SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 1): GAAHLS WYRD, IMPERISHABLE, MY DEMENTIA, ORTHODOX, A FLOCK NAMED MURDER, DISPYT, FAMILY GARDEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 122025
 


Gaahls WYRD – photo by Jørn Veberg

(written by Islander)

It’s good to have friends. Friends can give you useful advice. Sometimes friends can also give you advice that makes you think, “I wish they hadn’t said that.” Case in point:

Since the middle of last week my wife has been 1,100 miles from where we live visiting her favorite sister. Home alone, I spent way more than the usual amount of time yesterday getting ready for this column. I listened to bits and pieces of 30 new releases, most of them singles and some of them EPs or albums. I picked 10 of them for today that I thought provided a good amount of variety. I even arranged them in a way I thought made sense.

I was so happy that I shared the list with my old friends Andy and DGR. Between the two of them they then pointed out 4 more new songs that I’d missed, all from known culprits we all like. Fuck me, what to do? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ORTHODOX — “PROCEED”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jun 292022
 

 

The new Orthodox album represents both a return to an earlier essence and also a step forward, with the former (perhaps paradoxically) making the latter possible.

Proceed (which is due for release tomorrow by Alone Records) is this Spanish band’s eighth album in an extensive discography that began with the 2006 debut, Gran Poder. In these last 16+ years they have let very few years go by without releasing something new, short or long, and have seen their star rise, to the point of playing festivals such as Hellfest, Roadburn, Supersonic, Amplifest, and Primavera Sound, opening for the likes of Voïvod, High On Fire, and Corrosion Of Conformity, and collaborating with artists as diverse as Julian Cope and flamenco dancer Israel Galván.

Along the way, however, the original trio became a duo after the departure of guitarist Ricardo Jiménez following the 2011 album Baal, which left bassist/vocalist Marco Serrato and drummer Borja Díaz to handle all recording and live performances since 2014. But Proceed represents Ricardo’s reunion with those two, and in that way, and others, it is a revisiting of the past — but still a formidable movement forward into uncharted waters, as you’ll understand when you hear our premiere stream of the album as a whole. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GESPENST, ORTHODOX, PYLAR, ARCH ENEMY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 052015
 

 

Here’s an assortment of new music I discovered over the last 24 hours with some help from friends. Needless to say, I urge you to give all of it a listen.

GESPENST

Gespenst is a new Danish black band with some experienced members — vocalist/bassist Galskab, for example, is also a member of Woebegone Obscured, Dwell, and Black Dementia, as well as a former member of Horned Almighty and a live performer with Glorior Belli.  Gepenst have recorded a debut album named Forfald (Danish for “Downfall”), and yesterday they uploaded for streaming an excerpt of one of the album’s songs that blew me away when I heard it (it comes with some eye candy on YouTube).

The song’s name is “Life Drained To the Black Abyss”, and it’s a long one. Even the excerpt is more than 7 1/2 minutes long; as I learned from the band, the complete track runs more than 12 minutes. The album as a whole includes over 40 minutes of music, but only four tracks, so each of them is likely to be a long-form piece. Continue reading »

DOOM QUIZ PART 6: DJINN AND MISKATONIC, ET MORIEMUR, HOODED PRIEST, MYTHOLOGICAL COLD TOWERS, ORTHODOX, SOOM, TALBOT

 Interviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 172014
 


Djinn and Miskatonic

(Today our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks brings us Part 6 of a six-part series in which he puts the same five questions to doom bands from around the world, and introduces us to their music at the same time.)

Sometimes I use this unpopular “quiz” format because there are too many interesting bands that I would like to bring to light, and in my opinion it’s a good way to spread some news and to get new points of view on a few issues (including even some political questions). The list of questions I put to the bands is below:

1. What is the band’s latest news and what are your plans for the near future?

2. What do we get (in the broadest sense) from the release of your last album?

3. What is the best response that your band has ever received?

4. What role does the church (or any other religious organization) play in your life or (let’s take it wider) in the life of the heavy scene? Is there any spiritual, religious, or antireligious component in your songs?

5. What does the Media in your country tell about the situation in Ukraine? And how do you see that situation? Some people from other countries have asked me strange questions about Russia’s policy, and let me say that I have a few friends in Ukraine and my colleagues have relatives there, and believe me, there’s no media in ANY country that is showing the problem as it really is. We can watch as the Cold War turns into real warfare.

Today, we bring the answers to these questions from Djinn and Miskatonic (India),  Et Moriemur (Czech Republic), Hooded Priest (Netherlands), Mythological Cold Towers (Brazil), Orthodox (Spain), Soom (Ukraine), and Talbot (Estonia). Continue reading »