May 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The last two weeks have been out of the ordinary here, and the next 10 days will be too. In the weeks now past I and a few of my NCS comrades joined forces with a lot of other terrific volunteers to help put on the 3-day Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. (See above, just after we finished last Saturday night.) The fest was fantastic, but it didn’t leave me enough clear-headed time to do the usual weekend posts for NCS.

During the past week I had some good post-fest outings in the Seattle area with DGR and Andy Synn. That put a crimp in my usual new-music listening. And now, beginning on Wednesday of this coming week, we’re all going to venture to Baltimore with other friends to take in Maryland Deathfest. That makes it highly unlikely I will be doing the usual NCS posts next weekend either.

The wall of possibilities for this roundup and the blacker one tomorrow is enormous. I scraped against it, sort of like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption digging through the wall of his cell with a tiny rock hammer, except I don’t have 19 years to get the job done. Here’s what I chipped away for today. Continue reading »

Oct 052023
 

(Our Denver-based contributor Gonzo is back with another end-of-month column, recommending five albums released in September that he thoroughly enjoyed.)

I have to admit that I love fall, if for no other reason than the temperatures stop trying to boil me alive.

Music-wise, though, there was actually too much good shit that came out in September than I had time to write about, so I had to trim down some stuff that otherwise would’ve appeared here. But I loved what ended up making the cut – some of it was full of surprises, and some of it was stuff that lived up to the hype.

Let’s get weird. Continue reading »