NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORDBRAND (“COLD WOMB”) AND GRAVEHILL (“UPON THE 6TH CHIME”)

Apr 182016

It feels like June is going to be the start of murder season this year. I’m not sure of the exact date, so just circle the whole month in red on your calendar, preferably with someone else’s blood. Sometime that month, as best we can tell, Doomentia Records will release a split LP by Mordbrand from Sweden and Gravehill from Hellheim, California (aka Los Angeles).

The LP will combine two new EPs, one by each band with separate artwork, and they deliver two different but equally lethal forms of death metal slaughtering. Mordbrand’s half is entitled In Nighted Waters, and Gravehill have branded their offering with the name Skullbearer. Today we have for you the premiere of one of Mordbrand’s five tracks on the split, “Cold Womb”, as well as a stream of a Gravehill song called “Upon the 6th Chime”.

MORDBRAND: “COLD WOMB”

I’ve been following Mordbrand since their debut release in a 2010 split with Evoke and have spilled words about virtually everything they’ve released since then. They were very good at the start and have only gotten better. Two of the band’s three members, guitarist-bassist Bjørn Larsson and vocalist Per Boder, were involved in the recent revival of the legendary God Macabre, and maybe that experience has added an extra dose of morbid energy, because In Nighted Waters is sounding like Mordbrand’s strongest work yet. Continue reading »

REVIEWS: THE ZENITH PASSAGE (“SOLIPSIST”) AND OMOPHAGIA (“IN THE NAME OF CHAOS”)

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Apr 182016

(DGR delivers a two-fer… reviewing the new albums by California’s The Zenith Passage and Omophagia from Zurich.)

If you’re a fan of the modern tech-death scene — the one in which tech-death has evolved into its own shorthand moniker to represent an entire genre as opposed to just a way to describe complicated death metal — then last week should have proved to be pretty big for you, as Unique Leader had two releases hitting right in the same window.

The label, which has specialized in a brand of tech-death that is equal parts technical and groove-focused, has spread out quite a bit in the past few years and has become increasingly prolific, to the point where they’ve actually developed something of their own sound. You could say, “Unique Leader tech-death” to some people, and they would have a pretty good starting point as to whatever bands you’d be describing at that moment. While the label has always delved heavily into the California scene (at one point seeming like they were sweeping through the Bay-Area-to-Sacramento run especially), recent years have also seen the label adding quite a few international acts to the mix — which brings us to this point.

Last week brought two fairly big Unique Leader releases, one of which is the first full-length release for So-Cal-based The Zenith Passage and the other the second album (after a five-year wait) for Swiss death metal proprietors Omophagia. As such, I felt it might be interesting to slam the two albums into one big review package, because both of them by their nature feel like two takes on the same subject — two differing styles of death metal but with one very solid throughline between them. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: NAÐRA, SVARTIDAUÐI, DEATHBRINGER, OATH, TREES CLOUDS & SILENCE, HERDER

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Apr 172016

So much music, so little time. In this post I’ve collected some recent black (or blackened) metal releases, and a few songs from forthcoming ones, that I’ve been enjoying, plus one other excerpt of a release that isn’t black metal but is pretty fuckin’ black anyway. Hope you find some things to like in here.

NAÐRA

I’ll begin with two Icelandic bands I’ve written about frequently, because their music is so exceptional. The first is Naðra, whose debut album Allir vegir til glötunar was released in January of this year (reviewed here) and whose line-up includes members of other notable Icelandic bands, including Carpe Noctem, Ophidian I, and Misþyrming.

Early last week the band released a new two-song EP named Form via Bandcamp. The first track includes guest vocals by Eirikur Hauksson, a well-known vocalist in Iceland in both pop music and heavy metal. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (CENTINEX)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 9 Responses »

Apr 172016

Death metal will never die, and some death metal bands are really hard to kill, too.

After eight albums going back to 1992’s Subconscious Lobotomy and a dozen shorter releases, Sweden’s Centinex disbanded in 2006 — but they crawled out of their grave in 2014 and released a comeback album named Redeeming Filth, which was a hell of a comeback. And they have another album on the way now. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SÓLSTAFIR AND LEGEND, ARÊTE, BRITTSOMMAR AND BLOOD AND SUN, DEATHCODE SOCIETY, NECROGOD

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Apr 162016

As you may have discerned by now, I enjoy not only recommending new music in these round-ups but also selecting items for them that don’t all come from the same genres of metal. For this Saturday collection of recent discoveries, however, there’s perhaps more variety than usual because I’ve partially gone outside the realms of metal. This is always a risky maneuver because I so rarely listen to anything that isn’t metal. I don’t know how dependable my metal tastes are, but when I veer off those pathways I’m pretty sure my taste isn’t dependable at all. Self-doubt has never held me back, though, so here we go….

SÓLSTAFIR AND LEGEND

More than two years ago I wrote (here) about a split release by two Icelandic bands, Sólstafir and Legend, in which each of them covered a song originally recorded by the other. In Sólstafir‘s case, they put their stamp on a Legend song called “Runaway Train”.

Yesterday the two bands released a video in which members of both groups joined together last fall for a live performance of that same song from the split (which they had earlier recorded together at Studio Neptunus). The performance occurred in an abandoned industrial factory and was filmed by Brynjar Snær Þrastarson and edited by him and Frosti Jon Rúnólfsson. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RABID FLESH EATERS — “REIGN OF TERROR”

Album Reviews, Premieres 5 Responses »

Apr 152016

Reign of Terror is the kind of classic barrage of electrifying sound that ought to put a big goofy smile on the faces of all heavy metal fans. And although it’s the debut release by Rabid Flesh Eaters (from Arlington, Texas), it’s clearly the product of people who’ve got metal in their veins instead of blood and a deep knowledge, experience, and affection for full-throttle mayhem. You’ll have a chance to hear what I mean through our premiere stream of the whole album — which is being released today.

On this date five years ago, the late Mike Scaccia (of Rigor Mortis and Ministry fame) agreed to record the album, and he also contributed a scintillating solo on its opening track, “Lycanthrope”. The production quality will be one of the first things you notice about the album — the sound is so powerful, so sharp, and so immediate that it’s as if you’re right inside a room with the band — a room whose walls are being blasted outward by the explosiveness of the sound. And although Scaccia‘s solo is a thing of beauty, there are white-hot solos salted all the way through the album that will make you want to raise your clawed hands to the sky (check out the one in “B.T.K.”, for example, if you want to really get bug-eyed by the shred). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUSTRAVI — “EVIL INCARNATE”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Apr 152016

The sun-drenched shores of Panama City in Florida’s Bible-thumping panhandle may seem like an unlikely spawning ground for a knife-wielding black metal band like the one menacing that prostrate nude up there, but that’s the place Lustravi call home. Their debut album, due for release by Obscure Musick in early May, is named Cult of the Blackened Veil, and we bring you a taste of what it holds in store through our premiere of “Evil Incarnate“.

The song certainly claims kinship with a particular flavor of black, satanic Scandinavian savagery, but the path it carves draws upon other other musical traditions as well. Continue reading »

ANCST: “MOLOCH”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Apr 152016

(Here we have Andy Synn’s review of the first full album by Germany’s Ancst.)

If the name Ancst is unfamiliar to you, don’t feel too bad about it. Though we have featured them on NCS before now, Moloch is the band’s first “proper” album release, following a lengthy and varied series of EPs, singles, splits, and compilations, which have, over the years, allowed the band to showcase their ever-evolving blend of Black Metal, Punk, Hardcore, and Drone.

What this means of course is that even those already familiar with the band and their “anti-fascist, anti-sexist, anti-religion, DIY” ethos might not know exactly what to expect from the German collective this time around, such is their history of criss-crossing and cross-pollinating genres with almost reckless abandon.

Well, you need wonder no more, because Moloch is one hell of an incendiary blast of utterly ferocious punk-edged Black Metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AU CHAMP DES MORTS — “LE JOUR SE LÉVE”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Apr 152016

Debemur Morti Productions have discovered yet another gem amidst the great piles of detritus that litter the metal scene. This time the band is a young French group named Au Champ Des Morts. ACDM was founded in 2014 by Stefan Bayle (Anorexia Nervosa) and Migreich (VULV). DMP will introduce them to discerning listeners through the release of a debut, two-track 7″ EP entitled Le Jour Se Léve and will follow that later this year with the band’s first album. What we have for you today is a stream of the EP’s title track.

The song is not confined by rigid genre boundaries, though black metal beats at its heart. At the start, the music crashes like waves driven by a storm surge, with a moving blast-front of intensely emotional melody pierced by savage vocal cries. After that initial gale of ripping guitars and pulsing rhythms, the force subsides, replaced by ethereal guitar notes and the ambient shimmer of keyboards. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SYSTEMIK VIØLENCE, AN ABBATH REMIX BY CRYPTICUS, CULT OF THE HEAD, AETHERIAN, MOTHER WITCH & DEAD WATER GHOSTS

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Apr 152016

Hey there. It’s good to be back on round-up duty. As I mentioned at the beginning of the week, I had to spend the last four days in something like the Bataan Death March for my fucking day job, except I was able to eat food and wasn’t scarred for life watching all my friends around me die in misery. I didn’t have to crap myself while walking either. But, I mean, by modern first world standards for a well-paid office worker it felt brutal. Please don’t shed too many tears, ‘cuz it’s over.

Anyway, there ain’t no fuckin’ way I can catch you up on all the good stuff I spotted since last Sunday and couldn’t write about, so I’m not even going to try. And I’m working on not feeling anxious and miserable about it. I don’t understand why people frown on having a few shots at breakfast. It’s very therapeutic. Here are some jewels you probably won’t find at some other metal site.

SYSTEMIK VIØLENCE

Speaking of therapeutic, the debut EP of Portuigal’s Systemik Viølence will do a masterful job of helping you discharge your desire to kick the living shit out of everything and everyone around you, without going to prison. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries