MUSTAFA GÜRCALIOĞLU: A RETROSPECTIVE

 Album Reviews, Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 022021
 

(NCS contributor Nathan Ferreira prepared the following exhaustive retrospective concerning the work of Turkish musician Mustafa Gürcalioğlu (a current or former member of such bands as Decaying Purity, Burial Invocation, Engulfed, Diabolizer, and Hyperdontia), which includes extensive discussions with the artist.)

I’m back with another way-too-ambitious deep-dive project, inspired by my excursions into The Ruins of Beverast’s body of work earlier this year. I was hoping to get this out in time for the premieres of either or Hyperdontia, but alas, that proved to be too lofty a goal. I may have bit off more than I could chew. Either way, it’s finally ready for all your music nerd-related pleasures, just in time for you to add those two bands to your year-end lists – if they’re not on there already.

The discography of Mustafa Gürcalioğlu was one that I wanted to give in-depth coverage to for a few reasons. One, it’s incredibly consistent – I don’t think the guy’s put out a stinker yet, and even the ones you don’t think you like tend to grow on you over time. Two, it starts out good, slowly gets better, and it sounds like the best is yet to come, since the most recent albums by all four of his projects are the strongest. Three, there are enough small differences between albums and different bands that you can tell them apart, but because of the aforementioned consistency, you’re still guaranteed a solid listen while also getting something new along the way. No one has given his discography the appreciation it deserves – if you didn’t get the hint yet, pound for pound it’s one of the best in metal.

Since Mustafa is a more accessible and/or approachable character than Alexander von Meilenwald proved to be, I was able to flag him down and ask him a ton of questions, so with each venture into one of his bands, I’ve included some information straight from the creator’s mouth (keyboard?) to add extra context and colour. In addition, I’ll kick off the article with some more general questions so you can get to know the man behind the music a bit more before fully taking the plunge. Enjoy! Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): AQUILUS, ARCHSPIRE, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, ENSLAVED, HYPERDONTIA, HYPOCRISY, IN MOURNING

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 032021
 

 

I’m playing catch-up, as usual. I had hoped to get this humongous round-up of new songs and videos (and one news item) posted yesterday, but the day didn’t work out as planned. Should you choose to go through everything (and you damned well should), it will take a while, because there are 15 items here, divided into two parts. And on top of that I still hope to pull together a SHADES OF BLACK post.

I’ve again alphabetized the selections by band name. There is singing to be found, especially in Part 2, as well as many candidates for my year-end list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. To get this done I’ve again limited my own verbiage to just brief scattered comments, without artwork and missing some of the usual pre-order links.

AQUILUS (Australia)

I don’t have any music to share for this first band, merely the long-awaited news (and yes, a 10-year gap between albums qualifies as “long-awaited”) that Horace Rosenqvist has a new Aquilus album named Bellum I set for release in early December by Blood Music. That’s so exciting that I thought it was worth including the news, which I usually never do when there’s no music yet. Also, the cover art by Julius von Klever is great. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ANOPHELI, CIRCLE OF SIGHS, DRAUGABLIKK, HYPERDONTIA, INCANTATION, JUPITERIAN, KATASTAH, OTTONE PESANTE, SIEGE COLUMN, VOIDOATH

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

On Sunday I mentioned that I had a big block of time over the weekend that I was able to spend listening to new music. Almost everything I’ve selected for the following set of recommendations came out of that listening session. I resisted the impulse to replace a lot of those selections with things that came out this week, but I did add three of the tracks that surfaced during this week. Hopefully I’ll get to more of those in tomorrow’s round-up. The music today is presented in alphabetical order by band name.

ANOPHELI (U.S.)

I’m starting with something that’s not entirely new. It’s a debut album by Anopheli from Oakland, California (and other places), that was originally released in 2o15 (and I wrote about it here at that time). But the band had the album re-mastered by the same man who mastered the original release — the veteran producer Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden. He explained the changes: “”Things to listen for. It’s less overloaded and everything is more articulate. The overall low end is deeper, the high end is clearer. The drums snap better and interfere less with the other instruments.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MAJESTIC DOWNFALL, FORLET SIRES, HYPERDONTIA, FATHER BEFOULED, GOD SYNDROME, NECKBEARD DEATHCAMP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 202019
 


Majestic Downfall – great photo by Luis Roa

 

I decided to begin this Saturday round-up with a rare news item (because it involves a band that’s a personal favorite) and then get into a bunch of new music. It’s not nearly enough new music to make up for the fact that I only managed one other round-up over the last three weeks, but it’s the best I can do for today. I siphoned off most of the black metal from my selections, and those will appear in the usual Sunday column, which is already shaping up to be a two-parter. Instead of Shades of Black, today’s picks could be called Shades of Death.

MAJESTIC DOWNFALL

Here’s the news item, which is a rarity because we’re really not set up to share the word about new tour announcements, since that would become a full-time job, and I’d rather spend the time writing about new music. But in this instance I made an exception, because it concerns Majestic Downfall, and in particular an excursion by that fine Mexican band into the provinces of The Great White North. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOLFHEART, HIGHRIDER, HYPERDONTIA, EADEM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 032018
 

 

We probably won’t have as many posts at NCS today as we usually do. I’m on my way to Sea-Tac airport for a flight to a top-secret location in New Mexico where I’ll be engaged in various nefarious activities until Sunday night. I have an even longer trip next Tuesday that will take me away for that entire week, and posts will be scanty then as well.

I know we will have a very enticing premiere today, because I’ve already written it, and beyond that we might not have anything else. But before I zoom off into the clouds I thought I’d share a new video, two new songs, and a new item.

WOLFHEART

The news item makes those of us at our putrid site happy and hungry even though there’s no music to share yet: Finland’s Wolfheart will be returning with a fourth album on September 28 via Napalm Records. Its name is Constellation Of The Black Light. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): EMPTINESS, HYPERDONTIA, ZOLOA, WIZARD UNION

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Dec 122016
 

emptiness-not-for-music

 

As the title says, this is the second part of a round-up of new music I thought was worth sharing to begin this week. As often happens, in between posting Part 1 and this Part 2 I came across some more new songs I thought were very good, and I’ve added one of them at the beginning of this post.

As explained in Part 1, this particular Seen and Heard includes more minutes of new music than usual because of the presence of numerous full EPs — three of which are to be found below.

EMPTINESS

This morning brought the premiere of yet another track from the new album by Belgium’s Emptiness. I’ve enjoyed all of them so far, but I think this one is my favorite. Continue reading »