I realize that recently I’ve been making these “Seen and Heard” posts a daily occurrence when I should have been concentrating more in depth on individual albums or EPs. But I’ve been fucking off a lot pressed for time recently, and although I’ve fallen even further behind on reviewing albums and EPs I like, I’m at least trying to keep up with the news — especially news that involves new music that really strikes a chord.

Yesterday was a big fucken bonanza of new music. In fact, I found so many likable new discoveries that I’ll have not one but two of these posts today (and maybe more, depending on how much I fuck off how today goes). This is the first one, and I’m really excited about the songs I’ve collected here, all of which are dramatically different shades of black metal — from Rage Nucléaire (Montreal), Decline of the I (Paris), and Black September (Chicago).

RAGE NUCLÉAIRE

Late June it was when I saw an announcement by Season of Mist that they had signed a four-piece black metal band called Rage Nucléaire. It got my attention because the band was formed by Lord Worm, former vocalist of Cryptopsy. I wrote about the event (here) despite having no music to hear. Now I do.

As SOM begins the ramp-up to the debut of Unrelenting Fucking Hatred, they’ve now disclosed the release dates — Nov. 6 for North America and Oct. 19 for the rest of the [fortunate] world — and they’ve started streaming the album’s opening track, the name of which is “Violence Is Golden”. And you beginning to detect a theme about the music? Continue reading »