AN NCS PREMIERE (AND REVIEW): EVEALE – ENTER THE WOODLAND REALM

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 302026
 

(Andy Synn is here to guide you on a journey… into the woodland realm)

There are lots of different factors one can use to analyse, criticise, and appraise a band… ambition, execution, innovation, intention.

But the one that’s more important than any of them – in my opinion, at least – is passion.

And make no mistake, Eveale is very much a passion-project for its members (whose work you may have heard in bands like Am I In Trouble? and Ashenheart) whose goal on Enter the Woodland Realm – which releases on Friday but we’re premiering exclusively here today – is to channel their love of Black Metal, in all its forms, into nine rich, evocative songs that pay tribute both to the history of the genre and to the glory of nature.

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SHADES OF BLACK: EVEALE

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Mar 152026
 

(written by Islander)

I don’t have much to share with you in today’s column. I spent a lot of time yesterday unsuccessfully trying to solve a security glitch that disabled my administrative access to NCS, and then more time communicating with our web host and third-party security service and staring at the in-box waiting for them to figure out the problem and fix it. Listening to and writing about music got elbowed out of the way.

The web host did eventually fix the problem by disabling the CAPTCHA feature on the site, which I guess is now forcing some visitors to re-register here and/or re-set passwords. Sorry about that. To celebrate the fix, and to flush away the anxiety caused by the fear that we wouldn’t be able to post anything on Monday (including premieres I’d committed to do), I went out last night and drank too much.

That led to a very late start on this Sunday, which compounded the problem of not getting a head-start on the column yesterday. To further compound the problems, my spouse and I are leaving home very soon to visit a family member who’s recovering from an injury.

I thought about just abandoning the column for this one day, but as you probably know, I hate leaving any days without music at NCS. So here is just one thing I’d like to recommend. Continue reading »