GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, END-OF-SUMMER EDITION

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 152026
 

(Our Denver-based writer Gonzo had an eventful summer, and reported on some of those events in our pages, but he now returns to reviewing and recommending albums — six of them released earlier this year.)

Well, fuck.

To say the past three months have been busy would be my own personal understatement of the year. Said months included, in no particular order: My wedding, three festivals, one World Cup road trip, one trip to North Carolina to see Acid Bath at a brand-new venue in Asheville, and other random adventures I’m somehow blanking on. June now seems like a blurry haze, July was like a metalhead’s paradise, and August was mostly spent recovering.

As a result, life forced me to break routines and generally fall behind on business as usual this summer. Among the normal routines I broke: Posting my usual monthly roundup here. And like any routine, once it’s broken, it’s hard to get back on the horse and continue riding. As it turns out, my will to write prevails.

But now that we’re about 75% of the way through 2026, it’s been quite the year for heavy music—much of which we’ve already covered here. The following five albums are some of the best I’ve heard during that stretch that still slipped through the cracks. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FIRES IN THE DISTANCE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 182023
 


Photo by Matty Thrash

(Today we have another new interview by Comrade Aleks, and this time he talked with the band Fires in the Distance, whose second album saw release in April by Prosthetic Records.)

Melodic death-doom outfit Fires in the Distance was founded in Newington, Connecticut seven years ago. Their debut album Echoes from Deep November (2020) demonstrated the band’s good taste towards dark, melancholic music with natural emotional depth. Prosthetic Records released the band’s second full-length work Air Not Meant for Us on April 28, 2023, and we almost immediately got in touch with the band.

The album is an amazing voyage to the fragile realm of autumnal melancholy and an effective exercise in expressing hidden griefs.  Air Not Meant for Us grants high-level of melodies and drive at the same time, so it’s right to mention the names of those who stand behind the album: Craig Breitsprecher (bass, vocals), Jordan Rippe (drums), Yegor Savonin (guitars, synths), and Kristian Grimaldi (guitars, vocals).

Yet, not everything goes according the plan, and this interview with an anonymous member of the band was unfinished for reasons, speaking diplomatically, beyond our control. The album is worthy of your attention yet, and this interview will help to understand it a bit better. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: FATES WARNING, HINAYANA, FIRES IN THE DISTANCE, IHSAHN

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 292020
 


Fates Warning

 

(Because your humble NCS editor has done a shit job compiling new-music round-ups in recent weeks, our contributor Gonzo stepped up and offered to begin doing that himself on Fridays, and this is the first edition. It actually would have been posted yesterday, on Friday, except your humble editor fucked that up too.)

Suffice to say, it’s been a fucking weird year.

Weirder, perhaps, is the fact that so much new music keeps rolling out from all corners of the earth; weirder still is that most of it is quality material instead of half-assed live albums, comps, EPs, singles and cover albums.

Most of it.

(I’m looking at you, In Flames.)

Before I start spiraling into a tirade about my odious thoughts on the Clayman reboot, allow me to get right to it: Yesterday, August 28, marked another Friday in this endlessly bizarre, dystopian and occasionally terrifying timeline we all just call “2020,” and it marked another day of new metal coming to assault our eardrums.

This one’s a glorious mix of old and new, and some stuff I’ve been anxiously awaiting for a while. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FIRES IN THE DISTANCE — “THE CLIMB”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 282020
 

 

Fires in the Distance is a Connecticut-based band that includes three members of the long-running melodic death metal project Archaic Decapitator. Their friendship and existing familiarity with each other’s talents created a smooth path into this new project, but the musical conception of Fires in the Distance gave it a distinct identity, one that draws upon death/doom influences as well as inclinations toward atmospheric and progressive metal. Among their inspirations, the band cite such groups as Man-Eating Tree, Type O, Enshine, Swallow The Sun, Amorphis, and Dark Tranquillity.

The band’s debut album, Echoes From Deep November, is now set for release on May 22nd. Conceptually, as the band have told us, “The record primarily encompasses a perpetual struggle with mental health, primarily living with major depression. The songs generally reflect the progression of going through the peaks and valleys of torment and internal rationalization of existing with chronic mental illness.”

Serious and decidedly melancholy subjects, to be sure, and the music does indeed have strong emotional resonance. But listening to it is far from a depressive experience, as you’ll discover through our premiere of the album’s opening track, “The Climb“. Continue reading »