SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MESHUGGAH, FORNDOM, BLOODRED, SUFFER IN SILENCE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 262022
 

 

If we let a day go by without posting something, will anyone worry that a catastrophe has befallen us? Some technological breakdown or illness or death in the ranks of those of us who toil here at NCS? Oh, probably not. Maybe just mild disappointment would befall some regular visitors, rather than severe anxiety or anguish. Maybe others would welcome a break from the daily torrent of new sounds.

But life is disconcerting enough these days without the experience of even mild additional disappointment. And so… here are a few new songs and videos, just a few.

MESHUGGAH (Sweden)

It’s hard not to mention the appearance of a new Meshuggah song and video even though everyone likely to visit our site already knows about it, especially because the video is so intriguing (and frightenig). The song’s stuttering and shivering grooves are relentless, and very catchy, and it succeeds in creating a spacey, futuristic atmosphere in keeping with Meshuggah‘s history of providing what seem line soundtracks to the rise of hideous machine intelligence. Continue reading »

WILTING AWAY, BLOODRED, THE NEOLOGIST

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 102016
 

choking

 

(We applied the squeeze to DGR and he coughed up not one, not two, but three reviews all at once…)

I’ve actually been taking a quick breather from the giant review slate that I’ve built up for myself at this lovely site. After the humongous swath of death metal (with a handful of releases to go, as well) and some upcoming more doom-flavored tracks, I figured I’d pull away from the names I’d recognized and try to find some stuff that we’ve never really crossed paths with before. One of the ways I’ll do that is to go fishing through our various social media contacts, because although there is a gigantic pile of music to work through, I’ve had pretty good luck in finding stuff.

Even though an absolute torrent of new releases is coming our way here over the next few months, I occasionally like to go back and sift through earlier releases to see if there is anything interesting that we missed. Often, it has usually boiled down to me surfing through our various messages to see if there have been any bands who have contacted us recently, and among the few of us at the site we start slowly filtering our way through them. So yes, this process does seem to take forever but it is also because I like to deep-dive into most things, rather than take a cursory glance at it and give it the up vote/down vote scenario.

That’s the case with this collection of music, as I found myself getting yanked and driven all over the globe. In this particular roundup, I have two bands that we’ve never covered before and one that should be intensely familiar to very seasoned NCS readers, but three very different styles of music on top of that. Let us charge forth, shall we? Continue reading »

METAL NOT PREVIOUSLY FEATURED ON NCS — PART 1

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 302014
 

(We welcome guest contributor Gorger, who explains himself and the objective of this new series as follows… )

Let me start off with a short presentation of myself. For almost a year I’ve been running a Norwegian metal site with a focus on reviews of metal releases. The site is split into two forms of reviews. There are the standard reviews, where I listen a plethora of times before writing a medium-long, moderately indept description with a dice-scaled rating, and then there are what I call “Impressions”, where I listen to an album a few times before writing short and somewhat impulsive description with a classification as Approved (V), Dissapproved (X), or Intermediate (VX).

Like Islander, I know what lack of time is. I have a wish of making a parallel, English-language version of my site, but that ain’t happening any time soon. When Islander told us all he’d be leaning back between two loud-speakers and enjoying some full albums for a change, I decided this was a perfect time to both give something back to this enlightening site and also do a “pilot” of English translations, to see how that would work. I plan to present 16 releases from the past two months over three posts, and the criteria are these:

-Only albums that have not earlier been presented in any way at NCS.
-Only music that fits the NCS profile (i.e., no clean singing)
-Only music that fits the NCS concept (i.e., only recommendable releases)

We are all excited to see which records will be reviewed by our host. In the meantime (yes, time is mean indeed) I hope you’ll find something interesting here. For those with Scandinavian linguistic skills, check out Gorger’s Metal.

I’ll put it all in chronological order. Now, let’s get started, shall we? Continue reading »