(written by Islander)
If you missed yesterday’s roundup of new music you missed some very good and very diverse tunes. You also missed my alert about a request for help I’ll be making to our readers tomorrow. Catch up on all of that if you can.
For today’s assembly of black and blackish metal I picked four songs from albums that will be released later this month or in December, plus two EPs that I caught up with in the last couple of days. Continue reading »
these plus one
(written by Islander)
The last time I compiled a Saturday roundup of new songs and videos was 21 days ago. No need to go into the reasons for that (because I’ve previously shared them). Needless to say (but of course I’m saying it), the volume of new musical extremity that has emerged since then has reached towering proportions.
As the days passed I continued keeping lists and open tabs, and visited many of those locations to do some listening yesterday and this morning, but it was still just a relatively small dent in that looming edifice of new sounds.
To sort of make up for being AWOL for the past three Saturdays, I’ve made this roundup a big one — a baker’s dozen of songs (and one short EP). Recency being primacy, I tended to lean toward newer things at the top of my list.
As you’ll see, I also tended to lean toward prominent and familiar names, but eventually descended deeper under ground. I also loaded almost all the videos on the front end — eight of them to start. And much of what’s coming, including the first four songs in a row, delivers the kind of high-speed intensity that gets hearts hammering. Continue reading »
Unsurprisingly, I have accumulated quite a lot of new music I want to share since the last of these round-ups almost one week ago. I’ve picked four new songs for the following collection and have plans to highlight a few more on Saturday.
FRIGORIS
In 2016 we had the privilege of premiering the third album, Nur Ein Moment…, by the atmospheric black metal group Frigoris. As I wrote then, “Through the course of the album’s six long tracks Frigoris move from passages of soft, ethereal beauty to storms of surging blackened power, interweaving elements of black metal, post-metal and doom to create a journey through a changing emotional landscape of peaks and valleys.”
That album was the beginning of a concept that reaches its conclusion on the band’s fourth album, …In Stille, which will be released by Hypnotic Dirge Records on January 24th. The first song I’ve selected for today’s collection is one from the new Frigoris album that was revealed just yesterday, and it makes a powerful first impression of the new record. Continue reading »
(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Belgian black metal band Enthroned, which was releasd by Season of Mist on Friday, June 7.)
The human brain works in some funny ways (well, mine does anyway).
Conditioned as it is, by thousands upon thousands of years of evolution, to discern patterns in the surrounding world, sometimes it makes unconscious connections between things which the conscious mind would never have thought to put together.
For instance, ever since receiving the promo for Cold Black Suns I’ve been unable to shake this idea that, on a certain level, Enthroned have a lot in common with Sepultura.
Not musically of course – the two bands could hardly be more different – but it’s undeniable that the careers of both groups are defined/delineated by two distinct phases, each with their respective fans and detractors, and that the split between the two eras can, in simple (and far from comprehensive) terms be put down to a dramatic change in vocalist/frontman.
The difference, however, is that while latter-day Sepultura has proven rather divisive and uneven over the years (though not without its high points), the modern version of Enthroned have only gone from strength to strength, to the point where it seems like a majority of the band’s fans now recognise their current incarnation as the definitive one. Continue reading »
Cold Black Suns
I’m assuming everyone knows that Darkthrone will be releasing a new album named Old Star through Peaceville Records on May 31st. Fenriz says that he and Ted will be continuing in the style of Arctic Thunder — “BLACK OLD HEAVY METAL with slow thrash, classic doom and slow death metal” — which is just fine by me. The album is available for pre-order HERE.
With that piece of news out of the way, I’m devoting the rest of this post to things we can hear right now.
ENTHRONED
Cold Black Suns is the new album by the almighty Enthroned, their 11th full-length in a career that stretches back a quarter-century. Their new label Season of Mist will release it on June 7th. The first song in today’s collection, “Silent Redemption,” comes from that album and premiered a couple days ago at Ghost Cult Magazine. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn returns to his irregular series devoted to things that come in five’s, the focus of this one being metal album art.)
The phrase “never judge a book by its cover” was obviously uttered by someone who’d never found themselves stranded in a busy bookshop and frozen by indecision over which of the many, many options to spend their hard-earned cash on.
Of course while I agree with the sentiment in principle – style is no substitute for substance after all, and a shiny package is no guarantee of superior contents – the truth is that human beings are very visual creatures, and an eye-catching cover, one which hints at the themes and manifest delights contained within, can be the difference between finding a new reader and being consigned to the bottom of the bargain bin at the end of the month.
The same obviously applies when we’re talking about albums too. Yes, the move towards a primarily digital market has had an impact on the means and methodology behind how new albums are accessed and presented (though apparently physical sales have been rebounding quite a bit recently), but the importance of good album art still shouldn’t be understated. Continue reading »
John Martin: “The Deluge” (1834)
As I mentioned yesterday, the past week brought good song and video premieres in a flood, which was unfortunate only in the sense that I didn’t have time to write about all those discoveries day-by-day as they happened. So this weekend I decided to just flood you with them, leaving behind all but some short snippets of my own sparkling prose and mainly delivering the streams, along with release info.
Yesterday I collected 11 (!) new songs and videos, plus a couple of tantalizing news items, and today I’ve got 12 more, plus a few more news items. Once again, I present them in alphabetical order:
AMBIENT DEATH
The Song: “Apotheosis of the Hangman”
From: Dismembering the Image of God
Release info: self-released by the band on April 7; below is a new video for the opening track
Vicious melodic death metal with flying fretwork that gets more interesting and seductive as the song progresses. Punches pretty damned hard, too. Continue reading »
(In one fell swoop, Andy Synn reviews three superb new albums — by Enthroned, Infestus, and Horizon Ablaze — and we bring you the streaming premiere of a song from Horizon Ablaze.)
It may only be early April but 2014 has already produced numerous candidates for my own personal End of Year list/s. And it looks like it’s going to be a very bleak, blackened year indeed.
So, to highlight the wealth of majestic misanthropy that has already appeared this year, I’ve selected three examples of Black Metal at its finest, three albums that richly deserve to be feared and worshipped in their own right, three artists who may yet lay claim to the crooked crown.
Each one has its own allure, its own character, from the uncompromising, to the unknowable, to the unorthodox. Each one has its own voice and style, from the demonic, to the despairing, to the deranged. Yet each one is united by an undercurrent of remorseless passion and refusal to follow the path of others. Each one a visceral, violent, dissonantly melodic and brutally infectious example of blackened musical magick. Continue reading »
I have a lot of new discoveries from the preceding 24 hours that I want to share with you today in between the two premieres we have scheduled. I’ve divided them into two of these “Seen and Heard” posts. In this first one I tried to mix things up. Some of what’s here isn’t metal, but it’s all good.
ENTHRONED
As I previously reported in these pages, Agonia Records will be releasing the 10th studio album by Belgium’s Enthroned on April 15. The title is Sovereigns, and it’s now available for pre-order at this location. Earlier, I featured the first advance track from the album (“Of Feathers and Flames”), and today Noisey premiered another one — “Of Shrines and Sovereigns”. This one is ravaging and rapacious, but it also includes a somber interlude, something similar to Gregorian chant that transforms into a black metal processional, and it really makes the song.
Enthroned’s Facebook page can be accessed through this link. Here’s the new track: Continue reading »
I thought about saving the two songs in this post until our next round-up of new music, but I’m too excited to wait.
ENTHRONED
A scant six days ago I received the news in my e-mail inbox that Agonia Records will be releasing the 10th studio album by Belgium’s Enthroned on April 15. The title is Sovereigns, and it’s now available for pre-order at this location. I wrote about that news even though I had no music to share, because hell… it’s Enthroned!
Now I have new music to share. “Of Feathers and Flames” is the song’s name. It’s both a blitzkrieg assault of feral power and a stomping death march, both a ravaging storm and a swirling fog of funereally bleak melody, both a merciless battlefield fusillade and a dismal downpour of staggering hammer blows. After being stunned by 2012’s Obsidium I had very high hopes for Sovereigns. Sounds like expectations will be met. Continue reading »