of music on top of that. Let us charge forth, shall we? Continue reading »
(Comrade Aleks brings us his interview with Trent Jacobs, guitarist of Portland’s Holy Grove.)
Nowadays there are a lot of doom bands with female vocals and lyrics about all the mystic stuff you ever could imagine. It is harder and harder to sort out anything in this scene besides the big names that are on everyone’s lips. But here we are! Here we are to help you, and that’s why I want you to pay attention to Holy Grove, a really strong doom-quartet from blessed Portland.
They’ve been in the game for nearly four years, but their first self-titled album was released just five weeks ago. Why so long? That’s the question for Trent Jacobs, Holy Grove’s guitarist. Continue reading »
(Here’s Allen Griffin’s review of the new second album by the Russian band Katalepsy.)
Modern Brutal Death Metal has long been the red-headed stepchild of the Extreme Metal scene, and one could easily argue it was for a good reason. The world never needed generic breakdowns and ridiculously misogynistic artwork and lyrics, or at least not this late in the game (Cannibal Corpse will always get a pass).
In recent times, however, and perhaps missed by all but the most ardent fans, leaps of progression have been rolling through the sub-genre. And while groups such as Wormed and Fallujah have certainly been spearheading the charge, even mid-listers such as Moscow’s Katalepsy have considerably upped the ante. While they may not blast off into space like their aforementioned compatriots, they certainly know how to construct a powerful Death Metal record. Continue reading »