Sep 042021
 

 

Can’t you read plain English? It says “Labor Day”. It doesn’t say “Holi-Day”. So I’m just following the prescribed agenda, and laboring.

Because I unexpectedly agreed to write a whopping four premieres yesterday, I had no time to begin rounding up a selection of songs and videos that surfaced this past week. Leaving that until today has resulted in another massive collection, again featuring too many bands to name in the post title.

As it happens, the majority of the new music you’ll find below is accompanied by videos. It also happens that almost all of the new songs are high-speed devastators. This isn’t entirely by accident, because many of them were recommended in our NCS group by DGR, who tends to prefer musical riots over other forms of audio entertainment. And once I’d gotten into that kind of groove, I tended to stick with it in choosing from among other possibilities I checked out.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

We’ll start with a new lyric video for a frantic new song by Archspire, in which vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron goes faster than a cattle auctioneer and the rest of the band spits a variety of bullets even faster — but then abruptly the song gets dreamy. Continue reading »

Jul 172021
 

 

This may be the only NCS post of the weekend, and even this one is hurried. I have a work meeting this morning. There’s also a celebration planned for tonight that I have to prepare for. What the hell kind of party requires hours of preparation? One that involves speech-making. But it’s still a party, and has all the earmarks of one that’s going to keep me up past midnight, which means a very late awakening on Sunday and some unpredictable degree of mental incapacitation, which is why there may not be a SHADES OF BLACK column tomorrow.

As for today’s metal roundup: I posted a big one yesterday exclusively devoted to new songs with videos, but big as it was it still didn’t exhaust all the good new tracks that surfaced over the last week. And of course it didn’t include the usual Friday flood of new song reveals. A few of my NCS comrades made sure I didn’t overlook what that Friday flood flung up on the beach, and I’ve included a few of their suggestions as well as a few of my own picks that I left out of that video-only roundup yesterday. Coincidentally all the songs included here also came with videos, hence the title of this post.

What’s missing today, for the most part, is my own commentary. I’ll give you a minute to dab the tears from your eyes… and then on we go…. Continue reading »

Jul 302012
 

Here are a few items of interest I came across this morning that I thought were worth spreading around.

ITEM ONE: WINTERFYLLETH

Winterfylleth are a UK black-metal band whose name should be familiar to long-time NCS readers, since I’m high as a kite about this band, having fallen head-over-heels for their second album, The Mercian Sphere (2010). In May, I reported that Candlelight Records was re-issuing the band’s debut full-length, The Ghost of Heritage, after a remastering by Colin Marston. What I didn’t realize then but have discovered this morning is how close the band were to completing their third album.

Now I know that Candlelight is prepared to release a new Winterfylleth album — The Threnody of Triumph — in September. I also saw that the September issue of Zero Tolerance magazine will include a feature on the band AND a track from the new album — “Void of Light” — on a bonus CD. I’m hoping that song will surface on the web soon. I’m eager to hear the new album. You should be, too. Find Winterfyleth on Facebook here.

ITEM TWO: ILSA

I saw today the album art for the forthcoming album by D.C.-based crust/doom occultists Ilsa. It’s a real eye-catcher: Continue reading »