WHERE AM I?

I think I’m back home after a week of being here, there, and everywhere. I woke up disoriented, jet-lagged, and thinking about the lyrics to “Once In A Lifetime” (Talking Heads). Was that my beautiful wife in bed next to me? Is this my beautiful house I’m in? Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down. Letting the days go by, water flowing underground. Into the blue again . . .

I’ll get my shit together before the day is out, but at the moment the shit is kind of scattered and incoherent. After a week of having not much time to call my own, I’m also way fuckin’ behind on the metal. A lot of catching up to do, a lot of new music to hear, a lot of gibberish to write. But I ought to make a start right now, shouldn’t I?

For example: Yesterday our friends at The Monolith turned on the site and made it go live. If you haven’t checked out that site, you should give it a whirl. A couple of very good dudes who’ve been slumming here at NCS after The Number of the Blog shut down — groverXIII and DGR — will be writing over there now, as will a bunch of other folks from other blogs who we’ve gotten to know and admire since we started NCS. We wish all of them much success with the new venture.

I also heard some new tracks that I thought you might enjoy, from ILSA, Devolved, and Rage Nucleaire.

To begin, I saw that CVLT Nation has started streaming a new ILSA track from their new album Intoxicantations (to be released by Baltimore’s A389 Recordings on Nov 23). I fuckin’ love the artwork for the album, which was created by ILSA’s drummer, Joshy:

In an e-mail from A389, I also got what appears to be a slightly colorized version of the art, which will be part of the gatefold 12″ vinyl for this album:

As for the song, it’s called “Say You Love Satan”, and yes, I said it. I mean, I know I’m saying I love an imaginary being, but the song is so damned fine that if they told me, “Say You Love Eating Diarrhea With A Spoon”, I’d do that, too. If they told me to actually eat diarrhea with a spoon, it would be a closer call. Sure glad I don’t have to make that decision.

It looks like A389 will eventually put the track up on this Bandcamp page, but for now go HERE to listen.

I’ve heard the new Devolved album, Reprisal, which will be available on November 20. In fact, because John Sankey and Mark Hawkins are such good dudes, I got a really early advance listen and  reviewed Reprisal here in August. I’ll condense my multi-hundred-word review down to this: It’s the shit.

Yesterday Devolved released a fascinating and completely fitting fan-made lyric video for “Embodiment”, which includes a real jaw-dropper of an eerie, prog-metal styled solo contributed by Nate Vennarucci (Ontogeny, Anomalous), in addition to all the blazing, hammering, technical brutality inflicted by Devolved. This vid is as cool to watch as it is to hear.
 

 

If you’ve been hanging around here over the last few months, then you’l already recognize the name Rage Nucléaire, because I’ve written about them twice before. They’re a four-piece Canadian black metal band formed by Lord Worm, former vocalist of Cryptopsy, and ex-Cryptopsy guitarist Steve “Dark Rage” Thibault. Season of Mist has already released the band’s debut album, Unrelenting Fucking Hatred (order-able here), everywhere but NorthAm, and that release date will be November 6.

A few days ago DECIBEL premiered a second track from the album by the name of “Endziel”. From the ominous strings+piano intro to the ripping/crushing main body of the song, I found it to be a riveting listen. Fredrik Widigs’ drumming is a jaw-dropper, Lord Worm’s vocals are blistering (and inhuman), and the dark keyboard-enhanced melody is a brooding menace. I like, very much.