SEEN AND HEARD: ENTRAILS, AU-DESSUS, KOLLAPSE, QRIXKUOR, SATANARCHIST

 

Things are going to slow down here at NCS until early next week. As of this morning I’ve left Seattle with Ms. Islander for a short vacation, and blogging isn’t part of any planned activities. Any attempts by me to do any NCS stuff besides hurriedly post whatever I might receive from other contributors would be met with severe punishment, or at least a cold shoulder.

I thought I’d pull together a round-up of new music before we left, but found myself with too little time to write impressions of the songs I chose. So this will be more bare-bones than usual.

ENTRAILS

The last time I wrote about this band, almost exactly two years ago, I began by saying that, “By my lights, Sweden’s Entrails can pretty much do no wrong”. Back then the context was their new album Obliteration. Now they have a new one named World Inferno, which will be released by Metal Blade on June 16th.

 

 

There are a couple of new players in Entrails now, but the first single, “The Soul Collector“, still has everything I want from their music. Dan Swanö, who mixed and mastered the album, seems to feel similarly enthusiastic:

“I don’t know if I had said this before, but I say it again. Every time I start thinking about putting together some new SweDeath project, Entrails show up at my doorstep with a new album to mix, and every time I think ‘Fuck!! – What’s the point in making my own project when this is so fucking good, and exactly what I wanted to do…’

“And if I felt there were some details to improve upon from our previous work together, they fix that and then some, and return with an album even stronger than the previous one…. Yet another amazing slab of SweDeath coming your way from Entrails! Beyond. Blown. Away!”

Pre-order:
http://www.metalblade.com/entrails/

Entrails:
https://www.facebook.com/Entrails666/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AU DESSUS

I really really really really like the new Au-Dessus album, End of Chapter. Really. I’m still confident that seven months from now it will remain one of my favorites from this year. A couple of songs have appeared already, one of which we premiered, and now there’s a video for a third one — “VI“.

The video is interesting to watch; the song is great. The album will be released on May 19th by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions.

Pre-Order:
http://bit.ly/2mOzkFV
https://au-dessus.bandcamp.com

Au-Dessus
https://www.facebook.com/audessusabove/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KOLLAPSE

In early April I discovered this Danish band through a video for a song from their new album, Angst, which will be released on May 19. As I wrote back then, both the video and the song (“Void”) were striking.

Early this morning, before departing on vacation, I discovered another new song and video from this album. This track is named “Til Hølle“, about an old friend of the band who committed suicide. The music is intense, and the video is just as engrossing as the first one I saw by this band — simply one very interesting face after another gazing seriously into the camera.

Order:
https://www.kollapse.bandcamp.com

Kollapse:
https://www.facebook.com/kollapseband

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

QRIXKUOR

Our old friend SurgicalBrute named Qrixkuor’s last release, Three Devils Dance, to his NCS list of 2016’s Best EPs, with these words:

“While we’ve been almost overdosed on this style of cavernous metal recently, I for one never get tired of it… and with a release like this, I’m more than happy to make room for Qrixkuor. Powerful and disturbing, this album puts them in a league of their own.”

Fans of this British band (and I’m definitely one) can now look forward to Incantations From the Abyss, which will be released by Invictus Productions on June 6. This is a compilation that includes the band’s first demo, 2014’s Consecration of the Temple, and their second one, a 2015 recording of their rehearsal for a festival in Dublin that included a new track entitled “The Benign Architect,” a cover of Demoncy’s “Winter Bliss”, and a re-interpretation of the title track from the Consecration demo.

Both demos were remastered for this new compilation by VK (Vassafor), with layout by SeventhBell. The song below is the version of “Consecration of the Temple” that was included on the first demo.

Order:
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/incantations-from-the-abyss

 

 

 

 

 

 

SATANARCHIST

In June 2015 we premiered a split that was my first exposure to a Portland (Oregon) band called Satanarchist — and they made a damned strong impression, creating “a hell of a vicious racket with a boiling cauldron of ingredients that include elements of thrash, black metal, and crust, with a punk attitude that gives no fucks”.

I was very happy to discover yesterday that the band have now completed a debut album named Fire Against the Wall that will be released on June 2. The first single from the album is “Paradox“, and it sure does make me want to hear the rest of this.

Pre-order:
https://satanarchist.bandcamp.com/album/first-against-the-wall

Satanarchist:
https://www.facebook.com/Satanarchistpdx/