VALE OF PNATH: “BETWEEN THE WORLDS OF LIFE AND DEATH”

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Jun 182024
 

(On May 24th Willowtip Records released a new album by the U.S. metal band Veil of Pnath. As is usually the case, DGR didn’t rush to prepare an early review but allowed the music to linger a while. Now his review is finished and available below.)

Vale Of Pnath are of a class of tech-death groups that never seemed to fully get their due. The Denver-based crew made themselves known at the right time, had the right scratchy logo, and had the right high-speed playing style to prominently place themselves in the world of the initial tech-death explosion as it quickly codified into its own subgenre rather than just a way to describe a much more complicated style of death metal that is more well-known for caveman slamming into the ground repeatedly.

Guitarist Vance Valenzuela is the only long-time member of the group still standing at this point, having been surrounded by a legion of incredibly talented musicians over the years. Maybe it was the ever-shifting nature of the group that was to blame? Maybe the revolving-door list of who would be in the lineup at any album? Maybe it was the sense that Vale Of Pnath was a machine, not just in the precision of their playing but in ‘parts’ changing themselves out, or maybe it was just the tad too long gaps between releases?

Regardless, it never seemed like Vale Of Pnath were fully able to achieve the relentless touring and constant social media renown as well as many of their fellow classmates did, despite having the body of material to back that up. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DARKEND — “VIATICUM”

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Jun 122024
 

(On June 14th Time To Kill Records will release the fifth album by the Italian black metal band Darkend, and today we’re premiering its full stream, preceded by an extensive review by our writer (and longtime Darkend fan) DGR.)

Even though it would be wonderful for every group we cover to achieve massive stardom, playng to gigantic crowds and existing as a perpetual part of the cultural zeitgeist – since that seems to be the only way we can completely guarantee someone is making a decent living playing music these days – a few artistic benefits are afforded to musicians who are currently dwelling in the underground, ever on the slow burn and amassing more and more notoriety over time, as opposed to a sudden viral explosion that sees them top of the world one week and then trying to maintain that for years afterward.

One of those is that you are free to move within the realms of an artistic spectacle far more than you might otherwise be given room to; every album becomes an opportunity to swing for the fences and execute upon ambitious and grand ideas while also giving room to reinvent oneself as much as you feel.

We bring this up in part because Italy’s Darkend have had a near-two-decade career at this point and it is one that has allowed them to be increasingly ambitious over the course of five albums, while remaking themselves into as much of a spectacle as they are a musical act within that time. Continue reading »

UPON STONE: “DEAD MOTHER MOON”

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May 282024
 

(Our writer DGR finally made his way to the debut album by the San Fernando Valley melodic death metal band Upon Stone, which was released in January by Century Media Records, and was moved to write about it at length in the following review.)

Upon Stone were a heck of an anomaly when they first appeared in the early part of 2024. Seemingly emerging out of the aether with a full-length album and a professed love for melodeath, it was eyebrow-raising to see the group gaining enough steam to grab headlines in the early part of the year, right about the time everyone is still on their post-end-of-year list collection comedown.

Admittedly, we’re late to the bus on this one. Upon Stone‘s first full-length Dead Mother Moon has been on the back-burner since its mid-January release, mostly waiting for a gap in time when we could truly explore the album’s deepest reaches but also to take a deep glance at why the band might’ve garnered such interest with its melodeath necromancy in the year 2024: a time in which even the old-guard are glancing over the mid to late ’90s era efforts of a lot of those bands in favor of material more in line with music from the mid-aughts. Continue reading »

DRIPPING DECAY: “RIPPING REMAINS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 242024
 

(Hot on the heels of their blistering debut album, Festering Grotesqueries, Portland’s Dripping Decay spewed forth a new EP in January 2024 via Satanik Royalty Records, and DGR finally caught up with it, provoking the following review.)

Always being behind the eight ball when it comes to playing catch-up with music releases has proven to be the best sort of motivator in a twisted perversion of the idea.

When you have a deadline upcoming there’s always a sense that you can relax a little, and we have been lucky enough to receive our fair share of early promo works that have allowed us time to really soak in a release and absorb as much as it can offer. But the ones where we miss the bus or discover later? Now it feels like we owe them, which is strange given that many of these are ones we’ve found on our own time or became part of our own private collections to dive into.

This is the case with Oregon’s Dripping Decay and their late-January EP Ripping Remains (we did receive a timely promo, btw). Continue reading »

CARRION VAEL: “CANNIBALS ANONYMOUS”

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May 222024
 

(Here, DGR devotes about 1400 words to extolling the virtues of Carrion Vael‘s newest album, which is out now on Unique Leader Records.)

There was a period maybe five or six years ago where a band like Carrion Vael would’ve found a good handful of compatriots within their current label home of Unique Leader Records. Their brand of high-speed melodeath, light implementing of symphonics to help break up the constantly whirring lead guitar, and tech-death hybridization has gone under a few names throughout the years – even cheekily referred to around here once as ‘black dahlia murder-core’ – but there was one pretty distinct carrier of that strain of metal, and at the time many of those groups would’ve been ensconced within the loving brutal bosom of Unique Leader.

However, things changed and something interesting happened within real time as the label’s priorities seemed to shift, favoring the low-and-slow approach of many up-and-coming deathcore groups, or leaning heavily into the brutal deathcore monstrosities that were being born out of former brutal death and gore-focused bands.

Nowadays the label is a tri-headed monstrosity of its own and many of the groups who were playing the high-speed, highly-technical style found a home in labels like The Artisan Era – whose own bands like Inferi found themselves leading the charge in recruitment – and Willowtip seems plenty happy to cast their net in those waters as well. Continue reading »

CONVULSING: “PERDURANCE”

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May 212024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of a new album from the Australian one-person band Convulsing, which was released this past March.)

If we can offer a bit of advice – armchair psychiatrists that we are around here – do not let anyone ever tell you that you’re going to have a good time with Convulsing‘s third album Perdurance.

Perdurance is not a ‘good times, happy fun times’ album. It’s a dissonant and ugly piece of work, one that is abrasive enough to smooth barnacles off of a ship. Perdurance is cavernous and noisey, Perdurance is expansive and heavy, but under no circumstances could you look at the bent contortions of Convulsing‘s third album and think to yourself ‘well, that’ll be a pleasant trip through the void’. Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD”

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May 202024
 

(Below you will find DGR‘s extensive review of the newest album from NZ’s Ulcerate, in advance of its June 14 release by Debemur Morti Productions.)

Weirdly enough, I had to check to see who had penned the last few reviews for Ulcerate’s releases as they’ve crossed our desks in the burnt-out husk that is more colloquially known as the ‘NCS Office’. The situation was one of those, ‘I’m pretty sure it was me, I am not a thousand percent sure it was me’.

You’ll forgive someone, of course, who has been spending a decent block of their heavy metal writing ‘career’ within the distant chasms of the Ulcerate discography for experiencing some sense of disassociation with the self. It turns out, it has in fact been yours truly for the most part, which means we can now add ‘Semi-Expert on Ulcerate’ to the resume, which’ll be only the third or fourth strangest thing on there, placed right up next to ‘balloon animal fluffer’. Continue reading »

WASTEWALKER: “TRAPPED BETWEEN REALMS OF SUFFERING”

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May 172024
 

(In April of this year Sacramento-based Wastewalker released a new EP dedicated to their late guitarist Nate Graham, and long-time Wastewalker follower DGR delves into it in the following review.)

Sacramento’s tech-death group Wastewalker have been put through the wringer lately. The band, finally somewhat ascendant after the release of a solid sophomore album in Vengeance Of The Lowborn, suffered from the tragic passing of guitarist Nate Graham in mid-2023. While the band were never short on talent, the group were put in a hard place on multiple fronts, yet in that time somehow managed to soldier on. The band returned in early April of 2024 with a three-song EP entitled Trapped Between Realms Of Suffering – their first as a four-piece act.

Wastewalker have been a slow burn, launching out of the gate with Funeral Winds back in 2016 and then growing into their sound from there. Funeral Winds had an air of expulsion to it, like the band had to get a ton out of their system and exorcise a cadre of demons before they could truly evolve into what is Wastewalker. Funeral Winds felt like it was moving in twenty different directions all at once, overstuffed with ideas – and sometimes even lyrically – and interesting on the front that there was a lot of promise there; Wastewalker just had to hone in on what was really working within those bounds. Continue reading »

PARTY CANNON: “INJURIES ARE INEVITABLE”

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May 162024
 

(DGR fires off the following review of the latest discharge from the Scottish band Party Cannon, which is out now on the Unique Leader label.)

The thing to keep in mind when listening to Party Cannon and their newest release Injuries Are Inevitable is that it is a supremely stupid collection of music. This has been the band’s M.O for the course of their career; the logo proclaims it, the album art proclaims it, and their album titles and song titltes spell it out for those of us denser than the band.

Granted, proclaiming yourself as being massively moronic does not make yourself critic-proof and portraying your music as being the cranial equivalent of an empty, infinite void doesn’t excuse endless braindead riffage – but it does soften the blow quite a bit.

You know upon entrance that Party Cannon‘s music will not be a high-minded exercise in philosophy. It is not something you’ll be sitting down to with a nice glass of sipping whiskey and a pipe full of fine tobacco and ‘appreciating’. Unless, your idea of this exercise involves putting all those things in a bowl, smashing it with a rock, and eating the shards and splinters.

Injuries Are Inevitable is an exercise in ‘dumb’ and just the group’s latest exploration in how far they can push that particular label without morphing into something completely different. Continue reading »

RIVERS OF NIHIL: “CRIMINALS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 152024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of a new EP by Pennsylvania-based Rivers of Nihil, which is out now on Metal Blade Records.)

Strangely enough, writing about Rivers Of Nihil‘s newest EP Criminals feels like a little bit of a ‘gimme’. The three songs on Criminals – none of which is a cover of the titular Katatonia song – were all ostensibly recorded during the same experimental session for the band, one which saw the newly restructured lineup of the group getting together to see just what they could do and where they might be headed post-The Work.

They were then slowly drip-fed to listeners over the course of a little under a year, so listeners will have an immediate familiarity with prog-rock minded “The Sub-Orbital Blues” and the slightly more recent stomper in “Hellbirds”, which means the big draw for most people will be the unveiling of “Criminals” as a song, as well as the ability to take in all three in one go, providing an intriguing glimpse at Rivers Of Nihil‘s current headspace and lyrical inspirations, as well as peek through a smudged lense of where their future paths may take them. Continue reading »

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