SEEN AND HEARD: THE MUNSENS, LAMP OF MURMUUR, AN ABSTRACT ILLUSION, NIPHREDIL

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Sep 182025
 

(written by Islander)

As I write this I am in Nottingham, England, and eagerly looking forward to attending Andy Synn‘s wedding on Saturday. An overnight flight brought me from Seattle to London with an early arrival yesterday, and I didn’t feel too much the worse for wear despite only napping for an hour on the 8-hour flight. Then came a car ride to Nottingham and a lunch there with Andy, his bride-to-be, and some other American friends (including DGR) who have also come over for the event.

By the end of our long lunch and a post-prandial drink at another spot, I was hitting the wall. I fought to stay up until 6 pm and then crashed hard. But I woke up early this morning after 12 1/2 hours of sleep feeling great, and now I’m quite happy with my jet-lag solution!

Of course it’s still weird being on UK time, weird in the sense that I decided to pull this round-up together with something like 7 hours to go before it will magically appear in line with our normal daily posting schedule, instead of just minutes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THULCANDRA, ROTTEN SOUND, CATACOMB, LAMP OF MURMUUR, KAAL NAGINI, OSSAERT, MENSTRUAL VAMPIRES, BÜDDAH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 152023
 

I’m very happy about all the music in this mid-week roundup. I’m also very happy about the way it all lines up.

A big part of the fun of doing these collections is not just finding new songs and videos that I think are worth recommending, but also choosing the ones that either flow together well or instead ricochet off each other in unexpected ways. There’s a little bit of both strategies in what I chose for today, but mainly this roundup is designed to quickly elevate your adrenaline and then keep it surging. Lots of good cover art today as well.

THULCANDRA (Germany)

I searched out the first time we wrote about Thuldandra at this site. It was in June 2010, when NCS was barely seven months old. The occasion was an extensive review of the band’s 2010 debut album Fallen Angel’s Dominion, in which I included an extensive discussion of the band’s back-story, with notes about the C.S. Lewis space trilogy that was the source of their name. It was evident even then that they held the potential of becoming the truest heirs of Dissection. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: SIEGE OF POWER, MEMORIAM, GOD DISEASE, OAK, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION, DEVANGELIC, THUNRAZ, DAWN RAY’D, VELNIAS, LAMP OF MURMUUR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 142023
 

 

No, this isn’t a weather report on what’s happening in California this Saturday. The post title is just a sign that I decided to “go big” with today’s collection of new songs and videos.

The time it takes me to write up each day’s selections for our 2022 Most Infectious Song list (and surely you’ve been looking at those, haven’t you?) has prevented me from doing any “Seen and Heard” round-ups since January 4th, and consequently the pile of new things has grown to mountainous proportions. Hence the temptation to make this roundup a big one, even though what remains still looks like a mountain.

On the other hand, today IS a Saturday, and coming up I have both a work meeting and an NFL football playoff game I need to watch, even though the odds of our local team winning are remote, so to save time I’ve mostly dispensed with album art and order links, and cut back on the usual verbiage. I’ve organized these according to genre and style. Don’t forget I’ll have another column tomorrow, devoted to shades of black metal. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: OFERMOD, PROFECI, SORGUINAZIA, HELLIGE, TRUUS, FLESIA, LAMP OF MURMUUR

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
Sep 192021
 

 

I got a spike of excitement from a couple of of Bandcamp alerts, only to feel letdown after clicking them. One was for a new Cantique Lepreux release, but none of the songs are streaming there yet. The other was for a new Wormlust release, but there’s no page for it yet, or maybe there was and it got pulled. But it’s just as well, because I already had more to write about for this week’s column than time to write about them.

What you’ll find below are six advance tracks from forthcoming releases and then a pair of full releases that surfaced from the same band within the last couple of days.

OFERMOD (Sweden)

Ofermod wasted no time returning with a new album, just a year after 2020’s Pentagrammaton (which was itself a double album). The new one is entitled Mysterium Iniquitatis, and it  sees the original lineup joined together once again – Belfagor on guitar and vocalist Nebiros (Malign, Mephorash) – with session bass by Magnus “Devo” Andersson (ex-Marduk) and session drums by Calle Larsson. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): WESENWILLE, DAI-ICHI, LAMP OF MURMUUR, PAN-AMERIKAN NATIVE FRONT, QWÄLEN, SURUT, NAARKAS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jan 312021
 

 

What you have before you is a selection of advance tracks from forthcoming releases and, at the end, the stream of a new EP. If that weren’t enough to occupy you (and it probably is), I have in mind a second part to this column that includes a bunch of complete new releases, most of which I found stupendously unsettling but also fascinating. Since I haven’t put that Part together yet, I can’t confidently say when you’ll see it, but by tomorrow at the latest.

WESENWILLE (Netherlands)

The first track I’ve picked, “The Descent“, exhibits some favorable developments as compared to this Utrecht duo’s first album, which caught our attention in 2018 and is still worth your time. The new song is a scorcher but also adventurous, creating moods that are dismal and twisted, as well as maniacally glorious and chillingly hallucinatory. The tempos and riffing are in constant flux, while the vocals are perpetually unhinged in their fury. The blazing yet bleak finale is downright breathtaking. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): NECROPHOBIC, ISOLERT, LAMP OF MURMUUR, WHOREDOM RIFE, OCCULT BURIAL

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Aug 302020
 


Necrophobic

 

I used to joke around here that I made my living as a drug mule, or as a secret adviser to world leaders who were flummoxed about how to solve shattering problems, or as a caretaker for a loris horde that would threaten human survival if I didn’t keep a close watch on their compound near the NCS headquarters. The truth is much more mundane (though I still suspect that covid was hatched in the loris lab). Not that I’m going to advertise the truth, because I still don’t think what I do here would be healthy for me in the world where I collect my paychecks.

Even a few months ago I thought my day job had settled into a long-lasting somnolence, leaving me an abundance of time to spend at NCS. But it has come roaring back. Not a completely shocking development, because the job has always varied among shifting states of intensity, but still a surprise. Last week was particularly demanding, and I fell way behind in paying attention to new metal. Thankfully, I was able to ignore it all day yesterday and spent the hours immersed in music.

Having surfed the tides of metal from near sun-up to sundown, I created the beginnings of half a dozen NCS posts, with four of them devoted to black and “blackened” metal. Most of those will probably remain little more than mind games once the new work week begins, but at least I’ve completed this two-part SHADES OF BLACK, which I hope you’ll enjoy. Continue reading »

COVER YOUR FUCKING MOUTH IF YOU COUGH NCS PLAYLIST III (BY NEILL JAMESON)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 262020
 

 

(So far, Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) has shared with us (here and here) two playlists of musical suggestions to help us get through the current plague time, and today he follows those with a third selection.)

I’ve been a little slower than I wanted to be with this third quarantine playlist, slow to the point where the country decided the virus is like black metal and moved on to grind.  Or something like that, I’m probably mixing my irritations up. But much like your desire to hug all the homies “when this is over” these playlists aren’t going away. Well, after the fourth one it will, but let’s suspend disbelief for a minute because these are TRYING TIMES and my inability to get a haircut makes it illegal for me to be in close proximity to a school. Catch-22 though, there’s no kids in there anyway.

Moving on. I think the format to this is pretty much established, especially since I see a few people biting off it, terminology and all, so let’s get into it. Continue reading »