Aug 102020
 

 

Nug’s new album Alter Ego, which we’re premiering today, is a dimorphic creature, a union of beauty and the beast. This Ukrainian band’s formulation of progressive and post-metal is capable of both transporting your head into sunlit clouds and also clubbing them through the pavement and deep into the mantle below. You could also think of their hybrid of obliteration and wonder, of pile-driving destruction and head-swirling dreams, as the workings of a wondrous machine that constantly morphs — from an earth-ruining demolition device into a spaceship venturing through head-spinning wormholes to reveal astonishing vistas of vast, blazing nebulae.

These extremes of sound — which are soft and loud, breathtakingly intense and sublimely mesmerizing, bewildering and brazen — might seem to occupy distant and opposing points on an axis, but Nug fold the axis in on itself, not merely juxtaposing the extremes but laying them on top of each other with gripping and exhilarating consequences. Continue reading »

Jun 072020
 

 

I’m way behind in putting together compilations of new music and videos that I want to recommend. Yesterday, after hours of listening, I assembled more than two dozen of them that I discovered just over the last week. I had the fantasy of presenting all of them in alphabetical order in this Overflowing Streams format (short on words and visual art but long on music).

This morning I realized that would be a herculean task, and I’m no Hercules. So I abandoned the alphabetical idea and have arranged the collection with different ideas in mind and divided the post into Parts — because I’m not sure how far I’ll get. There should be at least one or two more installments today.

By the way, I decided to do this instead of the usual SHADES OF BLACK post today, though I’ve made sure to include new black metal in the collection, beginning with…

AKVAN (Iran)

The Persian tar (a type of four-stringed lute) is the star of this first song, along with the mesmerizing, melancholy melody that it voices. It provides the beating heart of the song even after the music rises into a tumultuous storm of thundering drums, scathing riffs, and scorching vocals. Fascinating, fierce, otherworldly, and glorious, the song is a tremendous thrill to hear. Continue reading »