SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SEPTICFLESH, VITAL SPIRIT, ANATOMIA, UNDERGANG, COME MIERDA, OTTONE PESANTE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 052022
 


Septicflesh – photo by Stella Mouzi

I wasn’t able to pull together any roundups of new songs and videos this past week, which means that today I’m only scratching the surface of what surfaced. It’s more like scratching just the top molecular layer of a solid block of steel. I’ll be back tomorrow to do some more scratching. Maybe some of your musical itches will be scratched too.

SEPTICFLESH (Greece)

Yesterday Nuclear Blast released news about a forthcoming album by SepticFlesh and a video for its first singe, “Hierophant“. It’s a conceptual song that begins a story which continues in the track “Self-Eater”.

This first part of the story (to quote band member Sotiris Anunnaki V) “depicts the experience of a high priest, acting as a human conduit between Heaven and Earth. Having never heard a single word from the mouth of God, he grows tired of preaching the preordained words of the clergy. He turns to performing primitive and powerful rituals that have been long forbidden, as he seeks the guidance of a chaotic elemental consciousness”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ABYSSLOOKER, MOANAA, DISCORDANT SYSTEM, THE SUN AND THE MIRROR, ANATOMIA, ORECUS, INTOLERANT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 272021
 

 

This past week we had fewer posts per day than usual, and it saddens me to say this will continue for the next two weeks. The reason is that I’m in the midst of a project for my fucking day job that’s crushing my NCS time. I mean, you can’t build an electrodynamic particle accelerator without some concentrated effort.

I’ve still made commitments to host song and album premieres on many days between now and the end of this project on the Ideas of March, but even that’s going to stop during the final days of the effort. Apart from writing the premieres and passing my hand over what other people write before posting their stuff, I’m really not going to have time for anything else. This weekend is therefore kind of a last hurrah for round-ups for a while.

For this collection I’ve ignored bigger names and stayed pretty deep underground, and you’ll see that the music connects with my current dark moods. I’ve deferred the black metal until tomorrow’s column.

ABYSSLOOKER (Russia)

I decided to begin with the most recent of the discoveries I’ve collected here, a single released just yesterday that was brought to my attention overnight by Rennie (starkweather). Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ANATOMIA (TAKASHI TANAKA)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Nov 222019
 

 

(Comrade Aleks has brought us this very interesting and informative interview with Takashi Tanaka, drummer and vocalist of the formidable Japanese death-doom band Anatomia.)

There’s a sort of niche genre – something between crude, quite extreme death metal and death doom. It was set by Asphyx and Autopsy back in the early ’90s, and a good amount of bands carry on this tradition of mixing these sonic elements with brutal lyrics and straightforward delivery. Japan has two main bands of that kind – Coffins and Anatomia. You could see interview with Coffins here in November 2018, and now it’s Anatomia’s turn. Why?

Well, this band always has a new release. Yes, there are only three full-lengths in their discography, but just add to this score 14 split releases and 5-7 releases of other formats and you get a full picture.

Takashi Tanaka (drums, vocals) runs three more bands at the same time, so I believed it was wise to focus only on his Anatomia achievements. Continue reading »

MORE EVIL IN YOUR LIFE: NOCTURNE, ANATOMIA, BLATTARIA, THE NIGHTSTALKER AND SERCATI, DEGOTTEN, EUFOBIA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 202017
 

 

As you can see, I decided to give the “SEEN AND HEARD” title a rest for today. After I picked these new songs and videos for an end-of-week round-up, it became clear they all had something in common. Even though the music is all very different, it all sounds… evil.

NOCTURNE

This Austrian melodic black metal band’s self-titled debut album (briefly reviewed here) proved their ability to create powerful, dramatic music that displayed considerable diversity. Now they’re returning with a new album named The Burning Silence (the cover art is above), which will be released by Talheim Records on December 16th. From that album, they’ve recently released “Hubris Virtue” as a digital single and a lyric video. Continue reading »

FIVE BANDS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FOR SAN ANTONIO’S “RITES OF DARKNESS” FESTIVAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 162011
 

(Thanks go out to NCS reader/commenter Surgical Brute for today’s guest post, which focuses on five bands that may be new to you; they were certainly new to me, but I’m damned glad I know about them now: Anatomia, War Master, Grave Ritual, Adorior, and Ilsa. I’m also happy to learn about the Rites of Darkness festival that, to date, has confirmed appearances by 41 bands, including the likes of Behexen, Demonical, Interment, Mitochondrian, Sargeist, Valkyrja, and Vasaeleth, in addition to the bands that are the focus of this post.)

Okay, as you know, Islander was looking for some articles to use as fill-ins so he didn’t lose any days on the NCS website. I stupidly said Id try to put something together for him, and…well… here we are.

I guess I should start with a little bit about me. My name’s Rob, but I usually use the tag SurgicalBrute (no there’s no story behind it . . . so don’t ask). Compared to a lot of you, I’ve only been into metal for a very short time, but after dabbling with metalcore a little bit I found Amon Amarth’s Twilight of the Thundergod. I couldn’t stop listening to the title track, and I’ve been devoted to the metal gods ever since. I listen to most of the different styles (grindcore being the exception), but I prefer either old school death metal or folk/viking metal.

Now, I’m not much of a reviewer; frankly, I suck at it. So I was trying to figure out what I should write about. Well, as some of you may know, I try to stay pretty tapped into metal’s underground.  So I figured I’d make a suggestion list of bands most of you may not have heard about. I’ll also include a brief description of theses bands

This isn’t just any list though. No . . . I’m going to tell about 5 lesser known bands you should check out at Rites of Darkness 3, which is happening in San Antonio, Texas, on December 9-10.  (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »