OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 19): SVALBARD AND VISCERA///

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  4 Responses »
Feb 012019
 

 

The two songs I’ve added to this list today consist of one that I discovered very late in the year after neglecting the album for many months, and another that’s been stuck in my head since we premiered it in October.

As usual, I’ll be taking a break from the rollout of this list this weekend while I continue trying  to figure out what will come next. Decisions, decisions, and they’re not getting much easier even though 19 installments are now behind me.

SVALBARD

I confess that I didn’t pay close attention to this UK band’s latest album until near the end of the year. Even after reading Andy Synn‘s review of It’s Hard To Have Hope last April, which spoke of the album’s  “unbridled passion and unwavering integrity” and insisted that “Svalbard deserve all the support and attention they can muster going forwards”, I didn’t listen. I meant to, but it must have been one of those especially harried weeks around the NCS compound, and as time passed, so too the album passed me by. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VISCERA/// — “MARAUDERS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 252018
 

 

The first time I heard Agalloch’s “Not Unlike the Waves”, a song that still lives in my head like a cherished companion, I was awe-struck. Even 12 years and countless listens later, it still evokes a powerful emotional response, the kind that simultaneously puts my heart in my throat and also makes me feel as if it’s about to burst from my chest.

As a nearly inviolable rule, I resist the impulse to compare one band’s music to that of another, even though it can be a useful descriptive shorthand, because I fear  it might be misinterpreted as a suggestion that the music in question lacks originality, when (usually) that’s not what I would mean to imply at all. But in introducing the song we’re premiering from the new album by Viscera///, I’m violating that rule through the reference to “Not Unlike the Waves”, for what I hope is a good reason.

Allow me to explain. Continue reading »