SHADES OF BLACK: ALIOTH BOREALIS, ACHERAD, THUNRAZ, DØDSFERD

 Album Reviews, Forthcoming Albums, LISTMANIA 2015, LISTMANIA 2016, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 242024
 

(written by Islander)

I haven’t kept a running count, but I think a substantial majority of the music I’ve written about in these Sunday columns has consisted of singles, usually advance tracks from forthcoming albums. A couple of reasons for that:

First, I can put our spotlight on a lot more bands and records that way. In the time it would take me to listen to and scribble thoughts about one album, I can do that for pieces of six or seven albums.

Second, I don’t think I’m great at writing album reviews. I find it difficult to provide some kind of succinct discussion because I always feel like I’m leaving out important aspects of the music, and so I often get bogged down in the details. Even when an album is already out I feel that way, even though it might be a silly feeling since everyone can listen and discover the details for themselves.

All of that makes today’s collection a rarity, because today I’ve chosen to write about three albums that have already been released, and one new song (and video) that’s a bonus track for the vinyl edition of another album that’s already out. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DØDSFERD, DARKEND, LIMINAL SHROUD

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  9 Responses »
May 052024
 

I don’t have as many different things to share with you in this week’s edition of SHADES OF BLACK as I usually do, mainly because I’ve devoted most of my time to expressing detailed thoughts about a forthcoming record which I’ve found to be one of the most gripping black metal albums I’ve encountered so far this year.

After that, I’ve included a couple of recent singles that I also hope you’ll enjoy, both of which are fore-runners to eagerly anticipated albums that I haven’t yet heard in full.

DØDSFERD (Greece)

We’ll begin with the first two songs you can now hear from Wrath, the forthcoming 12th album by Dødsferd. The album’s title shares the name of the band’s founder and also describes the emotional energy that fuels much of the music. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLUT AUS NORD, HORRENDOUS, BLAST SHIELD, THUNRAZ, DØDSFERD

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 132023
 

In part, this roundup of new songs and videos (plus a recent EP and two complete new albums) is an effort to make up in part for the absence of Shades of Black two days ago, when an unexpected intervention by my fucking day job de-railed my plans. So, there’s blackened metal here, but not exclusively so. I do think that despite the considerable stylistic variation within the collection, it’s all mind-bending in different ways.

BLUT AUS NORD (France)

The last time I mentioned the news of Blut Aus Nord‘s new album Disharmonium – Nahab I had artwork to share, but no music. Now I have music, but wouldn’t have had it for a Shades of Black column two days ago because the song was just released over the last 24 hours. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): DØDSFERD, TUMBA DE CARNE, WALDGEFLÜSTER

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Aug 092021
 

 

As you can see, this is Part 2 of the weekly column I began yesterday. Because I’m hurrying to finish it before turning to the usual Monday flurry of activity at our site, I’ll dispense with any further introduction and get right to the music.

DØDSFERD (Greece)

On August 10th this Greek black metal band will commemorate its 20th anniversary of existence by releasing a new album named Suicide and the Rest of Your Kind Will Follow Part II, which arrives a dozen years after Part I. It consists of two long songs, the first of which premiered yesterday at Metal Addicts through a video made by Nikolaos Stavridakis (VisionBlack), which builds upon artwork created by Georgios Gyzis (aka Bacchus of the black metal band Grab). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DØDSFERD — “LOYAL TO THE BLACK OATH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 212021
 

 

August 10 of this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the Greek black metal band Dødsferd, which was first formed in Athens by Wrath (Nikolaos Spanakis) as a one-man band, with the assistance of session musicians, and has been based in Crete since 2018.

Dødsferd’s discography is extensive, and now includes two demos, ten full-length albums, nine split albums/EPs, four EPs, one live album, three compilation albums, and two boxed-set albums. The most recent full-length was 2018’s Diseased Remnants of a Dying World, and the most recent EP is Skotos, which was released earlier this month by Transcending Obscurity Records on CD, in an edition that combined Skotos with Diseased Remnants of a Dying World. (The artwork for both the album and the EP was created by Giorgos Gyzis, aka Bacchus from Grab.)

In commemoration of the impending 20th anniversary, Wrath’s label, Fucking Your Creation Records, will also be releasing the combination of Skotos and Diseased Remnants… in a limited box cassette tape that features layout and graphic design by by Nikos Stavridakis (VisionBlack), and to help spread the word about it, we’re premiering a striking video for the equally striking song “Loyal To the Black Oath“, which first appeared on Diseased Remnants…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DØDSFERD, AUBE GRISE, ARKHERON THODOL, OVTRENOIR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 192020
 

 

When I woke up this morning I thought there was no way I would be doing something as seemingly inconsequential as listening to music and writing about it. The awful confluence of events in the country this year — the rampant disease, the hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, the economic collapse, the vivid reminders that systemic racism still thrives, the burning of immense swaths of Western forest and the immersion of millions in a miasma of toxic smoke — just got worse again because of a single death, one that will give a mentally defective tyrant and his sycophantic enablers the chance to finish the job of tearing the country apart. Can we not get even one tiny fucking break from 2020?

And then I thought, we do get tiny fucking breaks every day. Every good new song is a break, maybe tiny in the grander scheme of things, but if 2020 has taught us anything it’s that hopes for bigger breaks are likely to be dashed without mercy.

So, I listened to some new songs, just a few, but enough to get a bit of a break. Maybe I picked them because they express (and perhaps reinforce) my current dark mood of rage mixed with despair, but I guess that’s often what musical catharsis is all about. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DØDSFERD — “DISEASED REMNANTS OF A DYING WORLD”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 222018
 

 

Our world is dying. With each sunset the planet draws closer to its inescapable extinction. It will of course survive our own lives, but what we collectively do may hasten its demise as a hospitable home for our kind and our co-inhabitants long before it becomes a barren cinder. Humankind so often seems determined to make a misery out of the wonders around us, and a ruin of our own best creations.

In seeming contemplation, and condemnation, of a bleak future, the new album of the Greek black metal band Dødsferd is named Diseased Remnants of A Dying World. The album’s title track is the record’s centerpiece in more ways than one. Set dead center in the running order, it’s also the album’s longest track and perhaps its most ambitious as well. In the ebb and flow of its powerful, mood-changing sounds it could be experienced as a far-sighted panorama painted in tones, a foretelling of human blindness, lost glories, and the pain of avoidable but uncorrected failures.

It’s our pleasure to present this immersive, emotionally gripping title song today in advance of the album’s release by Transcending Obscurity Records on December 14th. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 5)

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Dec 112015
 

radar5

 

(Here’s Part 5 of our Norwegian friend Gorger’s entertaining multi-part feature on bands we seem to have overlooked at NCS. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here; Part 4 is here.  And be sure to check out Gorger’s Metal.)

Intro shmintro. Now, with those formalities out of the way, lets get to it.

KHORS – THE FLAME OF ETERNITY’S DECLINE (Re-Release)

Ukrainian Khors celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their début, and mark this occasion by releasing the album in remastered edition with new cover art. My two previous meetings with the band, their fourth and fifth albums Return to Abandoned (2010) and Wisdom of Centuries (2012), left me with a decent impression, but not much more. I haven’t forgotten the albums though. At least that’s a good sign.

Something seems to have been lost along the way, for my impressions of The Flame Of Eternity’s Decline are a good deal better. The music here eagerly grabs me and drags me along from the very beginning. Continue reading »

MONDAY MEANDERING: SATURNIAN MIST, BRYMIR, DODSFERD, HERETOIR, SQUAREPUSHER x Z-MACHINES

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 172014
 


Saturnian Mist (photo by K. Lehto)

Happy fucking Monday. Here’s a random assortment of music I discovered over the last 24 hours. The key word here is “random”, but all of this suits me quite well. Mayhap it will suit you, too.

SATURNIAN MIST

Saturnian Mist are from Tampere, Finland. Because they are from Finland, I figured the odds were high they would be worth hearing. Candlelight Records thinks so, because they just signed them and will be releasing the band’s second album, Chaos Magick, later this year. When I saw that news this morning, I went in search of recent music and found a demo version of one of the songs that will appear on the album — “The Heart of Shiva”.

It’s thumping and grinding, bone-scraping and body-moving, ugly but hooky. I’m now thoroughly infected by that jumping repeating riff, my head bouncing like a bobble-head. Digging the unexpected drum fills, too, which sound almost like congas. Listen: Continue reading »