(Here’s Andy Synn’s interview with the members of Turbid North, a band originally from Alaska and now based in Texas, whose albums were the subject of a SYNN REPORT in January [here] and whose 2015 full-length Eyes Alive received special praise.)
Hello gentlemen, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the band, would you care to introduce yourselves to our audience at home?
Nick Forkel – Guitar, Vocals
Chris O’ Toole – Bass, Vocals
Jono Garrett – Drums Continue reading »
Wolvserpent
You may have noticed that over the weekend I only posted one article on our site, despite the fact that for more than 6 years I’ve been obsessed with posting something every day of every year, weekends and holidays included. I think Saturday was only the 7th or 8th day when I’ve completely fallen down on the job since I started the site, and I had wanted to do more than one post on Sunday. As sometimes happens (but rarely), I just got too overwhelmed by personal obligations and the demands of my fucking day job to focus on NCS.
I’ve actually been kind of overwhelmed since the middle of last week. One of the things I’ve been unable to do is post round-ups of new music that I like. I did attempt to fly through the interhole and the NCS in-box from time to time and make a list of songs I wanted to check out as time permitted. When I looked at the list yesterday, it had new songs from 30 bands on it — all of which appeared just within the last week!!! Continue reading »
Gaelynn Lea is a musician in Duluth, Minnesota. According to the biography on her web site:
“She has been playing violin for over twenty years. First classically trained, she began learning traditional Celtic and American fiddle tunes at the age of 18. During her college years Gaelynn started sitting in with various folk/rock musicians and developed an improvisational style all her own. Eventually she also began singing and dabbling in songwriting.”
“Dabbling” is a humble word for it. Gaelynn was one of more than six thousand un-signed musicians or bands who submitted music videos in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. Under the rules of that contest, the song had to be an original work created solely for the purpose of entering the contest, and it had to be performed “at a desk (any desk!)”. All those thousands of submissions were reviewed by a panel of six judges, and they picked Gaelynn Lea’s submission as the winner.
I read the judge’s comments about the song and the video before I heard it. The judges were Robin Hilton, Bob Boilen, Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys and The Arcs), Son Little, and Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of the band Lucius. You can read their comments about the song here. In a nutshell, they were all profoundly moved. They explained that they heard other songs that displayed better musical craft and skill, but what Gaelynn did was to create something unusual and memorable.
I can’t separate the song from what I watched in the video and what I knew immediately about Gaelynn Lea from seeing it. It makes the song more poignant and powerful — but I believe (though I’ll never know for sure) that I would have found it tremendously poignant and powerful anyway. Continue reading »
The Swedish black metal band Rimfrost began life in the summer of 2002 as the vehicle for the creative inspirations of two 14-year-olds, singer/guitarist Hravn and drummer Hravn. In the years since then, the band have seen their fair share of ups and downs, but the original duo have remained together, and now, having been joined by bassist B.C., they are on the verge of releasing their third album through Non Serviam Records.
This self-titled work comes more than six years after the release of their second album on Season of Mist, Veraldar Nagli. Those six years have brought the band increased maturity not only as songwriters and performers, but also as observers of life and combatants in its conflicts. The experience shows in the new music, and today we give you a sample of it through our premiere of a song from the new album named “Saga North“. Continue reading »
Anger as Art’s new album Ad Mortem Festinamus (“We Hurry Into Death”) is a non-stop thrill ride, and today we’re giving you the chance to experience it for yourselves one week before the official release date through our premiere of a full album stream.
This is the fifth full-length released by a veteran group of musicians who’ve paid dues in other bands, and it’s the sort of album that fully displays the experience, the song-writing talents, and the top-shelf performance skills of people with a deep knowledge and love of heavy metal. But it’s also full of fire and fury, as you would expect from a band named Anger As Art. Continue reading »
For those who missed our previous feature about Yliaster, it’s a project formed by musician/vocalist Marcel Polit in partnership with drummer Dariusz ‘Daray’ Brzozowski (Vesania, Dimmu Borgir, ex-Vader). Later this month, Yliaster will release its debut album, Soliloquy, and today we bring you a stream of its powerhouse title track.
From beginning to end, the song is galvanizing. Ratcheting electronic sounds pave the way for jackhammering riffs and swirling guitar notes, and Daray‘s drumming alternately hits hard enough to crack concrete, somersaults in head-spinning progressions, and launches bullet-spitting fusillades with mechanistic precision. Continue reading »
(We present Wil Cifer’s review of the new album by Howls of Ebb.)
Finally there is some motion in the ocean, as the albums I’ve been looking forward to going into 2016 have begun to creep into my inbox. This project out of San Francisco brings a sense of adventure back to death metal. There is little in the way of rehashing what Incantation and Morbid Angel have already done. No time is wasted digging into the meat of the metal on this one. The trippy grooves and atmosphere are still intact, as the double-bass hammers beneath the rubbery bass lines. The aggression is not conveyed in the manner you expect from death metal. Their guitar tones are not saturated in distortion; they give an organic quality to the chaos bubbling within these songs. Continue reading »
I had so much fun watching the video you’re about to see. There’s something perversely satisfying about the surprise of seeing a flesh-eating band dressed to the nines in business attire kicking down the door to a blast furnace of superheated death metal. And then you discover that these dudes are quick-change artists as well as fleet-fingered assassins. And yes, there will be blood before it’s over.
The band in question is a group of Swiss berserkers named Omophagia, which does indeed refer to the consumption of raw flesh. When I tell you that their new album In the Name of Chaos is being released by Unique Leader Records, you may make the educated guess that speed and technical proficiency will lie ahead, and yes, you’ll get a hot dose of both in the song we’re premiering via this eye-catching video for “Down We Fall“. But those ingredients don’t exhaust the appealing facets of this turbocharged track. Continue reading »
Midnight Forces is the first release by a band from Lima, Perú, named Obscure Evil. The dark lord willing, it will not be their last — because it’s hellishly good.
Caligari Records will be the courier for this bat-winged blast of savagery, releasing the album on March 11 in the form of a pro-tape cassette limited to 150 copies. What we have for you is a chance to hear all four tracks before parting with your hard-earned money. Continue reading »
Although we don’t often write about trailers for albums that include mere snippets of music when there are so many complete songs and albums to spread around, we made an exception last month for the teaser reel for Draugnim‘s new album, Vulturine. In addition to the eye-catching visuals, even the brief excerpt of music in the video was arresting. And now, in cooperation with Debemur Morti Productions, we have the good fortune of bringing you the premiere of a complete song from the album: “A Passage In Fire“.
Vulturine comes six years after this Finnish pagan metal band’s last album, Horizons Low. In a career that began in the late ’90s, the band’s three core members have remained the same — Morior (composing, guitars), Chimedra (vocals, lyrics), and Turms (bass, lyrics) — and their experience, talent, and persistence have produced an album that has definitely been worth the wait. Continue reading »