I spent the last three days doing some catch-up work on recent premieres and releases from the realms of black metal, and today it’s time to shift gears and begin a series of round-ups of new music from other corners of the underground. My NCS comrade DGR is working on a round-up of his own, but even between the two of us we still won’t succeed in covering everything good that we’ve found over the last two weeks (when our round-ups were scarce).

Having said that, we may still threaten to overwhelm our readers with the volume of what we’re recommending. To give you a chance to catch your breath, I’m dividing my collection of recommendations into at least two parts, with the second one to come tomorrow (Saturday). I’ve also attempted to mix up the styles of music within each of these two parts in the hope of appealing to a broad array of tastes (and keeping you off-balance, of course).

ZEAL AND ARDOR

Zeal and Ardor is the name of a music project based in New York City. I’m calling it a “project”, because I have no idea who is behind it, or whether it’s the work of one person or more than one; I’ve searched and can find no background information at all. This mysterious project released a self-titled album in June 2014 that I did not know existed, and in mid-April of this year they released a second one named Devil Is Fine — which is unlike anything I’ve heard before. Continue reading »