SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PANOPTICON, UPRISING, LUCERNE HAMMER, BIAŁYWILK, VANISHING EARTH, LAST SADNESS, FOTOCRIME, EGREGORE, TRANSILVANIA, KATHAREIN

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 072026
 

(written by Islander)

At this point Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” is probably the most widely heard protest song to emerge from the ICE invasion of the Twin Cities and the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. But it hasn’t been long, only 14 days since ICE agents shot Pretti to death, even though it seems much longer than that.

Undoubtedly other songwriters have already started releasing their own protests across many genres of music, though I wouldn’t know (you’re looking at the wrong dude if you want insight into the breadth of modern musical culture). Where I do tend to notice things are in the genres of extreme metal, and I guess a few “metal adjacent” realms.

Over the last week I noticed a handful of songs from those realms that were either protest songs or tracks designed to raise money in support of the resistance in Minneapolis to the sweeping seizure of immigrants (and racially profiled U.S. citizens). In the first section of this Saturday roundup I’ve collected those songs, and one other that seemed appropriate. Fortunately, the music’s good, in addition to the artists’ hearts being in the right place. (If you know of more, please leave a Comment.)

To round things out, I added three other very good songs that surfaced last week. I could have added 20 more, because it was a big week for new metal, what with yesterday being a Bandcamp Friday. But we do what we can. Continue reading »

HALLOWEEN HELL: BENIGHTED, MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, VEGAS., PUPIL SLICER, SICK N’ BEAUTIFUL, DESASTER, DECAYED, HELGAMITE, GROMADAH, PANYCHIDA, TRANSILVANIA, NOIRE ANTIDOTE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 312020
 


Benighted – photo by Anthony Dubois

 

While slugging coffee this morning I got my daily text-message alert from the county health department reminding me that the safest way to celebrate Halloween is to stay inside my home. As if I needed that fucking reminder, on top of all the other miserable reminders that this Samhain will be like no other in our lifetimes.

I can’t even count the predictable absence of trick-or-treaters as a silver lining to this cloud, because they never came around our place even before the pandemic made that a potentially self-destructive choice. The screaming of the loris horde and the carefully-placed pools of guts might have had something to do with that.

So, most of us will have to celebrate the most metal day of the year stuck inside playing with ourselves our pets and trying to forget that global infections are now setting new records, that the U.S. set its own new record yesterday with more than 99,000 new cases (!), and that Sean Connery died. What a fucking year it’s been, and still two months of fresh hell to go before it ends.

But we can still listen to the devil’s music tonight, and here at NCS we need to do our part to enliven that experience and help you forget. So here’s an extravagantly-sized playlist of mostly brand new songs and videos that I assembled this morning.

BENIGHTED (France)

If you haven’t had enough breeeeee in your diet, we’ll fix that right away. Also included in the food groups within this first dish are cyclotron-speed drumming, incendiary riffage, back-breaking grooves, splendid blaring chords, carnivorous roaring, and a generally rabid approach to life. Continue reading »