May 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The last two weeks have been out of the ordinary here, and the next 10 days will be too. In the weeks now past I and a few of my NCS comrades joined forces with a lot of other terrific volunteers to help put on the 3-day Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. (See above, just after we finished last Saturday night.) The fest was fantastic, but it didn’t leave me enough clear-headed time to do the usual weekend posts for NCS.

During the past week I had some good post-fest outings in the Seattle area with DGR and Andy Synn. That put a crimp in my usual new-music listening. And now, beginning on Wednesday of this coming week, we’re all going to venture to Baltimore with other friends to take in Maryland Deathfest. That makes it highly unlikely I will be doing the usual NCS posts next weekend either.

The wall of possibilities for this roundup and the blacker one tomorrow is enormous. I scraped against it, sort of like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption digging through the wall of his cell with a tiny rock hammer, except I don’t have 19 years to get the job done. Here’s what I chipped away for today. Continue reading »

Jul 052018
 

 

I’m willing to bet good money that all metal addicts have that one kind of special sound lodged in their brains that, once heard, triggers a Pavlovian response — the jump in the pulse rate, the immediate wolfish grin, the reflexive drooling that comes at the sound of the dinner bell. Different sounds might do it for different people, maybe a Priest-ian riff here or a Sabbath-ian one there; maybe the resonance of a Bolt Thrower-like tank attack or a Testament-ary ripper does the trick.

In my case, the sure-fire trigger comes from the sound of Swedish death of the old school. And so in my case, Angerot bring forth the slobbering in a great, borderline-embarrassing flood. Their new album The Splendid Iniquity does that from start to finish. Continue reading »