BECAUSE WITTY YEAR-END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS — THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART FOUR: 20-11

 LISTMANIA 2024  8 Responses »
Dec 192024
 

(We’ve made it to the fourth installment of DGR‘s Top 50 year-end list, with another block of 10 releases being ranked, and one more section slated for arrival tomorrow.)

You ever do something constantly even though you’ve known for a while that it is taking a lot out of you and driving other people insane? I have habits that I can’t break and sometimes think that long ago we evolved past yearly ‘tradition’ and into something in the warehouse of yearly ‘ritual’ instead.

This YE list series is my closing act in a way, the final signing off, tying of the bow and boot out rifling out the door of my writing for 2024. The final summation in many ways of everything up to this point even though it’s the one time I allow my writing to really veer off the officious sounding mark and into casual territory, as if we’re sitting across the table from one another, and I – in my incredulously drunk state – have achieved inebriated Buddha status and am ready to guide along my vision of the eight-fold path of heavy metal and wild-eyed lunacy.

The realer reason of course is that it helps break up the daily routine and gives me reason to sit cross-legged in front of the computer and just type endlessly, laughing about how I’ve never learned how to type properly and am of the school of ‘whatever finger is closest, thumb is for space bar and I use my pinky if I’m feeling fancy’ yet am still somehow in the one-hundred words per minute range. It’s stupid, but it helps break up the end of the year when I feel like I’m just running in endless loops. Continue reading »

ETERNAL STORM – A GIANT BOUND TO FALL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 152024
 

(Andy Synn offers some insight into A Giant Bound to Fall, out tomorrow on Transcending Obscurity)

Spanish sensations Eternal Storm have found themselves in an interesting position in the run-up to the release of their long-awaited, highly-anticipated, second album, A Giant Bound to Fall.

The group’s first full-length, 2019’s fantastic Come the Tide, was such a breath of fresh air in a segment of the scene which had, for the most part, grown rather stagnant that many outlets (including this one) declared it to be one of the best albums of the year.

But success like that can be just as much of a curse as a blessing, setting such a high bar – one inevitably raised even higher by the sheer flush of excitement engendered by a new discovery – that nothing they ever do afterwards will ever be judged to match it.

And with the not-insignificant gap between their first and second releases having raised audience expectations ever further, the question now is – can Eternal Storm recapture that same Melodic Death Metal magic from their debut or are they… bound to fall?

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETERNAL STORM — “LONE TREE DOMAIN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 052023
 

It’s already quite evident that as good a year as 2023 has been for metal, 2024 is going to start off with a big BANG! as a new universe of annual music begins another rapid expansion. Part of the early-year explosion is a new album by the Spanish progressive/melodic death metal band Eternal Storm that’s set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on February 10th.

The album’s name is A Giant Bound to Fall, and it follows Eternal Storm‘s very impressive first full-length, 2019’s Come the Tide, which our own Andy Synn reviewed here, calling it “a brilliant album, from start to finish, and one which might just restore your faith in the Melodic side of Death Metal”.

To help pave the way for the new record, Transcending Obscurity has released two singles so far, and today we’re bringing you a third one — “Lone Tree Domain“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ETERNAL STORM, HESPER PAYNE, THUNRAZ, BEFORE THE DAWN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 212023
 

Oh hell what a week it’s been. One of those weeks when I’ve barely had time to write up the premieres I agreed to do, much less focus on other new music and videos. So now I’m staring at all the links to the stuff I wanted to check out, featuring big names known to all and names I’ve never seen before. Time is still short, but I’d better make a start and then hope to fill in more tomorrow and Sunday.

ETERNAL STORM (Spain)

In 2019 we gave a lot of attention to this Spanish band’s debut album Come the Tide. It popped up on a lot of the year-end lists we posted, and a lot of year-end lists at other sites acclaimed it as well.

To quote only from our own staff, Andy Synn (who included Come the Tide on his list of 2019’s Great Albums) wrote that “if there’s one band who might just be able to kickstart a brand new Melodic Death revolution, it’s Eternal Storm“, and DGR (who put the album at No. 14 on his year-end list) summed it up as “a master class of progressive death and melodeath hybridization that makes an hour just fly by”. And for my part, I hosted a song premiere and then put a different song on our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 2): MISÞYRMING AND ETERNAL STORM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  4 Responses »
Jan 062020
 

 

Admittedly, I began this year’s Most Infectious Song list in unusual fashion yesterday, diving deep into the underground with songs by unheralded bands from records released on the very last day of last year. However, these next two songs come from better-known bands (though their names are not yet on the tip of every metalhead’s tongue) and from 2019 albums that have received quite a bit more attention (but still not enough).

MISÞYRMING

Misþyrming’s 2015 debut album Söngvar elds og óreiðu opened a lot of eyes — opened them so wide you could see the whites showing all ’round. But these Icelanders were even better than we knew, because four years later they decided to throw us a curveball. Rather than build on the success of their debut with slight iterations on a proven formula, they spread their wings and flew in a noticeably different direction.

I’m not arguing that their second album Algleymi is better than the first one (choosing between them is a very difficult decision), but the fact that they followed their creative impulses even at the risk of not merely surprising people but perhaps even leaving some behind is worth a big round of applause. Of course, I probably still wouldn’t be applauding if their new one weren’t so fucking good. Continue reading »

ALTERNATIVE RELEASE DAY ROUNDUP

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 202019
 


Apparatus

 

(Andy Synn presents an extra-large Friday round-up of highly recommended new releases, from Apparatus, Consummation, Crypt Sermon,  Eternal Storm, Foscor, Haunter, Soheil Al Fard, Toadeater, Weight of Emptiness, and Witch Vomit.)

Inundated and overwhelmed with new releases as we are here at NCS it’s no surprise that a lot of albums this year have gone unpraised and unremarked upon.

And this situation looks likely to only get worse going into the last quarter of the year, as there’s a frankly astounding number of new albums yet to come before 2019 draws to a close.

Heck, today alone sees highly-anticipated new releases from Cult of Luna and White Ward, an unexpectedly killer comeback from Exhorder, as well as some seriously good new records from less well-exposed, but no less deserving, artists like Coffins, Engulfed, Urn, and more.

But, chances are you’re likely to have already read a lot about all those bands, either here or elsewhere.

So, instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to draw your attention to a bunch of albums (some big, some small) that you may have missed over the last few days/weeks/months. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETERNAL STORM — “THE SCARLET LAKE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 282019
 

 

The Spanish melodic death metal band Eternal Storm made their advent in 2013 with an EP named From the Ashes, and followed that the next year with one of the wonderful splits released in the Elemental Nightmares series (which is how we first learned about the band). Now, five years later and with a new drummer in the line-up, Eternal Storm are poised to release their debut album, Come the Tide, which Transcending Obscurity Records will reveal in its fullness on August 23rd.

The talents of Eternal Storm were quite evident even in the nascency of those previous releases, but those talents have flourished in striking fashion on this new album, which demonstrates the kind of assured compositional complexity that finds a sublime balance between emotionally involving melody and physically compulsive heaviness. The song we’re presenting today, “The Scarlet Lake“, is a great example of those qualities, a multi-faceted and completely captivating piece in which the minutes fly by. Continue reading »