EP REVIEW PARTY: BOMBS OF HADES, TRIBE OF PAZUZU, TOMBS, KATHOLIK, SUTRAH, OVARYROT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
May 192020
 


Bombs of Hades – photo by Susan Wicher

 

(DGR prepared this collection of reviews, focusing on six 2020 EPs across a range of metal genres.)

If you’ve been reading the site recently you might’ve caught fellow writer Andy Synn doing a deep dive on six EPs that had seen recent release (here). Well, that wasn’t the only one of those on the docket, and what you’re looking at is a second collection of EPs: Stuff that I’ve noticed we haven’t dived into in print, stuff that might’ve glanced by us, and one or two that are basically on the DGR radar by proximity alone.

Musically, we’re all over the map – hell, Ovaryrot’s presence alone was likely to have that effect – as we travel through crusty death metal realms, thrashier-death and black hybrids, to black metal itself and all of its post-genre cousins, even making a trip to the tech-death world to say hi to those over-complicated goofballs and their tendency to try to write everything and the kitchen sink into five-minute chunks, before finally winding up on the doorstep of some nightmare music, because who the hell needs to sleep?

So if you saw the previous six EPs and thought, “Wow, what a fantastic idea”, then settle in my oddly specific friend because do we have a treat for you, another six EPs of music that have hit over the past few months for you to check out and bang your head to. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ULCERATE, NOMAD, LIKE RATS, HOT GRAVES, BOMBS OF HADES, CHURCH OF DISGUST, HOLY DEATH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 022020
 

 

At the risk of overloading our readers with new music in light of what we’ve already sent your way over the weekend and this morning (a risk that obviously means nothing to us), here’s a carefully curated collection of chaos to begin the new week. If death metal is your meat and potatoes, this will explode your gastrointestinal tract.

ULCERATE

It didn’t take long for a new Ulcerate song to cause a flurry of comments within our internal NCS group. Not long after the title track to the band’s new album surfaced this morning, my colleagues uttered such exclamations and opinions as “tasty”, “oh shit”, “this is probably the cleanest and least reliant they’ve been on recorded-in-a-cave-next-door style mixing they’ve had yet”, “it’s DEFINITELY more melodic, and the production is warmer, but those are GOOD things”, and “it’s a natural progression from what they were doing on Shrines of Paralysis“. Continue reading »

BOMBS OF HADES AND PSYCHOTIC GARDENING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 302014
 

I’ve got some other goodies lined up for you on this day of rest, but while I finish messing with those I thought I’d bomb you to smithereens with some Bombs of Hades and then let Psychotic Gardening prune your vines.

BOMBS OF HADES

Bombs of Hades are one of the bands I included on a list of the best Swedish-style death metal being recorded by newer bands over the last five years, and if you haven’t heard them before you’re about to find out why they belong on that list. They have a new album on the way entitled Atomic Temples and yesterday they started streaming one of the new songs — “Omens” — and it’s great.

As many of you know, I have a long-standing love (some might call it a crippling weakness) for this kind of metal, despite the fact that it’s music that MUST fit a certain mold or it loses its identity. With other styles of metal, sub-genres can be spliced together, filigrees and embroidery can be added, experiments can be performed, growth and innovation can occur. But with this kind of old-school, d-beat-driven Swedish death metal, there’s simply a right way to do it or a wrong way. Bombs of Hades do it the right way. They keep the faith, they carry the torch, and it’s smokin’ hot. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 43: PSEUDOGOD, BOMBS OF HADES, SECTIONED, AND DWELLERS OF THE TWILIGHT

 MISCELLANY  12 Responses »
May 012012
 

Jeez, it’s been something like six weeks since the last MISCELLANY post. I’m swarmed by new music from bands or PR agents who have written NCS or left posts on our FB page, and it has become even more difficult for me to check out everything. I’m doing a piss-poor job of even answering all the messages, for which I make this abject public apology. I wish I could say I will do better in the future, but who am I kidding?

Still, I have to start somewhere in an effort to make headway, so I’m starting here, with music by Pseudogod (Russia),  Bombs of Hades (Sweden), Sectioned (Scotland), and Dwellers of the Twilight (France).

As a reminder, these MISCELLANY posts are devoted to bands whose music I’ve never heard before. I pick the bands pretty randomly, I listen to one or two songs (not knowing what they’re going to sound like), and then I record impressions here and provide streams of the same songs for you to check out. I usually try to pick bands who don’t have a high profile in the world of metal, though today’s second band is fairly well-known (though new to me).

PSEUDOGOD

I discovered this band because I received an urgent e-mail from Tr00Nate (ex-TNOTB) commanding me to listen. Nate doesn’t write that often, so I concluded this must be serious. It became even more serious when I discovered that their new album Deathwomb Catechesis (the album cover is above) has been released in the U.S. by Hells Headbangers, who are recommending it to fans of Archgoat, Katharsis, Teitanblood, and early Belial. That was a pretty good indication that the music would cause nightmares, so of course I bit. Continue reading »

DOES LENGTH MATTER?

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  50 Responses »
Feb 112012
 

No, no, no.  This post isn’t about dicks.

Wait!  Where are you going?  Hang on for a minute and let me explain.  This may be interesting even if it’s not about penises, difficult as that may be to believe.

The subject of this post is one I’ve thought about before and discussed with others outside these pages. Here’s what finally prompted me to throw it open for NCS discussion — this Facebook status by Sweden’s Mordbrand, whose killer 2011 EP Necropsychotic we reviewed here and whose November 2011 split with their fellow Swedes in Bombs of Hades we featured here:

“It looks like MORDBRAND’s discography will mostly consist of EP’s and splits at the moment. We’re excited about all suggestions, proposals and offers we have in front of us. But here’s a question to YOU: If a band produces enough material on small releases – is a full-length then necessary? The way we see it: If we record a handful of songs, we can really focus on them and make them turn great. If we record full-lengths, we’ll have less time working on each track. This calls for an interesting discussion!”

Yes, it does call for discussion. As a fan, what would you rather see from the bands you like — shorter but more frequent releases or full-length albums that are more spaced out, e.g., a new one every couple of years? Do you tend to take a band more seriously, particularly a new band, if they release album-length material instead of EPs? Is it the meat or the motion? Continue reading »