SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, BALMOG, JUODVARNIS, DARK MEDITATION, GRAVEWITCH, MESSA, MARES OF THRACE, IMPURITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 012025
 


These are bathrooms I visited in Port Orchard, Washington

(written by Islander)

It’s been a hell of a week hasn’t it? More like a week from hell. The daily news has become a series of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the ghastly ones whose details have frequently appeared on the cover of metal albums.

On the other hand, it’s been a heavenly week if you focus on the kind of music that typically makes its way into these Saturday roundups. So let’s forget about the news for now and move right to that!

MANTAR (Germany)

I’m never going to not rush to check out new music from Mantar. (Forgive the double-negative, I guess I haven’t completely forgotten about the news.) Especially when it’s prefaced by this kind of statement from guitarist/vocalist Hanno Klänhardt: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBSCURE SPHINX / SLAUGHTERSUN / ΘΛΊΨΙΣ

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 282025
 

(Andy Synn promises to review more EPs this year… we’ll see about that!)

Every year I promise that I’m going to feature and review more EPs here at NCS… and every year I fail spectacularly at this, and have to jam in all the short-form releases of the year into my annual “List Week” instead.

But, mark my words, this year things are going to be different! Although, I might have said that before…

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 »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MŮRA — “NEEDLE CATHEDRAL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 162025
 

(written by Islander)

“Punishing in its heaviness, violently deranged in its fretwork,  hopeless in its moods, and vocally horrendous, the song takes listeners to a nightmarish place, and freezes us in place while it completes its looming edifice of terror and awe.”

That’s how we summed up the title song to a new EP by the Prague-based blackened death/doom metal band Můra when we premiered it earlier this month. Today we premiere the EP in its entirety, in advance of its release on January 20th by Doomentia Records and Caligari Records. Like the title song, it is a very heavy and relentlessly harrowing experience. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PLAGUEWIELDER, FROSTNATT, SAMIARUS, SCHATTENFALL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 122025
 

(written by Islander)

Here we are again in the very early part of another new year. In these dawning new days with a long stretch of more days looming ahead I’ve thought about why I continue toiling away on this blog after so many years despite the mental pressures and time demands it imposes. I think there are two main reasons.

The first is a continuing fascination with the music we cover and how it has changed and continues to change. If all the numerous sub-genres had stagnated, boredom would have set in. Repeatedly listening to newer generations of musicians doing basically the same thing as older generations might not have been completely fruitless, but I doubt I would have wanted to keep writing about it.

The second reason is the challenge of the writing, the challenge of not saying the same kinds of things over and over again. Repeating the same methods of describing audio sensations would also have become boring. Falling into a rut and not trying to get out would have been easy; trying to do better is frustrating, a mission of only incremental gains beset by recurring feelings of failure and backsliding. But so far, that mission has seemed a better alternative than just giving up.

These thoughts have been on my mind today because I decided to devote this Sunday’s column mainly to a small group of complete releases. Writing about entire albums or EPs is harder for me than introducing individual songs — a bigger challenge. And on the other hand, I thought the records I chose represent, in different ways, a resistance to stagnation. Continue reading »

EX DEO: “YEAR OF THE FOUR EMPERORS” (AND A HISTORY ESSAY)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jan 082025
 

(In the following article our contributor Didrik Mešiček provides not only a review of Ex Deo‘s new EP, which will be out on Friday of this week via Reigning Phoenix Music, but also a history lesson.)

There’s no band that bridges the gap between ancient history and metal quite as much as Ex Deo. I think it’s not a very contentious opinion to say that the side project of Kataklysm’s frontman Maurizio Iacono has musically surpassed the main band, even though the reach of Ex Deo‘s audience is much smaller. Ex Deo will be releasing a new EP called Year of the Four Emperors, which continues the story from their last album, on January 10th. Let’s hope 2025 goes a bit better than the year 69 CE went in the Roman Empire.

So because this is a release very tightly linked with history and because I’m a history nerd, we’re going to be doing something slightly different and that means including a lot of history into what’s meant to be an article about an EP. Who’d have thought you can come to NCS to learn about things other than music, eh? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SKALDR, STELLAR FOREST, JZOVCE, SPECTRAL LORE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 052025
 

I had a decision to make that I knew would have a significant impact on how many new releases I could cover in this Sunday column. That decision is discussed in the intro to today’s last item. I made the decision in a way that forced me to cut down the total, and leaves a lot of other songs buzzing in the back of my head as if clamoring for the attention I didn’t give them.

But I better truncate this opening verbiage before I have to further truncate the selections. In short, I’m beginning with three singles, and then moving to a very long demo at the end.

SKALDR (U.S.)

The first single today is a song from this Virginia band’s new album Saṃsṛ (their second full-length overall). I’ve been meaning to include it in one of these columns for weeks, but one thing or another has kept delaying the follow-through on my intentions. The song’s name is “The Crossing.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SABHANKRA, ANDE, HOLY DEATH, MEGATON COMMUNION, CRACKWHÖRE, GASH FAITH, THE FALL OF MOTHER EARTH, ЧЕРНОПЛОДЬ

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 042025
 

 

We’ve reached the end of a long holiday period and that left me feeling glum last night, morose over the realization that the rat race will resume on Monday. I felt much better after going through a big batch of songs I wanted to consider for this Saturday roundup.

Apart from enjoying the music, I’m enjoying the idea of how wobbly these eight selections will leave people who make it through all of them; there are many twists and turns along the way.

I arranged the choices in four two-band blocks. This doesn’t mean the selections in each part sound alike, but I did perceive some connections, except in the final two. Those two are together at the end only because I didn’t want to leave them out. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON NEW YEAR’S DAY: AVULSED, CRAWLING CHAOS, ARGWAAN, SERPENTS OF PAKHANGBA, AWRIZIS, STRESS TEMPLE, GROUND SWEAT, HUSMANSKOST, BYFROST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jan 012025
 


Fireworks at the Seattle Space Needle last night (photo by Sigma Sreedharan / KOMO #SoNorthwest Photography)

(written by Islander)

Happy New Year to all of you! May the turn of the calendar page begin leading you to many good things over the coming year, even if it mainly leads you to still write “2024” in your date entries over the next few weeks.

Yesterday we finished the main part of our annual LISTMANIA series, and I posted a “wrap up” for it earlier today. All those lists verified what we already knew as the past year crawled by, i.e., that 2024 was another great interval for metal, even if it was a garbage fire in many other respects.

We have abundant reasons to expect that 2025 will also bring us abundant metallic goodness and greatness, and some of those reasons are already concretely apparent, witness the music I picked for this New Year’s Day roundup (though some of it also comes from the later days of December — and a couple songs are from 2010!). Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries