OSLO DEATHFEST: DAY 1

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 042024
 

(Our Oslo-based contributor Chile had the good fortune to attend the latest edition of Oslo Deathfest on November 29-30, and he has given us the following lively report, accompanied by his photos.)

Time does fly on the wings of death. Nowhere more true than on the ice-covered streets of Oslo, where a moment of inattention takes you straight into the abyss or the pavement, whichever comes first. A bit dramatic, but that’s life. Threading slowly and with great care, walking through winter streets alone, he stops and takes a breath with confidence and self control; Friday has finally come to bring us the first day of Oslo Deathfest, the annual fest of unreadable logos.

A full year has already come to pass from the first edition of Oslo Deathfest, which aims to be a regular gathering for both the bands and the fans of that most beautiful genre of gut-wrenching riffs and crushing rhythms, namely death metal. Last year’s first edition was a success in itself and it was only normal to expect that the organisers would build on that by trying to expand the festival.

And they do. Going from nine bands in 2023, mostly of local fare, but still full of strong names, this year’s festival brings us fourteen bands of colourful, international variety from four corners of the Earth spread over the course of two days. Continue reading »

BLOOD RED THRONE: “NONAGON”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 192024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by the Norwegian death metal band Blood Red Throne, which is out now on Soulseller Records.)

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have the book of death metal read to me. The classic chapters would probably be incredible, set in stone and defined by an era of wild experimentation, gore obsession, and studio production ranging from ‘what the hell were they thinking’ to ‘wow, that’s impressive’.

For a genre that has been around as long as it has, it remains to this day impressively fluid. Both an extreme sport by which modern athletes test their mettle but also one wherein people take that blueprint and mutilate it into many other forms. They twist, morph, contort, and absorb so much that at times the ‘death metal’ genre-tag becomes more like a filter through which other things are forced through than the starting seed.

The modern chapters that are still being written are the ones that would be most intriguing based simply off of ‘where do you even start to approach it?’. You have regional scenes, all with their own hallmarks, you have outside influences that have gone unacknowledged that simply become part of death metal, and you have the blastbeat vein that became its own throughline. and that’s just the starting part.

You have experimenters and vanguards alike, and over the course of an eleven-album career Blood Red Throne have shown themselves to be perfectly fitted into the ‘vanguard’ role. They’ve added their own sentences and addendums to the modern segment of death metal’s book over the years, recent attempts bringing their name well into the limelight in the world of brutality, and with late-January’s Nonagon, Blood Red Throne are finally sitting down to read those segments back to you. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BLACK FRIDAY: VREDEHAMMER, BLOOD RED THRONE, NECROWRETCH, DVVAD, AKKAMOTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 242023
 

Here in the U.S., where I am, it’s been a holiday week. For the rest of the world, it was just another Thursday. The holiday continues today, but even elsewhere in the world it’s not just another Friday.

For decades here, the day after Thanksgiving has marked the beginning of shopping season for the upcoming Christmas holidays, but it seems to have spread its infection elsewhere, even in the world of metal, based on the volume of e-mails I’ve received offering discounts on records and merch from locations in Europe as well as North America.

Well, why fight against the tide? Today, for one day only, we’re offering a 50% discount on the price of subscriptions to NCS, which is normally zero. Get ’em while they last.

I resisted the obvious temptation to limit today’s collection of new music to black metal, but it’s all still pretty black. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 042021
 

 

Can’t you read plain English? It says “Labor Day”. It doesn’t say “Holi-Day”. So I’m just following the prescribed agenda, and laboring.

Because I unexpectedly agreed to write a whopping four premieres yesterday, I had no time to begin rounding up a selection of songs and videos that surfaced this past week. Leaving that until today has resulted in another massive collection, again featuring too many bands to name in the post title.

As it happens, the majority of the new music you’ll find below is accompanied by videos. It also happens that almost all of the new songs are high-speed devastators. This isn’t entirely by accident, because many of them were recommended in our NCS group by DGR, who tends to prefer musical riots over other forms of audio entertainment. And once I’d gotten into that kind of groove, I tended to stick with it in choosing from among other possibilities I checked out.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

We’ll start with a new lyric video for a frantic new song by Archspire, in which vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron goes faster than a cattle auctioneer and the rest of the band spits a variety of bullets even faster — but then abruptly the song gets dreamy. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (STILL TOO MANY NAMES TO PUT IN A POST TITLE)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 072021
 

 

By some kind of industry consensus Fridays have become big days for the release of new music. When you stack a Bandcamp Friday on top of that, you get a deluge of biblical proportions. In an effort to keep up with the torrent, I compiled an extra-large roundup yesterday, but even though it included 14 new songs and videos that I enjoyed it still only scratched the surface. So I decided to do it again today, and to go even bigger, though I didn’t quite make it to Z in the alphabet.

Once again, there are a lot of bigger names in this collection, and once again I’ve injected some lesser-knowns as well. I’ve also included some playthrough videos. There’s not a lot of black metal in the mix, but that’s because tomorrow is Sunday, and you know what that means. Don’t you?

A THOUSAND SUFFERINGS (Belgium)

In this first song the dark, folksy, acoustic opening grabbed me, and then I felt both swept aloft and heart-stricken by the ensuing waves of bleak but grand melody and the shattering screams. The sounds are immense, stately, and emotionally crushing, even with the softer, haunting interstitials that arrive. The music boils over into sounds of torment and fury, and becomes almost hallucinatory in its agony, which makes this rendering of black/doom even more powerful. Continue reading »

BLOOD RED THRONE: “FIT TO KILL”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 132019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Norwegian destroyers Blood Red Throne, which is being released today by Mighty Music.)

Now, I’m aware that I’ve caused a fair bit of controversy and upset over the last few weeks.

And I apologise for nothing.

But perhaps now it’s time for us (well, most of us, some people just won’t let things go) to put aside our differences and begin the healing process.

And what’s more healing than a good dose of Death Metal? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD IN A SATURDAY: BLOOD RED THRONE, ASAGRAUM, HIGH COMMAND, HAUNTED BY SILHOUETTES, PINEWALKER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 102019
 

 

I hope your weekend is off to a good start. As you can see, I managed to start mine last night without allowing the demon alcohol to inflict obliterating damage on my brain, only moderate damage (it feels like there’s a tiny man, center-right in my skull, repeatedly jabbing with an ice pick). And so I decided to pull together four of the better songs I heard over the last 36 hours and one I discovered about a week ago. All of them are from forthcoming albums.

BLOOD RED THRONE

September doesn’t seem as far away as it did when I wrote about a new song from Blood Red Throne‘s new album back in June. That album, Fit To Kill, is the ninth full-length in a career that began in 1998, and it will be discharged by Mighty Music on the lucky 13th of September. Now there’s a second song from the album out in the world, a track named “Requiem Mass“, which premiered this week at DECIBEL. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLOOD RED THRONE, BEASTWARS, TOMB MOLD, DARKEND, UNDER THE PLEDGE OF SECRECY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 212019
 

 

Since it’s the summer solstice today, it seemed important to commemorate the event with a selection of new songs. And since festival-binging and assorted other commitments have prevented me from preparing a round-up for the last nine days, it seemed all the more imperative. The array of choices that have surfaced in recent weeks has been extravagant. From my efforts to make a dent in my listening-list last night, I chose these five, with hopefully more to come this weekend.

BLOOD RED THRONE

September seems very far away, but patience will undoubtedly be rewarded because that month will bring us a new album by Blood Red Throne. Their ninth full-length in a career that began in 1998, Fit To Kill will be discharged by Mighty Music on the lucky 13th of September, and includes cover artwork designed by Giannis Nakos.

Struggling with the challenges of patience have been eased somewhat by the appearance earlier this week of a new track named “Skyggemannen” (which premiered at DECIBEL), accompanied by a video clip of the band performing the song for the first time together, at the Grabbenacht festival in Germany. Continue reading »

A THANKSGIVING BLOOD-LETTING: BLOOD RED THRONE, ALTARAGE, MASTIFF, GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY, DEAD TONGUE, ECHOES OF DEATH, ROTTEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 222018
 

A few other countries besides the United States have a Thanksgiving holiday, but not many, and none of them except the U.S. celebrates it today. So I guess in the vast majority of the world it’s just another day — and so it is at NCS. We do take a certain amount of pride in refusing to take time off for holidays. I mean, we mention them, and some of us partake of them in our non-blog lives, but at NCS they’re all just days, like all the other days, that give us a chance to give thanks for metal.

The following seven new songs flowed together very well in my head last night. Together they make one head-wrecking playlist of slaughtering sound. And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

BLOOD RED THRONE

The Norwegian wrecking crew Blood Red Throne, whose latest album (Union of Flesh and Machine) our Andy Synn called “yet another top-tier terminator of crushing, grooving, blasting belligerence and cold, calculated aggression”, recently discharged a lyric video for a new song from their next album, Fit To Kill, and that’s how we’ll begin today’s blood-letting. Continue reading »

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY (OR ELSE)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 202017
 


Photo by Stig Persson

(Andy Synn presents a collection of songs to celebrate the International Day of Happiness, which the UN has established as March 20th — today!)

How are we all doing today? Good?

I only ask because today is apparently International Day of Happiness, so we should all be feeling that little bit brighter and sprightlier as a result.

Today is also the day when the UN releases their annual World Happiness Report and, wouldn’t you know it, but our Norwegian brethren (and lady-brethren) have only gone and dethroned the Danish as the world’s happiest nation!

So, in tribute to this momentous occasion, here are five bands who help make Norway the happiest place on earth. Continue reading »

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