AN NCS PREMIERE: PUTRED — “ERA MORBIDITAȚII”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 162024
 

(written by Islander)

In this feature we’re helping spread the word that the Romanian death metal band Putred have their second album Megalit al Putrefacției set for release by Memento Mori on January 20th, just in time to scare the New Year to death in its crib.

By way of introduction for the song premiere we’re now hosting, here’s part of how Memento Mori‘s press release evokes the sensations of the music:

“Sonic references across Megalit al Putrefacției are many – Mortician at half-speed, Cianide at their world-eating best, early Necrophagia‘s weird textures, Apparition / Sorrow with a shot of energy, and of course the unholy trifecta of Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, and Grave.”

The same write-up refers to the riffing as “slamming” and “slithering,” and the atmosphere as “slimy,” “rancid,” and “foul-smelling,” and both brutalizing and eldritch. But of course we have some thoughts of our own, spawned by this new song, “Era Morbiditații.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCHAVOT — “DE LANTAARN SPREEKT DE WEG”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 162024
 

(written by Islander)

With just a couple of weeks left in the year we still have time to make 2024 the third year in a row when we’ve premiered a song for the Dutch black metal band Schavot, the solo project work of multi-instrumentalist Floris Velthuis, who is also a member of Asgrauw, Meslamtaea, and Sagenland.

It’s fair to say, as Floris has himself acknowledged, that nostalgia is a significant inspiration for Schavot‘s music. He has been active in black metal since the ’90s, and a nostalgia for the Scandinavian black metal he grew up with gave birth to the Schavot project. Beyond that, his lyrics have been inspired by “the twilight world of the past” — by old Dutch folk tales and history.

And so, in both respects, Schavot‘s music could be considered a journey into the past. Yet as people know who’ve already encountered Schavot‘s previous releases, including the first two albums (Galgenbrok and Kronieken uit de nevel) and the excellent 2023 split Verloren vertellingen, the music is far from the kind of dull wistfulness that nostalgia can sometimes produce.

Today’s premiere underscores that point. The name of the song is “De lantaarn spreekt de weg,” and it’s from a new Schavot album named Verstrikt in halflicht that we’re happily helping announce today in advance of its February 27 release by Void Wanderer Productions and War Productions. Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR-END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS — THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART ONE: 50-41

 LISTMANIA 2024  4 Responses »
Dec 162024
 

(This is the first part of a five-part countdown by DGR of his 2024 year-end list, with each selection accompanied by his very extensive thoughts about the releases. Our plan is to roll out the rest of the installments on successive days until this week ends or falls into a sinkhole under the weight of his words.)

It feels like I blinked and suddenly a whole year had passed. Maybe it’s just the flow of life finally catching back up to me but this year moved in extreme fits and extreme starts and somewhere along the way I lost track of it among the deluge and wreckage that seems to be a daily existence. Among the piles of charred wood and still yet burning cars is another three hundred and sixty-five days of existence slowly signing its final paperwork and preparing itself to move on from the mortal coil.

At the very least, there was some sort of notification that this was coming. It feels like every year I open with some variation of ‘hey, this previous year sucked shit,’ and I’m pretty sure I’ve taken a similar tack to open up a few of the previous year-end posts – if only some sort of dipshit had done an anniversary post whereby he might have easy access to all his previous years’ transgressions upon the internet and the collective heavy metal world at large –  so I’ll dispense with the usual landfill avalanche of thoughts pertaining to world events and the previous days gone by because, shock of all shocks, this year sucked.

Next year is likely going to suck too and the year after that will probably suck even worse. We’ll make the word ‘suck’ mundane through repetition, as if an ever-present shadow haunting our lives, by the time we’re done with this. Eventually, we will all lose all sense of what the word actually means and we will be permanently trapped in some sort of constant suck-vortex powerful enough that we’ll get dragged into court for infringement by Dyson and we’ll be numb to the common sense of suck surrounding us. We’ll have finally ascended into the boring dystopia I’ve bitched about that is coming for years. Just my luck I can’t even get one with decent Blade Runner lighting. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: YOVEL, EEUWIG, BOLG

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Dec 152024
 

(written by Islander)

As predicted in the intro to yesterday’s roundup, the high winds in our area finally did murder the power at our house. Amazingly, it didn’t happen until overnight, and more amazingly, the internet is still working this morning even though the power’s dead, so here we are.

But I’m getting a late start today for a different reason: I went to a holiday party in Seattle for my job last night. It was fun, and somehow three Sazerac cocktails didn’t leave me crawling, but by the time our royally fucked-up ferry system got me home the wee hours of Sunday were already in progress. So I’ve shortened my plans about what to do in this column; otherwise it will arrive very late in the day. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AN EVENING WITH KNIVES, ARKAIST, HAVUKRUUNU, NOVARUPTA, SADIST, GOJIRA, THY CATAFALQUE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 142024
 

(written by Islander)

If you’ve been visiting us recently it’s obvious that we’ve dived into year-end LISTMANIA. Andy Synn just finished his week-long series, which always starts us off, and we’ve re-posted a few lists from sites much bigger than our own. But if that was the dive, we’re about to sink way deeper into lists, like someone who offended a crime lord and are now being pulled into a watery abyss with concrete blocks chained to our thrashing body.

To preview what’s coming, next week we’ll roll out DGR‘s week-long Top 50 list, a three-part list series from Neill Jameson, and a couple of year-end lists from other NCS writers, with a lot more to come in the weeks after that. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CELESTIAL DEATH — “ANTI-PREACHER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 132024
 

(written by Islander)

In our daily discharge of premieres we often find ourselves spreading the word about new music from bands who’ve already established some kind of track record through previous releases, or debuting a second or third single from a record after people already have an idea what’s in store for them. That makes today’s premiere something of a novelty, because it’s the first song publicly released by a brand new band.

The band is Celestial Death, a black metal quartet from Atlanta headed up by Jay Crash, who’s also the owner of Terminus Hate City Records. He’s joined by other experienced performers from the Atlanta scene — guitarist Ryan Buck (perhaps best known for his bass playing, as a member of Coletta, and having toured with Hail the Sun); drummer Matthew Carmichael (who has recently filled in on drums for Tómarúm, has toured with Cyborg Octopus and Archeologist, and is also a member of the Atlanta tech-death band, Nihilect); and bassist Hellstorm.

The song we’re premiering through a video, on the day of the song’s release across streaming platforms, functions as a mission statement, not only in the formulation of black metal that Celestial Death has concocted but also of their philosophy. Here’s their statement about “Anti-Preacher“: Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES VOL. XII: THE SEASON OF THE LIST

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 132024
 

(Daniel Barkasi is back with us again, this time providing reviews of eight recommended albums of varying style that were released in November 2024.)

No, we’re not talking about Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and we certainly won’t be seeing any odd witch masks with a piece of Stonehenge in them. That movie is rough, but also strangely entertaining. It was better than almost all of the subsequent Halloween sequels that came after, though that isn’t saying much, is it? Now that infernal Silver Shamrock song is stuck in my head. Go ahead and click on that link. Now it’s in your head, too.

Halloween has long since passed, and now also Thanksgiving being in the rearview – and a huge thank you to our awesome KevinP for having the wife and myself over. Seeing him and his awesome family on Thanksgiving has become a tradition for us, and one we’re incredibly thankful for. Certainly hope there were some good times with good people, whether you celebrate the holiday or not.

The sheer volume of releases the last few years has been staggering, with 2024 being no exception. Sometimes it’s an overwhelming circumstance, however, as we don’t want to miss much, so there are plenty of long listening sessions. It’s impossible to not miss releases, and once we get into next year, there will always be some that we can hardly believe evaded our ears by perusing the many lists out there. Especially the many lists that’ll be present on this fine site – Andy Synn is on a roll, and he always unearths plenty of gems. Continue reading »

2024 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE PERSONAL TOP TEN

 LISTMANIA 2024  13 Responses »
Dec 132024
 

(Andy Synn finishes off “List Week” with his personal favourites of the year)

Well, here we are, finally at the end of “List Week”… and, let me tell you, I am ready to take some time off and recharge/reset my mental machinery.

Oh, I’ll probably end up writing one or two more things, here and there, before the end of the month – there’s a handful of Black Metal albums I really want to write more about, for one thing, and I’ve got to do my end of the month Synn Report, of course – but for the most part I’ll be turning the site back over to Islander, DGR, and whatever guests posts we have, for the rest of December.

Before then, however, I’ve got one more list up my proverbial sleeve… and this one, thankfully, is a lot easier and more laid back, seeing as it’s basically just the ten albums which “clicked” with me and monopolised my listening the most this year.

It’s not the “best” albums of the year, by any means – though many of them appeared on my “Great” list – it’s just my favourite full-lengths from the last twelve months (and you can see what my favourite EPs were here), and should give you some idea of where my personal tastes lay these last many months.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HARKANE — “ARGO”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 122024
 

(written by Islander)

When I was a very young lad my mother gave me an illustrated book of Greek myths. One of the tales that especially captivated me was the legend of Jason and the Argoanuts’ quest for the Golden Fleece. Later, I was equally captivated by the classic film Jason and the Argonauts, which featured stop-motion animation visual effects by the great Ray Harryhausen.

I didn’t know then, and only learned recently thanks to the Italian band Harkane, that the principle source material for this legend was an epic Greek poem, The Argonautica, written in the third century BC by Apollonius Rhodius, who served as a scholar and librarian at the great Library of Alexandria.

I learned this because Harkane have made an ambitious concept album entitled Argo, soon to be released by the Dusktone label, that itself narrates this epic adventure, with express credit given to Appollonius. Continue reading »

2024 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE CRITICAL TOP TEN

 LISTMANIA 2024  13 Responses »
Dec 122024
 

(Andy Synn does his best to remain objective while selecting his “Critical Top Ten” of 2024)

Out of everything I’ve written and published this week, this is the closest to a traditional “Best Of” list.

But, even so, it’s still a little different, as while it’s ostensibly a “Top Ten”, it’s purposefully not ranked… rather it’s meant to be a snapshot of the ten albums (drawn from yesterday’s “Great” list) which together form the best representation of the year in Metal, across all the different styles and sub-genres which make up our beloved scene.

I’ll grant you that ten albums isn’t enough to fully represent the sheer variety and vitality of the year – you’ll notice for example, that both Blood Incantation and Job For A Cowboy are notably absent – but I’ve still tried my best (while also trying to be as “objective” as possible, despite that being ultimately an exercise in futility, as there will always be some sort of subjective bias involved) to provide a hand-picked cross-section which hopefully illustrates the very best-of-the-best from the last twelve-ish months.

As always, in recognition that many of our readers may already be familiar with some of the albums selected for this year’s “Critical Top Ten”, I’ve also included a few “honourable mentions” – whose primary purpose is to highlight a few extra albums which, while they may not have made it into the Top Ten, still deserve more recognition and attention – so even if you think you know what to expect (and, hopefully, there’ll still be a few surprises) you might just discover a brand new favourite artist/album while you’re here!

Continue reading »

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