DORMANT ORDEAL: “THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 022021
 

(DGR provides both a very short and also a much longer review of the new album by the Polish band Dormant Ordeal, which will be released tomorrow [December 3rd] by Selfmadegod Records.)

Do not sleep on Dormant Ordeal‘s newest release The Grand Scheme Of Things.

There’s your review.

Seriously.

By following the site for a while you’ve been subjected to the absolute torrent of music that we’ve reviewed over the years. We do this on purpose, partially because we collectively have tastes that spread far and wide, and by maintaining the cadre of writers that we do it pretty much insures we’ll cover a tremendous amount of ground throughout the year. However, when we do sync up around a certain band we tend to bang the drum for that band hard and take them up as one of our causes.

Poland’s Dormant Ordeal are one such group and have been for a while now, at least since the release of their previous album We Had It Coming all the way back in 2016. That album’s take on relentless death metal was so filled to the brim with sharp grooves, hammering drums, and non-stop guitar assaults that it was kind of shocking it didn’t seem to make as much of an impact as it should have. We shouted out the disc constantly, even including it amongst our various end-of-year lists that year and awarding it one of our ‘most infectious song’ awards before that list inevitably managed to suffocate under it own weight.

Hell, during one of our GimmeMetal invasions we even closed out one of our programs with the two-parter of “Derangement Zone pt 1′ and ‘Derangement Zone pt 2’ from that disc.

Needless to say at this point, our history with Dormant Ordeal runs pretty deep – which is why the group’s newest album The Grand Scheme Of Things has been in damn near constant rotation since the moment it landed on our fire-charred desks. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “MOONFLOWERS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 012021
 

 

(DGR continues an extensive series of reviews this week with the following take on Swallow the Sun‘s new album, which is out now on the Century Media label.)

Swallow The Sun are at a point now in their careers that they’ve become an institution in the realms of all things moody and melancholic. It’s been a journey too, one that has been exceedingly well-documented and at times absolutely heart-wrenching – and not just musically – and in my own personal case, one dating all the way back to 2007’s Hope album. The band are already at two decades of slow, frozen, and moody doom music and it has been interesting watching their trajectory into and out of funeral doom, fuller-sounding death metal, and even moody-rock music. Here at NCS we are very well acquainted with all of those journeys – especially since yours truly is now on the third review for the band with this most recent release.

Moonflowers arrived on November 19th via Century Media Records and comes to us nearly two and a half years after 2019’s When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light. Granted, when you consider that seven of Swallow The Sun‘s eight mainline releases have hit during a period between November and February, you could argue that the group have carved out quite a niche for themselves in the colder months of the year. Continue reading »

IN MOURNING: “THE BLEEDING VEIL”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 302021
 

(DGR prepared the following review of the new album by the Swedish band In Mourning, just released on November 26th.)

In Mourning have definitely found a sound since the heady days of 2012 and their release of The Weight Of Oceans. Creating their own loosely conceptual lyrical universe, that album laid the groundwork for just about every release of In Mourning that followed it. While early works in the band’s discography would land them on the radar of prog-death fans – and I will go to bat for Monolith being an absolutely fantastic and underrated release – The Weight Of Oceans and its doom and post-metal influences would be where In Mourning would stake their claim.

Both 2016’s Afterglow and 2019’s Garden Of Storms continued along that path, acting as extensions of that musical world, sometimes wandering down a more death metal oriented path and sometimes going full avant-garde, as Garden Of Storms would reach its tendrils into every crevice it found. Now firmly ensconced in their corner of the progressive death metal world and with an even smaller gap between releases, In Mourning are with us once again with The Bleeding Veil, the group’s sixth full-length and the third release so far to contain seven songs in its track list.

Given that the throughline of The Bleeding Veil and its two most recent siblings is so similar, it’s interesting to see what paths In Mourning have decided to chart this time around. The Bleeding Veil is In Mourning in full focusing mode, as the disc takes all of the different directions that Garden Of Storms shot out and hones them down, refining them into a much more tied and tighter release. Continue reading »

LOCK UP: “THE DREGS OF HADES”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 292021
 

 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by deathgrind superstars Lock Up, just released by Listenable Records.)

While everyone else was enjoying their holiday here in the States and those of us who worked retail dreaded the following day, your reviewer here was waiting patiently for that dreaded following day as well. Not because there was some innate urge to go trample someone in the charge to catch not only a potentially deadly disease but also a deal on a TV, but because that Friday also delivered to us an absolute bludgeoning of new releases to listen to. What this also provided was a fantastic case of genre-whiplash as Voices, In Mourning, and today’s subject Lock Up would also release their newest additions to their collective works.

The Dregs Of Hades is Lock Up‘s fifth full-length release in a pretty long career, but one that has seen newer releases becoming far more frequent than the gaps left between their second and third albums. It also has some new additions to the group. Notably, Nick Barker and his fantastic neverending drum fills have bowed out and Misery Index/Pig Destroyer drum-kit annihilator Adam Jarvis is in. Also, one of the changes that equally grabbed press was the return of Tomas Lindberg back into the fold on vocals – tag-teaming alongside Brutal Truth’s Kevin Sharp for an interesting hardcore punk tinge of gang shouts and dual-pronged vocal attacks to the group’s constantly hair-on-fire style of grind music. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 4): DEVILS REEF, VAELMYST, DISKORD

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 182021
 

 

(We reach the end of DGR‘s nearly week-long collection of reviews, in which he attempted to clear out the backlog of writing about favored releases before year-end Listmania descends.)

Devils Reef – A Whisper From The Cosmos

Even though the plague-times we live in currently mean that we have a whole army of musicians who effectively haven’t been able to do anything but be trapped at home, I still find myself very intrigued by the quick turnaround on certain releases. The Frederick, Maryland based crew of Devils Reef released their album Chosen By The Sea in January of this year and then early October saw the group return with five more songs in the form of an EP, A Whisper From The Cosmos – from one terrifying unexplored depth to another, it seems, just in the opposite direction.

There’s definitely some interesting stuff happening on A Whisper From The Cosmos. It seems that in the span of time between the two releases this year Devils Reef have really leaned into their influences and drew from a well that could see them being compared to Revocation and Alkaloid almost immediately. Makes sense then, that if you have a peek at some of the recommended releases by the band on their Bandcamp page, you’ll spot both Alkaloid’s Liquid Anatomy and The Outer Ones by Revocation among others. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 3): BE’LAKOR AND MAYSALOON

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 172021
 

 

(This is the third Part of a week-long series of reviews by DGR as he tries to clear out a back-log before year-end Listmania descends.)

Be’Lakor – Coherence

Australia’s prog-death long-form masters Be’lakor are now five albums deep into their career, with their latest record – and second for Napalm Records – Coherence releasing just a few days before Halloween this year. Despite the five-year gap between Coherence and its older sibling Vessels, there’s no sign whatsoever that Be’lakor are making any attempt to change what works for them.

Since 2009’s Stone’s Reach the run-times for their albums have consistently stayed within the fifty-five minute to one-hour range. Part of the experience has been listening to how the band try to earn their time with you, because in all honesty, with the absolute flood of metal that is out these days, it’s a pretty big ask that you invest an hour of your time with one specific group.

In Be’lakor‘s case though, they’ve nearly always earned the right to do so and have proven time and time again that their ‘no part left behind’ writing style can be made to work within the confines of the prog-minded melodeath scar that the band have carved into the Earth. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 2): ZORNHEYM AND BROKEN GLASS SANCTUARY

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 162021
 

 

(This is the second Part of a week-long series of reviews by DGR as he tries to clear out a back-log before year-end Listmania descends.)

Zornheym – The Zornheim Sleep Experiment

We do love a spectacle around these here parts, and the recent release of The Zornheim Sleep Experiment is certainly one of those. The group’s second album takes us back within their concept-album universe, guiding us into the darkened halls of a comically evil mental asylum and the psychological-horror-movie events that take place within it.

The Zornheim Sleep Experiment doesn’t step too far beyond the foundation laid by the group’s previous album Where Hatred Dwells And Darkness Reigns, but instead refines it a lot, at times aiming to be a little bit more bombastic and also allowing for a multi-pronged vocal attack to get a ton of mileage out of many a folk-metal-inspired chorus and hybrid melodeath and black metal movement. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE (PART 1): EXHUMED AND GRAND CADAVER

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 152021
 


Exhumed

 

(This is the first Part of a week-long series of reviews by DGR as he tries to clear out a back-log before year-end Listmania descends.)

With year-end season quickly approaching it’s time for the final sailing of the good review ship. This time, like every year, there’s a collective of music that’s been unleashed over the past few months – and earlier, because the search for new noise never really stops – that deserves to be written about.

Whether it’s a surprise release from a larger name or a ‘why did we never follow up on this’ way down the line, this attempt to briefly review a whole smorgasbord of metal releases that emerged over the last few months is an effort to get some names out there before year-end season fully takes over the website and yours truly does the annual exercise of numbering things for my own amusement.

Throwing yourself into the heavy metal maelstrom never stops being fun – especially when you emerge from the other side with no clear idea how you’re still standing – so who knows what else we might discover in the near future. In the meantime though, here’s the first installment of a huge batch of offerings that may please the musical hordes. Continue reading »

WHITE STONES: “DANCING INTO OBLIVION”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 282021
 

(Multiple listens and two months after the album’s release by Nuclear Blast, DGR now attempts to describe why the latest full-length by the Spanish prog-death band White Stones remains so fascinating.)

There are a few albums a year that I’ll fully own up to listening to and writing about here because they fascinate me. You can pinpoint those write-ups because I’ll often preface them with that exact statement. They’re albums where by the end of a long listening session I’m still not 100% sure where I stand on them, or they provide an indescribable difficulty in discussing why they continue to stick around.

Last year one of those albums was the Spanish death metal group White Stones‘ release Kaurahy. The Martin Mendez (of Opeth bassist fame) project’s first release was an amorphous number, one whose combination of folklore and prog-death sensibilities was hard to grasp on to. The darkened atmospheres and little light provided often felt like trying to kill a moth while it danced in and out of your flashlight’s beam, or like thinking you finally had a hold on a spiky ball and could grasp it only to have it turn completely smooth and move just outside your field of view again. It was, for lack of a better term, fascinating.

Not all of that album worked and it could at times come off a little samey and would blur together, yet an album that many were expecting to be a sort of prog-death masterpiece, given its pedigree, turning out to be an oddly discordant beast that was more often ugly groove than it was fully death was a surprising turn.

You can definitely find value in consistency though, and one year later the group behind White Stones return to us again, this time with an album entitled Dancing Into Oblivion, and save for a couple of notable changes it is once again a fascinating album. Continue reading »

FRONTIERER: “OXIDIZED”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 282021
 

(The mainly Scottish extremists Frontierer released their new album on October 1st, and DGR reviews it here.)

You probably could’ve sensed this one coming like a killer in a slasher film hiding just outside the frame, given how we salivated at the opportunity to cover anything the group did in the lead up to this one’s release.

Frontierer have made a name for themselves over recent years. The Scotland and US union of musicians – most of whom also play in Sectioned, who released my top album of 2019 with Annihilated – have burrowed impressively deep into the tech and mathcore scene. Conjuring old ghosts that could see the band being genre-blood-brothers with a group like Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza (whose last two albums are just relentless) as well as hybridizing influences from Dillinger Escape Plan, the off-kilter rhythms of Car Bomb, and the big, earth-shaking grooves of a band like Meshuggah is a damned lofty way to find yourself described. Yet the sound that Frontierer have forged for themselves on releases like Unloved and their newest album Oxidized is likely going to see them being mentioned in the same breath as those other names often. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries