SEEN AND HEARD: DAWN OF A DARK AGE, ELLENDE, 1914, LAETITIA IN HOLOCAUST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Nov 142025
 

(written by Islander)

This is another rare day when I have no premieres on our calendar and therefore have some free time for other things. Not wanting to spend it paying bills, hand-washing dishes (the dishwasher is busted), doing laundry, cleaning the cat box, or taking calls from world leaders interested in trying to understand what the fuck is going on in the U.S., I decided to get a head start on my usual weekend roundups of new music and videos.

Without further ado, here we go: Continue reading »

THE HALO EFFECT: “WE ARE SHADOWS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 142025
 

(On November 21st Nuclear Blast will release a new EP from the Swedish metal band The Halo Effect, an EP named We Are Shadows that includes five cover songs, featuring one track picked by each band member. Our writer DGR has been a fan of the band, spent some time with this new EP, and wrote the following review.)

The year in heavy metal is going to have peaks and valleys. Previously, we could’ve viewed years in heavy metal as one seemingly unending torrential flood or the polar opposite in a semi-peaceful consistency, a steady flow of new albums, discoveries, and distractions in equal measure. The past handful of years, however, have been so brain-fried and birdshot when it comes to any form of a consistent release schedule that you could never tell what was going to arrive and – part of this due to getting older and being blissfully unaware of the world surrounding us – more often than not now it feels like we’re constantly getting blindsided by something just off in the distance arriving at the front door with all the aplomb and grandeur one might afford to a distant cousin deciding to bike across the country and wanting to crash at your house for the day. Not to say that there’s any personal experience in the matter, but come the fuck on dude, we’ve spoken one time in nearly forty years?

2024 could have been kindly described as a year of fits and starts at best, were it not for the feeling of burning the candle at both ends – as well as just immolating the whole fucking thing after dousing it in kerosene with the amount we wrote – but 2025 has been the first time in some time that things have felt… consistent. Sort of. We still seem to be drunkenly stumbling to a semblance of previous reality at times but this is more like the occasional stumble one might make when they’re just on the legal line and walking home after having cut themselves off hours ago. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOJIRA, ZADISM, ZAKAZ, ZEIT, ZMEY GORYNICH, JOROGUMO, CHRIS GEBAUER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 082025
 

(written by Islander)

Welp, I got another very late start on this Saturday. Of course, for most well-adjusted people Saturday is made for getting late starts. Not being well-adjusted, I get anxious when it happens, nervously staring at the clock and realizing I have to hurry or I won’t get roundups like this one finished in time for anyone in quadrants east of here to pay attention before sundown.

Enough of that. I should use my diminishing time to introduce the large handful of things I picked for today’s recommendations, including the semi-usual curveball at the end. Continue reading »

VAELRAVYN: “THE VEIL” AND “SUN GOD”

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 072025
 

(In this feature our friend Vizzah Harri shares his thoughts about two singles this year released by the Tennessee collective Vaelravyn.)

Wikipedia lists nearly 150 sun gods throughout human history, roughly 17%, or 26 of them, are Filipino in origin. Interesting fact number one, The Philippines have around 1000 deities listed on the page for Filipino mythological figures. Way more water gods than lords of light, wonder why? Must be wet there or something, perhaps they don’t even have a word for drought? They do, it’s ‘tagtuyot’. Absent father jokes aside, I lost count at around 981 seeing, as I refuse to use LLM’s, and Wikipedia lists both mortals and immortals in their mythological figures of The Philippines article, and quite a few of the gods like Diwati aka D’wata and Kabunyan aka Kabunian crossbred across islands and waterways putting Zeus to shame, so the actual number of gods is hard to count.

Fact number two, if your name is Alan, I have only known two in my life and they both left impressions on me of being pure souls that took life by the horns and lived it to the full, but if your first or last name is Alan, you might want to go read that Wikipedia article up there cos you might get some weird looks if you ever decide to visit the wonderful country of The Philippines. Of the two gods with that name I spotted, one was a shapeshifting corpse thief and the other one a cannibal; someone needed to do the honest work of scouring the internet to make a weirdly adjacent point after all.

I’ve been in Vietnam too long, and one complaint I’ve often heard from students when they bemoan one of their most hated subjects, literature, is that the authors always had this wild-goose-chase tactic in their storylines, going all around the forest to come back to the tree of import. Guess it rubbed off on me. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CELLAR VESSEL / MALADIE / SPLITJAW

 SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 052025
 

(Andy Synn has three more EPs for you to check out today)

It might be controversial to say so, but I don’t think that 2025 has been quite as strong as 2024.

That’s not to say there haven’t been some truly excellent albums released this year (there’s only about a month or so until my regular annual round-up, where you’ll get to see the evidence for that statement) but I feel like there’s been fewer soaring highs, and a few more unexpected disappointments, compared to last year (don’t quote me on this though, as I still need to run a final analysis).

The exception here, of course, is in the realm of the short-but-sweet release (aka, the EP), as I’m constantly finding new bite-sized morsels of brilliance to sink my teeth into (for a while, anyway), with all three of today’s records being prime examples of what you can find if you just keep your ear to the ground.

Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DE PROFUNDIS / PLAGUE PIT / SOULFRACTURE

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 292025
 

(Andy Synn recommends three short-but-sweet releases from the UK Metal underground)

Let me start off today with a little announcement of my own… sadly, for reasons beyond our control the third and final part of the Beyond Grace EP trilogy (which will also, Voltron-style, form our third album when all connected together) won’t be out this year.

I know, I know… I’m as disappointed as you are… but having lost most of September due to two different weddings (including my own) and their accompanying stag-dos/bachelor parties, and then struggling to book studio time for the drums, it really couldn’t be helped.

We’ll still be releasing another cover track, most likely at the start of January (and quite possibly as part of an awesome charity compilation), and then following that with another video prior to the EP/album release (where you’ll be able to get the digital version of the new EP and the collected CD/LP version, at the same time) but I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a little longer for your next fix.

But don’t worry, because today I’m bringing you three other short-form releases from three other killer British bands – including one we’ve toured with before, plus another that we’re hoping to tour with next year – that I’m hoping will help ease your obvious disappointment!

Continue reading »

UMULAMAHRI AND SUFFERING HOUR: A TALE OF TWO EXTREMELY EXTREME EPs

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 272025
 

(Gonzo is busily thinking about what to cover in his next monthly review roundup for NCS, but in the meantime he’s pulled together some thoughts about a pair of EPs released in the early days of October by two U.S. bands.)

When you spend a significant amount of time bulldozing your way through new music discoveries, a lot can happen. For one, it eventually becomes a hell of a lot harder to be impressed at anything. Your brain starts to tune out anything formulaic or unimaginative. Quality will always triumph over quantity, you start to tell yourself, and surely you’ll find yourself immersed in the throes of a dopamine hit that can only be generated by the nastiest, vilest, and more extreme foray into sonic depravity the human mind can possibly conjure. Just keep searching.

Then, at long last, when your quest for heavy music fulfillment reaches a zenith, it leads you to the very edge of the abyss you were once so intent on finding… and you suddenly find yourself afraid to look down, fearing what lies below.

In the case of these two EPs, the abyss stares back. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BLUT AUS NORD, KRALLICE, THOKKIAN VORTEX, ETĚR, TEUFELNACHT, NATTRADIO

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 262025
 

(written by Islander)

This has been one of those rare weekends when, due to some other plans falling through, I had a ton of time to immerse myself in new metal and spew out a bunch of thoughts in print. Yesterday I compiled music from 8 bands, and today I’ve got 6 (I did have 8 but ran out of writing time). These bands, of course, exhibit their creativity through varying shades and phases of black metal — except the last one, a final curveball for you.

This collection includes three complete EPs as well as enticing excerpts from records not yet out. I hope you’ll give them all a chance. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HELLRIPPER, ABYSMAL DAWN, OMEGAVORTEX, OMNIVORTEX, SOULFLY, VALLETTA, ROTGUT, LOCUSTS AND HONEY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 252025
 

(written by Islander)

I spent more time than usual last night listening to heavy music and, unlike what often happens on Friday nights, I didn’t get destroyed (except by the music), so I felt pretty good upon awakening this Saturday. Which is why this roundup is as bulging as it is.

In my listening excursion I fell down a rabbit hole, not intending to, but that’s what falling down is about. Except this rabbit hole was like a steep and rapid descent (more jet-fueled than gravity usually powers), with a fuckload of fireworks and sharp edges on the way down, and who knew rabbits had such big teeth and vicious red eyes?

Or to put it more prosaically, there’s a ton of high-speed thrashing and vigorous battering ahead of you. At least until the end, when I indulged something very different, for people who don’t want to thrash their reproductive organs off today or otherwise get their craniums fractured and their grey matter whipped up in a centrifuge. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SHORES OF NULL — “AN EASY WAY” (AND A REVIEW OF “LATITUDES OF SORROW”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 222025
 

(written by Islander)

Latitudes of Sorrow is a new five-song split featuring the music of two bands whose past music has garnered substantial praise both here and elsewhere: Convocation from Helsinki and Shores of Null from Rome. The esteemed Everlasting Spew Records will release the split on November 21st.

At the beginning of this month we had the privilege of premiering one of Convocation’s compelling songs from the split, “Empty Room,” and now we’re following that with the premiere of “An Easy Way” by Shores of Null. Continue reading »

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