SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THECODONTION, CEREMENTED, ZEPHID, NETHERMANCY, VOIDCEREMONY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 252023
 


Thecodontion

I used to type lists of new songs and videos I wanted to check out, pasting the links below the band names. Now I use a Firefox thingy called Pocket. When I’m on a web page for a song or video, I tap the Pocket icon on the Firefox browser and it automatically saves the link in Pocket.

Much faster than what I used to do, but the downside is that when I go to Pocket I see endless rows of thumbnail images for all the links I’ve saved. I fear my fingers will cramp from the scrolling, down and down and down… and my mind starts to cramp up on me too.

The result is that I tend to focus on stuff at the top (the links I saved most recently), especially when I’m hurrying. That phenomenon explains most of the choices in today’s round-up. Continue reading »

VOIDCEREMONY: “AT THE PERIPHERY OF HUMAN REALMS”

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Jan 192022
 

 

(Here’s Alex Atkinson‘s review of a new EP by California-based VoidCeremony that was recently fired into the void by 20 Buck Spin.)

California’s tech-death monstrosity VoidCeremony have given us a quaint dose of things to come with their three-track cassette release At the Periphery of Human Realms.  I usually steer away from tech-death, but something about these four members’ ability to navigate a song like a rabid Cujo always pulls me in.  Their all-star crew, pulling from such heavyweights as Incantation, Stargazer, and Atramentus to name a few, should be enough to get even the most annoying dingleberry a-twinkling.

For anyone who lives under a rock and has not heard VoidCeremony’s debut LP Entropic Reflections Continuum:  Dimensional Unravel, check out NCS’s review back in July of 2020 and listen to it as soon as possible.  It is like falling into a waking manic nightmare. Continue reading »

VOIDCEREMONY: “ENTROPIC REFLECTIONS CONTINUUM: DIMENSIONS UNRAVEL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 222020
 

 

(This is Todd Manning‘s review of the first full-length album by California’s VoidCeremony, which was released by 20 Buck Spin on June 26th.)

While some Death Metal bands try to streamline their sound to have hooks and conventional song structures, others seek to create obscure and challenging material that summons images of alien horrors and oddball geometries of terror. VoidCeremony certainly fall into the latter camp. Their debut full-length, Entropic Reflections Continuum:Dimensions Unravel marries progressive technicality with unrelenting brutality to create an incredibly powerful statement.

Consisting of Garrett Johnson on vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, Jon Reider on rhythm guitar, and Charlie Koryn on drums and engineering, VoidCeremony is full of powerhouse musicians. While plenty impressive on their own, they also enlisted the criminally underrated Damon Good (Stargazer, Black Cauldron Ram, Mournful Congregation) on bass for this album as well. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (DEATH METAL EDITION): I THE INTRUDER, DEFEATED SANITY, OMNIKINETIC, ABYSSUS, CLAIRVOYANCE, INISANS, SEPULCHRAL FROST, VOIDCEREMONY, PUTRESCINE, LIBERATIA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 072020
 

 

I know I’m damned lucky to still have a job when so many people have been thrown out of work, but the job has been annoyingly intrusive lately. And by “intrusive”, I mean that it unexpectedly interferes with my grand ideas for NCS posts. This post, for example, is grand and gargantuan, but the job that pays me has delayed its appearance and constricted my time to the point that I’ve had to strip away most of the writing I had in mind. I’m cognizant of the likelihood that depriving you of my complete thoughts will cause widespread weeping.

As the title signifies, I decided to make this round-up death-centric — but there are lots of flavors of death metal represented here and different directions being pursued. I might have figured out a good way to order the flow, but didn’t have time to think about that either. So, just be prepared to bounce around.

I THE INTRUDER (Tunisia)

“Check this steamroller. Nasum-like grind with choppy tech riffs to break things up. Complete barbarian war vocals. From Tunisia. What the hell, Omination, Ayyur, and now this….” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AETHERIAN, BLOODSHOT DAWN, GATECREEPER, OF WOLVES, DECAYING, WASTEWALKER, VOIDCEREMONY, ULVER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 112017
 

 

You can go long or you can go short. You can pound your musical erogenous zones or you can shrivel up and go dry from something far outside the rim of your bullseye. You can fragment your mind or feel it coalescing in configurations that become receivers of new visions. Every day there are new opportunities.

I’m speaking of metal, of course. I got doses of all those experiences this week, but bit off almost more than I could chew with this week’s flood of premieres, and got squeezed by my fucking day job on top of that, so I failed to compile a round-up until now, and hence it’s a big one.

Catching up is an impossibility, of course, and this time it happens that my choices (all the way up to the last one) are mainly indulgences in a particular mood rather than my usual effort to throw darts all over the metal dartboard. The one thing I haven’t done is incorporate black metal, because I have tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column for that.

AETHERIAN

We’ve been writing about this Greek band for years, beginning with their first single in 2013 and including their second one in 2015, their debut EP released the same year (and reviewed by DGR here), their amazing single and video from last year, “The Rain”, the first single (“Seeds of Deception”0 from their debut album, The Untamed Wilderness, which will be released by Lifeforce Records on November 24th, and the second one (“Shade of the Sun”). And now there’s a third, accompanied by a video. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 6)

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 122016
 

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(This is Part 6 of our Norwegian friend Gorger’s continuing feature on bands we seem to have overlooked at NCS. And be sure to check out Gorger’s Metal.)

Cheers anew, and a headbanging new year. The past has been revisited a bit lately on NSC, a site that typically holds a firm stare into the crystal ball. I have, after hours arguing with myself, decided not to spend days arranging a 2015-favorites list. Thus, at least I can spend some time presenting some infectious releases from the year that kicked the bucket on its own birthday. I hope you’ll find something you’ll pursue and enjoy. Continue reading »