SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OBSCURE SPHINX, THIS GIFT IS A CURSE, SH-BO-OO-OM, BANK MYNA, MISANTHROPÆ

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Dec 212024
 


Obscure Sphinx

(written by Islander)

It seems like the end of the year is coming up in a big rush. It’s now four days before Christmas and the start of Hanukkah and 10 days before New Year’s Eve, a block of time when many people do something different from what they normally do (like taking time off from work), and other people feel grumpier about what they normally do because they’re still having to do it (like working).

We’re still here of course, and not even feeling grumpy about it. For a bunch of reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s the fanatically commercialized “holiday season” that makes me feel grumpy, and it’s continuing to pound away on this blog that helps get me through it.

Part of what we’re pounding on, of course, is year-end LISTMANIA. Even on a Saturday I nailed another list to the door. Next week we’ll have lists from at least four more of our writers, plus a bag of odds and ends from Neill Jameson.

But for now, just more new music — quite a lot of it actually. 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 »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AN EVENING WITH KNIVES, ARKAIST, HAVUKRUUNU, NOVARUPTA, SADIST, GOJIRA, THY CATAFALQUE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 142024
 

(written by Islander)

If you’ve been visiting us recently it’s obvious that we’ve dived into year-end LISTMANIA. Andy Synn just finished his week-long series, which always starts us off, and we’ve re-posted a few lists from sites much bigger than our own. But if that was the dive, we’re about to sink way deeper into lists, like someone who offended a crime lord and are now being pulled into a watery abyss with concrete blocks chained to our thrashing body.

To preview what’s coming, next week we’ll roll out DGR‘s week-long Top 50 list, a three-part list series from Neill Jameson, and a couple of year-end lists from other NCS writers, with a lot more to come in the weeks after that. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ABDUCTION, ANCIENT TOME, FANE, MONASTR, MONTE PENUMBRA, PHRENELITH, RELICS OF HUMANITY, VIOLET COLD

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Dec 072024
 


Abduction – photo by Jack Armstrong

(written by Islander)

Bandcamp Friday would have been a better time for this roundup, but I couldn’t get it done in time. Yesterday was the last one of those for 2024, and it’s not clear if Bandcamp will keep it going next year. They announced the 2024 schedule on March 11th of this year, so it’s really too early to say. Obviously, a big horde of us hope Bandcamp continues the tradition.

Well, near misses only count in horseshoes and hand grenades, so my near miss with this roundup probably doesn’t count. Still, even with Friday gone, picking up the releases collected below won’t cost you anything more, even though less of the purchase money will go to the labels and artists.

Once again I resorted to arranging the music in alphabetical order by band name. To the extent there’s any musical through-line here, anything that explains why I picked these songs instead of the many others I considered, it might be that they all made me… uncomfortable… in different ways. And it turns out that the arrangement will throw you back and forth, tempo-wise. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BALEFIRE, BENEATH MOONLIGHT, DREAMING DEATH, FRACTURED INSANITY, KONKHRA, OCELOT OMELET, PLAGUEFEVER, PRIMEVAL MASS, PYRE

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Nov 302024
 

I have to remind myself that less than half of our visitors had a Thanksgiving Day holiday last Thursday. I checked, and only the U.S. and Brazil celebrated the holiday that day. Here in the U.S. it launched a 4-day holiday, because most people who are relieved from working on Thanksgiving get Friday off too, so it’s a time when lots of people check out of their routines.

It’s not an entirely lazy holiday for a lot of people because the Thanksgiving Day tradition usually involves getting together with family and friends and cooking, and the day after is the ridiculous shopping splurge of Black Friday. But for me, the holiday does make me feel lazy.

I didn’t completely check out of all my routines. We still had lots of NCS posts on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, because I’ve never believed in honoring holidays at our site, and for our writers outside the U.S. those were just two more nothing-special days.

But I admit I did succumb to long bouts of laziness and therefore didn’t listen to much new music the last couple of days. I thought seriously about taking today off from NCS, but as you can see, the old compulsion wouldn’t surrender. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GRIMA, A THOUSAND SUFFERINGS, KLUDDE, BODY COUNT, GOSPEL TREMORS, BRÜDNY SKÜRWIEL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 232024
 


Grima (photo credit: Mikhail Yuyukin, Viktor Shkarov, Marat Zaborovskiy)

(written by Islander)

How’s your day going? Well, I hope. Here’s how mine started:

I woke up way earlier than I wanted. I made coffee and went out on my deck to start inhaling it, along with a few smokes. While doing that I read various lengthy narratives of the Game of Thrones series because my wife and I had started binge-watching it for the first time and I was both confused and curious about where it was going (though I’m still confused). I also read a moving and meaningful report on a ceremony in Gettysburg, PA last week to commemorate the 161st anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

I was putting off a daunting task but finally forced myself to get to it, the task of trying to figure out what to put into this roundup, daunting because even though I managed two weekday roundups over recent days my list of candidates was still enormous. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SAOR, AXIOMA, ACID MAGUS

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Nov 222024
 

This collection is short in number, just three new songs, two of them with compelling videos — though those two are quite long. But that’s three songs I now don’t need to include in this weekend’s coming roundups, and thus I’ll have room for three others as I continue trying to winnow down my monstrous list of recent releases.

SAOR (Scotland)

I’ve chosen to begin with a video for the title song from Saor‘s new album Amidst the Ruins. Although the video starts with a majestic but haunting scene from the Highlands, it soon shifts to dramatic film of the band’s performance, appearing as dark silhouettes in the midst of rushing smoke or clouds. The music is equally dramatic. The drums attack and the bass heavily rumbles, but the music flows in sweeping and searing waves, glittering and glorious. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE GREAT OLD ONES, OBSCURA, YOVEL, CONCRETE AGE, SPERE

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Nov 212024
 


The Great Old Ones – Photo by Daphnea Doto/Solweig Wood

(written by Islander)

This week I’ve done a better than average job staying abreast of new songs and videos that have surfaced since last weekend which I thought would be worth checking out. The result is that my list of things to investigate is now 40 links longer than it was on Monday morning! Anyone who thinks the rollout of heavy new music slows down near the end of the year must have just awakened from a very long slumber.

Fortunately, I had some time this morning (which I usually don’t have on the weekdays) to make a small dent in that list and pull a few things together to get a head-start on my usual Saturday and Sunday roundups at our site. I confess that today I erred on the side of bands who I think of as “proven commodities,” just to make the winnowing process a bit easier — though I did decide to include one I’d never heard before. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, SAVAGE LANDS, FRONTIERER, ASS TO MOUTH, ROTTEN SOUND, RITUAL FOG, SKAPHOS, THE SWORD, SOLIPSISM, PLAGUEFEVER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 162024
 


Mantar photo by Sonja Schuringa/Chantik Photography

I have my second miserable cold in two months, and how are you doing? I’ve been focusing on music that I thought would help blast the snot out of my head. I’ve included a lot of that below. I can’t tell that I’ve really come un-clogged, but it has made me feel better in other ways, including providing catharsis for being so pissed off that the virus has hit me again so quickly.

As you can see, I had time enough to do lots of listening and watching yesterday and this morning. As usual, the music from the 10 bands featured below isn’t all I heard and liked, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I moved some of my choices to tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, and others I hope I’ll get too somewhere down the road. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: EZOV, DIZZINESS, [4672], THE SUN’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE NIGHT, SLUG SALT LAVA, SAHG, DAEDRIC SHRINE, KTANA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 092024
 

(written by Islander)

I was going to begin by sharing some thoughts about “current events”. I started writing them. Then it dawned on me that if you wanted to read some dude’s thoughts about current events right at this moment, you wouldn’t be here. You might even be trying to forget about current events, to put off thinking about them until another hour, another day, another month.

And anyway, trashing what I started writing rather than finishing it provided more time for thoughts about another couple of songs. You might not want to read those either, but you might listen, and that’s good enough.

Once again, there’s a lot here. I’ve alternated between complete albums and preview tracks from forthcoming records, followed by a couple of clean-singing head-knockers and something quite out of the ordinary at the end. Continue reading »

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