DELIVERED AT THE SPEED OF PRINT: BLACK AND WHITE DISCOVERIES — SIBERIAN HELL SOUNDS, A BAND OF ORCS, AETHER REALM

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 162015
 

 

(DGR hath delivered the following round-up of two new EPs and one new single.)

It’s been a little while since I’ve had time to really trawl around the internet and pen up one of these humongous roundups — mostly because smaller descriptions have been mutating into full album reviews. Often, I’ve used this kind of feature to help folks catch up with stuff they might have missed (or that we missed) and discover things that may have happened weeks ago, but flew under our collective radars. This time we’re having a little fun and attempting to bring a theme with this one — the theme of desaturated artwork, because what is more METAL than black-and-white artwork?

The answer is “nothing”, for it is bereft of all color, like our hardened and blackened souls. So I present unto you the most recent collection of things I have found, which actually share not one, but two things connected to the printed format: They are in black-and-white, and I was really fucking slow in writing about them and getting them out to you. Continue reading »

AETHERIAN: “TALES OF OUR TIMES”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 122015
 

 

(DGR reviews the debut EP by Aetherian from Athens, Greece.)

Oftentimes, when a writer disappears for an extended length of time, the writer will usually return to the fold — because really, the muse is always calling, siren song being strangled from her (because really, we have to METAL around here) — with tail tucked between the legs, bevy of excuses in hand (most pretty valid), ‘aw shucks’ look on the face, and full of apologies, ready to be welcomed back with grand plans and a ton of material to work with.

I can’t do that this time. I disappeared because work kicked my ass. It’s been a well-known fact that NCS is a labor of love and it is our passion (and that of many others) that keeps the site running. We happen to be in a very blessed position where we don’t have to worry about ad-buys and traffic, and therefore we can sort of freely write about what strikes us. But our amateur status also opens up the scenario in which actual real life takes over, and for about a month and a half I was the aforementioned single digit that was being smashed into dust on Napalm Death’s Apex Predator. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “DORMANT HEART”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 052015
 

 

(DGR reviews the latest album by Sylosis.)

For a long time, there were few bands out there that I was willing to evangelize as much as Sylosis. Long before I ever got into the writing game, I would tell anyone who would lend me their ear about the band — a group I had initially checked out on a whim when my policy for checking out new music consisted of looking into albums that scored an eight and above on Blabbermouth.net’s review scale, a criterion that Sylosis’ 2008 release Conclusion Of An Age happened to satisfy.

To explain why the group held such a strong appeal to me, I have to own up to the fact that three genres were really my entryway into heavy metal, and they were melodeath, metalcore, and thrash metal. It’s probably a common event that those three tend to be the welcome mats, since a lot of what I view as “gateway bands” tend to fall into those genres, but I just had to highlight it, in part because, to be incredibly reductive, Sylosis‘ sound is a combination of those three genres. Continue reading »

NAPALM DEATH: “APEX PREDATOR (EASY MEAT)”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Napalm Death.)

Our crops had been weak for decades, our village was starving, and we found ourselves on the near brink of ruin. Famine had torn through the whole country, but my village was hit especially hard. We knew that there wasn’t much time left, and despite this being the modern age we had few solutions going for us. We had tried so many on the path to getting ourselves back up on our feet but nothing had worked. We were desperate and starving and we all knew it. Ideas once thought stupid were now grand gestures of genius and we were embracing them all wholeheartedly. If we had honestly thought that painting ourselves blue and pretending to be cat people would’ve worked, we would’ve done it.

Now, we found ourselves turning to a person that we honestly hadn’t thought about or given a second notion to for years. He was a relic of the past, kept alive mostly by fool traditionalists and relatives. Nobody cared to learn his art and so he was to be the last of his kind, yet here we were, three days running now in a smoke-filled tent with a man now in his upper eighties with body paint on, deep in thought and apparently asleep. We had turned to our shaman and were using him in the way that my grandparents would’ve sought knowledge with his father. We were hoping to hear something wise, anything, really, to get ourselves out of the mess of starvation that we were currently in.

Finally, after three days of being so still as to appear petrified were it not for the glistening beads of sweat on his forehead, he began to convulse. My friend jumped forward to help but my father held him back, informing him that this was how it had always gone and were anyone to interrupt him the whole process would have to start anew. And so, we sat and watched a man convulse until finally he opened his eyes and one our own ran out of the tent hollering to the village that he had awoken and was going to speak. Finally, he opened his mouth and uttered a few words of wisdom before closing his eyes and nodding off.

“Napalm Death are an important band” Continue reading »

INTO INFERNUS: “THE END OF EDEN”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 092015
 

(DGR reviews the second album by Into Infernus from Tampa, Florida.)

Sometimes you come across a band via Facebook surfing after bouncing between various band pages to the point where you don’t remember where you started. Into Infernus is one of those cases for me; I’m not sure who directly pointed me to them, but I found myself enjoying enough to share — even three months out from their album’s release.

Heavy metal as a genre is one that has embraced the idea of a concept album countless times over the years. Any other genre of music can do that, and many have plenty of examples, but it feels like heavy metal has had a lot of them just due to the theatrical aspect of the music. It often feels like bands sit around with regular concept discs and go, “Alright, now what if it was way heavier”, or, as some would argue, it feels like these groups are using the cathartic aspect of heavy metal, with all its screaming, fast-tempo songs, and heavy grooves, to really tell some dark stories. Continue reading »

HATE: “CRVSADE: ZERO”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jan 282015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Poland’s Hate.)

With most musical sub-genres and regional scenes, I have found that most people will have what I call a three- to four-pillar series of bands. These groups are generally the more popular bands. and sometimes even the cream of the crop. They do what they do the best and have come to define their particular musical realm.

In the case of the Polish death metal scene — which is a dangerous one to bandy about, since it seems like huge swaths of it have become the “blackened death metal scene” — the imperialistic, riff-heavy, relentless-blast-and-shouted brand of death metal that has hailed from Poland, and it seems like only from there for some time, would later become one of the progenitors, if not the most important one, for the sort of subtle genre-morph that Blackened Death Metal has gone through. It has reached the point where the two have almost become synonymous. Continue reading »

PROFANITY: “HATRED HELL WITHIN”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jan 142015
 

 

(DGR has found an EP released in December by a resurgent German band that he really seems to be enjoying, as he explains in this typically extended and typically entertaining review.)

Death metal groups reanimating from the dead after a decade-plus-long hiatus seems to be happening more in the underground scene these days. Given that some of these groups never had a huge reach to begin with, it seems slightly easier today for them to appear at different points in time after years of silence, but I also think that the internet has started to have a much bigger effect on the decision of groups to come back.

The net has become something of a great equalizer, where at least on the right sites, small bands with a handful of fans can appear on the same front page as a group in a bigger spotlight. This phenomenon has helped make it possible for people to re-discover bands who have been dormant for years, bands who may have struck out PR-wise or just never been lucky in breaking out of their region, and groups who were clearly onto something and the stars just didn’t align for them at the time.

Now, people have platforms upon which to preach about such groups, converting fans and at times encouraging people to reunite. Added to this is also the relative ease with which bands can reappear now, with sites like Bandcamp making it a breeze to set up shop and get themselves out there, so long as their recordings aren’t hot garbage. Continue reading »

HIGHER “CRITICISM”: RAUNCHY — “VICES. VIRTUES. VISIONS.”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  13 Responses »
Jan 122015
 

 

(DGR gets Raunchy… and he wrote this review. Your humble editor made a few intrusions in italics.)

It’s time to get a little silly don’t you think? We’ve covered a whole lot of really heavy shit over the past few weeks. It feels like we’ve covered a billion death metal bands and ground a million lists to dust. We’ve been in the murk-covered swamps of gore that metal comes from for far too long, and it’s time to lighten shit up around here. And personally, I feel like I’ve done enough with my year-end list, helping out with infectious song nominations, and sharing groups like Unbeheld out there that it’s time to swing the pendulum back in the other direction. This site needs equilibrium — we can’t let people actually think we’re going to take our own name seriously, now can we?

Now, we could go in depth with what the fuck Myke Terry’s been up to lately — given that the man is partially responsible for the name of this site — but that feels a little uncouth. Instead, I propose we check back in with the guys in Raunchy.

More than a year ago I started my only real contribution to a series for the site, a “higher criticism” feature that began as a sort of joking half-take on a whole bunch of Raunchy albums [the last installment of which is here]. It was  a feature partially proposed to me on a dare by other NCS staff, because over the years the band’s name has made them the unfortunate butt of a few jokes and their sound, which combines a hefty dose of pop music with the more modern metal scene, has been one that could turn off people in our usual audience. This is how you wind up with a bunch of people sitting around a table going, “Let’s make the new guy do a Raunchy discog run.” Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: UNBEHELD — “UNBEHELD”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jan 082015
 

 

(DGR reviews the debut EP by a Canadian band named Unbeheld.)

And so, a new year dawns. We’re already close to a week into it and honestly things don’t seem that much different, other than the fact that we are still releasing a massive spate of lists as well as beginning to hammer our way through the seemingly never-ending and always growing list of infectious songs, eventually creating a huge playlist that will hopefully help people discover a huge batch of new bands when all is said and done.

Normally, around this time, you find all sorts of garbage floating around about resolutions, promises to be better people, “new year, new you”, like the fact that accidentally writing ’14 on all your dates for the next half month is going to somehow change you at the sub-atomic level and some brand new, fresh being is going to be borne of it.

I can’t make too many promises on that front, and given that I already got my scientifically accurate horoscope this year, I can consider that crossed off the list. What I can promise you is a grand NCS tradition of always poring over underground pages, trying to find new bands, writing reviews that are way too long for their own good, occasionally posting utter blasphemy in the form of clean-sung music on this site because it’s so good that people should be able to look past that, and discovering groups and discs far too late to be relevant to the initial burst that comes from a just-released new EP/album. Continue reading »

DGR’s Top 30 Albums For 2014, Provided Whether Or Not You Agree With Him, Which After Reading This Site For A While You Should Know By Now, But If Not Then That Is Okay Too

 LISTMANIA 2014  37 Responses »
Dec 162014
 

 

(Here is NCS writer DGR’s year-end list, preceded by a post title that he made himself, except for the commas.)

Coming up with an end-of-the-year list is always the most stressful thing for me, and 2014 was no different. It usually involves me combing through the reviews and going, “God, what the fuck even came out this year?!”, before I really start hashing something together.

Multiple events take place as I do this as well. I almost always wind up throwing onto the list a disc that came out the previous year — in fact, I’m still worried I might have let one slip by. I usually wind up letting the thing get way out of control, but I guaranfuckingtee you that the moment I publish it, I’m going to be putting one or two more albums retroactively on this list in the comments — as if it’s some sort of justice.

2014 was an interesting year. I found so much music that I enjoyed this time, and a lot of it not by bands that I listen to super-regularly. It was a lot of groups really coming into their own this time, or bands that, while good before, just put out massive releases. I know my top ten could start a couple arguments for being mainstream as fuck, but that tends to be my listening taste. I’m like a dog with a set of keys. They’re shiny and I love them, just make them jingle again. Continue reading »

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