Islander

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORSE BUTCHER — “HORSE BUTCHER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Dec 192024
 

(written by Islander)

It’s not enough that a particularly dismal and disgusting year on Earth will soon gasp its last rotten and rattling breath — Horse Butcher have arisen to murder it with one of the most vicious and mind-mauling releases of the last 12 months. It’s as if they decided this bastard year didn’t deserve to live even another two weeks.

Given how often our putrid glorious site throws emotionally and aurally assaulting sounds at visitors, it may seem like an exaggeration to say that about Horse Butcher‘s self-titled EP. Trust me, it’s no exaggeration.

Sentient Ruin Laboratories, which will release the EP on December 20th, also isn’t exaggerating when they call the record “a disfigured onslaught of gore-fucked bestial deathgrind worshipping directly at the altar of Carcass, Archgoat, Disgorge, Impetigo and Pissgrave” — “six tracks and twenty minutes of neanderthalian carnage and slaughterhouse madness.”

But you’ll see this for yourselves right quick because today we’re hosting the EP’s premiere. Continue reading »

JESUS CHRIST WILL HE JUST GO AWAY? NEILL JAMESON’S 2024 LISTS PT II

 LISTMANIA 2024  1 Response »
Dec 192024
 


photo by Hillarie Jason

(Here’s the second installment of year-end lists compiled for NCS by Neill Jameson (Krieg), with a couple more yet to come.)

Remember how I said things weren’t in any kind of order, until the end, in our last get together? I wasn’t entirely truthful. That list was really more the warm-up because this year I had incredible difficulty putting together a top ten list for my yearly what-have-you with Invisible Oranges, where I had to solidify it just so I could walk away without constantly wanting to move things around. We’ll start seeing those records I left out of the top in here.

I realize there’s several releases that I’m including in these lists that just came out within the last few weeks, which seems to happen every year. Does that mean I had enough time to truly sit with them? I’d like to think so, but it doesn’t seem likely. So I went back to years prior to see if I still felt strongly about late year releases I’d written about before, with a nearly perfect success rate, which was all scientifically calculated. So, in short, fuck off – they’re worth shedding light on.

I doubt anyone truly cares but that seemed like a good internal conversation. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SHRIEKING DEMONS — “PERENNIAL DIRGE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 192024
 

Throughout the history of death metal some bands have been very successful in choosing names for themselves which tell you what they’re up to with a bullhorn. Bands like Autopsy, Death, and Possessed. Of course, we’d still have forgotten about names such as those if their music hadn’t taken deep root in the harrowed and fertilized fields of our minds.

Shrieking Demons is another name that uses a bullhorn to tell you what’s coming. Not coincidentally, we chose those other reference points above not just because they help make the point about evocative band-name choices, but also because they’ve influenced the music of Shrieking Demons.

But if you think about those other, now-legendary names, you’ll also guess that these Italian demons do more than shriek, and a further clue to what else they do can be found in the name of their forthcoming debut album: The Festering Dwellers. Or even more vividly, from the name of the album track we’re about to premiere: “Perennial Dirge.” Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR-END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS — THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART FOUR: 20-11

 LISTMANIA 2024  8 Responses »
Dec 192024
 

(We’ve made it to the fourth installment of DGR‘s Top 50 year-end list, with another block of 10 releases being ranked, and one more section slated for arrival tomorrow.)

You ever do something constantly even though you’ve known for a while that it is taking a lot out of you and driving other people insane? I have habits that I can’t break and sometimes think that long ago we evolved past yearly ‘tradition’ and into something in the warehouse of yearly ‘ritual’ instead.

This YE list series is my closing act in a way, the final signing off, tying of the bow and boot out rifling out the door of my writing for 2024. The final summation in many ways of everything up to this point even though it’s the one time I allow my writing to really veer off the officious sounding mark and into casual territory, as if we’re sitting across the table from one another, and I – in my incredulously drunk state – have achieved inebriated Buddha status and am ready to guide along my vision of the eight-fold path of heavy metal and wild-eyed lunacy.

The realer reason of course is that it helps break up the daily routine and gives me reason to sit cross-legged in front of the computer and just type endlessly, laughing about how I’ve never learned how to type properly and am of the school of ‘whatever finger is closest, thumb is for space bar and I use my pinky if I’m feeling fancy’ yet am still somehow in the one-hundred words per minute range. It’s stupid, but it helps break up the end of the year when I feel like I’m just running in endless loops. Continue reading »

FINITE BUT SACCHARINE — GLASS BEAMS, VAELRAVYN, JEAN MARAIS, SKALLABRAK, TUMBLEWEED DEALER, DAX RIGGS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 182024
 

(Our South Africa-born but Vietnam-resident NCS contributor Vizzah Harri decided to wade into a batch of seriously ear-worming music that generally isn’t as harsh on the ears as much of what we, and he, typically traffic in. We hope you’ll still enjoy what he presents here, as well as the enthusiastic presentation.)

If you follow this page diligently and try keeping up with each post and release, you’ll have more diotic islands of dreams at your disposal than the hours you delude yourself of having woken. Here are 6 new(ish) offerings of divergent persuasions.

I’ve got an authentically fiendish cornucopia of un-listened content in my meta saved folder as well as other bits I haven’t gotten even a second’s worth of ear-time towards because for a long time the only solace I had was the receding sound of foam expanding in the acoustic meatus neighboring my eardrums. Earplugs to drown out the near-constant barrage of construction, horns from flower delivery drivers, and the steel factory next door that works odd hours of the night. I moved recently though, and plugging in the external hard drive full of ‘golden oldies’ has really helped. As well as an insane YouTube wormhole researching a highly acclaimed album from them retrogressive prog ‘upstarts’ of death that I’m yet to finish writing. Continue reading »

JESUS CHRIST WILL HE JUST GO AWAY? NEILL JAMESON’S 2024 LISTS PT I

 LISTMANIA 2024  No Responses »
Dec 182024
 


photo by Hillarie Jason

(One of the perennial highlights of our year-end LISTMANIA series are the articles Neill Jameson has contributed, and we’re very happy that he’s doing so again this year. This one is the first of three four installments we’ll be publishing. To be clear, Neill wrote the title of this feature himself.)

What a fucking ridiculous year. Between wars, threats of wars, the election, that fucking girl who’s famous for a joke about dick spittings and whatever new allegations your favorite band has against them it’s just been an exhausting twelve months. What better way to cap that off than by reading a bunch of assholes telling you what you should have listened to this year instead of whatever meandering bullshit you actually did. Unless it was Krieg’s split with Withdrawal, you obviously have exquisite taste. 

After all, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, right?

Last year I skipped the genre format for my lists and just threw everything together, with the obviously subjective “best” saved for last. I did this mostly out of laziness but I think we’ve built a new tradition, like picking out who not to send Christmas cards to this year because they did something to publicly shame the family, like supporting RFK. 

Sure the comments section will be measured and forgiving after that one.

So this’ll be a few parts, depending on how much I can write while tucked away in my office hiding from my employees. Here’s part one: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ONIROPHAGUS — “BLACK BREW”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 182024
 

(written by Islander)

First impressions of just about anything can often be lasting impressions, not necessarily indelible, because further experience can result in reevaluations, but still significant. Which is why parents the world over try to teach their kids the importance of making good first impressions when meeting people for the first time.

For many of you, the first impression of Onirophagus might be Paolo Girardi‘s ghastly eyeball-filled cover art for their new album Revelations From the Void. Odds are, it will be a lasting impression, even though it isn’t the kind of impression that doting parents have in mind when trying to school their children. They don’t tell them to be as hideous as possible. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MOONDARK — “THE ABYSMAL WOMB”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 182024
 

(NCS contributor Zoltar wrote the following introduction to our full streaming premiere of the long-awaited debut album by Sweden’s Moondark, which will be released on Friday by Pulverised Records.)

Her name might not matter that much anymore but boy oh boy did she have the look. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about don’t you? That one gorgeous looking girl, for whom you had a not-so-secret crush all high-school years long. She filled your dreams and even to this day, although three decades have passed and you’ve moved to greener pastures with a ring on your finger, three kids, a mortgage, and a beer belly, you can’t seem to be able to get rid of, you can’t help but think of her from time of time, like a lost relic of bygone times when things seemed simpler and funnier.

And then, totally by random, you bump into her on your way to the supermarket. And boom, without warning, all your teenagers’ fantasies are ruined in a nano-second as this once seemingly goddess-like figure turns out to now be ugly, fat, ridden with bad skin problems, and utterly obnoxious.

So yeah, I so wanted Moondark not to be that girl geddit? Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS – THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART THREE: 30 – 21

 LISTMANIA 2024  No Responses »
Dec 182024
 

(This is the third installment of DGR‘s year-end Top 50 list, counting down the third group of 10, with the next two groups slated for the next two days ahead.)

I’ve been doing these lists long enough that I’ve developed a genuine fear that I might be repeating myself. I console myself with the fact that no one else seems to have noticed so far since every one of these has been a fantastic exercise in breaking out the thesaurus and learning new words every day – or reminding myself that I used to not be so dumb. I have yet to work “lugubrious” into one of these but you better believe I’m going to damned well take a swing at it at some point.

But it’s the fear of repeating myself that drives me to such inanity, because I am worried that it might seem like I’m wasting your time. I don’t want these to be the ‘if you’ve read one, you’ve read them all’ of the year-end lists. I even gut-checked myself by archiving them all together at one point just to make sure that each stood as its own artistic statement – or at the very least the authorial equivalent of changing the food for the dog every once in a while.

But like I said (twice already), repetition is a big fear of mine. Well, that and accidentally putting releases from last year in here or playing my hand early and putting something that comes out next January on here. Luckily I haven’t been at risk of doing that last one yet, as I don’t think I have any promos from that timeframe in hand nor would I likely acknowledge them. At this point I feel like I’ve taken a round off of the reaper just by making it to next week. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2024: A YEAR-END LIST FROM SEB PAINCHAUD (TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

 LISTMANIA 2024  10 Responses »
Dec 172024
 

(Montréal -based Seb Painchaud‘s unusually varied year-end lists have always been a popular highlight of our YE LISTMANIA series, and the one below for 2024 won’t be an exception. But unlike other years, when we’ve voiced a futile hope that his band Tumbleweed Dealer would come out with a new album in the New Year, this time they really will do it!)

Another year, another list! And what a god damn year it was. Wasn’t sure it’d make it to the end at times. But here we are.

I`ve greatly modified my listening habits, trying to be less obsessive compulsive about NEEDING to listen to every new release out there. Sometimes it’s okay to throw on a Slayer record you’ve heard a thousand times when you’re stuck in traffic.

I still managed to discover some gems amongst the revisiting of classics this year, and here they are: Continue reading »

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