THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 112022
 

(Andy Synn catches up with a few gems from last month which you may have overlooked)

September is always a busy time for new releases, and this year was no different.

Sure, they weren’t all good (in fact, I can tell you now, there was at least one major name that is definitely going to end up on my “Disappointing” list, and probably piss quite a few people off in the process) but there were a lot of high quality albums released last month and, even though we tried our best, we barely scratched the surface of what September had to offer this year.

So while I’ve attempted to cover a number of different bases with the four artists/albums I’ve chosen to write about today, I also urge you all to check out some of the records which we weren’t able to find space/time for, including new stuff from Acausal Intrusion, Dead Void, Kathaaria, Maunra, Mo’ynoq, Otus, Wayward Dawn, and Writhing (and many, many more that I’ve probably forgotten about).

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEGEMONE — “INFERENCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 182022
 

When we had the opportunity to premiere We Disappear, the second album by Poland’s Hegemone (released in 2018), we introduced it this way:

“If you’re looking for titanically heavy music, the kind that will loosen your teeth and vibrate your spinal fluid, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for music that glimmers and shimmers like the northern lights, you’ve also come to the right place. If you want the sounds of tension and pain, lead-weighted gloom and feverish desperation, mechanized warfare and sunrise grandeur, you’ll find that here as well — plus a steady dose of what makes people compulsively bob their heads…. The music surges and subsides, seems to crack the earth and heat the blood to a feverish boil, and spirits the listener away to heights of of perilous and panoramic wonder.”

We Disappear made our veteran writer Andy Synn‘s list of 2018’s “Great Albums”, and one of the tracks also appeared on our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. No wonder, then, that we got very excited to learn that Hegemone would be releasing another album this year. The name of the new one is Voyance, and it’s coming our way on September 15th via Brucia Records.

Thankfully, we again get a chance to help introduce Hegemone‘s music, through today’s premiere of a stunning new song named “Inference“. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): SARGEIST, DEITUS, HEGEMONE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  5 Responses »
Jan 292019
 

 

Unlike some people I know, I have zero problem with current bands slavishly devoting themselves to the sounds of black metal from the early-mid ’90s, as long as they’ve got the talent to express their devotion in credibly cold and grippingly hostile fashion.

But it so happens that the black metal songs I’ve added to the list today (which are among my favorites of the last year) aren’t of the slavishly old-school variety, yet no one would accuse any of the bands of being new-school posers either, with merely a trim-picked riff or two as the basis for claims of “blackened” sound. The albums in which these tracks appeared were also uniformly excellent.

SARGEIST

Unbound was the creation of an (almost) entirely new incarnation of Sargeist, with only mainman Shatraug remaining from the line-up which gave us such gems as Disciples of the Heinous Path and Let The Devil In, but it too turned out to be brilliant. Given that the new line-up included a guitarist from Nightbringer, a bassist who dwells within the Saturnian Mist, and two members who provide bass and vocals for Desolate Shrine, all of whom (along with Shatraug) stand out in the sharpened production of this record, that should have come as no surprise. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HEGEMONE — “WE DISAPPEAR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
May 112018
 

 

If you’re looking for titanically heavy music, the kind that will loosen your teeth and vibrate your spinal fluid, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for music that glimmers and shimmers like the northern lights, you’ve also come to the right place. If you want the sounds of tension and pain, lead-weighted gloom and feverish desperation, mechanized warfare and sunrise grandeur, you’ll find that here as well — plus a steady dose of what makes people compulsively bob their heads.

Even if all you know about Hegemone’s new album, We Disappear, is what you just read, you can already tell that they’re devoted to creating contrasts on multiple levels, sometimes by separating and juxtaposing the differences, and often by layering them together. The music surges and subsides, seems to crack the earth and heat the blood to a feverish boil, and spirits the listener away to heights of of perilous and panoramic wonder. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEGEMONE — “Π”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 282018
 

 

There’s such a potent rhythmic drive to this song, like a big powerful engine with pistons hammering, and all that robust torque propelling a heavy machine forward in a way that elevates the pulse rate. We’re the passengers, carried along but also wanting to move our heads like pistons too, locked in to the movements of this gear-shifting juggernaut as it eats up the pavement.

As you’ll discover, that’s only one aspect of the song we’re helping to premiere today, but it’s an aspect with a primal, charismatic attraction. It’s a testament to the imagination of the Polish band Hegemone that what they’ve built around such a muscular musical drivetrain is equally seductive.

The song is “Π“, and it comes from the band’s new album We Disaappear, which will be released on May 11th by Debemur Morti Productions. Continue reading »