Chernaa
(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three 2019 albums that we haven’t previously paid attention to with the thoroughness that they deserve.)
No big intro or preamble this time. Just three very cool albums delivering only the best in heart-stopping Post-Black Metal, cinematic Prog Metal, and rampaging Death Metal.
Prep your ears accordingly. Continue reading »
Since it’s the summer solstice today, it seemed important to commemorate the event with a selection of new songs. And since festival-binging and assorted other commitments have prevented me from preparing a round-up for the last nine days, it seemed all the more imperative. The array of choices that have surfaced in recent weeks has been extravagant. From my efforts to make a dent in my listening-list last night, I chose these five, with hopefully more to come this weekend.
BLOOD RED THRONE
September seems very far away, but patience will undoubtedly be rewarded because that month will bring us a new album by Blood Red Throne. Their ninth full-length in a career that began in 1998, Fit To Kill will be discharged by Mighty Music on the lucky 13th of September, and includes cover artwork designed by Giannis Nakos.
Struggling with the challenges of patience have been eased somewhat by the appearance earlier this week of a new track named “Skyggemannen” (which premiered at DECIBEL), accompanied by a video clip of the band performing the song for the first time together, at the Grabbenacht festival in Germany. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn looks back at three albums from 2014 that we sadly neglected to review.)
Despite what you all clearly think, even your humble Metal overlords here at NCS aren’t completely infallible. Try as we might, sometimes even we miss out on stuff amongst the hustle and bustle of this thing we call life.
Case in point: I’m still discovering albums from last year (and the year before that… and the year before that…) which we failed to adequately cover properly, and which I’m metaphorically kicking myself for having missed.
So, in the interest of correcting such heinous oversights, I’ve decided to wax lyrical about three albums which went cruelly unappreciated here at NCS during the chaos and confusion of last year, each of which offers something very different to tease your musical tastebuds! Continue reading »
(Austin Weber provides the following introduction to our premiere of a song by Germany’s Under the Pledge of Secrecy.)
I was made aware of Under The Pledge Of Secrecy quite recently, and at just the right time it seems, as this talented German band have a new album, Black Hole Mass Evolution, coming very soon. I heard their last album, The Convoluted Line, described to me as sounding like Between The Buried And Me stripped down to their early primal aggressive style, and while I hear that, I would say they are also equal parts early Dillinger Escape Plan and early The Red Chord. Their Facebook and Soundcloud describes them as experimental grind metal, and those three intertwined certainly encompass the feel and flow of their music.
This is high-octane musical rabies, a convoluted yet precise wrecking ball of grind and death metal — shot through with a strong melodic counterbalance. Their music has always eclectically drawn from a wide swathe of sounds, though this new album embraces a greater death metal focus — a trait inherent in the rampaging track “The One Eyed God Prophecy” that we are premiering today.
The first few seconds bring the triumphant evil of Behemoth to mind, until the song ignites into a white-hot fury of thunderous roars, a conveyor-belt approach of frenzied riff after frenzied riff, bustling bouncy bass lines that exhibit a keen presence in the mix, and lightning-fast drumming interlocking with the guitars in pure rhythmic bliss. A multitude of grind bursts ratchet the intensity ever higher, feeding the frenzy and fire of the song’s scorching death metal primacy. After the pummeling, the track fades out into a section that sounds like a horror film score, an effective slip back into the abyss. Continue reading »