SEEN AND HEARD: MALOKARPATAN, KALA, HIEMS, FILTH IS ETERNAL, SHADOWSPAWN, OBSCURA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 182023
 

It’s been a very long time since I was able to compile roundups of new music three days in a row, but lo and behold I have done so, mainly due to the absence of any premieres on our calendar for today. Barring some unforeseeable calamity I’ll add a fourth one in a row tomorrow in the usual Saturday Seen and Heard spot.

MALOKARPATAN (Slovakia)

To spice up the musical fall, and just in time for Samhain, Malokarpatan will release a new album named Vertumnus Caesar through Invictus Productions (EU) and The Ajna Offensive (NorthAm) on October 27.

We never really know what devils will come out to play when this band records something new, and that’s probably not entirely clear from listening to the first single from the album, which just surfaced. But that’s all we have so far, so what does it show us? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALKALOID, FILTH IS ETERNAL, OMNIVORTEX, TÁLTOS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 232023
 

Once again I’m beginning what I hope will be a three-stage march backward through some of the better metal I came across over the past week, most of it brand new and some of it only newly discovered. Stage One is today, with the next two stages planned for the weekend. (None of the stages will include the bludgeoning and blistering new Cannibal Corpse song, but only because you probably already know about that one).

ALKALOID (Germany)

The last time I included Alkaloid in one of these round-ups we had news and cover art to share, but no music from their forthcoming third album Numen. Now we do. You might assume from the song’s title — “Clusterfuck” — that Alkaloid are going to throw your head into an instrumental blender set to liquefy, but if so you might be surprised.

I read this in a press release before listening to the song: “‘Clusterfuck‘ might have a clean and catchy chorus, but even the fiery, finger-tapped solo that squiggles loose around the four-minute mark is crushed like an ant between colliding moons”.

I also read the following comment from the band (now a quartet consisting of Morean (vocals, guitars, concepts), Hannes Grossmann (drums), Christian Münzner (guitars), and Linus Klausenitzer (bass)), which reveals that the song’s title has perhaps more to do with its subject matter than its sounds: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: 1914, EREB ALTOR, COLONY DROP, FILTH IS ETERNAL, WINGLESS

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Sep 242021
 

 

Man, my head is spinning once again over how many new songs and videos I want to recommend from the week that’s now ending. There are only six of them in this roundup, and there’s not much rhyme nor reason about why I picked these — other than the fact that I like ’em — because they provide a pretty wild series of musical twists and turns rather than some kind of cohesive flow from one to the next. But I am smiling at the whiplash it’s going to give you. I guess I should add that in different ways they’re all pretty fuckin’ intense.

I’ve got a very busy weekend ahead, but I hope to collect a few more new things from the past week’s deluge in posts on both Saturday and Sunday.

1914 (Ukraine)

I’m beginning with a couple of very dark and (as promised) very intense songs, the first of which is 1914‘s “Pillars of Fire (The Battle of Messines)“. If you’re not already familiar with the horrific World War I event that’s the subject of the song, you’ll learn about it in the prelude to the animated video. Continue reading »

FILTH IS ETERNAL: “LOVE IS A LIE, FILTH IS ETERNAL”

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Aug 252021
 

 

(Our old friend Justin C returns to NCS with the following review of the new album by the re-named Seattle band Filth Is Eternal, which will be released on August 27th by Quiet Panic.)

We’ve all been there. Grandma wants to hear some of the rock ‘n roll music the crazy kids are making these days, and Fucked and Bound is an obvious choice. Grandma needs a shot of adrenaline, not some droning doom, after all! But will the name be too off-putting? Especially after church?

Well, the band has made your life a little easier now with a new name, Filth Is Eternal. No, they haven’t changed the name in a craven attempt at Top 40 success, or probably even for Grandma. It just turns out that getting the word out about all your hard work during a pandemic, with no live shows plus social media platforms flagging you left and right for potentially being naughty content, your choice might come down to a name change or complete obscurity, as the band explained to Decibel last month. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HOODED MENACE, PANZERFAUST, LYKHAEON, FILTH IS ETERNAL, NEFARIYM, PAIN

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May 202021
 

 

I managed to grab a few hours of listening time yesterday before they evanesced. I barely scratched the surface of my gargantuan list of things to check out, but it didn’t take long before I found the songs and videos I’ve compiled here, which collectively made a gripping impact. I book-ended the collection with some bigger names and stuffed the interior with some names that need to be bigger.

HOODED MENACE (Finland)

Hooded Menace have a new album named The Tritonus Bell headed for release in August. Guitarist Lasse Pyykkö commented that the first advance track, “Blood Ornaments“, “comes with some of our most intriguing ingredients yet”. He continued: “There’s a contrast between death/doom misery and head-bangable heavy metal riffs like never heard before in Hooded Menace‘s music, making ‘Blood Ornaments‘ my favourite track from the album”. Continue reading »