AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PRAETORIAN — “PYLON CULT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

At the end of this month APF Records will release Pylon Cult, the debut album by Praetorian from Hertfordshire in the UK. The label describes the album this way:

A new lesson in vile, disgusting and gruesome blackened sludge metal, mixed in a volatile cocktail of death metal, thrash and hardcore. Praetorian are here to take you on a wild ride with an album that fluctuates between hi-octane energy, colossal doomy riffs, a savage dual-vocal attack and insane tempo changes, all culminating in a violent, nightmarish thrill ride.

That provides a faithful description of the brutalizing but mind-bending sonic nihilism provided by Pylon Cult — a title that comes from contemporary British author David Southwell’s imagined county Hookland, in which a so-called cult begin to worship pylons in order to harness their energy.

But we have our own thoughts to share about this ruthless but consistently fascinating album — in addition to the main attraction, which is our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2025

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)

Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.

So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.

Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CONAN, GREY AURA, SEPULCHRAL CURSE, NITE, DEATH OBVIOUS, ABRAXAS HORN (AND MORE)

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 252025
 

(written by Islander)

In the early part of this month, as the old year moved into the new, the volume of new album announcements and new songs subsided. For people like those of us at NCS, things got kind of slow and comfortable.

Well, of course that turned out to be comparable to a “negative storm surge,” a phenomenon in which waves recede before a typhoon strikes, the water being pulled away from the coast by the storm’s low pressure system before the ocean comes rushing back when the typhoon strikes in full force.

Which is what is now happening in the music we pay attention to. Everything is in full force, and I’m drowning in new music. I know it gets repetitive and possibly mind-numbing when I share the count, but I’ve got more than 60 open tabs on my computer, each one linked to a song that came out just this past week which I was curious to check out in planning today’s column, on top of a lot more from last week.

Obviously, I didn’t listen to all of them. Obviously, I wouldn’t have liked all of them if I had. I liked the ones below that I did get to. How did I get to them within that great mass of tabs? I admit I gravitated to bands I’ve liked in the past — though I did take a few shots in the dark that also paid off. And I decided to add some music at the end without commentary (due to vanishing time).

P.S. In the early evening I’m going to an annual party in Seattle across the water from my home. I’m sure that if I make it back home, it won’t be until close to 2 am. I’m also sure I won’t make any effort to wake up before noon on Sunday, and will be woozy when I do. So, don’t expect a SHADES OF BLACK column this weekend (I won’t have enough time to pull it together before leaving home this afternoon). Continue reading »

CONCRETE ICON: “VORACIOUS STREAMS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 232025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile has brought us (and you) the following review of a new album by Finland’s Concrete Icon, released just a few days ago by Memento Mori and Fetzner Death Records.)

Maybe the dark, frozen months of the winter and the thick snow cover are not the right time to think about the reasons why there are not more death metal records played at the summer barbecue parties, but here we are. Just think about it, for it’s a perfect match-up, as both deal in the themes of dead, carved tissue, the eternal flames of charred remains, and the cult-like gatherings around those very flames, and are normally a whole lot of fun. Now only to find the place where this idea falls on fertile ground.

Not trying very hard, we turn our gaze towards Finland, the most metal-bands-per-capita country in the world, so if you’re going to make it anywhere, you can make it there with these random ideas. Anyway, all of this brings us today to our guests in Concrete Icon who, you might have guessed it, are indeed Finnish and play death metal. As if the spiky band logo and the toxic, green-tinged cover art by the brilliant Juanjo Castellano didn’t inform you enough, then heed these words. It really is a death metal album through and through. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: BARSHASKETH / GRIEF RITUAL / MUTAGENIC HOST

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jan 222025
 

(Andy Synn once more sets out to share a few of his favourite home-grown exports)

My main hope, for all of these “Best of British” articles, is that they encourage people to check out some of the grass-roots talent from this dark, Satanic isle that they might otherwise have overlooked.

After all, I know from bitter, personal experience how hard it can be to break through and get yourselves noticed when there’s so many other bands vying for attention and exposure at the same time.

Not, it must be said, that this seems to be an issue for any of the bands in today’s piece – Barshasketh are one of the most respected bands in the UK Black Metal Scene, Grief Ritual have played multiple festivals and are about to release their much-hyped debut album on Church Road Records, and Mutagenic Host have already been pegged by some as the “next big thing” in British Death Metal – but hopefully this article can still play a role in bringing them all to an even wider audience.

Continue reading »

THE HALO EFFECT: “MARCH OF THE UNHEARD”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 222025
 

(Not long ago Nuclear Blast released the second album by the Swedish melodic death metal band The Halo Effect, and today we have DGR‘s review of the record.)

We are now a couple weeks removed from the release of The Halo Effect‘s newest album March Of The Unheard and the one thought that keeps rattling around the ole’ brainpan is a discussion of what exactly you might come to music for.

This can seem repetitive of course because everyone has a chosen purpose that music might fulfill for them, whether it’s simple enjoyment or some deeper resonance with the artist. I am more often part of the second club, which is why you’ll see many screeds penned that spend more time pontificating about why a specific piece of art might have arisen versus the actual general quality of it. Yet in the case of a group like The Halo Effect I’ve found myself firmly in the former camp.

When it comes to The Halo Effect, I’m not seeking anything deeper and I’m present for the simple enjoyment of whatever the band are creating, and it seems that largely, the band feel the same way. There’s nothing deeper here. No inner quest, nothing revealing itself, and no long-lasting message with which we can walk away from March Of The Unheard feeling fulfilled, with our lives changed. March Of The Unheard is musical red-meat at its finest and, for lack of better term, a perfectly fine ‘pop’ album. Continue reading »

SACRIFICE: “VOLUME SIX”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 212025
 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of a new album by the ’80s-era Canadian thrash metal band Sacrifice, their first one in 16 years and with their original lineup intact. It will be released on February 21st by Cursed Blessings Records.)

Thrash is a metal subgenre perhaps most shackled to a golden era that reached its peak in 1990 with albums like Seasons in the Abyss and Rust in Peace. Death metal gained prominence and bands either doubled down and got heavier to keep up or veered off to follow the ’90s alternative sound. The Canadian thrash band Sacrifice has been kicking it since the ’80s but never caught on to gain the cult status of a band like Voivod. They have however changed with the times on for their 6th album, which finds them sharing sonic ground with bands like Power Trip, who blended hardcore sounds with the thrash of the past.

If you were to listen back to the 1986 album Torment in Fire, while it captures the energy of that time, the guitar tones are a little dated, so the current production value plays to their benefit and breathes new life into what they do. This band is not jumping on a bandwagon to be relevant, but staying true to what they do while packing a suitable song punch, rather than digging up their pedal board from the ’80s to cash in on nostalgia for 1986. Continue reading »

SHEDFROMTHEBODY – WHISPER AND WANE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 202025
 

(Andy Synn finds that the fourth time continues to charm when it comes to Shedfromthebody)

With 2025 finally starting to get into gear, it’s time for us to start looking ahead and planning out what artists and albums we’re going to review over the next few months (and beyond).

That being said, it’s always important to leave a little bit of wiggle room in your schedule for an unexpected surprise or two… such as the recently-released new album from Finnish “Doom-gaze” chanteuse Suvi Savikko, aka Shedfromthebody.

Continue reading »

CHRONICLING CORRODED CRENELATIONS OF RESONANCE – LONGFORM MUSINGS ON KOKESHI, MESARTHIM, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, LYCOPOLIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jan 202025
 

(As the title of this post signifies, our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri shares some thoughts about new music by kokeshi, Mesarthim, Imperial Triumphant, and Lycopolis, but in this month of beginnings and transitions he also shares a great many other abundantly-linked thoughts before getting there, many of them concerning “theft and intertextuality within music.”)

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” – ultimate guitar user quote… originally by H.P. Lovecraft

It was 210 days left in my 40th year when I started writing this. One of my exes recently said the reason I’ll remain single for life is because I refuse to grow up, probably also why my articles read like they were written by a teenager on crack. 210 is a Harshad number. Harshad originates from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver. I for one rejoice in the bliss of discovering new music gushing in from my headphones.

2024 was the year of the dragon, a word which finds its origin in the Greek drakōn or ‘serpent’. 2025 will be the year of the snake, from 蛇 or Shé in traditional Chinese, or Hebi in Japanese Kanji which refers to “the winding thing.” This bodes well for what is to come for the dragon sharing so much of its hoard with us in music. And their etymologies being so linked one could only imagine 2025 to be as prodigious in output. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: RUINOUS POWER, DAKÛ, NECRODANCER, BESNA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 192025
 

(written by Islander)

What is the correct adjective for the genre of music known as Black Metal? Is it “blackened“? I think not. “Blackened” is a word I often see applied to the music of bands who play something other than Black Metal but add ingredients that people think are drawn from Black Metal, even if it’s nothing more than shrieks, blizzard-like tremolo riffs, or blistering blasts, even though none of those elements is unique to Black Metal.

So if “blackened” really isn’t right, then what is? Other adjectives commonly used to describe Black Metal are even less specific to the genre — words like “grim,” “cold,” “nihilistic,” “misanthropic,” or “kvlt,” and for some kinds of Black Metal they don’t fit very well at all.

How about “Black Metallic“? Linguistically, it appears to be accurate; “metallic” is an accepted adjective for things relating to or being a metal, and there’s also an accepted definition of “metallic” that refers to “having a harsh or rasping sound.”

There’s a risk that if “Black Metallic” were accepted, it could become a noun. After all, the term “Classical Music” originally might have been intended as an adjectival phrase but is now a noun, and has been for a very long time. But I don’t think it would be terrible if people used “Black Metal” and “Black Metallic” interchangably. Of course that will never happen. Continue reading »

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