OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): VALLETTA, LACABRA, MANTAR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  No Responses »
Jan 232026
 

(written by Islander)

In yesterday’s segment of this list I was explaining about the challenges I face in preparing it. Even though not one solitary soul asked me to do that, I knew you were hungry for the information — though maybe I was sensing a desire for pita bread and a big tub of hummus or a rack of ribs, and I just misinterpreted things. Desires don’t always reach me through the ether in their original form.

Anyway, I mentioned that one of the challenges was figuring out how to group together songs in these daily segments. Even within my odd mind there’s no particular rhyme or reason to many of the groupings, but sometimes there is, and today is one of those times. The first and third songs below just rock the fuck out, and even the one in the middle felt like it belonged, albeit for somewhat different reasons than rocking the fuck out.

All three of these songs were ones I was convinced I’d have to find a place for in this list from the first time (of many times) I heard them. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE WEEK THAT WAS, AND MUSIC FROM NINE BANDS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 012025
 


Marcus Larson (1825–1864) Ocean at Night with Burning Ship (detail)

(written by Islander)

It has been a week in hell. I don’t mean the stuff you’ve seen every day in the national news reports, including the vile treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House yesterday (I’m addressing the 3 of you who can still bear to read the national news), but hellish events closer to home that impacted our putrid precious site.

Specifically, beginning last Sunday night and carrying into Monday the Puget Sound area of Washington where I live got walloped by lightning storms, heavy rain, and very high winds. Windstorms are fairly common during the winter months here, and the results are predictable: In the heavily forested island where I live, trees fall, limbs break off, and they hammer themselves into the power lines, all of which are strung above ground close to trees. And pop! The power goes out!

Which it did in the early hours of last Monday. And when the power goes out here, so does the internet, because my ISP’s local servers and routing stations apparently don’t have generators or human beings close by to keep them going. And when the internet goes out for everyone in my neighborhood (and this time for nearly all of the 30,000 people who live on the island), the strength of cell phone signals drops to borderline non-existent. I guess because everyone is trying to use their phones in place of the stricken net service. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE TROOPS OF DOOM, SOL DE SANGRE, WEREWOLVES, COLDCELL, NIHILO, LACABRA, KYBALION, BALWEZO WESTIJIZ, KŌYA, WHARFLURCH, AMORPHIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 182024
 


Troops of Doom – photo by Cissa Flores

I wasn’t able to serve up a Saturday roundup last weekend due to working on Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, and it’s highly unlikely I’ll get one done next Saturday since I’ll be at Maryland Deathfest (if you’re there and spot someone who looks like a heavily tatted escapee from a nursing home, come say hi). So that makes this one kind of important, if only for me.

There’s gobs of new music to choose from, many more gobs than usual since I missed a week. And by the way, I’m using “gob” here as a word meaning “a large amount” and not its other meaning, i.e., “a lump or clot of a slimy or viscous substance”, though I have included a song off an album named Shittier/Slimier.

Ready, set, go! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ASCENDED DEAD, LACABRA, ZEIT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 242023
 


Ascended Dead – photo by Scott Kinkade

This is the second brief round-up of new songs and videos I’ve managed to assemble today, having unexpectedly found myself with time I didn’t think I’d have. Once again, as in the first installment, I’ve focused on three things that just surfaced overnight or this morning. With a bit of luck I’ll have a third installment finished before I have to pay attention to paying work. If that fails, there will be another roundup tomorrow.

ASCENDED DEAD (U.S.)

To lead off this segment I have “Ungodly Death” (is there any other kind?), the maniacal first preview track from this California band’s new album Evenfall of the Apocalypse. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LACABRA — “FRACTURED”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jun 062022
 

The metal band Lacabra from the Pacific Northwest brings together the talents of Lance Neatherlin (Lead Vocals), Eric Snyder (Guitar), Eric Weber (Bass/Vocals), Michael Anthony (Guitar), and Ryan Yancey (Drums/Vocals). All of them have been tried and tested in other bands, but it’s fair to say that in Lacabra they’ve caught lightning in a bottle. We’ve got electrifying proof of that in the single “Fractured” that we’re premiering today through a powerful video.

Lyrically, the song foretells a nightmarish future in which humankind’s own technological innovations become the agent of its downfall. That grim conception is captured in the animated segments of the video (created by Maria Nicheva-Wicklund of Bulgaria), which were inspired by Netherlin‘s “disdain for technology and how it makes us desensitized and numb to events that should cripple the human heart”, and by his attraction to the work of Lotte Reiniger, a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation.

The video also captures the intensity of Lacabra‘s own live performances, and pairs extremely well with the turbocharged power and captivating dynamism of the song. Continue reading »