Feb 242018
 

 

Two nights ago on my way home from a late meeting in Seattle I hit a patch of black ice less than a mile from my house. My car skidded off the road, rolled over, and landed on its side in a deep ditch. I missed hitting a telephone pole by two feet, but did destroy a mailbox and probably my car as well.

On the other hand, I’m unharmed, just a bit sore in a few places. I spent three hours sitting in a police car with a very decent officer while we waited for and then watched some remarkable tow-truck guys figure out how to get the car on its wheels and out of the ditch, in 20-degree weather in the middle of the night. The cop finally drove me home at 4 a.m. yesterday morning.

That scary incident fucked up my plans for a round-up yesterday. I’m afraid to go back and read the premieres I wrote after a sleepless night and in an addled frame of mind, but I sure didn’t feel up to writing anything I hadn’t already committed to do.

Anyway, the past week was another blockbuster in terms of new metal, and I’ve left a lot of stuff out of this post — which is still pretty long. I picked the music of the following five bands to provide a wide spread of different genres.

PRIMORDIAL

So far, the Irish troubadours in Primordial have released videos for two singles from their new album, Exile Amongst the Ruins, the second one appearing last week. Both songs will likely be surprising in some ways to Primordial fans, although Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill‘s remarkable voice is still front and center in both. Continue reading »

Mar 252016
 

0 - collage2

 

(Straight outta Norway, our friend Gorger is back with a new edition of his series recommending releases that we’ve managed to overlook. And be sure to check out Gorger’s Metal.)

“Hot on the heels” after part 8, here’s part 9 of stuff that Islander and other contributors have overlooked in the abundance of releases. Well, that’s what I wrote almost two weeks ago before slipping into a new hiatus anyway.

Today I bring you black metal and atmospheric/symphonic derivatives thereof, thrash, tech-death, blackened death, and a blackened thrash gem from down under that you could sort of sort under Islander’s Tourism posts. Not in that order, though.

Also, I originally increased this post from the usual four to five, as I recently came across an elder piece that I’ve fallen in love with. But than, when assembling the collage above, I realized that five just wasn’t doing, and thus it grew to six.

Let’s get to it, shall we? Continue reading »

Aug 212013
 

In this post I’ve collected three new videos and one new song on which you can feast your eyes and ears. Actually, although I can imagine eyes feasting — because I’ve seen hungry eyes before — ears just look like ears. But they will feast nonetheless.

SKÁLMÖLD

After you have dined upon the following video from Iceland’s Skálmöld, and assuming you enjoy the taste of it, I strongly recommend you read this December 2012 NCS interview of the band’s lyricist and bass-player Snæbjörn Ragnarssonin conducted in Iceland by our very special traveling correspondent Gemma Alexander. There you will learn, among other things, about the complex rules of traditional Icelandic poetry that Snæbjörn follows in his lyrics, the stories from Norse legend that became the foundation for the band’s latest album Börn Loka (“Loki’s Children”), and the use of parallel fifths in the choral arrangements for the last part of the song “Gleipnir”.

I mention “Gleipnir” because that’s the song which is the subject of Skálmöld’s new video. You might be interested in knowing that in Norse legend “Gleipnir” was the name of the magical binding fashioned by dwarves to hold the monstrous wolf Fenrir in captivity — until the events of Ragnarök, when Fenrir breaks free and destroys Odin. Or so says The Font of All Human Knowledge. Continue reading »