May 012021
 

 

It’s been a long time since I resorted to this Overflowing Streams format for spreading the word about new music I’ve enjoyed, but last week seemed more even more insane than usual — just a ton of new tracks were revealed by old gods, new gods, and assorted minor demons. As bloated as the following collection may seem, it’s still far from complete — I’ll include a few more in tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

Without further ado, here we go with lots of sights sounds and not many words, though I do encourage you to add your own in the Comments.

AT THE GATES

Speaking of old gods, I might have included the news about Darkthrone album No. 19 (Eternal Hails), but there’s no music yet, so I’ll wait. You can peep the cover art here. But among the old gods, At the Gates did give us a new song, and I had to lead with it. Continue reading »

Mar 062021
 

 

As forecast last weekend, I’m not able to write my usual NCS weekend posts today or tomorrow. The project for my fucking day job has indeed been consuming me. I haven’t listened to any new metal over the last 4 or 5 days other than what I had agreed to premiere. I didn’t even have time to pay close attention to our in-box or use my other typical ways of ferreting out new music so as to add to my list of what to check out later.

However, a few things did jump out at me yesterday — a surprise new album by Krallice (they do love surprising people), a new 20-minute song off the new Majestic Downfall album, and a video for a new track by Grave Miasma from their next album. I would listen to and watch all of that today if I had time, which I don’t. But because I detest letting a day go by without having new music up on the site, I’m installing the streams of these three things below, even though I haven’t checked them out myself. But it’s a good bet they will be worth your time.

By the way, even though I can’t do more than this today, it would be great if you used the Comments to flag any other new music that would be good uses of listening time. And of course, feel free to let us know what you think about the following streams if you get a chance to hear them. Continue reading »

Jun 042016
 

Alewife brunch1
Friday beer/brunch at Alewife with friends.

For those of you just now joining this series about Maryland Deathfest XIV, I’m in the process of highlighting the bands whose performances were the best of the ones I saw and heard in Baltimore beginning on Wednesday of last week.

Rather than doing a day-by-day recap, I’ve organized the bands into four somewhat loosely defined categories. Yesterday’s feature was a “Shades of Black” collection of black metal bands, and before that was one under the heading “Swedish (and Dutch) Death Metal Supremacy”. I’m calling today’s celebration “The Black Death“, not only because that describes the general style of music performed by the following six bands, but also because they all spread a lethal kind of auditory plague.

Presented in the order in which I witnessed the performances over 5 nights and 4 days, and I’ve again included my photos of each band (most of which are gathered at the end of this post). Continue reading »

Feb 252016
 

Gorguts-Pleiades' Dust

 

Here are a few new things I spied over the last 24 hours that I thought you might like, because I sure as hell did.

GORGUTS

There’s been a running joke in the comment sections of our annual LISTMANIA series over the last few years. It dates back to a comment left in December 2013 when I re-posted a list from Rolling Stone that named Deafheaven’s Sunbather as the best album of 2013. Not having paid attention to the title of the post or the text that also identified Rolling Stone as the source of the list, some nitwit wrote: “Deafhaven. That’s laughable. Gorguts put out the best METAL album this year – don’t deny it. Stop trying to be different – you’re only appealing to hipsters. Have fun with that. I thought I’d found a credible metal music site to frequent – apparently not. Laters.”

That comment has now jokingly been repeated in our comment section so many times in the subsequent years that I can almost recite it from memory. I shudder to think how often it will appear this December, when there actually IS a new Gorguts release in the year-end running — as it surely will be. Continue reading »

Sep 112013
 

Odori Sepulcrorum, the debut album by London’s Grave Miasma, is easily one of the best blackened/death/doom albums of the year. Although it is very difficult to compare albums across all the manifold sub-genres of death metal, it surely must also be considered among the best death metal albums of 2013 regardless of category, because the band so masterfully achieve what they set out to do. But it’s one of those albums where reviewers will get a lot more mileage out of reaching for metaphors to describe its dense, dank atmosphere than by detailing the mechanics of what the band do to produce it. Because what they do, at least on the surface, may seem very simple, very primitive, perhaps even neolithic. I’ll show you what I mean:

The album was produced in a way that drenches the vocals and instruments in delay and reverb effects, creating a dense, thick sound in the guitars and bass and a massive (though quite natural) tone in the drums. The vocals in particular come with a decaying echo, as if recorded in a crypt — and they’re so deep and ghastly that they would give Disma’s Craig Pillard a run for his money in the sweepstakes for cavernous bestiality.

The guitars and bass are tuned down and distorted to near-Dismember levels of corrosiveness. Almost all the guitar parts are executed with tremolo picking, producing an even more impenetrable, roaring maelstrom of evil, grinding sound. You can imagine the pick hands flying in a frenzy, although the chord progressions generally move in massive, almost overwhelming waves, in keeping with the generally slow or mid-paced rhythms of this utterly doomed music.

The drumming, which accounts for a significant part of the music’s variety, is bone shattering in its tone. The double-bass eruptions feel like earthquakes, the methodical blast-beats like cannon fire, the tribal-style progressions like the prelude to a sacrificial ritual.

Shit.  I’m already reaching for the metaphors before even finishing a description of the mechanics. Continue reading »

Aug 032013
 

To start the weekend, I’ve collected new death metal in this post that I strongly recommend, from three very good bands.

GRAVE MIASMA

This UK band made quite an impact with the two EPs they’ve released to date — 2009’s Exalted Emanation and 2010’s Realm of Evoked Doom — and now they’ve completed a debut album entitled Odori Sepulcrorum that’s due for release on September 13 (September 17 in NorthAm) by Profound Lore and the German label Sepulchral Voice. It was reportedly recorded on analog format using vintage equipment, and it features wonderful cover art (above), painted with acrylics on glass by Denis Forkas.

So far I’ve only heard one of the new tracks, “Ovation To A Thousand Lost Reveries”. It made me think of the song we streamed earlier this week from Ulcerate’s new album. It’s a roaring storm of ancient blackened death metal, the riffs moaning and grinding and oozing with putrescence. The drum tone is titanic, and the barbaric vocals echo like roars of the awakened dead across the vault of dank crypts.

Like Ulcerate, Grave Miasma prove that there is still fertile ground for creative growth in the graveyard of wholly dominating death metal. The song is wonderfully inventive while remaining rotten to the core. Stupendous stuff. Continue reading »