Reviews Archives - Page 23 of 556

KANONENFIEBER – DIE URKATASTROPHE

Sep 102024

(Andy Synn goes back to the front with the new album from German fusiliers Kanonenfieber)

War… war never changes.

And neither, in some ways, do Kanonenfieber, whose long-awaited and highly-anticipated second album, Die Urktatastrophie (transl. “The Original/Primal Catastrophe”) comes out next week (September 20, to be exact).

And yet… and yet… those of us who’ve been marching alongside the band over the years, slogging through the mud and blood of Menschenmühle (2021), then going on to join the Yankee Division to fight against Der Füsilier (2022), only to find ourselves staring deep into the abyss as a U-Bootsmann (2023), will know from experience that although the band (strictly speaking a solo project, I know) may not have changed, their tactics have definitely, albeit subtly, evolved with each new engagement.

In particular, there’s been a slow but steady shift in focus to incorporate more of Death Metal’s riff-centric heft and rhythmic hookiness with each and every release, with the result being that the group’s career has, up to a point at least, followed a similar arc to their Dutch cousins (and similar WWI scholars) God Dethroned.

But whereas the latter’s most recent album ended up falling a little (or, more accurately, a lot) short of achieving its objectives, the anti-war anthems of Die Urkatastrophe have no such problems hitting their target.

WOLFHEART: “DRACONIAN DARKNESS”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Sep 102024

(Below we present DGR’s review of the new album by Finland’s Wolfheart, which was released on September 6th by Reigning Phoenix Music.)

Much as we joke about it – yours truly in particular has created enough material to 3-D print a house – Finland’s Wolfheart have become a hallmark of consistency on a near unchallenged level since their inception. Save for a brutal year-over-year album schedule a few discs ago, Wolfheart have been a band you could set your watch by. Every two years, without fail, ballpark eight or so songs and about forty minutes of music. In fact, it wasn’t until the band’s Napalm era that Wolfheart flipped their career paradigm on its head by putting out albums with seven and nine songs.

It won’t shock then that a discussion of Wolfheart‘s newest album Draconian Darkness is going to contain a lot of familiar shades to it, because with consistency comes familiarity, and familiarity leads to an odd approach in reviewing their discs wherein you almost reset-to-zero with them every time and approach a new album at face value.

Which is interesting, because in a lot of ways you could view Draconian Darkness as a double-album with the one that preceded it, King Of The North. Continue reading »

THE HOWLING WIND – THROUGH THE EYES, PAST THE SUN

Album Reviews No Responses »

Sep 092024

(Andy Synn is ready to be swept off his feet again by The Howling Wind)

Look, by now I’m sure we’re all aware of the big surprise revelation of last week… that’s right, I’m talking about the unexpected, world-shaking return of ~~Linkin Park~~ ~~Pyrrhon~~ The Howling Wind!

Sure, it’s only been two years since their last release – 2022’s Oak EP – but it’s been eleven years since the duo of Tim Call and Ryan Lipynsky actually created a full-length album together (with 2019’s Shadow Tentacles being a solo effort by Lipynsky under the THW moniker).

So, with that in mind, the pair’s new album, Through the Eyes, Past the Sun, has a lot to live up to.

SHADES OF BLACK: ANTE-INFERNO, ANTIKVLT, SKOGNATT, ANOMALIE, YOTH IRIA

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Sep 082024

Yesterday I bemoaned the trouble that weeks ending in Bandcamp Friday’s create for me in trying to compile the usual Saturday roundup for NCS. It creates similar troubles for picking music to recommend in these Shades of Black collections: just way too much potentially interesting stuff to check out.

Yesterday I tried to compensate (only slightly) by stuffing a greater-than-usual number of new songs into the roundup. For better or worse, I don’t have time to do that today — below you’ll find only four advance tracks and one new EP. I hope you like all of it, or at least find some one thing to brighten (i.e., darken) your day.

ANTE-INFERNO (UK)

In the fall of this year Ante-Inferno will release their third album in what is developing as a steady every-two-years sequence (our own Andy Synn reviewed their first two albums here and here). Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS ON A SATURDAY

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

Sep 072024

From midnight on Thursday to midnight on Friday we received 221 e-mails about recent and forthcoming heavy metal releases. That’s not counting the e-mails that were just trying to sell us clothing or physical editions of records that have been out for a while, or to announce tours and shows, or to promote music that’s utterly foreign to anything we cover here (no idea how we get on some of these distribution lists).

That’s what Bandcamp Fridays do to our in-box, and the same thing happens on social media. It’s no longer surprising. Bands and labels know that lots of metalheads wait for these days when more of the money they spend will go to bands and labels. But it sure as hell makes me feel like I’m drowning when I look for things to include in Saturday roundups following Bandcamp Fridays.

And that’s not counting all the new songs and videos that were already on my plate before Friday arrived. Continue reading »

KALANDRA: “A FRAME OF MIND”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule No Responses »

Sep 052024

(We present Didrik Mešiček‘s review of a new album by the Norwegian band Kalandra, in advance of its September 13 release on By Norse Music.)

Nothing goes together as well as the extreme heat of the summer and really depressive black metal, right? Or is that just me again? Well, anyway, it’s basically autumn and surely we can agree this is a season for romance and softness – the leaves are turning a lovely colour and slowly withering away in a cruel but beautiful reminder of our passing nature. Yet few things in this world would be as pretty were they not as fleeting.

This article isn’t about extreme metal, nor about any sort of metal, really, it’s about a Norwegian band called Kalandra who play a sort of Nordic folk – but not in the vein of Wardruna, it’s a band with a more modern tone and expressing a softer, more feminine touch. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EC{C}ENTRIC PENDULUM — “PERSPECTIVA INVERTALIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Sep 052024

The Indian metal band Ec{c}entric Pendulum send all sorts of signals about the nature of their music before you hear a single note. Their name of course, which kindles images of a swinging thing that doesn’t swing like you expect it will, and the quirky typography they use in spelling it. And then there’s the title of their forthcoming second album — Perspectiva Invertalis — a Latin phrase which means “inverted perspective”.

And then there’s that cover art up above by Sam Ektoplasm, which is (to put it mildly) out of the ordinary for a metal band (or any band).

Undoubtedly some of you are aware of what Ec{c}entric Pendulum do with their music, because they do have a previous album (Winding the Optics) to their credit, and they’ve played at Wacken Open Air in Germany (the first band to represent India there), and shared stages in both Europe and India with the likes of Opeth, Textures, Meshuggah, Kreator, Orphaned Land, and recently Suffocation.

But it’s been more than a dozen years since that first album was released, and nearly seven years since their Tellurian Concepts EP, and so even if you’ve heard what they’ve done in the past, it’s best to now listen with fresh ears to what they’ve accomplished on this new album, which will be released tomorrow via Subcontinental Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRAGSHOLM — “SORROW HEXEN”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Sep 052024

(written by Islander)

“Blackened Death Metal for fans of Dissection, Behemoth, Dimmu Borgir, Sacramentum and Vinterland“. That’s how Horror Pain Gore Death Productions hails the music on the third EP from New Jersey’s Dragsholm, which the label will release tomorrow (September 6th).

That turns out to be a meaningful set of reference points for the four songs on Sorrow Hexen. And that title of the EP is a good reference point in itself, conjuring thoughts of both melancholia and the occult, both of which are features of the music’s atmosphere — though there are other features as well.

You’ll have an opportunity to experience everything Dragsholm bring to the table on Sorrow Hexen, here on the eve of its release, because we’ve got a full stream for you below. Continue reading »

NORNA – NORNA

Album Reviews No Responses »

Sep 042024

(Andy Synn has a new favourite artist/album he needs to share with you, in the form of Norna)

The phrase “Post Metal” is one of those genre terms which doesn’t necessarily have an agreed definition.

Some people use it to refer mostly to what are, in essence, Post-Rock bands who’ve decided to use certain more metallic elements (usually meaning a more heavily distorted guitar tone along with the occasional burst of blastbeats) while others reserve it for bands who exist on the more atmospheric end of the Sludge/Hardcore spectrum (most of the big names in the scene started out like this, for example).

For Swedish trio Norna, however, their approach to “Post-Metal” is all about attempting to refine things down to their raw essence, beneath and beyond the flashy technicality and mindless machismo so often still associated with the genre, to achieve the Platonic ideal of pure auditory weight and distortion-driven emotion.

And while their debut didn’t quite manage to achieve this – admittedly impossible – task, the band’s self-titled second album comes closer than most to achieving artistic apotheosis in molten metallic form.

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SILVERN — “STARDUST SERMONS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 2 Responses »

Sep 042024

(written by Islander)

The creation of underground metal is a global phenomenon, more extensive and varied in some countries than in others but still ubiquitous. Ukraine is one nation with an extensive and fairly multi-faceted history in the field, yet even when considering the music that’s currently being generated, the first thought that comes to most of us now is… war.

Now more than 30 months after Russia’s unprovoked invasion, the conflict, which the aggressors thought would end quickly, has settled into a grinding devastation with no end in sight, still peppered with almost weekly atrocities inflicted on non-combatants; this week, for example, brought Russian ballistic missiles that killed more than 50 people and wounded almost 30 others in Poltava, followed just yesterday by a nighttime missile and drone attack on Lviv that killed 7 and injured more than 50.

Life goes on, of course, even under the grim shadow of a war that will reach its thousandth day in November, and part of that life is the making of music, a visible way of defiantly demonstrating that life does indeed go on despite a tyrant’s determined effort to grind it into bleakness and despair. Continue reading »

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