Apr 052025
 

(written by Islander)

I don’t have a “physically active lifestyle” these days, yet some nights my body acts like I just ran a marathon. Last night was one of those. I conked out and woke up more than 9 hours later. Not even the part of my brain that always nags me, even asleep, about the need to get this Saturday column in shape could resist the bear-like compulsion to hibernate.

So, a very late start today, made later by the time needed to overcome grogginess. Still groggy, even after reading godawful global news stories while inhaling a cocktail of caffeine and nicotine, I glanced at the godawful big NCS in-box. Here’s the first message I saw:

Please take a moment out of your day to listen to the new track from Casa Mondo “Same Words.” It is a taste of Afro Reggae Summer Niceness and would give your followers a warm fuzzy feeling 🙂

I nearly wrote back to ask how in the world we got on this person’s list. We must be on many lists that have zero to do with what we do, because I see dozens of e-mails like this every day from musically remote planets (remote from our own ugly little asteroid).

Of course I didn’t write back, but I thought, the only warm fuzzy feeling our followers might want from music at NCS would be a feeling of fungal infection. And “niceness”? I think our definition of “nice” is not what Casa Mondo had in mind. Continue reading »

Feb 222025
 

(written by Islander)

Greetings on another Saturday. I have another globe-hopping-and-genre-hopping selection of new songs and videos filtered from what I was able to check out over the past week.

At the end, I’m also recommending a pair of recent interviews published at locations other than NCS, not just because the bands are favorites of mine but also because the discussions are so interesting.

But we’ll start with the music…. Continue reading »

Feb 172023
 

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was “heavy metal”. Then thrash, doom, death metal, black metal, and all the ways in which hardcore began to hybridize with metal. Over time, the genres continued to divide, subdivide, intertwine, and absorb DNA from a universe of non-metal music. Metal has been segmented and categorized with a multitude of ever-expanding genre- and sub-genre labels, so many that we may soon deplete the storehouse of hyphens and slashes. But hey, there’s always room for one more, isn’t there?

How about “WAKE THE FUCK UP!” metal? You probably get the idea. Not so much a stylistic descriptor as a description of impact — the kind of explosive, blood-rushing musical cyclone that will kick your adrenaline into overdrive even when you think your brain couldn’t be more foggy or your ass dragging any more miserably.

What’s making us think about this is the electrifying video we’re now presenting for a heart-pounding song by the Oslo-based band ARV. Its name is “Fury“, and that is absolutely truth in advertising. Continue reading »