NEBULOUS OBFUSCATION OF ESSENCE (RELEASES THAT STRAIN CATEGORIZING)

 Album Reviews, Off Topic  No Responses »
Sep 192024
 

(We will let our Vietnam-based writer Vizzah Harri explain in his own words what he did in selecting the records reviewed in the following article, and why they are here now.)

What follows are other obscurities and arcane esoteric mysteries of the abstruse. If a more redundant sentence exists as title, I’m obviously ignorant of its existence. It’s almost October, I know, but my brain is still stuck in the heretofore, so the next few writeups will contain releases that happened at the end of the year of the rabbit (cat in Vietnam) and the beginning of the year of the dragon (earlier in 2024).

In signs of the times, it is easy to become but a whisper of grace wrapped in a facade of putrescence in the absolute cacophony and unceasing mass of new sounds. In this era of mass consumption, it is the underground at times where some of the truest art hides. Especially of the underground metal kind if you are so inclined. Only one of the releases to follow can be described as metal, though they all dabble in extremities in different senses. Continue reading »

WANDERING INTO BLACKENED REACHES — 4 CRITICAL BLACK METAL ALBUMS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 172024
 

(In this article our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri brings us four reviews of four unusual albums from blackened realms — albums created by Skeletal Augury, Cemetery Trip, Conifère, and Xw​î​n.)

The following 4 albums have been on my to-do list for months. You won’t find a slew of reviews on their Bandcamp pages sharing the praises from bigger media outlets. I couldn’t even find many reviews of the albums themselves out there. And partially this could be because of it being one hell of a year for black metal, but isn’t that just every year?

If you like black metal, you’re bound to love at least one of what I’m sharing with you today. The only order here is chronological because I don’t have a favorite amongst them and their styles diverge violently. There were more albums which I will hopefully be able to get to soon, but 4 is a nice number for its tetraphobic propensities in East Asia. The number 4, you see, signifies shaking hands with Elvis (I only learned that slang phrase for death today). Continue reading »

VULVODYNIA: “ENTABENI”

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Sep 042024
 

(Our distinctive contributor, the South Africa born and Vietnam resident Vizzah Harri, is back at NCS with his review of a new album by the South African death metal band Vulvodynia, which was released in July of this year by Unique Leader Records.)

Click play with caution, because there is a real danger that your attention might be shanghaied for a full forty-one minutes and 8 seconds, the runtime for Entabeni, Vulvodynia’s fifth, released by Unique Leader Records (that’s if you’re not counting 2015’s Finis Omnium Ignorantiam ‘EP’ which clocked in over 34 minutes). Continue reading »

ABSENCE OF THE SACRED: “IV: THE HAND THAT WOUNDS”

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Aug 262024
 

(About 10 days ago the multi-national extreme metal band Absence of the Sacred released their fourth album, IV: The Hand That Wounds, and below we present NCS writer Vizzah Harri‘s enthusiastic and evocative review of this new achievement.)

There is a saying that we die every second we breathe, for each breath that we release back into the air is a small death. In French that translates to petit mort, which in no uncertain terms is slang for sexual release. The immensity of molecules exuded from just the collective sigh necessary to deliver a qualifiable work of art into the world… uncountable. It’s important to put in perspective sometimes where we are at, and how good we have it right at this minute.

In death there is life, yet we consume the art that can un-alive a packed venue for the amount of carbon dioxide released from the breaths it took to create. We consume without sometimes even thinking about that part, and we can masticate on that hard-won elegance made manifest in waves of sound as if it were nothing, but a thing it is. Continue reading »

ZNOUS: “ZNOUSLAND 4”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 122024
 

(Our Vietnam-based writer Vizzah Harri prepared the following highly entertaining review of the latest album by the Tunisian band Znous, released in early June of this year.)

And now for something completely different. No, I’m not referring to the Flying Circus, the music and the band is anything but unserious. Znous hail from Al Rudayyif, Gafsa in Tunisia and were covered by Andy Synn back in 2021 as “socio-political Punk-Metal firebrands” not to miss.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: LILLE GRUBER

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 022024
 

Images courtesy of Laura McCullagh and Slam Dank Productions

(We’re very pleased to present our contributor Vizzah Harri‘s interview of Lille Gruber from Defeated Sanity, with apologies to both of them for our delay in publishing it.)

Defeated Sanity are a jazz ensemble hiding in plain sight as a brutal tech-death band. At this writing they’re currently on their Final Impetus tour to bring to audiences far and wide one more experience of their 2020 opus, The Sanguinary Impetus. Their recent show in Cape Town, South Africa was reviewed here.

It’s certainly not easy to make time on a tour for pesky questions from a sometimes-contributor to a music blog, but Lille Gruber, drummer, songwriter, and founder of Defeated Sanity, took precious time out of his busy schedule to entertain my queries.

For those who don’t know or grew up under a rock like me, Lille Gruber started playing and growling from a really young age. Starting the band with his brother Jonas Gruber and their dad, the late Wolfgang Teske (R.I.P. 2010), it was like growing up with a literal Amadeus as a father.

With family names basically soothsaying where they’d end up seeing as the etymologies date back to people who lived in a hollow… or pit (Gruber), and to console/comfort (Teske); well, they’ve been comforting pit-dwellers since 1993 and aren’t we all the richer for it? Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: UKEPARAAVE ENVIAVUASAN

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Aug 012024
 

(Our contributor Vizzah Harri has provided us and you the following interview that he conducted.)

We contacted the founder of Nächtlich and owner of Vinland Corpse records, the artist known as Ukeparaave Enviavuasan, in order to shed more light on their latest album Exaltation of Evil, which was reviewed at NCS here. (They’re also involved with quite a few other projects, Thallid, Black Kruud, Bloody Winds, Dibikimitig, Dobhar Chú, Dolmen Shrine, Eerified Catacomb, Reliquary Ash, Malphas). Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: DEFEATED SANITY, PEASANT, EAT THE ELDERLY, AND THE FALLEN PROPHETS IN CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, JULY 5TH, 2024

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 172024
 

(Our contributor Vizzah Harri lives and works in Vietnam but is a native of South Africa, and on a recent return there he caught a great show in Cape Town featuring the bands named above. He sent us the following lively report, adorned by photos courtesy of Laura McCullagh and Slam Dank Productions.)

June 2022, intermittent light beams get blasted from the Oort cloud. 2 lightyears from Earth. In June this year the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Sutherland receives a message from outer space. Weirdly enough, instead of the technosignatures and quantum communication techniques that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has prepared for, it was in morse code:

Lucien Rudaux – Sur les Autres Mondes (defiled by adding morse digitally)

It immediately got sent to the SAAO headquarters in the suburb of… Observatory, Cape Town. Once deciphered it baffled astronomers the world over: Continue reading »

KÓLGA: “BLACK TIDES”

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Jun 242024
 

(Vizzah Harri wrote what follows below. It’s best that we not spoil it by attempting any further introductory words.)

Nearly 3 months have passed since Black Tides has been released. So many things in life are timebound; news, they say, needs to be relevant, timely and fresh. Nothing refreshes more than a jump into the ocean, or smelling the salty morning breeze, I mean, 3am is morning, right?

If you don’t mind, we’re going to take a trip back in time, because that’s exactly what Kólga’s sound implores us to do. And like the evening news after an emergency, it’s best to wait until the stylus revolts unto the dead wax. Continue reading »

BLOODY KEEP: “RATS OF BLACK DEATH”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 142024
 


(Our contributor Vizzah Harri has discovered California-based Bloody Keep and their debut album released by Grime Stone Records in January of this year. He wishes to share with you his considerable enthusiasm for it today. Read on….)

You must be a selenite (inhabitant of the Moon) at this point in time to not realize that black metal is probably the kind of metal that, if not incumbent to the highest frequency, probably has the best base for coagulation and experimentation with any other genre.

Grime Stone Records have a penchant for the odd and strange and there are those who would prefer their murky darkness unspoiled with the invasion of even the faintest light (or chiptune for that matter, click on the ‘strange’ link above to take a trip down a rabbit hole you might never have had the chance to know existed). With Bloody Keep we find abstractions of the acrid and abrasive type yet subscribed purely to that which is animistic, and efficacious in its effulgence.

These acolytes of the black arts exist to zapruder the flow of that what is deemed the norm. Wormscored, engaging, fertile with ideas, and glimmering with lustral exuberance. From the bleak and near comical cover to that which can be deemed garish musically. Aberrant to the abhorrent, recalcitrant to such non-divergence. Continue reading »

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