AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TEMPLE DESECRATION — “WHIRLWINDS OF FATHOMLESS CHAOS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 102018
 

 

We have been bred through evolution to desire order, and to develop the skills for imposing it, because for so many millennia we were at the mercy of chaos in the natural world, and that chaos often brought sudden death. Paradoxically, we also seem to have a taste for chaos, and a talent for creating it — and for inflicting it upon ourselves on a scale that’s unrivaled by any other species.

The manifestation of chaos in sound is a large part of what drives many of us to metal. Metal feeds the taste for chaos, which wars with the instinct for order, and fuels the rebellious spirit that pushes back against someone else’s idea of order. The music of Temple Desecration is that kind of manifestation. It captures the terrifying sensations of destructive chaos, but more than that, the music seems to wish for it, to summon it, maybe even to worship it. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: URFAUST, WALLFAHRER, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, DIPLEGIA, RITUAL, TEMPLE DESECRATION

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  8 Responses »
May 062018
 

 

There’s a lot of new music in this week’s SHADES OF BLACK, which I suppose isn’t all that unusual. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of time for me to write about it, in part because of time spent on a rare Sunday premiere (which also comes from black subterranean realms) and in part because I have other plans for today that will separate me from the computer; I hope I don’t experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.

I’ll begin with streams of two fantastic new albums and follow those with four individual songs from forthcoming releases, one of which is paired with an outstanding video.

URFAUST

Maybe it’s not too soon to proclaim the emergence of a trend. Like an unusually high number of other occurrences this year, the august Dutch band Urfaust launched their new (fifth) album with no warning, no advance promotion, no opportunities for scurrilous scribblers to review it before release. This happened on Friday, and although I’ve only managed to listen to The Constellatory Practice once since then, my impulse is to proclaim it a triumph. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: TEMPLE DESECRATION, TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE, MORTUUS, VUYVR

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
May 162014
 

I started writing this post last weekend, when the featured songs were fresh out of the blast furnace and had just appeared online, but every day since then has thrown distractions in the way of finishing it. Finally, it is done. I’m afraid there’s nothing in this collection that’s suitable for the faint of heart, but if you’ve become acclimated to ravaging sonic assaults I think you’ll find a lot to like.

TEMPLE DESECRATION

I re-ordered the appearance of Temple Desecration since I began writing this post because what started as a feature about a single song is now a review of a two-song 12″ EP, the name of which is Communion Perished. It’s due for release by Germany’s Iron Bonehead Productions on June 27.

Temple Desecration are a blackened death metal band from Poland and their previous output consists of a 2012 demo named Abhorrent Rites, which I’ve not heard. The new release includes two songs — “Ghoul Prayer” and “Apotheosis”. Both of them intertwine passages of rapacious, storming riffs and merciless percussive fusillades with ghastly doom dirges, the guitars and bass drenched in distortion and the bestial vocals reverberating as if recorded in a catacombs. Continue reading »