Jan 162022
 

 

This weekend hasn’t been conducive to my NCS plans. I didn’t have time yesterday morning to post a round-up of new songs and videos, only time enough to share some artwork and news. During Saturday afternoon I plowed through a lot of new tracks and videos that mostly surfaced over the last week, and found a whopping 23 of them that I enjoyed to varying degrees.

Obviously, that’s way too many to post about, even for an OVERFLOWING STREAMS type of round-up. Some sifting was required. But sifting takes time, and for reasons I won’t bore you with it turns out that free time has been in very short supply this weekend. What to do?

Well, what I decided to do was just to say Fuck It and foist all 23 of those songs and videos upon you, with almost no commentary about the music and not even the usual links and artwork, just a small amount of info about the releases that include them. Even with that approach I’m dubious that I’ll get everything ready to go before I have to depart my computer for the rest of the day. So I alphabetized everything by band name and cut the group into two parts.

Part 2 might come tomorrow instead of later today. Sadly, I won’t have time for a SHADES OF BLACK column, though there is some black metal sprinkled through this giant collection, along with music across a big range of other sub-genres. Continue reading »

Dec 132021
 

 

I guess you noticed that we didn’t post anything new at the site on Saturday or Sunday. In 12+ years of our existence that has happened only a couple of other times. I went to holiday events on Friday and Saturday nights, got trashed at both of them, and spent the days after in a state of crippling mental and physical disability. So that’s the explanation in a nutshell.

There’s obviously a lot of catching up to do in the race for staying on top of new songs and videos, which explains why I’ve resorted to this OVERFLOWING STREAMS format. I made a conscious effort to include a fair share of black metal since I failed to post a SHADES OF BLACK column yesterday. Speaking of which, if you haven’t noticed I’ll mention the good news that a new Funeral Mist album is set for release on December 17th HERE (it appears that it will be released in its entirety that day, without any advance song streams).

IMMOLATION (U.S.)

I thought about alphabetizing this collection, as I usually do, but I have to begin with Immolation. Last week one of the best death metal bands of all time divulged a video for the first single from a new album, and it’s a breathtaker — explosive, blazing, bludgeoning, exotic, and crazed. Here’s a band who seem immune to the deleterious effects of aging. Continue reading »

Jan 022019
 

 

(Here’s the third installment of DGR’s 5-part year-end effort to sink our site beneath an avalanche of words and a deluge of music.)

Now that I’ve broken it out from the tremendous bulk of the rest of my year-end collective, I’m amused by how much world traveling this specific subset of the list does. It spends a surprising amount of time in France (which has done very well for itself these past few years), some time in the States, some time in Australia, and even manages to touch base with both Canada and Sweden for a few. It is also probably the most varied intsallment so far — the tech-death crews make a strong play here, but you’ll also start seeing some of the prefix-core resurgence that happened recently, as well as some ugly-as-fuck grind (on two fronts). And then there’s however in the hell Author & Punisher might be described.

Oh, did I spoil that Author & Punisher is making an appearance here? Whoops. Well too bad, Beastland is fucking killer but if you want to know why you’ll have to read on and see just where the San Diego noise-engineer found himself. There’s still a lot of list left to go, and knowing me, at least two-thousand more words of intro paragraph left to be written somewhere so let’s get the third chunk of this motherfucker going. Continue reading »

Oct 012018
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer’s review of the new sixth album by Author & Punisher, which will be released by Relapse Records on October 5th.)

Not being satisfied with heavy as merely blazing fast double-bass with even faster guitar solos, I require something out of left field with a great deal of sonic intensity. Author & Punisher’s brand of sludged-out industrial fits the bill.

At first listen, what Tristan Shone does might seem like a novel concept…”Oh yeah, he’s the dude that plays with machines”. Six albums in, that novelty has to be taken out of the equation to leave the focus on the songs. He delivers in this regard, while working against the abrasive drone that tends to dominate his sound. Continue reading »

Aug 092018
 

 

I mentioned late last week as I was headed off to New Mexico for the weekend that I’d be gone from Seattle all this week, too. And that has come to pass.

I’ve been in Atlanta since Tuesday for my fucking day job, cranking away from early to late, with little time to check out new music and even less time to write about it. To keep from falling abysmally far behind I threw together this round-up, but am too pressed by my job to write much about these new tracks and videos. You’ll like them anyway — at least I hope you will.

THOU

Yesterday Louisiana’s Thou released a video for a song called “The Changeling Prince” off their new album Magus (cover above), which will be released by Sacred Bones Records on August 31st. It was directed by Bryan Funck and Mitch Wells. Continue reading »

Nov 302015
 

 

(Wil Cifer penned these reviews of three November shows in Atlanta, Georgia.)

Here’s a snapshot of metal onstage and in the flesh. Over the course of the past week I caught three different metal shows at three different venues with the genres spanning from industrial to thrash to black metal.

The first of these was almost on the periphery of what most might consider metal when Author & Punisher played The Earl, a hipster dive bar with a venue in the back.

We arrived just in time to catch the Portland duo Muscle and Marrow. Never really gave their last studio album The Human Cry the time to immerse myself in it, but their live show changed the way I think of them. There are metal elements to what they do, but I would not call them a metal band. Even then, of the three shows, I would say they were the most emotionally heavy band of the week. This was channeled in a very honest physical manner. Singer/ guitarist Kira Clark’s voice goes from an almost black-metal-like scathing scream to a vulnerable soprano. The duo implemented samples and layers of vocals triggered from a laptop off stage, but in comparison to Author & Punisher they were very organic. Continue reading »

Jul 022015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Author & Punisher.)

If you’ve been reading the site for a bit you’ll have noted the name Author & Punisher coming up from time to time, usually by way of my loud mouth. I’m a relatively recent convert to the Author & Punisher school, yet in that time the releases out of this project have quickly rocketed up the charts into ones that I look forward to the most — in large part buoyed by the fact that I find this project absolutely fascinating.

It’s been great seeing the Author & Punisher profile increase over the years, even in the limited time I’ve been following it since my review of Women And Children (having heard stuff before, but never fully exploring until that disc). More people seem to be discovering this odd bit of machination turned into music — but lo and behold, who would’ve predicted that the next Author & Punisher album was going to be produced by Phil Anselmo of Pantera, Down, and Superjoint Ritual fame?

For those who are still wondering what it is the hell I am rambling about, Author & Punisher is a San Diego-based musical project belonging to artist and engineer Tristan Shone. Over the past few years, he’s been making a sort of slow-moving, suffocating, industrial, and heavy form of doom that is already pretty left-field to begin with, likely to be much discussed in dark, smoky rooms by people who probably finish half their sentences with, “You might not have heard them”. Continue reading »

May 272015
 

 

(DGR wrote this round-up of new music while I was away at MDF, and I rewarded his helpfulness by posting it days later after I got back home. You’re welcome, Dave.)

While most of the goofballs who inhabit this site are off fucking around somewhere in Maryland, one of us has to pick up the slack and bring you yesterday’s news tomorrow, otherwise we wouldn’t be fulfilling our mission statement of always being just behind the curve — but with more words to make up for the delay.

This edition is going to be a little heavily biased toward my tastes, which means we’re probably going to be on the lighter fare of the metal scale, but there was still some damn good music to happen within recent weeks, and most of the bands you folks will be familiar with. There were a couple of interesting discoveries on that front, as a couple of different artists decided to release new songs out to the world, and then in the other two cases, they’ve been out for a bit but we’re doing our best to keep them from flying under the radar. Continue reading »

Jul 022013
 

Here’s a collection of selected items your humble editor witnessed and heard while stumbling around the interhole yesterday. As usual, the stuff is all over the musical map.

BLACK CAP MINER

Black Cap Miner is the side project of West Virginia vocalist/guitarist Chris Ojeda of the mighty Byzantine (whose 2013 release ought to get some kind of award for comeback album of the year). The objective of the project is to get you to headbang like it’s 1988. To be more precise, OJ and friends are recording covers of some old school thrash songs. But not just any songs, and not just any friends. Check out his list of guest performers:

JAMES MALONE (Arsis)
GREG BURGESS (Allegaeon)
TONY ROHRBOUGH (Byzantine)
JAY HANNON (Gizmachi)
KYLE THOMAS (Exhorder, Trouble)
CHRIS POLAND (Megadeth)
CHUCK BILLY (Testament)

I think a robust HOLY SHIT! is in order, don’t you?  I mean, not to take even one little thing away from Chris Ojeda, but that’s a mighty fine group of comrades to assemble for the recording of some thrash. Continue reading »

Jun 192013
 

 (In this post DGR reviews the new album by Author & Punisher, which was officially released last week by Seventh Rule.)

One of the reasons that I got into heavy metal was the abrasive nature of it. Like a lot of folks, I was drawn to the rebellious ‘fuck you!’ aspect of the style, on top of the idea that it was ugly music for the ugly side of life. As I drifted further into the scene though, one of the things that always stuck out and made me excited was the machine-like nature that the music took on as it became heavier. People would play their instruments with the sort of finesse, accuracy, and technicality usually reserved for a machine, and it never stopped being incredible to me.

That’s probably why I found myself drawn to bands like Strapping Young Lad and Meshuggah. It’s probably the reason why I spent five minutes in a bathroom once, just standing there because the fan sounded like the drum beat to “Bleed”. However, unless you’re continually searching out music that is heavier and more intense until you finally land in noisegrind territory, even the heaviest bands can eventually feel a little sterile and safe. Sometimes you have to go outside your comfort zone for music that truly challenges you, still has that edge.

I write this in order to explain why a project like Author & Punisher appears here. It’s a one-man project consisting of custom-built machines being played that creates a cacophonous sort of drone and doom with some very light dubbed elements. Author & Punisher just recently put out a disc bearing the title of Women & Children. It’s an experiment that takes on an abrasive and hypnotic air as it drags the listener deeper into layers of noise, layered upon tons of bass and drums, all moving at a slow, monolithic, crushing pace – only to be occasionally interrupted by anguished screams and distorted robotic vocals that sound more like the low hum of an engine than anything human. Continue reading »