Feb 152025
 


Dormant Ordeal – Photo Credit: Piotr Dzik

(written by Islander)

Another week has gone by and I’ve had another session with the roulette wheel of new releases, watching the bouncing ball land in one pocket after another as I mentally spun. It’s a fair analogy, since there are 37 or 38 pockets on a wheel and that’s in the ballpark of new releases from the past week I thought might be worth checking out. Also fair, because of the general randomness of my choices of what to listen to.

But the process is also a little like casino craps, getting an instinct about a shooter and betting on particular outcomes. And so I mentally bet on some of the bands from last week I thought were likely to be winners – and some were and some weren’t.

To be clear, I’ve never played roulette or craps in my life, only watched without much understanding. I’m not much of a gambler with my own money; I care much more about losing than the chance of winning; I prefer to keep what I have; there are other ways of being entertained when the odds aren’t always stacked against you — like listening to the following songs: Continue reading »

Nov 202012
 

For most of yesterday and last night, the NCS headquarters was running on generator power and brutally cut off from the internet due to a DSL failure produced by one of our lovely Puget Sound winter storms. At some point while yours truly was sleeping the sleep of the just, the internet connection came back on, and I spent a few hours this morning catching up on what I missed in the world of metal.

Turns out I missed a lot. This is the second of three posts in which I’m collecting the best of what I missed while the NCS HQ was cast into outer darkness yesterday. I’m running through the music in alphabetical order. Featured in this Part 2 are Bossk, Chaos Inception, and Decades of Despair.

BOSSK

Bossk are a band from Kent in the UK whose name rings bells, but whose music was an undiscovered country to me until this morning. It appears that after releasing a couple of EPs, a DVD, and a split, the band called it quits in 2008 or 2009. However, Bossk revived earlier this year and have recorded a new single named “Pick Up Artist” that debuted in September and is still available for free download here.

I found out about the song earlier today and liked it immediately. It begins with pounding drums and sludgy chords and breaks into an up-tempo, post-metal bone-breaker with caustic vocals, lots of low-end punch, and swirling guitar leads. Past the half-way point, the hammering power abruptly stops and the song turns into an almost dreamlike flow of chiming notes and hypnotic rhythms. Damn cool music. Continue reading »