OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 1)

 Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015  9 Responses »
Dec 242015
 

Wolfheart video clip-2

 

And so it begins, the last piece of our year-end LISTMANIA extravaganza: For the seventh year in a row, I present my list of the year’s “most infectious extreme metal songs”. As I’ve done in the past, my goal is to roll out this list gradually, with one installment per day (including weekends and holidays) until I’m finished, and usually with two songs in each installment. This is a goal, not a promise, because life is too damned unpredictable.

I will add that, as in most other years, I’m starting the rollout before actually finishing the list. Because it’s a work in progress, I don’t know how long it will be. My goal (not a promise) is to finish it before the end of January. To be clear, this is an unranked list; there’s no rhyme or reason to the order in which I’m announcing the songs.

To get a running start, I’m including three songs instead of two in each of the first five installments of the series, and these groupings aren’t random; they may not make sense to anyone but me, but I have my reasons for putting them together as I have.

Okay, let’s get started — and if you don’t know what I mean by “most infectious songs”, go HERE for an explanation. Continue reading »

ENSHINE: “SINGULARITY”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 202015
 

Enshine-Singularity

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Enshine.)

Jari Lindholm is one of those musicians who surrounds himself with incredible talent, having been involved now in a handful of projects over the years  and beginning to find himself having multiple releases within one year. Two of the projects that he is a part of are two-man melo-doom groups. Though they lie on different sides of a very finite spectrum, both are still playing a brand of ethereal doom that has always felt decidedly European, even as more groups in North America seem to be mastering it recently.

The first release of these two-man collaborations hit earlier this year, with Exgenesis releasing its first EP in the form of the soul-crushing bleakness of Aphotic Veil. Exgenesis sees Lindholm paired with musician Alejandro Lotero for a project that spans a pretty good chunk of the globe. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): ENSHINE, CRYPTOPSY, NECROSAVANT, FOREVER OBSCURED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 282015
 

Enshine-Singularity

 

(DGR steps up for round-up duty, and he prepared a really big round-up, so big that your humble editor decided to divide it into two parts.)

In case you missed it, Friday was a kind of slow date for the site. We’ve had times like this before, where various outside influences conspire to make sure that we post with the speed at which animals are able to escape the La Brea Tar Pits. That doesn’t mean we weren’t up here in space, lookin’ down on you and keeping track of various rumblings going throughout the web.

I’ve gathered together eight fairly recent developments in the heavy metal world for you all to enjoy. As usual, I’ve tried to catch stuff that has flown under the radar and mix it in with a few things that have likely made a big splash across the web already. This collection of stories covers a pretty good swath of the globe in terms of distance but has a foot heavily planted in the death metal and doom metal realms, making a few labored grasps to the outside genre world.

ENSHINE

In case you missed it, we here at NCS have a bit of a soft spot for the melo-doom band Enshine and all their related shenanigans. The group recently allowed us to premiere their song “Adrift”, and that song was an awesome teaser of things to come for the group’s upcoming album Singularity. Recently, Enshine uploaded another song to the web in the form of “Resurgence” and boy, in NCS parlance, is it a doozy. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENSHINE — “ADRIFT”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Sep 132015
 

Enshine-Singularity

 

The multinational collective known as Enshine released their debut album Origin in 2013, a record that our reviewer DGR praised as “devastatingly beautiful”, one that “takes us to that snow-filled, cold, and desolate place where we sometimes long to be and lets us sit and watch the world move as it speaks to us.” Now Enshine have completed their second album, entitled Singularity, and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s first advance track — “Adrift” — in advance of its October 18 release.

Origin was packed with atmospheric songs capable of taking listeners outside themselves and transporting them to vividly realized spheres crafted by their own imagination. We chose one of those songs (“Ambivalence”) for our list of 2013’s “Most Infectious” extreme metal songs, and “Adrift” has quickly become a candidate for this year’s list. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 23

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  32 Responses »
Feb 082014
 

Welcome to Part 23 of our list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the three songs I’m announcing today, click here.

Today’s three songs have something in common. Although the bands don’t all fit neatly together under precisely the same genre heading, to varying degrees the music falls in a place where doom, melodic death metal, and a melancholy aching intersect.

ENSHINE

This Swedish/French collective put out their debut album Origin in 2013, and DGR reviewed it for us here. In an effort to capture its sense of devastating beauty, he wrote this:

“I know I am going to like a disc like this if it takes me to a certain place I have set aside in my head, one of empty spaces, snow falling from the sky, long-since devastated cities. Places that you just know were beautiful long ago, and the sense of fragility that these vacant places emanates makes them beautiful now….  Origin takes us to that snow-filled, cold, and desolate place where we sometimes long to be and lets us sit and watch the world move as it speaks to us.”

Continue reading »

ENSHINE: “ORIGIN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 052013
 

(DGR reviews the recently released album by a multi-national collective who call themselves Enshine.)

This is probably one of the most pretentious-sounding opening paragraphs I have ever written and for that I sincerely apologize.

One of the things that has always drawn me to the specific brand of European death-doom that Enshine wallows in is the sense of ethereal beauty that seems to weave its way through each song. Groups like October Tide and Swallow The Sun have mastered it; and bands like In Mourning incorporate many of these elements as well. Yes, it usually is tied into the feelings and delivery of melancholy and depression, but for some reason I’ve always found that stuff like that has a certain aura to which I am unerringly attracted. A person described it to me once, in reference to Swallow the Sun’s Hope disc, as devastatingly beautiful. I know I am going to like a disc like this if it takes me to a certain place I have set aside in my head, one of empty spaces, snow falling from the sky, long-since devastated cities. Places that you just know were beautiful long ago, and the sense of fragility that these vacant places emanates makes them beautiful now. If an album can take me to that place, evoke those images, then it’s almost guaranteed I will enjoy it. And so, even though I finally bit into Origin by Enshine during a heatwave out where I live, I find myself entranced by it.

Enshine is the two-man project of Jari Lindholm (Seas Of Tears, ex-Slumber) and Sebastian Pierre (Fractal Gates, Inborn Suffering). The group was founded in 2009 as a solo project for Jari, but eventually Sebastian would find his way into the group. According to their Facebook page they spent about two years in the studio working on what would become Origin, with the final dates being wrapped up in 2012. Hence, if you look them up elsewhere and see that even though they’ve been around for four years they only have Origin to their name, you will know why. Quality does take time, and who knows what was happening behind the curtain that could stall an album recording? All we really know is what we have in front of us, which is an excellent hybrid of death metal and doom metal that spreads out enough melody and melancholy to make this an enjoyable listen. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PATHOLOGY, FIRST REIGN, CHALICE OF DOOM, AND ENSHINE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 152013
 

Here are a few new things I came across since our last post from yesterday that got me excited.

PATHOLOGY

The first item is at the top of this post. It’s another creation of the masterful Par Olofsson, the cover for the next album by San Diego’s Pathology. Yesterday the band announced that the album will be entitled Lords of Rephaim and will be released on September 3 by Sevared Records (the band having completed their three-album commitment as the fish out of water at Victory Records). Based on previous reports, this new album will feature the return of singer Matti Way and original guitarist Tim Tiszczenko. I’m ready.

http://www.pathologymusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/PathologyMusic

Next, get a load of this new cover art: Continue reading »