(After a hiatus, we present another edition of Andy Synn’s three-line reviews.)
According to my records (or vague recollections) it’s been almost ten months since the last edition of ‘Reviews in Haikus’… and this simply will not stand!
So, since I have a backlog of unreviewed albums as long as the Seine, I’ve selected three albums from our Gallic cousins which deserve some attention to cover here.
So, without further ado… Continue reading »
The flood of outstanding new metal is unceasing. I actually wouldn’t mind a break — not long, mind you, maybe a week or 10 days of absolutely no new music at all. But since that won’t happen, I’ll continue doing my best to tread water and keep my flaring nostrils above the tide.
Here’s a collection of new tracks that I sifted from those that appeared late last week. In genre terms, they’re all over the map.
GLORIOR BELLI
It has gotten increasingly difficult to predict what Glorior Belli is going to do from album to album, or even from song to song. The one you’ll find below is “Deserters From Eden“, the first single off this French band’s new album, The Apostates. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn revives an old, irregular series of album reviews in haiku. Three reviews of three lines each come after the jump. With music, of course.)
REVIEWS IN HAIKUS
It’s been quite a while
Since I’ve done one of these. Let’s
See if I still can! Continue reading »
I had planned a very large round-up of recent music for today. It’s not finished yet, but I still have hopes. Yet as I try to catch up on sharing metal that I discovered over the last week, I continue to be overtaken by metal that has appeared within the last hour or two. Rather than try to cram these new discoveries into that planned round-up, I’m setting that aside so I can bring you this trio of items while they’re still hot off the presses.
WORMED
I’m going to assume that everyone knows Wormed has a new album named Krighsu, and that it will be essential listening here in the first quarter of 2016. And now you can get started listening to it, because a full album stream premiered today at DECIBEL. Continue reading »
Here’s Part 19 of our list of the year’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 songs I’m announcing today, click here.
Yes, I missed adding an installment of the list yesterday. I blame my continuing delirium over the Seahawks’ victory in the Superb Owl. And yes, it’s February and I still haven’t finished this list. I blame metal, for giving us so much to like in 2013. Now, with those excuses out of the way, here are three songs I’ve grouped together because, well, because they rock. And they’re vocally vicious, too.
TRIBULATION
Not every song on this list comes from an album that ranked high on a plethora of year-end lists, but this next one does. The Formulas of Death deserves all the praise it has received from so many quarters. It is a highly ambitious, remarkably accomplished album, full to bursting with musical ideas and hell-bent on breaking free of any kind of death metal strait-jacket that might confine the band’s creativity. It leavens the raw and the raucous with the exotic and the atmospheric — it’s a long album, but it’s endlessly interesting.
Tribulation don’t go in for cheap tricks, but they sure do know how to get heads moving when the mood strikes them. In the “highly infectious” category, the two strongest contenders are “Wanderer In the Outer Darkness” and “When the Sky Is Black With Devils”. I picked the latter. Continue reading »
The subjects of this post are three full-album streams now available for listening.
The first is Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls by the French band Glorior Belli. It will be released on November 12 by Agonia Records. Our man BadWolf gave it a favorable review here. Three of your five regular NCS writers consider it one of the year’s best albums (and the other two haven’t weighed in). The full stream premiered yesterday at Stereogum, but you can also listen to it here, after the jump.
The second is a full stream of the new album by Sepultura, The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must be the Heart, which will be released in NorthAm by Nuclear Blast on October 29. In the US, the album is streaming exclusively at Metal Sucks, so you’ll need to go here to listen.
In light of certain accusations leveled at Nuclear Blast for not playing nice with web sites who don’t favorably review their releases, I thought it interesting that MS was selected for this stream, since their reviewer didn’t treat the album very well. We haven’t reviewed the album yet, and I haven’t heard it. But it’s Sepultura, and I thought that fact alone made the stream newsworthy. Here, by the way, is the album cover: Continue reading »
(BadWolf is back with a review of the stupendous new album by those swamp lords from France, Glorior Belli.)
I’ve gotten in a few discussions about Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls, the new album by France’s Glorior Belli—already a mark in the record’s favor. People seem to be of two camps regarding the band’s unqiue—and oftentimes infuriating—mixture of black metal and blues rock. Glorior Belli begs the question: where does meaningful experimentation end and gimmick begin? Their choice of blending ingredients doesn’t seem meaningful on the surface, or organic. It’s certainly hard to get right judging by their previous album, 2011’s The Great Southern Darkness, which suffered from an incoherent production that often reduced the band’s experimenting into mush. However, if this year’s iteration is any indication, Glorior Belli is no gimmick, despite an irreverent tone.
On Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls, the blues licks overpower the black metal foundation. Only the first leaked song, “I Asked For Wine, but He Gave Me Blood” has more grime than blue notes. A cursory listen to opener “Blackpowder Roars” reveals squealing Les Paul pentatonics and some swing time drumming. The album benefits first and foremost from some added clarity and a boosted bass sound—like Skeletonwitch did earlier this year, Glorior Belli show credence to the raw power of the Rickenbacker! Songs like the mostly instrumental “A Hoax, a Croc!” greatly benefit from the separated instruments, as for most of the record the bass and each guitar play distinctly different lines—it’s a rich, complex sound that somehow goes down smooth. Continue reading »
Well, I made it back home from Idaho last night. Thanks to the wind gods, the smoke that had shrouded the valley where I was working cleared long enough for the plane to take off. I took a few pics from outside the airport to show what was going on back in the direction I’d just come from. I’ll put those at the end of this post. But first things first: here are three kickass new songs (one of which comes with an eye-popping video) that I came across late last night after I got home.
BROKEN HOPE
You want an old-school band who make death metal sound fresh? I give you Broken Hope. I’m getting more and more pumped up about their new album Omen of Disease (their first in 14 years). One week ago we streamed the first advance track from the album (“The Flesh Mechanic”). And then yesterday the band’s label started giving away a second track (you’ve got to surrender your e-mail address to get it). This one is called “Ghastly”, and it’s just as striking as “The Flesh Mechanic”. Much of the song is simply . . . ghastly: the horrific guttural growls, the jagged riffs, the weaponlike drumming, the overarching atmosphere of menace.
But that is definitely not all this song delivers. The pulsating, harmonized guitar lead will grab your attention almost immediately. The choir will surprise you later. Or it would have if I hadn’t mentioned it (sue me). Hell of a song. Go HERE to download it.
And how about the band’s new promo photos by Stephen Jensen? Handsome motherfuckers, aren’t they? There are two more after the jump, plus a YouTube upload of the song. Continue reading »
(NCS writer BadWolf gives us a triple shot — a combined review of three new albums by Glorior Belli, The Atlas Moth, and Rwake.)
So, I believe everyone has a pet subgenre. For some it is Kvlt black metal, for some American metalcore, or retro doom. My pet is prog sludge. Neurosis, Isis, Jesu, Mastodon, Kruger, Burst, Kylesa, Iron Thrones, the list goes on. Basically, if it sounds anything like Breach [GO LISTEN TO BREACH!], I probably love it. Anyway, it’s just felt like a long time since a great, forward-thinking sludge record came to my attention.
And then three amazing records that fit that description drop on the same day.
What the hell, right? Anyway, I’m too busy listening to music to review all three of these amazing albums, so I’m just going to tell you that all 3 of these records are on my short list for album of the year. I have no complaints about any of them other than they end. Truly we are blessed. (more after the jump, including music . . .) Continue reading »
I’ve been immersing myself in black metal today in preparation for writing the latest in our increasingly infrequent MISCELLANY posts, which will see the light of day tomorrow. I decided to give that post a black-metal theme, and so when I saw a press release an hour ago about Parisian black-metal band Glorior Belli, I stopped what I was doing and explored further — just to stay wholly within the blackened realm for a bit longer.
Glorior Belli could well have been included in the MISCELLANY post, because they’re a band whose music I can’t remember hearing before, though I’m certainly familiar with the name. They have a new album called The Great Southern Darkness scheduled for release via Metal Blade on September 27, and today they began streaming the first single from the album, “Secret Ride to Rebellion”.
The press release also gave me my first look at the cover art for the album, which as you can see, is a real eye-catcher. It’s by a Canadian artist named Alexandra Snelgrove. I like it very much. I like the new single very much, too. It charges from the launch with a blizzard of tremolo intensity, attacking drums, and raw, predatory vocals, but it’s got a grooving, swampy, rock style-beat, a catchy melody, and a very sweet bass track — which means (you guessed it), the production on this song is clean and sharp as knives. Have a listen after the jump. Continue reading »