Album Reviews Archives - Page 9 of 506

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE: OAK, ASH & THORN; FRACTAL GATES

Oct 172024

(This makes the fourth, and apparently final, installment of DGR‘s effort to clear out a backlog of reviews he’s been pondering for releases spread across earlier months of the year, clearing the decks for the year-end NCS orgy ahead.)

It is wild, staring at the review collective and realizing you’re down to the last two.

The best time to write one of these is not directly after one has woken up, I’ve learned. Something about the brain still trying to wander itself out of the fog with nary a static radio signal and flashlight for help tends to make one’s writing look as if it slid off the side of a mountain.

The artist’s curse is still a minor player at the poker table though, given that some of your best ideas usually arrive in the shower, the drive home from work, or the second before you hit deep sleep, so that’s not to say I still won’t be attempting to do so as if writing right after I’m waking up for the day is preserving some sort of the mental cacophony I’ve tried to piece together for the final one of this initial review pile. Continue reading »

SCHAMMASCH – THE MALDOROR CHANTS: OLD OCEAN

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Oct 162024

(Andy Synn plumbs the depths of the new album from Schammasch, out next Friday)

Let me tell you something – I regard Schammasch‘s stunning second album, the now decade-old duology entitled Contradiction, to be one of the finest, yet also most underrated, Black Metal albums of the post-millennium period.

And while I understand and appreciate (and, to an extent, share) the love for Triangle – their even more ambitious triple-disc follow-up – and the way it allowed them to explore three subtly different aspects of their sound, the truth is that nothing since then has quite managed to achieve that same balance between esoteric creativity and focussed fluidity (with 2019’s Hearts of No Light in particular being a collection of artistically intriguing tracks which still, somehow, felt like less than the sum of its parts).

So when I say that Old Ocean is, in my opinion at least, the band’s strongest, most consistent, and most captivating work since 2014… you’ll understand how much that means.

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEAMONOLITH — “THE MONOLITHIC CULT OF DEATH”

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Oct 152024

(written by Islander)

The debut album from the Polish band Deamonolith is unusual. First, it comes with cover art by Michał “Xaay” Loranc (based on a concept by the band’s two founders) that will stop most people dead in their tracks when they see it.

Second, the album is just a single song — a single track that’s 35 minutes long.

Third, and most important, although the members of Deamonolith have been active in the metal scene since the 1990s and have made death metal the core of their first album, it’s far away from some kind of “OSDM” re-tread. Instead, it’s an enormously ambitious and thoroughly jaw-dropping extravaganza that pulls freely from multiple genres of music, both within and outside of extreme metal.

That’s a conclusion you might infer when you discover that the album’s music includes such ingredients as saxophone, classical guitar, piano, clean male and female vocals and choirs, and dark ambient accents. But you needn’t rely on inference, because today we’re premiering The Monolithic Cult of Death in its entirety, just a few days away from its co-release by Godz Ov War Production and Ancient Dead Productions. Continue reading »

VOMIT FORTH – TERRIFIED OF GOD

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Oct 152024

(Andy Synn says that when you’re as heavy as Vomit Forth it doesn’t really matter what they call you)

It’s funny how the use of certain words, certain terms, can prompt such drastically different reactions.

Case in point, if I were to call the new album from Connecticut crushers Vomit Forth a “Death Metal” album there’d be a bunch of people who’d immediately go and check it out purely because of that… and just as many people ready to string me up for daring to call it that.

But if I were to call it a “Deathcore” album? Well, those self-same people would either immediately hate it… or get mad at me for insulting the band.

The thing is – after having listened to it a hell of a lot over the last week or two – Terrified of God absolutely is what I’d call a “Deathcore” record… one which has just as much in common with the likes of The Acacia Strain and Black Tongue as it does Cannibal Corpse or Suffocation… but that’s nothing to be afraid of!

SHADES OF BLACK: SORDIDE, PSYCHONAUT 4, AMYSTERY, ALTA ROSSA, APOTHECARY, CELEPATHY, ANCESTRAL CÂNTICO, SILHOUETTE, PAYSAGE D’HIVER

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK 4 Responses »

Oct 132024

Sordide, photo by Jeremy Tiercelin

(written by Islander)

Over the past week I added an even 30 new songs or complete releases to my list of black and blackish metal that I wanted to check out in building today’s column. That was on top of how the list stood a week ago, already wobbly from its ungainly height.

As usual, I didn’t have time to check out all 30. In a handful of instances, I defaulted to previously proven names. For others, I had dependable recommendations. And for others, I went exploring, based on glimpses of one thing or another (artwork, lineup, location, conceptual framework) that I thought were interesting.

Here’s what came out at the end of the sifting, with the choices due in part to how the music fit together in my head, sometimes complementing and sometimes contrasting. Continue reading »

ORYX – PRIMORDIAL SKY

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Oct 112024

(Andy Synn follows the migratory patterns of the majestic Oryx as they prepare to release their new album)

To witness a band go from “good” to “great” – as Oryx did with 2021’s Lamenting a Dead World – is one of the great pleasures for a music writer/reviewer.

But being there to see them go from not just “great” to truly “world-class” is an even rarer phenomenon.

Which is why you should all keep an ear out for the band’s newest – and best – album next week.

SEEN AND HEARD: CREST OF DARKNESS, SLECHTVALK, DOEDSMAGHIRD, [4672], BULLHEAD, GRUZJA

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Oct 092024

(written by Islander)

I found enough time enough to pull together another mid-week roundup of new songs and videos. I picked all of these on Monday and started scribbling about them then, hoping to post this collection sooner than today. In the meantime, a lot of other new things have caught my attention, but those will have to wait ’til Saturday.

The first two of the songs and videos below are heart-pounders and neck-wreckers of different kinds, and then the music begins to twist and turn in increasingly bizarre directions. By sheer coincidence, none of the bands is from the U.S. By design, I again threw a curveball at you with the final selection. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: HERIOT / LOWEN / SUGAR HORSE

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Oct 092024

(Andy Synn presents three more prime cuts of British beef for you to gorge yourselves on)

What’s that? Another “Best of British”? The second in as many weeks?

That’s right, and I’ve even got my next one in the works already (though that won’t be until next month).

And, hey, you might even see some more music from yours truly out before then as well, which will hopefully also add to this year’s bumper crop of killer British bands.

Until then, however, let’s see what the new album from Heriot, Lowen, and Sugar Horse (all out now) have to offer, shall we?

DEADFORM: “ENTRENCHED IN HELL”

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Oct 082024

(Here’s Wil Cifer‘s enthusiastic review of the debut album by Oakland-based Deadform, which is set for release by the Tankcrimes label on October 25th.)

Entrenched in Hell is the first full-length from this Oakland-based trio. If you are a fan of crust punk, this should be considered the upper crust of the genre.

Dino Sommese from Dystopia is playing drums and sharing vocal duties with Brian Clouse from Stormcrow. Clouse is playing bass in this project, with Judd Hawk (ex-Laudanum) laying down the guitars.

Hawk cranks out a vicious guitar tone, and phrases his riffs in a manner that gives you everything one might want from the grim world-ending metal. The production is raw, but feels like you are in their practice space having your eardrums ruptured. It certainly highlights the things I love about this sub-genre as it carries a stormy fury but grooves into the dark apocalyptic mood of the songs. The disdain projected into these songs makes for the perfect soundtrack to the world around us, with lyrics shattering the false hopes we try to fool ourselves with. Continue reading »

FERAL LIGHT – A RECKONING WITH THE INTANGIBLE

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Oct 082024

(Andy Synn celebrates, and mourns, the end of an era)

Well, this… fucking… sucks.

Not the release of a new Feral Light album – that’s always something to get excited about – but the fact that A Reckoning with the Intangible (which dropped last Friday) is going to be the band’s final album.

We’re not happy about this, obviously, but sadly there’s nothing we can do about it, so I guess all that’s left for us is to see whether they’ve elected to go out with a bang or a whimper?

Spoiler alert… it’s the former.

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