Feb 052022
 


Photo Credit: Evelina Szczesik

 

I heard a couple of the following tracks last Saturday and saved them for what I hoped would be one of these collections during the last week, but I never had enough time to put one together. The rest of them I checked out this morning (they’re even more recent), along with others I took a pass on, and more that I’ve saved for tomorrow’s Shades of Black column.

In assembling this collection I followed one of our fairly standard strategies: I decided to include some big names at the outset, in the hope that would lure people into the more obscure names that follow, and I included a curveball at the end.

WATAIN (Sweden)

When you know the band is Watain and you see they’ve released a song named “The Howling“, you already have a good idea what’s coming. But Eric Danielsson spelled it out: “‘The Howling‘ refers to the wordless voice of the wild, wailing eerily through the ages, urging us to leave our safe spaces and explore the dark recesses of the great Abyss both within and without. To see it, to learn from it, to know it.” Continue reading »

Feb 062021
 

 

As I was trying to go to sleep last night I mentally fidgeted about what I was going to do for NCS today. The problem was that last week I didn’t have the time or patience to go through our e-mails carefully or do the other things I usually do to sniff out new songs and videos that would be fodder for a round-up. Most weeks I have long lists of possibilities to check out by now. As of last night I had made no such list.

As I tried to find sleep, I grudgingly resolved that I would have to spend a few hours this morning doing what I’d failed to do since last Monday, and make that list — and then start listening. I had to trash that idea this morning when I realized I had slept for 10 hours and that a big chunk of the morning was already gone. So, making the big list of newly released songs and videos will have to wait. Here, I’ve picked from things I already knew about a week ago, and added just a couple of songs more recently recommended to me by valued sources.

KLEXOS (U.S.)

“Obfuscâre Veritas”, the first song now up for streaming from Apocryphal Parabolam, the new album by Kentucky’s Klexos, is dissonant and deranged, twisted and ever-twisting, brazen and brawling — and generally berserk. The vocals display a lot of harrowing dynamism as well. The song exhibits impressive technicality, which is necessary, given how wildly and rapidly the music veers and careens. It will also give you a vigorous beating, which you probably deserve. Continue reading »