OVERFLOWING STREAMS: MOSSGIVER, DARK MEDITATION, NEKROVOMIT, SYLOSIS, CTHULHUSS, IRONMASTER, ET MORIEMUR, EISFLAMMEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 242021
 

 

Whether you celebrate Christmas because of its religious significance, or simply indulge in its old pagan trappings, or only try to keep your head down and get through it like running a gauntlet, I hope you have a joyful holiday. Of course I’m about to try to make it more joyful by sharing some dark, dreadful, and exhilarating tunes that have recently surfaced in the manifold realms of metal. Before doing that I’m going to digress in a way that I don’t think I have ever done before at NCS.

Some of us who can afford it at this time of year look for ways to make charitable contributions, and I want to suggest one. It arises from a severe misfortune that has befallen my friend Dustin Carroll.

I knew him first as the bassist for the Seattle-based metal band A God or Another, and later has a member of the bands Addaura and Bréag Naofa. But the context in which I got to know him better was through his volunteer work for Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, which I’ve been involved in producing and supporting since its inception, and which we’re planning to resume (covid willing) next year. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “CYCLE OF SUFFERING”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jan 242020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Sylosis, which will be released on February 7th by Nuclear Blast.)

Sylosis are one of Britain’s all-time great metal exports, and in my mind are undeniably one of the most important metal bands of the 2000’s, the 2010’s, and now. Nevertheless, these guys seem to get a lot of what I see as undue shit from a lot of people. They are often maligned for being boring (whatever that means) and for not doing anything essentially original (not essentially true), and somehow are accused of writing uninteresting riffs despite Josh Middleton, Sylosis’ founder and composer, being one of the post-2000‘s greatest riff writers. He blends an interesting approach to thrash metal and the heyday of pedal-point-riff-driven melodic death metal with the emotive, bruising nature of early metalcore, and further combines that with a post-y sense of ambience and atmosphere that sounds like no one else.

I guess for me, Sylosis has been metal at its most emotionally honest. It’s powerful, melancholy, angry, and arresting, and since the band’s debut, Conclusion Of An Age. I’ve just been unable to stop listening. They combine the technical aspects and the speed of styles of metal dear to me while also being provocatively emotive, which is a hard line to straddle and make it work. I am a fan, to say the least, with a view of their past catalogue as flawless, a band who’ve never written a record that includes a single throwaway song and who’ve always tried to evolve and refine their sound, never staying in quite the same place. They are modern song-writers still attracted to the past, a sort of approach to metal that I admittedly will eat up like candy if the passion is there. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: SYLOSIS, TOMORROW’S RAIN, THE SHADELESS EMPEROR, THE SPIRIT, ZARRAZA, LIBERATIA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 072019
 

 

I wasn’t sure I would write anything for this Saturday. I mean, it’s not like we didn’t leave you enough music to explore through the 18 posts we made during the last five days, especially the 1,000 or so albums that Andy Synn recommended in his week-long year-end lists. But as I made my way through some new songs that appeared last week, it turned out that six of the tracks I enjoyed (some of which include a portion of clean vocals) were presented through better-than-average music videos, and so I couldn’t resist the temptation to pull those together here.

SYLOSIS

Sylosis are returning with their first new album in five years. Entitled Cycle of Suffering, it will be released by Nuclear Blast on February 7th, and includes the work of new bassist Conor Marshall. The first advance track, revealed through the first video in today’s collection, is “I Sever“. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “DORMANT HEART”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 052015
 

 

(DGR reviews the latest album by Sylosis.)

For a long time, there were few bands out there that I was willing to evangelize as much as Sylosis. Long before I ever got into the writing game, I would tell anyone who would lend me their ear about the band — a group I had initially checked out on a whim when my policy for checking out new music consisted of looking into albums that scored an eight and above on Blabbermouth.net’s review scale, a criterion that Sylosis’ 2008 release Conclusion Of An Age happened to satisfy.

To explain why the group held such a strong appeal to me, I have to own up to the fact that three genres were really my entryway into heavy metal, and they were melodeath, metalcore, and thrash metal. It’s probably a common event that those three tend to be the welcome mats, since a lot of what I view as “gateway bands” tend to fall into those genres, but I just had to highlight it, in part because, to be incredibly reductive, Sylosis‘ sound is a combination of those three genres. Continue reading »

WEEKEND ROUND-UP (Part 2): NAPALM DEATH, SEA OF BONES, SYLOSIS, ANGELUS APATRIDA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 102015
 

 

Here’s Part 2 of a weekend effort to catch up on what I missed over the last couple of days. Part 1 is here. I’ll have at least one more installment tomorrow.

NAPALM DEATH

Would you believe that by the end of this month Napalm Death will have released their 15th studio album?!? It’s true. January 26 is the European release date and January 27 is the date for North America, and the album’s name is Apex Predator – Easy Meat. It will be released in NorthAm by Century Media.

A couple days ago the second advance track from the album appeared at selected sites on either side of the Atlantic. Its name is “How The Years Condemn”. Lyrically, it reflects bassist Shane Embury’s realization after being hospitalized a few years ago that he had “to make a choice which was either to carry on down the same path of selfish destruction as I had seen some of my friends embark on or stay around for the people I loved and who loved me.” Continue reading »

BIG ASS ROUNDUP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(Leperkahn continues to pitch in during my round-up hiatus.  Between what I sent him and what he found himself (of which there was quite an overlap), this is a monstrously large collection of recent, recommended goodies.)

Hey all! So a bloody lot of things got put up between when I sent in my last roundup and now, so this is gonna be a long one, since I’m not in the mood to separate them out. Strap in for a wild ride across the metalsphere.

BLUT AUS NORD

A few hours ago a new song named “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” from the new Blut Aus Nord album Memoria Vetusta III — Saturnian Poetry was made available for listening. This follows our own premiere of “Paien” right here. Islander says his review of the album will be posted on Monday, but he says there’s no point in waiting — just go pre-order the album in a special digipack CD edition here or on vinyl here. You can listen to “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” while you’re doing that:

https://www.facebook.com/blutausnord.official
https://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “MONOLITH

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Nov 092012
 

(Please welcome guest writer ElizabethKristina with a review of the new album by Sylosis.)

Writing this review was my first run-in with this British quartet, so naturally, curiosity got the better of me and I read up a little on the band. The foursome hails from Reading, Berkshire in the UK. Formed back in 2000 with the intention of playing thrash and death metal, it took Sylosis eight years before they got their big break with Nuclear Blast Records to record their first album, 2008’s Conclusion of Age. Now in 2012, the band sees the release of their third full-length album, Monolith.

While the title conjures images of a large stone block floating through space, this album is nothing of the sort. Sylosis have really kept up with their original mission to play thrash, but have evolved to incorporate a more progressive sound; the classic thrash elements are definitely present throughout Monolith, but the interweaving of progressive melodies and tempos breathes new life into both styles.

The first song of the album, “Out From Below,” with its atmospheric build-up and satisfying explosion of speed and riffage, evokes an Opeth-like sound, and also sets the rest of the album up quite nicely. “Fear of the World” features some aggressive and full-sounding vocals, but also has a beautiful moment of clean-singing about three minutes in.

“Behind the Sun” was a personal favorite of mine as it brought to mind Mastodon with some of the singing and guitar work. “A Dying Vine” also features great guitar work, and the ever-shifting tempos juxtapose the softer prog with the classic thrash to maximum effect. In fact, much of the interest derived from Monolith is due to the frequent tempo changes and stylistic shifts that keep the listener on edge for the nearly hour and half of play time. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SYLOSIS, PIG DESTROYER, HAIDUK, AND KAWAK IJEN BY NIGHT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 152012
 

Here are a few things I spotted last night and this morning that I thought were worth passing along.

SYLOSIS

October 9 is the North American release date for Monolith, the new album by Sylosis (Oct 5 in Europe). We’ve previously featured two of the songs from the album — “Dying Vine” and “Born Anew” — and “Born Anew” is being offered as a free download by Nuclear Blast at this site.

Now, someone has posted a teaser reel on YouTube that includes minute-long samples from each of the album’s 11 tracks. I can’t tell if this was an authorized compilation and upload or not. I guess we’ll find out. But for as long as it lasts, it provides a pretty good tasting of an album that a couple of us here at NCS have been spinning and enjoying quite a bit. You can find that teaser reel right after the jump.

As you may know, Sylosis are also opening for Lamb of God, In Flames, and Hatebreed on their North American tour beginning in October. I’ve put the tour schedule after the jump, too. Continue reading »

NO, WE DIDN’T OVERLOOK THAT SECOND NEW SYLOSIS SONG: “A DYING VINE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 082012
 

We watched the social media pages for Sylosis like hawks over the last couple of weeks, waiting for the new songs that the band had promised, and pounced immediately once the first one (“Born Anew”) debuted early yesterday (see this).

And then I got on an airplane yesterday morning to fly across the country, with no wi-fi onboard, cut off from the bubbling world of metal for 5+ hours, feeling like an abandoned brat with no blankie and nothing on which to nurse. By the time I got where I was going and plugged back in to the ether of metal, I had an in-box for of mail with links to the second Sylosis track — “A Dying Vine” — which had emerged while I was confined at 35,000 feet.

I hate being late with news, and thought about just moving on because so many other metal sites had been spreading the news already. BUT, the damned song is so sweet that, tardy or not, I have to post about it.

The song is streaming now on the band’s recently activated web site, Sylosis.com, where pre-orders from the new album (Monolith) are also being fielded, but of course it’s up on YouTube now as well, which means we have it here, too. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS FINALLY PREMIERE A NEW SONG, FINALLY: “BORN ANEW”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Aug 072012
 

Inspired by the Art Nouveau movement, this is the CD jewelcase artwork for Monolith, the new album by the UK’s Sylosis. The artist is Dan Goldsworthy, who also created the cover art for the band’s last album, Edge of the Earth. According to the band, some of the inspiration came from Greek mythology, and that figure on the left loosely represents the devil in disguise or a satyr and may have something to do with the album’s concept.

Also, Dan Goldsworthy created a second piece of artwork for Monolith, which it appears Nuclear Blast is using as an “O-card cover”, whatever that is. You can see that after the jump, too.

Monolith will be released by Nuclear Blast on October 5 in Europe and October 9 elsewhere. Sylosis has been promising to premiere a new song for weeks, setting specific dates and then no-showing. Most recently, the promise was that a new track — “A Dying Vine” — would premiere yesterday on the band’s new web site. Nope.  More undisclosed “technical issues” reared their venomous heads. I was beginning to think that this was a new Machiavellian strategy designed to pump up fan frenzy.

However, though not quite johnny-on-the-spot with the premiere, Sylosis have today finally unveiled a new track called “Born Anew”. This song isn’t the one that was scheduled to appear on their web site. It’s one that was broadcast last night on a BBC radio program, which means that it’s now up on YouTube, which means the radio rip is embedded here after the jump. The band are also now streaming “Born Anew” on their Facebook band page HERE.

In addition, Sylosis has stated that they will soon be providing more news about the still-not-yet-functional web site, which presumably will include news about when “A Dying Vine” will be unveiled. To stay on top of that, visit their Facebook page.

And unless you get the wrong idea and think this post is nothing more than a whine session about Sylosis’ delays, allow me to say that “Born Anew” fucking rips.
Continue reading »

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