OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XXIX: SUMMER SOLSTICE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 062026
 

(We welcome back Daniel Barkasi with another collection of reviews and recommendations of albums released in the month just ended, this time June 2026.)

The summer solstice came on June 21, and it’s been a wild ride so far in 2026. New house in a new state, new baby horse (Ezri is doing awesome). What’s also new – for me, anyway – is not being cooked alive by the temperature at this point in the year. It has been a comforting 70 – 75°F (around 21– 24°C) for a lot of the time here in the WV mountains. Then there’s Florida, where the real feel temperature has been as high as a sweat-farming 110°F (a hair over 43°C).

I used a past tense in describing the amazing weather we were having, but alas, a taste of Florida has arrived, with those same boiling conditions. Talk about perspiration soup. I miss some things about the home of the infamous Florida man, but not that.  With that, it’s been a regular refreshing of cold water for all of the outdoor animals, as well as shearing the sheep – which was quite the ordeal, but absolutely necessary to prepare.

At the beginning of June, we also got to attend an event a little different from music, but with a connection for many who enjoy this sort of music – a horror convention. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEAD VOID

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 032022
 

(In mid-September Me Saco Un Ojo and Dark Descent jointly released Volatile Forms, the stunning debut album by the Danish Dead Void. We shared our thoughts about it here, and spurred on by that album, Comrade Aleks participated in the following interview of the band.)

This time I had a kind of technical problem, so to say, and this interview with Copenhagen-based trio Dead Void was complete somewhere in September, around the official release date of their debut album Volatile Forms.

This trio preaches hostile, quite torturous, and nihilistic death-doom metal with an uncompromising approach and a brutal delivery. Cianide, a bit of Asphyx, and so on, you know? Dead Void is a cold and monstrous entity, so I wonder if we need to waste our time trying to add a few more empty words, as you can read this short but good interview and listen to Volatile Forms by the way. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD VOID — “ENTRAILS OF CHAOS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 222022
 

The discomforts of our lives are multitudinous and multifarious, ranging from niggling annoyances to traumatic terrors and crushing catastrophes. Though some people recoil from re-living such discomforts in the music they make or the music they listen to, some bands, at least in the expansive sphere of metal, throw themselves into the most unnerving ends of that spectrum with great relish and no remorse.

Dead Void are one of those bands. On their debut album Volatile Forms what they recoil from are half measures. They wholly devote their impressive talents to the creation of death metal that’s horrifically hostile, bestially savage, stunningly hopeless, and fiendishly unpredictable and unsettling. The music is brutally crushing and authentically unhinged, and just as likely to force listeners into claustrophobic caverns of doom as it is to gut you or shake you to pieces. As proof, we offer the song “Entrails of Chaos“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLACK ANVIL, DEAD VOID, PARIUS, BONES, BLODKVALT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 052022
 

Today we’ve already presented a pair of raunchy reviews, the premiere of some dismal and nightmarish black metal, and another evocative installment of a Fire in the Mountains festival report. But even with all that, I thought I’d still try to squeeze in a roundup of new songs and videos, just to somewhat lighten the load on me for the usual Saturday roundup. It will still be a crushing load, but maybe getting the following five items out there mow will leave a few vertebrae intact tomorrow.

BLACK ANVIL (U.S.)

Let’s begin with something bracing, something that’s both chilling and muscular, a song that creates tension and tightens it, becomes scathing and sweeping in its portrayal of despair, stampedes in a fury, and raises its voice in proclamations of hellish reverence. Continue reading »