THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Oct 092023
 

(Andy Synn highlights four albums from last month you need to listen to)

There’s two things you need to know about this column.

  1. It’s usually done sooner than this but, since I didn’t get back into the country until Wednesday last week, I didn’t have chance to write everything up until now.
  2. I normally try and present a pretty varied grab-bag of albums and artists in each article… but this time I’ve dedicated it solely to some of the nastiest, gnarliest, and most unfriendly sounds from September.

So, with all that in mind, let’s see what this latest edition of “Things You May Have Missed” has to offer, shall we?

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AN NCS PREMIERE: ACAUSAL INTRUSION — “TRANSFORMATIONAL DEATH PHENOMENON”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 212022
 

For reasons that our man Andy Synn incisively explained in his review last year, Acausal Intrusion‘s debut album Nulitas was a rare piece of work. My favorite fragment from the review was this one: “[T]his is one record that actively feels like it’s evolving and mutating as you’re listening to it, which is no mean feat”.

It wasn’t just that Nulitas morphed from song to song, it was that the individual songs themselves seemed to change when listening to them a second and third time, which was a strange experience. But as Andy also noted, it was only after repeat listens that the album began to make sense — albeit a weird and warped kind of sense.

Now this dizzying and devastating duo are fast returning with a new album, this one named Seeping Evocation. Not surprisingly, it’s a challenging listen, and a frequently disturbing one. As the band’s label I, Voidhanger Records, expresses it:

“Once again the watchwords are chaos and transformation…. Seeping Evocation is like a living organism from another dimension, a giant black hole that pulsates and breathes, the eye of a forgotten Lovecraftian god open to our reality, ready to burn and destroy everything.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MORTUOUS, KEN MODE, GRÁ, ACAUSAL INTRUSION, CODESPEAKER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 272022
 

I’ll dispense with the usual long-winded introduction to this Saturday round-up and just say that to assemble today’s collection I picked five songs from forthcoming albums, and chose them not only because I think they’re all extremely good and very intense, but also because the twists and turns from one to the next (and sometimes inside them individually) will keep you on your proverbial toes.

MORTUOUS (U.S.)

It’s difficult to pick out the most memorable aspect of the first song (“Graveyard Rain“) that I’ve chosen for today’s round-up, but it might be the spectral ring of mournful guitar (and perhaps piano) arpeggios that create a mood of haunting sorrow during the track’s slower and more magisterial movements.

But a stupefying death metal maelstrom surrounds those moments — a massed assault of maniacal riffing, thunderous drumming, and truly abyssal growls that sound like the fury of an ancient crocodile god. However, despite the breathtaking power and ferocity of the barrage, the song is also home to some killer riffs, and a magnetic solo, and the tornado of sound doesn’t obscure them. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jun 032021
 

(Andy Synn knows how easy it is to miss things when so many albums are released each month, so here’s four from May he recommends you try and find time to check out)

As the first edition of this (now officially “ongoing”) column was such a success (well, some people seemed to like it at least) I’ve made the decision to make it a regular thing.

So, for its sophomore outing I’ve chosen four artists/albums from the past month which we didn’t get around to covering properly before now (though we have featured some of them in various ways).

Don’t get me wrong, this is only scratching the surface of the various violent delights which May had to offer, but I think you’ll still be pleased with my selections, which this time around include a pair of very impressive debuts as well as new releases from not one but two former Synn Report alumni.

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AN NCS PREMIERE: ACAUSAL INTRUSION — “QABBALISTIC CONJOINING EXISTENCE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 132021
 

 

Daniele Valeriani‘s cover art for Acausal Intrusion‘s debut album Nulitas perceptively connects to the experience of the music. Both are malevolently frightening (even monstrously so), disturbingly surreal, and transfixing. The linguistic preview of the music offered by I, Voidhanger Records (who will release the album on May 21st) also effectively summons some of that experience:

“Acausal Intrusion play chaotic technical death metal tapping into regions beyond time and space, a vessel for ancient and unknown forces to channel into this earth, to dismantle the psyche and destroy the ego”.

And so too does the expression of the album’s concept provided by Nythroth, one of the two men who joined forces to make the music (the other goes by the name Cave Ritual):

“The acausal realm is the source of all true life. It lays beyond our causal world and is inhabited by ancient entities and chaotic energies usually too terrifying for humans to behold. Their intrusion into our reality can spark an alchemical process of transformation through which the individuals emerge on the other side with renewed self-consciousness.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DORDEDUH, JUODVARNIS, ANTRISCH, ACAUSAL INTRUSION, RALE, SLITHERING DECAY, PAN KUBUŚ

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 012021
 

 

This round-up includes seven bands, which is a lot. But except for two, there’s just a single track per band (in the remaining cases there are EPs). I included a curveball at the end.

DORDEDUH (Romania)

Two days ago Dordeduh premiered a beautiful English-subtitled lyric video for “Descânt” (“Disenchantment”), the second single from their new second album Har, which will be released by Prophecy Productions on May 14th. The previously released single is “Desferecat“, which translates to “unchained”. It was accompanied by a fascinating music video of its own. Both songs have a visceral “physicality” but also quicken the imagination as you listen. Here’s what former NCS contributor KevinP wrote me about them: Continue reading »