NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: MOONSPELL, VOLA, GAMA BOMB, WOLF KING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 232020
 


Moonspell

 

(For the second (or is it the third?) time, our editor (that would be me) screwed up and didn’t get Gonzo’s Friday music round-up posted before having to turn to non-NCS work, but we’ll just pretend again that Monday is the new Friday. Hope you have a good weekend on Tuesday.)

Doing what you love for a living can often be the ultimate study in double-edged swords, in the sense that getting paid to do it all day makes doing it for fun… somewhat less fun.

In this case, I’m talking about writing. The past month has seen me doing a lot of it, and unfortunately, the bulk of that has gone towards my new day job instead of describing the dark and devastating tones found here at NCS.

Today is Friday, though, and my chronic addiction to loud music is overtaking any professional obligations. For now.

Join me as I blast out some words about some new shit you can crank up and bang your head to. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: SOILWORK, RED MOON ARCHITECT, SUMMONING THE LICH, SOEN, RAGING SPEEDHORN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 232020
 

 

(Another work-week is ending, and Gonzo again helps usher it out with a selection of new songs and videos from forthcoming or just-released records.)

It only dawned on me this morning that we’re a week away from November, and given that most of this year has felt like floating in some nebulous void in an endlessly dystopian universe, that was a weird thought.

Even as snow falls just south of my Colorado home as I type this, wildfires continue to burn just north and west of me. It’s a confounding juxtaposition of fire and ice that’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Just another day in 2020, I suppose. With any luck, the plummeting temperatures and prevailing snowfall will help extinguish the flames that have been turning the sky into an unsettling shade of apocalyptic as of late.

All that being said, here’s a few bangers this Friday to make you forget how fucked up the world is right now. Continue reading »

WAYFARER: “A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 212020
 

 

(Here’s Gonzo’s imaginative review of the new album by Colorado’s Wayfarer, which was released last week by Profound Lore Records.)

In this writer’s humble opinion, there are two hallmarks of truly breathtaking music: 1) It gets better with every listen, and 2) it elucidates vivid imagery when listening to it with your eyes closed.

There are, of course, other criteria for evaluating the quality of music, but when talking about A Romance with Violence, the newest dust-covered output from Denver post-black metal crew Wayfarer, those two items are the perfect place to start. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: BENEDICTION, DARK TRANQUILITY, WARDRUNA, REFUSED

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 162020
 


Benediction (photo by Karen Rew)

 

(Another Friday has arrived, and that means another selection of new songs and videos chosen and introduced by our contributor Gonzo.)

It’s always fun when I wake up on Friday mornings and discover new music I never saw coming, especially when it’s from bands I’ve loved for 20+ years. It reminds me of simpler times. For me, though, nothing beats the old feeling of walking into a record store and browsing through new releases for hours at a time.

Alas, the modern conveniences of having gigabytes of new shit funneled into your ears simply by opening your phone these days is nice, but this week’s new music is a trip into a universe of nostalgia for me. Why? I’ve bought CDs from all four of the bands I’ve included this week – some of which I still have in a giant binder that I don’t open very much anymore. Maybe I’ll go revisit that now.

Anyway, hope you enjoy these tracks as much as I do. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: YATRA, FURNACE, REPUKED, HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, OLD MOTHER HELL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 092020
 

 

(NCS contributor Gonzo returns with another Friday round-up of new music, this time featuring recent tracks and videos by five bands from albums that are being released today, or will be forthcoming.)

I took a road trip down to Fayetteville, Arkansas, last week. Driving to the Deep South from my Colorado home is a study in culture shock, and not in a positive or constructive way. The entire length of Kansas is a desolate hellscape full of Trump flags and locals casting a weary gaze towards anyone wearing a mask in public. Missouri isn’t much better.

Fortunately, so much time in the car allowed for plenty of time to listen to all the new metal I’ve been meaning to get around to. It was also nice to roll down the windows and blast some of this shit at offensively high volumes in conservative rural towns. (It’s the little things.) Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: MR. BUNGLE, THE OCEAN, MORTA SKULD, SODOM, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE & THOU

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 252020
 


Mr. Bungle by Buzz Osborne

 

(Gonzo brings us another Friday selection of new songs.)

We talk a lot at NCS about how utterly fucking wild this year has been. As September winds down and we all welcome the fall (that’s autumn, not the imminent collapse of society), it seems like the metal community is pulling out all the stops to close out the year – familiar faces releasing some of their strongest work in years, newcomers putting out amazing debuts, and unexpected surprises materializing out of seemingly nowhere.

This week is no exception to any of that. It’s a glorious mix of old, new, and “holy shit these guys still make albums?” Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: TOMORROW’S RAIN, DARKENED, WAYFARER, CARCASS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 182020
 

 

(Here’s another Friday round-up of new music compiled by Seattle-based NCS contributor Gonzo.)

I, for one, am looking forward to cooler weather.

Not only will cooler temperatures bring about an overdue ending of the wildfires currently making life miserable for the Northwest, but also an ideal environment for listening to your audial brutality of choice.

And while it’s certainly kvlt as fuck to stand in the middle of a Norwegian forest in corpse paint and spiky gauntlets while cranking up the lo-fi black metal, it’s by no means required. Some of this week’s new releases may inspire it, though. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: TOMBS, OCEANS OF SLUMBER, ZEAL & ARDOR, FORETOKEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 072020
 


TOMBS (photo by Dan Higgins)

 

EDITOR’S CONFESSION: Is it possible? Could I have actually failed to post the second installment of this series by our contributor Gonzo on Friday, just like I was late in posting the first one? Even though it’s called NEW MUSIC FRIDAY? Hell yes! It’s true! I fucked up two weeks in a row! But I’m risking covid to visit a tattoo parlor today to have NEW MUSIC FRIDAY tattooed on my forehead so I’ll never forget again. Of course, when looking in the mirror it will read YADIRF CISUM WEN.

 

The show must go on.

Given the quality output so far in a year otherwise mired with seemingly every kind of imaginable strife dominating the headlines, you’d think those words were the mantra of every working band out there.

Some of those themes of the year, as it turns out, make for excellent and timely material to write songs out of. I have no doubt that we’ll start seeing more and more of it start to emerge as we trudge on through this supremely uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing timeline we’re living through. This week [Editor’s Correction: last week!] has dropped a few hints of what’s to come, with spectacular results. 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 »

SOJOURNER: “PREMONITIONS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 252020
 

 

(Seattle-based NCS contributor Gonzo has provided the following review of the new album by the multi-national band Sojourner, which is out now on Napalm Records.)

In all its forms and mutations, you could use a lot of adjectives to describe metal: Brutal. Powerful. Aggressive. Loud. Dynamic. Technical. And dare I say: Beautiful?

Some bands dabble in a “pretty” side at times, and it might work for them as a temporary gimmick or when forcing it into the occasional power ballad. But avid listeners are gonna know when you’re phoning it in, and as a result, the “beautiful” side gets buried under layers of the aforementioned adjectives. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with sheer, unabashed brutality (we ARE metalheads, for fuck’s sake), bands that succeed in combining the beautiful with the brutal can wield an almost overwhelming amount of power when they use it to write songs.

This brings us to Sojourner, a six-piece multi-national atmospheric black metal band, and their monumental new album Premonitions. Continue reading »

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