OUR LIST OF 2020’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 3): SELBST, AFSKY, VONLAUS

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2020  2 Responses »
Jan 062021
 

 

On Monday of this week when I began the rollout of this list I noted that there were only 11 songs in my massive list of candidates that received more than two nominations among the sources from which I compiled it. Two of those, both of which were on my own personal list, are among the three in this Part of the list. The third one (which I’ve put in the middle of this threesome) is also tremendously good, drawn from an album that has received a lot of completely deserved acclaim.

SELBST

In his review my friend Andy proclaimed Selbst’s Relatos de Angustia one of the best black metal albums of the year (an opinion with which I completely concur). He later added it to his year-end list of Great Albums, and it also took the No. 4 spot on the year-end list by our friend Johan Huldtgren of Obitus. And of course those aren’t the only year-end lists I’ve seen which anointed it in similar fashion (I found it on five of our reader lists, and on many others scatted about the web). Continue reading »

2020 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): EPs

 LISTMANIA 2020  35 Responses »
Dec 042020
 

 

(The time has come for us to again launch the rollout of year-end lists by NCS writers and guests, and as always we begin with Andy Synn‘s lists. As has usually been the case, Andy begins with his personal list of the year’s best EPs. We’ll continue with his other year-end lists every day next week.)

Well, here we are again.

Next week I’ll once again be rolling our my yearly round-ups of the “Great”, Good”, and “Disappointing” albums which I’ve heard this year, culminating, as always, in my attempt to narrow down these literal hundreds of entries into ten “Critical” selections and ten “Personal” favourites.

But, first of all, I want to give a shout-out to the many, many, fantastic, fascinating, sometimes frustrating, EPs which I’ve heard over the course of the last twelve-ish months.

This isn’t, obviously, intended to be in any way comprehensive (I never got round to listening to the new Carcass, for example, and I’m still digesting both the new Nexul and Descend to Acheron EPs),  nor is it a definitive statement about which EPs are the year’s “best” (though some of them definitely are) but my hope is you’ll all discover something new in what you’re about to read.

So, with all that out of the way, let’s get started, shall we? Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DAUGHTER CHAOS / ULTHA / VONLAUS

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Oct 202020
 


Daughter Chaos

 

(Andy Synn returns to NCS from the injured list and brings us reviews of three excellent EPs released in September or October of this year.)

Some of you may have noticed (or maybe you didn’t, I don’t know how much attention you’re all paying) that I haven’t published anything here at NCS for a little while.

The reason for this is that last weekend (not the one just gone, the one before that) I managed to do myself an injury – not the worst I’ve ever had, but significant enough to affect my life – that has basically kept me in pretty much constant pain, and prevented me from sleeping more than an hour or two at a time, ever since.

As a result I really haven’t been in any mental or physical shape to focus on my writing here, hence my absence over the last week or so.

Thankfully I’m slowly beginning to heal up (and have gained access to some better drugs) meaning I’m now finally capable of diving back into the massive backlog of bands/releases which has developed over the last few days/weeks/months, so expect to be hearing a lot more from me – about a lot of new releases – over the next several days.

And to start things off, here are three pretty damn killer EPs from three pretty damn killer bands. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VONLAUS, AUÐN, HENOSIS, AL-NAMROOD, ESKAPISM, DYSTOPIA

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Aug 232020
 

 

We’ve made it to another Sunday, and I had enough time over the last 36 hours to find new blackened music to recommend. I found more than you’ll discover in this post, but I’m staring down the barrel of a fully loaded gun (every chamber loaded with day-job work I need to tackle today), so the odds are against working up a Part 2. Let’s get to it:

VONLAUS

Even after the warm reception given to their 2018 self-titled demo (reviewed here), Iceland’s Vonlaus still prefer to remain anonymous, though I see that Metal-Archives has identified two of them as members of Above Aurora (whose new album we premiered and reviewed at great length here). They now have a debut album headed our way next month, and its first single is the song I’ve chosen to lead off today’s collection. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): COSMIC CHURCH, UNREQVITED, SCHRAT, VONLAUS, BOIS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Mar 182018
 

 

Continuing on from Part 1 of this Sunday’s column, I’ve chosen new music from five black metal bands. One is a recently released EP and the rest of the songs are from albums scheduled for release in the coming months. If you missed Part 1, it’s here.

COSMIC CHURCH

The Finnish one-man band Cosmic Church has released two albums and many shorter releases since the first demo in 2006, but has now decided to end its life with one final album, entitled Täyttymys. A single called “Armolahja” was digitally released on March 15th as a preview of the album, which will appear on CD and vinyl at some unknown future date via the Finnish black metal label Kuunpalvelus. Continue reading »