Andy Synn Archives - Page 152 of 160

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 60: BURDEN

Jul 222015

(Andy Synn delivers the 60th edition of The Synn Report, reviewing the discography to date of Philadelphia’s Burden.)

Recommended for fans of: Ahab, October Tide, Celtic Frost

This was not the column I was supposed to be writing this month. Only an hour ago I was discussing with my NCS compatriots which of two particular bands to choose to focus on with this month’s edition of The Synn Report.

Yet the best-laid plans of mice and men so often go astray… particularly when you stumble upon an artist so good you just have to write about them. And that’s exactly what happened in this case.

Gloomy progressive Doomsayers Burden hail from the darkest depths of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, to be exact) and have, so far, produced two full-length albums and two stand-alone singles of dense, introverted Doom and groaning, cavernous Death Metal, each time employing subtle progressive touches and splashes of captivating melody to maintain a sense of bleak vitality and cleverly shift the dynamic of their lengthy compositions.

Granted, this sort of music often takes a real investment of patience and time from the listener, but when it’s this good it’s definitely worth it. In fact their most recent album, last year’s Without, is probably one of the most under-appreciated and under-rated gems I’ve heard in a long while! Continue reading »

AGONYST: “THE BAD OLD DAYS”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Jul 202015

(Andy Synn reviews the new second album by Agonyst from Norwich in the UK.)

Here’s a quick disclaimer before I get on with this review. I actually know the Agonyst guys, although not particularly well. We don’t really talk often (or, in fact, ever), but we do have a number of friends in common, and have in fact played a few shows together over the years.

I say this because I wanted to try and head off any accusations of bias. Yes, I am definitely a fan of the band and their peculiar brand of off-kilter, psychosomatic Death Groove, but I approach this album with just as much trepidation as anyone else. If it had turned out to suck, then I would not have written about it.

Thus the cleverest among you may have deduced one thing already.

It does not suck. Continue reading »

SARPENTRA: “SUPERNOVA”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by Russia’s Sarpentra, which is out now.)

Hyperbole is a funny old thing. On the one hand it’s kind of fun to engage in, particularly if done so in a knowing, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, kind of manner. We love this music, so why not go all out? It’s an extreme genre, so let’s go wild!

But, on the other, when misused it definitely has a tendency to be more than a little misleading and to set up unreasonable expectations (something which I’ve been accused of myself only recently).

To wit, one of the reasons I elected to review Supernova was to try to counter some of the hype I’ve seen being thrown around, with words like “genre-redefining” and “revolutionary” being bandied about as if they were going out of style.

So I suppose what I really want to do with this review is to encourage you to take this album on its own merits, and not as if it’s the second coming of [Insert Famous Band Here]. Heck, if you really want to you can just scroll down to the bottom and listen yourselves, without taking any account of what I’ve written.

But for those of you who maybe want a little more context to inform your listening, or who simply enjoy reading articles about killer Death Metal albums… read on! Continue reading »

AN INTERVIEW WITH MOREAN — PART 3: ALKALOID

Interviews 3 Responses »

Jul 162015

Photos accompanying this interview by Christian Martin Weiss

(Andy Synn had the chance to interview the Dutch artist Morean about the three bands in which he is currently involved — Dark Fortress, Noneuclid, and Alkaloid. We’ve divided the interview into three parts, which will appear on three successive days. Today’s focus is Alkaloid. Check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

All jokes aside, all three of the bands discussed in this interview have a certain “Progressive” edge to them (though I’m trying not to over-use that word if at all possible) – Dark Fortress are a Black Metal band, and Noneuclid tend (at least in my mind) towards the Thrash-y end of the Metal spectrum. However your latest band, Alkaloid, is probably the most Progressive AND the most Death Metal focussed group of the lot. Was this something you were always aiming for?

M: You put your finger right on it. Not everyone in Dark Fortress and Noneuclid is equally into Death Metal and shred orgies. And despite all the artistic freedom we take in those bands, there were quite some things Alkaloid wanted to do that would never have fit with the other bands, and I think the same is true for Obscura. So we wanted to give it one last shot to start something fresh from the beginning, where we have complete freedom to do what we want without having to fit our ideas into 10 or 20 year old band concepts – even if they’re our own. In my own artistic development, I feel that with Alkaloid many things that have been growing in the other bands finally are falling into place. And the personnel in Alkaloid [Linus Klausenitzer, Danny Tunker, Hannes Grossmann, Christian Münzner] are very inspiring, there are very few limits to how far the composers in the band can go. It’ll be exciting to see where this band will end up going in the future. Continue reading »

AN INTERVIEW WITH MOREAN — PART 2: NONEUCLID

Interviews 4 Responses »

Jul 152015

(Andy Synn had the chance to interview the Dutch artist Morean about the three bands in which he is currently involved — Dark Fortress, Noneuclid, and Alkaloid. We’ve divided the interview into three parts, which will appear on three successive days. Today’s focus is Noneuclid. Check out Part 1 here and Part 3 here.)

Moving on to talk about your work in Noneuclid, which also includes your Dark Fortress band-mates Seraph and V. Santura, along with Linus from Obscura/Alkaloid, and recently departed vocalist Bruce. For those unfamiliar with the band, can you give us some background on the group?

M: We started as a group of friends playing covers together once a year. I had just graduated from the conservatory and was looking for an outlet for my metal-related ideas, and we had way too much fun playing together, so after a while we decided to make Noneuclid a more permanent outfit. That was back in 2004. I set out to write the first album with just the wish in mind to have a few songs to play; little did we suspect they’d be perceived as being this unusual. To us, it was just metal to begin with, but then things went off on a pretty wild tangent with everything that ensued in the years after. Continue reading »

AN INTERVIEW WITH MOREAN — PART 1: DARK FORTRESS

Interviews 8 Responses »

Jul 142015

(Andy Synn had the chance to interview the Dutch artist Morean about the three bands in which he is currently involved — Dark Fortress, Noneuclid, and Alkaloid. We’ve divided the interview into three parts, which will appear on three successive days. Today’s focus is Dark Fortress. Check out the next two parts here and here.)

So, first of all, I just want to say thank you for agreeing to answer these questions for me/us. Both Venereal Dawn and Metatheosis were amongst my favourite albums from last year, and it’s looking very likely that The Malkuth Grimoire will end up in my top ten at the end of 2015 too.

Now, obviously I’m a big fan of all the bands you’re involved in, so this is probably going to be a pretty long and in-depth interview, but let’s start with a simple question… how the hell do you find the time for all of this?

Morean: Thanks for the compliments! How do I find time? Well – I don’t. I have to steal whatever time I put into one band, commission, or project from all the other bands and projects. It’s a problem almost everyone in all these bands has, and it’s getting worse. It’s also the reason why it takes years sometimes before a band is able to get into the studio or back on the road. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: RUNAR PETTERSEN (INFERNO FESTIVAL)

Interviews 1 Response »

Jul 132015

(Andy Synn interviews Runar Pettersen, press manager of the long-running Inferno Festival, which has been staged in Oslo, Norway, since 2001.)

To start with, I wonder if you’d be able to give our readers a bit of a condensed history and background to the festival, as I don’t always like to assume everyone who comes to our site necessarily knows the ins and outs of the festival scene, particularly in Europe. So when/why did the festival start, who was involved, what were the early years like?

It started out as a two day festival in 2001. The festival boss, Jan-Martin, used to run a small club called Mars here in Oslo, and used to book bands there. He wanted to book Borknagar for a gig (after he ran into guitarist Jens F. Ryland one day), and when they were looking into dates for the show, there happened to be an open spot on Easter at Rockefeller. So from this Borknagar gig came the idea to turn it into a two-day festival. There weren’t any similar festivals back then, only much smaller or much larger outdoor festivals, so it was very unique. Only Norwegian bands played the first year and, when it turned out to be a success, it was all set to continue on the next year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RIVERS OF NIHIL — “MONARCHY”

Premieres 14 Responses »

Jul 082015

(Andy Synn introduces our premiere of the title track to the new album by Rivers of Nihil.)

I absolutely loved Rivers of Nihil’s debut album, The Conscious Seed of Light. Though it’s not a perfect release, it is very, very good (particularly for a debut full-length), and absolutely packed to the gills with nascent potential.

Potential which they’ve fully realised on their new album, Monarchy.

From start to finish it’s an intensely heavy, stunningly technical (though always in service to the greater themes of the song), and viscerally passionate album, that sees the Reading, Pennsylvania quintet capitalising on the momentum gathered by their debut in order to really expand the scope and breadth of their sound. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WILD HUNT — “SCROLL AND URN”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Jul 082015

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by Wild Hunt from the Bay Area of California.)

So I’ve really been enjoying discovering all these EPs lately. It’s not exactly been a conscious thing though, it just seems we’ve been enjoying a fantastic run of short, perfectly proportioned releases during the first half of this year.

Scroll and Urn is another one to add to the list, although we’re actually coming to it pretty late in the day, as it’s been available since the 17th of April from the band’s Bandcamp page.

If you visit the esteemed site known as Metal-Archives and search for the name Wild Hunt (and then click on the correct entry… handy tip: it’s the one without a “The” in front of it) you’ll see that the band are listed as Progressive Doom Metal/Post-Black Metal. However, this seems something of a misnomer to me.

While there’s certainly a strong progressive, and enviably creative, undercurrent to the music (as well as a gloaming shade of ominous, oppressive Doom) this is Black Metal to the core, with none of this “Post” nonsense to muddy the waters. Continue reading »

NO MORE EXCUSES

Mosh Pit 20 Responses »

Jul 032015

artwork by Sam Nelson

(Andy Synn wrote this opinion piece about the tendency of some people to make excuses for mediocre or terrible bands in the face of criticism. We gave up making excuses for Andy long ago.)

A wise man once said:

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

A similarly wise (and far more handsome) man also once said:

“Excuses are like assholes… I don’t want to hear yours, and it’s not special.”

Ok, so maybe that second one is slightly less well known, but still… Continue reading »

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