SEEN AND HEARD: THE GREAT OLD ONES, OBSCURA, YOVEL, CONCRETE AGE, SPERE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 212024
 


The Great Old Ones – Photo by Daphnea Doto/Solweig Wood

(written by Islander)

This week I’ve done a better than average job staying abreast of new songs and videos that have surfaced since last weekend which I thought would be worth checking out. The result is that my list of things to investigate is now 40 links longer than it was on Monday morning! Anyone who thinks the rollout of heavy new music slows down near the end of the year must have just awakened from a very long slumber.

Fortunately, I had some time this morning (which I usually don’t have on the weekdays) to make a small dent in that list and pull a few things together to get a head-start on my usual Saturday and Sunday roundups at our site. I confess that today I erred on the side of bands who I think of as “proven commodities,” just to make the winnowing process a bit easier — though I did decide to include one I’d never heard before. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLOODBATH, OPETH, BARÚS, WARBRINGER, DÖDSRIT, CONCRETE AGE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 172018
 


photo by Steve Brown

 

Despite the fact that we had a two-part round-up of new music yesterday, metal stops for no one, and so there’s a bunch more stuff, most of which surfaced over the last 24 hours, that has prompted yet another round-up today. And of course, what you’ll find below isn’t nearly everything I’d like to foist upon you, but it will have to do for now.

P.S. I’m in a hurry, and so I’m afraid I’ll have to dispense with my usual impressions of the music I’ve included here. Even more unusually, the first item in this collection includes no music at all, but it seemed sufficiently newsworthy that I’m including it anyway.

BLOODBATH

Today’s torrent of e-mails in the NCS in-box included an announcement by Peaceville Records that a new Bloodbath album has been set for release on October 26th, the name of which is:  The Arrow Of Satan Is Drawn. Which is a very promising title, as are these excerpts from the press release: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CONCRETE AGE — “THE TOTEM OF THE GREAT SNAKE, PART 1”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 192017
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Concrete Age, along with our premiere of a full album stream.)

 

Technical thrash-style riffing? Check. Melodic death metal styled melodic approaches and emotive song-writing? Check. Eastern ethnic cultural instruments and influences? Check. Raw thrash/hardcore styled vocals that have a complete disregard for technique and are all passion? Check. Concrete Age encapsulate a lot of things I love in extreme metal.

If this were a different time, these guys would definitely be classified under the so-called “Neo-thrash” tag alongside Hatesphere or Carnal Forge or even Darkane. Their music is more technical melodic death metal, I guess, with a great deal of Eastern ethnic instrumental moments and melodic tendencies.

The Totem Of The Great Snake, Part 1 is an immensely powerful album and is also the best melodic death metal album of the year that I’ve heard by FAR so far. Big deal, considering the style’s been in a real slump the last couple of years. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: AMENRA, MONARCH, CANVAS BLACK, DE PROFUNDIS, FJORDS, CONCRETE AGE, RAW IN SECT, TEETHGRINDER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 092017
 


Amenra photo by Stephan Vanfleteren

 

As I mentioned in yesterday’s Overflowing Streams round-up, my plan was to pull together another compilation of recent recommended music under the SEEN AND HEARD header. By the time I finished, I realized that almost everything I had picked came in the form of a video, and the one exception was close enough that I decided to change the heading for this post.

I arranged these videos to achieve a kind of flow, or an arc — not seamless, to be sure, but in a way that made sense to me. Things begin in very dark fashion with the first three videos, then we have some death metal necrophilia as a transition (necrophilia is always a good transition, right?), and then a trio of high-energy tracks that have ethnic musical elements mixed in with otherwise diverse sounds, and then we go out in an explosive bonfire. And with that, let’s begin…

(P.S. My usual Sunday SHADES OF BLACK feature will be posted on Monday.)

AMENRA

The Belgian band Amenra are returning with a new mass, five years after the last one. Mass VI will be released on October 20 by Neurot Recordings, a date that seems very far away, but at least it’s on the calendar now. The video below isn’t a full song (sadly), but it’s a very effective teaser for the new album nonetheless. Continue reading »