GONZO’S BIGASS END-OF-SUMMER ROUNDUP, PART 1

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Sep 012022
 


Final Light

(Our Denver-based friend Gonzo has brought us the first installment in a round-up of new albums that emerged this summer which caught his attention and kindled his enthusiasm.)

Look, I know it’s customary to open these kinds of seasonally themed posts with some quip about “WOW, THE SUMMER REALLY FLEW BY, DIDN’T IT?” but frankly, that sort of cheekiness is an abomination I simply won’t fucking stand for, let alone perpetuate.

What I will say is that this summer delivered. It was the sort of long-overdue event that saw yours truly being able to travel to some US-based festivals, which was something I’d been longing for. Fire in the Mountain was by far the highlight. I also managed to hit an average of two shows a week during all of this, mostly around Denver. On top of all this, I pulled a requisite turn-and-burn in Vegas earlier this month for a single night of Psycho, in which I finally saw Emperor take the stage and proceed to blast my face into another dimension. To say it was worth the 22-year wait would be the understatement of the year.

The point of me saying all this is during all of the above, I was a bad NCS writer and couldn’t quite keep up my monthly tradition of yelling at the internet about the new music I’ve been listening to. So, consider this me making up for lost time:

This is part one of my end-of-summer new music roundup, with albums spanning from June to August. Continue reading »

FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022: DAY THREE

 Concert Reviews  9 Responses »
Aug 102022
 

(Today our friend Gonzo brings us his third and final report on the recent Fire in the Mountains festival in Wyoming, along with a few of his own photos. You can find the first two installments here and here.)

Day three of any festival hits different. It’s no longer a matter of going balls-to-the-wall for 12 consecutive hours. It’s an endurance contest. It’s a marathon you’re running against yourself. One minute you’re staring bleary-eyed at the roof of your tent before the sun comes up, and the next, you’re chugging espresso you made in the back of a Subaru Outback in desperate hopes of being able to slog your way through the rest of the weekend.

And that’s just the first two hours.

But never mind that. No point in wasting any time lamenting your mental condition, I thought to myself as I threw some extra clothes into my backpack. Today would first be spent outside the confines of our beloved festival, and into the mountain range that we’d only been able to admire from afar. Before any music, we’d be taking a side quest to Grand Teton National Park. Continue reading »

FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022: DAY TWO

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Aug 052022
 

(Our friend Gonzo has brought us the second installment of his commentary on the 2022 edition of the Fire in the Mountains festival, which took place in Wyoming in late July. To check out the first installment, go here.)

Saturday morning came before I was ready for it. The sunrise roused me from an intoxicated slumber, and my bladder was quick to remind me of the choices I’d made the night before. “Balls,” I muttered as I put pants on, preparing to leave the warm confines of my tent and head towards the port-a-potties near the entrance to camp.

I unzipped the tent and stepped out into the frigid morning air. The temperature had dropped by almost half of what it’d been during the day. A layer of frost had accumulated on the top of the tent. I was grateful I’d kept my Amorphis hoodie on before going to sleep, even if I had no memory of doing it. So far, the running score of this weekend was FITM: 1, Gonzo: 0. Expecting anything else would’ve been ridiculous of me.

Walking along the makeshift footpath through camp, the stunning peaks of the Tetons were looming through the morning mist. This land, this festival – there was something different about it, something almost tangible. It’s not every day you find yourself immersed in nature, surrounded by wildlife, refreshingly out of range of any cell phone service, and have eight hours of amazing music to look forward to, but that was exactly what this day would hold for the lucky 1,200 of us who made the trek to this festival. Continue reading »

FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022: DAY ONE

 Concert Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 022022
 

(Our Denver-based contributor Gonzo was fortunate enough to be at the 2022 edition of Fire In the Mountains, which took place in the shadow of the glorious Teton Range in Wyoming. Today we present the first of his reports about the festival.)

I stepped out of the car and gently shut the door. Raising my arms over my head and interlocking my fingers, palms facing skyward, I stretched my body as if I’d never stood up on my own two feet before. Sitting on my ass for over 7 hours in a Subaru Outback through desolate landscapes and wide-open highways with barely another soul in sight for miles does tend to drain you after a while. And looking around now, it was almost fair to wonder if we’d driven through a portal to another dimension.

That otherworldly dimension, for our purposes, was known as Fire in the Mountains, a deeply unique festival experience that was just about to kick off its first occurrence in three years. Set deep within the Wyoming wilderness just outside of Grand Teton National Park, this gathering of metalheads, artists, hippies, weirdos, psychonauts, and anyone in between had gained a lot of buzz throughout the US festival circuit. Some called past incarnations of it “loose as goose shit,” while others described it simply as the best weekend they’d ever experienced in their lives. High praise for a festival that attracts just over a thousand people each year in a setting that requires you to pack in your own water.

Now that we’d arrived, the anticipation that had been building since 2020 was palpable, like a thunderstorm slowly looming over the mountaintops in the distance. More cars were slowly beginning to pull in, sporting license plates from as far as Canada, Ohio, Florida, California, Minnesota, and more. It was clear this was a destination for many. It was time to set up camp and let this experience take us wherever it would lead us. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, MAY 2022

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jun 072022
 


Nechochwen

(With another month now in the history books, we welcome back Gonzo, who again has recommendations for you of wide-ranging albums released in the preceding month – somewhat delayed only because our editor completely lost track of time while at Maryland Deathfest.)

When doing the legwork that goes into these monthly columns, there are some months when I have to reach deep into the metal underbelly to extract whatever hidden gems I stumble across, and there are others where the onslaught of new releases just looks downright overwhelming and perhaps menacing.

May turned out to be the latter. I actually had to trim this one down from what I had originally planned out, if for no other reason than the fact that I’m disappearing into the mountains for most of the weekend without many plans to be in front of a computer. Fuck that nonsense, I say. I get enough of that during my 9-5 job, and any excuse to hit the road for an escape is a good one.

Read on and prepare to abuse your eardrums with the best of what I stumbled into through May. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, APRIL 2022

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
May 032022
 


Somali Yacht Club – photo by May Lee

(April 2022 is in the history books, and our man Gonzo follows its end with a selection of albums released during the month that brightened his days, and we hope will brighten yours.)

If only my fucking day job made it easier to listen to all the music I wanted to. Pipe dreams, man. Pipe dreams.

The past month saw me venturing out to several shows, though; Archspire in particular ripped my face off for an hour straight while grinning maniacally the whole time. Amorphis and Uada were amazing as well, and I’ve got Behemoth and Arch Enemy lined up for this coming Wednesday. (I’ll likely be at that show by the time you read this column.)

All that being said, none of the bands I cover here are anything I saw live recently, but god damn does it feel good to be getting back into my pre-pandemic cadence of live music again.

As usual, here’s a smattering of new shit I found worthy of writing about this month. Continue reading »

LUX INCERTA: “DARK ODYSSEY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 202022
 

(We present Gonzo‘s review of the latest album by the French band Lux Incerta, which was released on April 8th.)

When it comes to storytelling, the ubiquity of dark-versus-light is just about the most repackaged theme in human history. It’s everywhere. It’s the hero’s journey, the struggle of inner turmoil, the journey to the self, good triumphing over evil, and otherwise present in just about every other archetypal tale you’ve ever seen or heard.

When it comes to making art, though, none of that shit matters as long as you can tell the same story well. In music, this is particularly hard to pull off – especially in a modern-day metal scene that’s rife with saturation and subgenres. (And saturated subgenres, now that we’re going there.)

But bands like France’s Lux Incerta don’t give a fuck how many times you’ve seen, read, or listened to stories that revolve around the dark/light duality. Roughly translated from Latin, the band’s name refers to the apex of the light-versus-dark battle, when light is about to succumb to the dark. And their stylistic crossroads of death, doom, and prog metal reinforces how well the band lives up to that moniker. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, MARCH 2022

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 012022
 


Falls of Rauros

(We’ve reached the end of another month, and thus Gonzo has surfaced with another edition of this column, focusing here on five releases from March 2022.)

I recently made the somewhat ill-advised decision to take a road trip to my old stompin’ grounds of Seattle from my Denver abode. For those not familiar with the length of the trek, it’s about 21 hours by car. Flying out was definitely an option, but there’s always something uniquely appealing about pointing your car in one direction and flooring it for hours on end. If we’re speaking honestly, it’s downright therapeutic.

The “ill-advised” part of the equation came into account when driving through northern Wyoming and Montana. March is not what you’d call a calm month in terms of weather, and there were a couple of parts along desolate highways in which I was white knuckling my way through a snowstorm. There was madness in every direction. Unfettered chaos was all there was for hundreds of miles; one Subaru was a drop in the bucket amid endless 18-wheelers and highway patrol cars.

The good part about all this? I got plenty of time to delve into every album I’d been putting off for a while, and even got surprised by some other stuff I stumbled into. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, FEBRUARY 2022

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Mar 022022
 

(Our friend Gonzo has shown up with reviews and streams of four February 2022 releases that hit the spot for him.)

February. What a dull, useless month.

That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway, to justify the fact that the end of this month ambushed me, causing this column to be late. As long as we’re assigning blame, my day job is also a culprit.

Enough of that, though. This month saw the release of some albums I can’t stop listening to. And many of them were a complete surprise. Continue reading »

DARK TRANQUILLITY / KATAKLYSM / NAILED TO OBSCURITY: LIVE IN DENVER, FEB. 10, 2022

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 212022
 

 

(Our Denver-based contributor Gonzo had the good fortune of seeing live performances by Dark Tranquillity, Kataklysm, and Nailed To Obscurity about 10 days ago, and he sent us the following report along with some of his photos.)

I’m sure this is the case with pretty much everyone who’s going to read this, but I’m pretty fucking sick of talking about the pandemic, what “normal” looks like, how long it’s been since we saw X band at X venue, and everything in between.

But in the case of the tour that rolled through The O Theater in Denver last Thursday night, I’d be remiss not to frame it against the backdrop of the aforementioned frustrations. Three incredible metal bands – Dark Tranquility, Kataklysm, and Nailed to Obscurity – are touring the US right now and none of them are native to this country. I don’t know when the last time that happened, so that alone is worth celebrating.

It certainly didn’t hurt that all three bands put on shows that made it seem like they – as well as tours featuring international acts in general – were never gone. Continue reading »

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