OBSCURITIES – VOLUME VIII: SUMMER BLUES & BLACK METAL

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 132024
 

(Below you’ll find Daniel Barkasi‘s reviews of 8 albums released in July that he enthusiastically recommends to you.)

As summer continues its dreadful humidity-laden romp, I’m reminded of a bit from Robin Williams’ (RIP legend) Live on Broadway standup special where he talked about climate change. More specifically, “It’s beyond Global Warming at this point – it is cooking!” Just over 22 years ago, and he got it like only Robin could. Seriously, watch that entire special if you want to writhe in pain from laughter. Some of the references may be dated to some younger than dirt, but man it’s a good time from one of the funniest people to ever live.

Going from my “If I go outside, I’ll be peeling sweat-ridden clothes off like a layer of Saran Wrap” Florida life, a subject that’s been bugging the crap out of me is generative AI. More specifically, it’s application of generating album artwork – and we use the term artwork in this case very loosely. It’s not artwork at all, but a prompt-drive monstrosity that almost always looks like cheap junk. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE TROOPS OF DOOM, SOL DE SANGRE, WEREWOLVES, COLDCELL, NIHILO, LACABRA, KYBALION, BALWEZO WESTIJIZ, KŌYA, WHARFLURCH, AMORPHIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 182024
 


Troops of Doom – photo by Cissa Flores

I wasn’t able to serve up a Saturday roundup last weekend due to working on Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, and it’s highly unlikely I’ll get one done next Saturday since I’ll be at Maryland Deathfest (if you’re there and spot someone who looks like a heavily tatted escapee from a nursing home, come say hi). So that makes this one kind of important, if only for me.

There’s gobs of new music to choose from, many more gobs than usual since I missed a week. And by the way, I’m using “gob” here as a word meaning “a large amount” and not its other meaning, i.e., “a lump or clot of a slimy or viscous substance”, though I have included a song off an album named Shittier/Slimier.

Ready, set, go! Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 133): COLDCELL

 THE SYNN REPORT  1 Response »
Apr 302021
 

(The April 2021 edition of THE SYNN REPORT is all about the soul-destroying discography of Swiss/German Black Metal collective ColdCell)

Recommended for fans of: Schammasch, Panzerfaust, Blaze of Perdition

Let me be honest with you, if I ever actually stopped to think about what it takes to actually put together each new edition of The Synn Report (which is now on its 133rd edition, and shows no signs of stopping any time too) I’d probably have long since collapsed into a gibbering wreck.

After all, we’re talking about a full, in-depth (or, at least, relatively in-depth) round up of a different band’s entire discography every month, complete with embedded album streams and helpful references/recommendations/comparisons, all of which I usually leave right up until the last minute because I’m an idiot who is incapable of learning from his mistakes or planning ahead.

But fate, thankfully, can be both a kind as well as cruel mistress, and sometimes things just line up in a way that takes the pressure of deciding what band I’m going to write about off me.

Case in point, when Swiss quintet ColdCell released their fourth, and arguably finest, album last week it immediately became apparent that I simply had to write about them for this month’s edition of The Synn Report, as their particular brand of bleak ‘n’ baleful Black Metal – hauntingly atmospheric without being “Atmospheric”, harrowingly emotional without falling over the line into DSBM territory – has long struck a chord with me, and so now seemed like the perfect opportunity to give them their due.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PALUS SOMNI, RITUALS OF THE DEAD HAND, CONSTANT NAUSEA, COLDCELL, HEGEROTH, MORK, VIPÈRE

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Feb 212021
 

 

In exploring what I might choose for today’s column I wound up going down a weird rabbit hole. By chance, the first few tracks I picked put me in a chilling frame of mind, and in sorting through others I decided to just stay there, immersed in a mood of cold, frightening eeriness. However, I did decide to pick a couple of more carnal (for want of a better word) selections to finish off this compilation, to shake off those other moods like a wet dog shedding water.

There’s obviously a lot of music here, but maybe not as much as you might guess because until the very end these are all advance tracks rather than full releases. So don’t be daunted… dive all the way in….

PALUS SOMNI (UK/US)

I’m beginning with “Unholy Cosmic Quintessence“, the first advance song from the debut album of Palus Somni, a trio that combines (to quote the label) “the twisted dissonant riffs of Stroda (known for this work on U.K. based Industrial / Black Metal act Decoherence), the thundering vicious percussions of Eoghan (known for his work on U.S. Black Metal bands Akhlys and Aoratos) and the distant cold icy screams of Imber (from U.S. based record label Noxial)”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COLDCELL — “TAINTED THOUGHTS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 162017
 

 

“ColdCell is the musical manifest of the modern individual’s prison: The modern new world, the globalized, digital society, a virtual designed image. Humanity as a sick species without consciousness, arbitrarily exchanging its gods, its ethics, its principles, isolated within the anonymous masses. The only benchmark is mammon, the individual is lost within stimulus satiation and shallow-brained social networks.”

The bleakness of this Swiss band’s worldview is manifested again in the name they chose for themselves, reflecting both the idea of “a constructed, bred human cell, produced and used for industrial purposes: human being as a single wheel within the system”, and as “a metaphor for the isolation arrest of the individual, lost within the masses, needing no connections”.

And it is further reflected in the music, as you shall see. What we have for you now is a track called “Tainted Thoughts” from ColdCell’s new album, Those, which will be released on November 3 by Czar of Crickets. Continue reading »