Nov 082021
 

(Andy Synn was fortunate enough to attend this year’s edition of Damnation Festival and now reports back with his experiences of all the bands he saw over the course of the day, along with video evidence)

Well, here it is, the very last Damnation Festival at Leeds University, as the event has become so popular now (as evinced by how quickly so many stages reach capacity these days) that the organisers are moving it (back) to Manchester where they’ve found a bigger and (hopefully) better venue for future editions of the fest.

And while this gives 2021 a real “end of an era” feel, it’s obvious that the Damnation team really wanted to see out their time in Leeds with a major bang, delivering – despite some well-documented, and sadly unavoidable, pandemic-based issues – one of the most stacked line-ups they’ve ever had.

Now, one thing I really tried to do this time around was to see (and document) as many sets by bands I hadn’t seen before, and while, in practice, this didn’t always work out – sometimes due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, sometimes just because I really wanted to see certain bands in particular – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by who I actually did manage to catch over the course of the day.

So, without further ado…

Continue reading »

Nov 232020
 


Moonspell

 

(For the second (or is it the third?) time, our editor (that would be me) screwed up and didn’t get Gonzo’s Friday music round-up posted before having to turn to non-NCS work, but we’ll just pretend again that Monday is the new Friday. Hope you have a good weekend on Tuesday.)

Doing what you love for a living can often be the ultimate study in double-edged swords, in the sense that getting paid to do it all day makes doing it for fun… somewhat less fun.

In this case, I’m talking about writing. The past month has seen me doing a lot of it, and unfortunately, the bulk of that has gone towards my new day job instead of describing the dark and devastating tones found here at NCS.

Today is Friday, though, and my chronic addiction to loud music is overtaking any professional obligations. For now.

Join me as I blast out some words about some new shit you can crank up and bang your head to. Continue reading »

Jan 072013
 

(Any band who names their debut EP after a 1967 Hugo-Award-winning short story by Harlan Ellison is alright in my book. But apart from having good literary taste, their music stacks up pretty damned well, too.  Here’s TheMadIsraeli’s review . . . and we also have a special treat: With the band’s permission, a free download of the music.)

We’re gonna take a bit of a break from year-end round-ups to go over a late 2012 EP I stumbled upon that I think is worth checking out.  GROT are, at their core, an Irish deathgrind outfit with a good bit of old fashioned Dying Fetus groove thrown in, but the membership actually reveals a more international collective:  GROT is composed of the mighty Kevin Talley on drums, John Roche of Gama Bomb on guitars and bass, and Eoin Broughal from Cold War and Warpath on vocals.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a no-bullshit collection of very mid-90’s deathy grime and venom.  The EP, at least as we have it, consists of five original songs and two covers (Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” and Misery Index’s “Pulling out the Nails”, though the Misery Index cover doesn’t come on the physical copies) that provide an immensely satisfying morsel of brutality and energy.  This band also has a shitton of meat, in the sense that their riffs, their grooves, their sections of chaotically fast double-bass saturation and grinds all have a massiveness to them that feels like a tonnage of toxic waste spill being shoved down your throat. Continue reading »