Oct 142019
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by The Great Old Ones, which will be released on October 25th by Season of Mist.)

My relationship with the French coven who refer to themselves as The Great Old Ones has been a long and fruitful one.

And it’s for this reason, among many others, that I feel a certain responsibility to provide you, our loyal readers, with the unvarnished truth (at least, as far as I perceive it) about their newest album, which is set for release next week. Continue reading »

Sep 042019
 

 

(Our Norway-based contributor Karina Noctum brings us this new interview of Benjamin Guerry of the French Lovecraft-inspired post/black metal band The Great Old Ones, whose new album Cosmicism is set for release on October 22nd through Season of Mist.)

I’ve been a fan of The Great Old Ones ever since they released their very first album, Al Azif, in 2012. I really like their elegant (the French way) atmospheric Black Doom Metal. Their latest album, Cosmicism, is pretty sinister and able to take you right to the Cthulian mood of despair and misery in a long journey. I have listened to TGOO while journeying through desolate, barren, and frozen landscapes, so I have had time to reflect about the mood and the Lovecraftian theme, but even if one can’t really experience the music in such an environment, one can certainly imagine it.

Cosmicism is a fine example of what Lovecraftian-inspired metal should be like in terms of how to convey the right mood. It is pretty much a showcase of the band’s talent and of the experience gained throughout the years in weaving atmospheres and experimenting with mixing genres and varied tempos. It was thus a pleasure to exchange questions and answers with the band’s vocalist/guitarist Benjamin Guerry: Continue reading »

Aug 232019
 

 

I’m posting this Friday round-up on my way to Sea-Tac airport, where I hope to depart the area for a mini-vacation in Wyoming with a bunch of other miscreants, returning Monday night. I’m not sure how much else I’ll be able to write for NCS between now and then, and I’ve been scurrying even to get this round-up completed before I disappear into the wild blue yonder.

A ton of new music has appeared over the last 24 hours, much of it from bigger names in the metal cosmos. I’ve included some of that here, but not all of it. There is, for example, a video released today for a new Insomnium song called “Valediction” (here) from the album Heart Like A Grave, out on October 4th, that I haven’t included. I assume it’s proving to be a crowd-pleaser. I’ve only listened to it once, and it did get its hooks in my noggin, but I also have some mixed feelings about it. And anyway, I wanted to make room for a couple of more obscure names in addition to the big ones below.

ALCEST

I’m beginning with a video for a new song by Alcest named “Protection“, from their new album Spiritual Instinct. Here’s what vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Neige had to say about it: Continue reading »

Jul 252019
 

 

You wanna know how many new songs I added to my listening list over just the 48 hours since I posted the last round-up of new music? Of course you don’t, but the number was 45. Don’t even bother trying to guess how many were already on the list from preceding days. There is a reason why the category tag on these posts is “Random Fucking Music”, because there’s not much rhyme or reason to making these selections from such a large universe of choices.

Of course, I haven’t listened to all 45 of those new songs I was curious to check out. Of the ones I did hear, I picked these five, going with my gut, and of course my highly refined sense of good taste. With luck, I’ll collect some more for tomorrow, to bring the week to an end with a BANG.

SARCASM

From their formative years in the early ’90s through today, the Swedish death metal band Sarcasm have had their fair share of obstacles, including personal tragedies, line-up changes, and the other vicissitudes of life that have often led bands of this vintage to sink beneath the waves, never to surface again. But Sarcasm have survived, although their sound has evolved since the earliest years.

Their first album (Burial Dimensions) didn’t surface until 2016, but they followed that quickly with 2017’s Within the Sphere of Ethereal Minds, and now their third album is headed our way via Chaos Records. Entitled Esoteric Tales Of The Unserene, it will be released on October 14th. Continue reading »

Feb 262018
 

 

The fifth edition of Culthe Fest will take place on March 31, 2018, in the city of Münster, Germany. When the festival’s organizers invited us to help spread the word about the event as a co-sponsor, the answer was a no-brainer, based on one glance at the line-up. Feast your eyes upon these names:

UADA (USA)
THE GREAT OLD ONES (FR)
VERHEERER (DE)
HEMELBESTORMER (BE)
TURIA (NL)
ALBEZ DUZ (DE)
BELTEZ (DE)
VYRE (DE)

With only one exception, these are all bands whose music we’ve enthusiastically praised at our site — and the one exception (Vyre) are a band we’ve happily discovered for the first time as a result of their confirmed appearance at Culthe Fest 2018. So it wasn’t a difficult decision to lend our own putrid name to the event. The difficulty is that we’re far away from Münster and haven’t yet gotten the teleporter operational, because this would be a hell of a show to attend in person. If you can be there, you damned well should! Continue reading »

Nov 282017
 


The Great Old Ones

 

(Greek metal writer and occasional NCS contributor John Sleepwalker attended the 5 Shades of Black show in Antwerp, Belgium, on October 21, 2017, and provides these thoughts about the performances by Saor, The Great Old Ones, Fen, Drawn Into Descent, and Sorrow Plagues. And we are most grateful to Kriss Wolf for kindly giving us permission to use her wonderful photos from the show, which appear throughout this review.)

 

5 Shades of Black stands as the type of an event that is a rare occasion in the lands of Greece. To the point that it seems more hopeful to dig for water in the desert than to expect names such as these to ever visit the capital city of Athens. Since the brand of old-school names is typically what tends to attract the majority of local interest, the few listeners dedicated to different aesthetics often need to travel to enjoy the related gigs of their choice. Continue reading »

Mar 162017
 


Cthulhu” by François Baranger

 

(To commemorate the anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s death, Andy Synn has assembled a playlist of great tracks inspired by the great man.)

 

The influence that the work of H. P. Lovecraft has had upon the Metal scene can’t be understated, with everyone from Metallica to Morbid Angel taking lyrical (and musical) inspiration from his work.

Now yesterday just so happened to be the eightieth anniversary of Lovecraft’s death and, in true NCS fashion… we completely failed to acknowledge it.

However, it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon, and what is dead can never truly die, so here are a bunch of songs/albums which pay tribute to the author’s lasting legacy of eldritch, inhuman horror. Continue reading »

Jan 252017
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn’s review of the new old one by The Great Old Ones from France.)

As much as I generally like to give my reviews some sort of concept or over-arching theme, sometimes there are only two questions which really matter – “is it a good album?”, and “is it as good as their last one?”

In the case of EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy, the third album by French cabalists The Great Old Ones, the answers to those questions are:

  1. Yes
  2. Not quite…

Continue reading »

Nov 292016
 

the-great-old-ones-eod-a-tale-of-dark-legacy

 

Numerous metal bands have drawn inspiration from the horrors spawned by the imagination of H.P. Lovecraft, but few have devoted themselves so single-mindedly to capturing the atmosphere of the stories as The Great Old Ones. They continue this mission on their new album EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy, which will be released on January 27 through Season of Mist. The seventh track on the album is “Mare Infinitum“, and we’re helping to premiere it in this post.

In Lovecraft’s mythos the Esoteric Order of Dagon was the dark, terrifying religion brought to the benighted community of Innsmouth by Capt. Obed Marsh upon his return from the South Seas, seducing the townspeople with promises of prosperity, power, and through interbreeding with the amphibious Deep Ones, transformation and eternal life. Those listeners familiar with The Shadow Over Innsmouth will recognize the reference in the new album’s title, as well as the connections of the song titles to that horrifying tale — and that’s because the album conceptually represents an original sequel to that famous story. Continue reading »

Nov 042016
 

the-great-old-ones-eod-a-tale-of-dark-legacy

 

I’m still in our nation’s capital on a business trip, doing the best I can to ignore the last frightening days of the presidential campaign in an effort to avoid an aneurysm. I had some time to kill before my flight home today, so I quickly sifted through some of the new music I discovered in recent days and compiled this selection.

My disturbed mind decided the following songs would make a nice grouping. In different ways, they summon a skin-crawling sensation of horror, which is how I’ve been feeling in light of tightening poll results in that torturous presidential campaign I mentioned.

THE GREAT OLD ONES

The new album by The Great Old Ones falls into my “highly anticipated” category. Two days ago Season of Mist announced details about the release and DECIBEL premiered a song. Continue reading »