SHADES OF BLACK: DARK PLAGUE, PYRE OF DESCENT, LA BESTIA DE GEVAUDAN, MATAVITATAU, SPIRIT POSSESSION, SKELETAL SERPENT

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Aug 142026
 

(written by Islander)

As many of you will know, I usually post a column at NCS on Sundays with recommendations in the expanding orbit of black metal. I wasn’t able to do that last Sunday due to leaving home on the early side of the day for what turned out to be a cool birthday celebration in a forest for a friend. I had made some choices for the column by then, and wanted to carry through with them whenever I could this week, while adding a couple of songs I’ve discovered since last weekend.

But it took me nearly all week to get this finished. It comes to you on another day when I’m about to depart from home and computer for most of the day; I have a ridiculously early start on a journey to the Seattle airport for a long weekend vacation. I’m doubtful that I’ll be able to assemble the usual new-music roundups for this coming Saturday and Sunday, but we shall see.

In the collection you’re now looking at I’ve interwoven an album, an EP, and four singles. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MISOTHEIST, DEATHLIKE DAWN, GLYPH, DARK PLAGUE, BLESTEMAT, BEHOLDER, VALRAVNE, PÂLEFROID

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Mar 032024
 

Here’s the way today’s collection of music goes: The first four choices include two albums and two singles that I thought fit well together. The music by all four bands is unmistakably harsh and hostile, but it’s also adventurously inventive and head-twisting, laced with the kind of unpredictable and unexpected elaborations that might invoke in some people’s minds the amorphous label “avant-garde”, or at least the term “unorthodox”.

After that I’ve included four other individual songs as bonuses. Later I’ll explain why I used that word to explain their presence here, if you make it that far (and you damn well should). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BATUSHKA, KOLOSSUS, MORDBRAND, KALMANKANTAJA, DARK PLAGUE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 202019
 

 

Wow, 16 days since I posted the last of these new-music round-ups. And that one came 10 days after the one before it. Not a good track record, but my job has been a jealous mistress lately, or more like a starving wolverine hungry for my flesh. It’s unlikely things will improve in the near future, but for different reasons.

In two days, for the 6th year in a row, I’m flying to Baltimore with a bunch of Seattle friends to take in Maryland Deathfest. My NCS comrades Andy Synn and DGR will be there, too, and I doubt they’ll be spending their free time banging out content for NCS either. And then the week after that I’ll be spending a shitload of time helping to put on the third edition of the NCS-sponsored Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. My day job probably won’t leave me alone over the next two weeks either.

So, it won’t surprise me if another 16 days pass between today’s round-up and the next one. Or maybe I’ll throw together a round-up that just consists of one new song. Or maybe two, if I skip showers and breakfasts. But today I have five, because I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep. Continue reading »