LISTMANIA 2016: AN INVITATION FOR READERS’ LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

 LISTMANIA 2016  264 Responses »
Dec 012016
 

NCS The Best of 2016 graphic

 

We’re now beginning the final month of 2016, and you know what that means: Now begins the final countdown to the end of the year (and the strengthening onslaught of the annual holiday season). In the world of metal, this month we’ll also start seeing more and more lists of the year’s best releases.

Back in 2009, when this site was just a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. However, we publish the picks of each of our regular staff writers as well as a large group of guest writers (which we’ll start doing later this month). Every year we also invite our readers to share their lists and we’re doing that again right here, right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEREZA — “UNIŠTI, PALI, RUŠI”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Dec 012016
 

hereza-i-become-death

 

“Uništi, Pali, Ruši” are the Croatian words for “destroy, burn, tear it down”. Those words are also the title to a song and video we’re premiering today from an album called I Become Death by the Croatian band HerezA. This is HerezA’s second album, which follows their 2015 debut full-length, Misanthrope. The new one will be released in mid-February by the Polish extreme metal label Godz ov War Productions.

Although I’m spoiling a jolting surprise, I have to applaud the moment in the first few seconds of the video that syncs the first sound of the song with an image of artillery going off. And the sonic bombardment of the song doesn’t relent from that moment to the end. Continue reading »

TERAMOBIL: “MAGNITUDE OF THOUGHTS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 012016
 

teramobil-art

 

(Here’s Austin Weber’s review of the new album by Montreal’s Teramobil.)

Some of you may have caught Teramobil’s initial 2013 release, Multispectral Supercontinuum, which we covered here at NCS in 2013. It got a lot of coverage elsewhere too, and for good reason. The line-up and the music were jaw-dropping.

The band is a power trio consisting of Dominic “Forest” Lapointe (Augury, First Fragment, ex-Beyond Creation) on six-string Bass, Mathieu Bérubé (Unhuman) on Guitar, and the always amazing Alexandre Dupras (Samskaras and Unhuman) on drums.

Out of nowhere, without any warning, the band dropped their second album yesterday called Magnitude of Thoughts. Even Luc Lemay gets in on the experience, playing some incredible stuff on second guitar on all of “Thanatonaut”. Continue reading »

SPAZZ: “SWEATIN’ II: DEPORTED LIVE GORILLA”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 012016
 

spazz-sweatin-ii

 

(Todd Manning reviews this re-mastered (or in some cases mastered for the first time) compilation of tracks by the now-defunct Spazz originally recorded from 1995-1996, plus a full live set from 1996.)

I always have drawn a rather false analogy when comparing music genres that goes something like, Metal is to Classical as Punk and Hardcore are to Jazz, trying to express the relative approaches of the musicians and their interactions as ensembles. More or less, Metal and Classical often seem to put a premium on a certain sort of precision, whereas Punk/Hardcore and Jazz, often at their best, rely on a tight sort of looseness, a sense that everything could fall apart at a moment’s notice, but yet the band manages to hold everything together, creating an enthralling dynamic tension.

All that being said, if most Hardcore were analogous to a Hard Bop quintet in full swing, then Powerviolence represented the most gonzo of Free Jazz ensembles, and Spazz was the king of the musical renegades. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PARIA — “SO FAR FROM THE HIDDEN GOD”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Nov 302016
 

Paria-Knochenkamp

 

The German black metal band Paria were spawned in the year 1995 and since then have grown ever more toxic and terrifying through a sequence of demos and splits, ultimately collected in a foul 2011 compilation (fittingly named 11 Years Of Blood, Cum & Satan), and then three full-lengths, the last of which was 2013’s Surreal Satanist.

On the 25th of December, W.T.C. Productions will add to Paria’s horrific legacy by releasing a new EP, entitled Knochenkamp, and today we bring you the premiere of its third track, “So Far From the Hidden God“. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 79: TERRA TENEBROSA

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  5 Responses »
Nov 302016
 

Terra Tenebrosa art

 

(In this month’s edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy Synn reviews the discography of Terra Tenebrosa.)

Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Leviathan, Ævangelist

Some bands are easy to categorise. Death Metal. Black Metal. Thrash. You can stick a band in one of these boxes and (generally) have a good impression of the sort of sounds you can expect to hear.

Of course, sometimes the category itself can be a bit nebulous. Metalcore. Nu-Metal. Progressive Metal. These aren’t quite as well-defined, and are frequently used as a catch-all term (often, but not always, with negative connotations) for bands that don’t fit properly in one of the “core” Metal genres (no pun intended).

And then there are bands like Terra Tenebrosa, who seem to willfully defy categorisation altogether.

“Avant-Garde Black Metal” seems to be the closest approximation that most people have settled on for their sound, but even this doesn’t quite capture it. There are elements and undercurrents of everything from gloomy Post-Metal and chaotic Hardcore to pulsing Industrial and droning Ambient music, all wrapped up in a grim shroud of morbid, blackened vibes and horror-movie atmospherics.

Whatever it is, though, it works. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUPPRESSIVE FIRE — “NUCLEAR DISMEMBERMENT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 302016
 

suppressive-fire-nature-of-war

 

If you’ve had enough of middle-aged big-name thrash bands who’ve lost the fire in their bellies and you’re left yawning by fledgling retro thrashers who sound like they couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag, listen up: We have a track for you from Suppressive Fire with a song title that isn’t an exaggeration: “Nuclear Dismemberment“.

This isn’t the first time we’ve paid attention to this band from Raleigh, North Carolina. Near the beginning of this year, in one of our new-music round-ups, we featured a song off their debut album Bedlam, which was released in mid-January. And in mid-January of next year, the band’s second full-length, Nature of War, will be upon us. That’s where you’ll find “Nuclear Dismemberment”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SARKOM — “ANTI-COSMIC ART”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 302016
 

sarkom-anti-cosmic-art

 

On the 2nd day of December, Dark Essence Records will release the new fourth album, Anti-Cosmic Art, by the veteran group of Norwegian black metal barbarians known as Sarkom. Produced in a way that gives it the sonic power of a megaton detonation, it’s a compact, varied, and consistently addictive blast of fire and ice that will keep your head in a hammer lock from start to finish. You’ll see — because we’ve got a full stream of the album for you today.

At seven songs and 30 minutes, the album doesn’t overstay its welcome, but instead leaves the listener wanting more. The first time through it is like unwrapping one thorny, charred gift after another, each song a nasty surprise, and each track so well-written and so capably performed that it sticks in the head like a spike. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NEVER PRESENCE FOREVER / GRIDFAILURE – A SPLIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 292016
 

npf-gf-cover-art-web

 

If you aren’t already dreading the holidays ahead, we can help fill them with dread, disorientation, and anxiety. At the very least, we can divert your mind and shunt it off along dark tangents where your imagination may flourish in interesting ways.

Actually, we won’t do any of that ourselves. We’re merely conduits to the people who will — the solo artists behind Never Presence Forever and Gridfailure, who have joined forces for a split that’s projected for both a digital and a tape release on December 23. We have a full stream of the split below — with a preface, of course, produced by a mind that has already been spellbound and then fragmented by these sounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE GREAT OLD ONES — “MARE INFINITUM”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Nov 292016
 

the-great-old-ones-eod-a-tale-of-dark-legacy

 

Numerous metal bands have drawn inspiration from the horrors spawned by the imagination of H.P. Lovecraft, but few have devoted themselves so single-mindedly to capturing the atmosphere of the stories as The Great Old Ones. They continue this mission on their new album EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy, which will be released on January 27 through Season of Mist. The seventh track on the album is “Mare Infinitum“, and we’re helping to premiere it in this post.

In Lovecraft’s mythos the Esoteric Order of Dagon was the dark, terrifying religion brought to the benighted community of Innsmouth by Capt. Obed Marsh upon his return from the South Seas, seducing the townspeople with promises of prosperity, power, and through interbreeding with the amphibious Deep Ones, transformation and eternal life. Those listeners familiar with The Shadow Over Innsmouth will recognize the reference in the new album’s title, as well as the connections of the song titles to that horrifying tale — and that’s because the album conceptually represents an original sequel to that famous story. Continue reading »

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