A DOOMED TRIO: INFIRMUM, EVADNE, EIRÐ

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 072022
 

 

(We present a trio of album or EP reviews by DGR, delving into music of the doomed variety.)

One of the more reliable things about heavy metal outside of a yearly re-issue of Death‘s catalogue is that the end of year turnover/beginning of another is where a lot of doom releases like to insert themselves into the fray. It’s not surprising, given that it’s the cold season for sections of the world. With everything being painted as if it were covered in snow anyway, it makes sense that one of metal’s more melancholy genres steals a bit of the limelight.

Also not surprising, then, that the early part of my year was weirdly doom-dominated and not just by the three present in this write up but also with Author & Punishers Kruller hovering just outside the ring as well. I’m not the doom guy at the site – more often comfortable in my realms of death and grind – but that doesn’t mean I’ll make the genre draw the short straw all the time when it comes to focus. I just think there are people here that are way better at covering this style than I am.

You’ll note though that with these three, not all of them are from 2022 proper. Even though we’re making a valiant attempt to keep looking forward we still find ourselves ocassionally dragging ourselves back to the previous year with some of our discoveries. In this case it’s because one album came out on December 24th, 2021, and another is an EP containing three songs, two of which were singles released throughout the previous year. The third comes as a random stumbling while on break at work and may be one of the deeper journeys I’ve made into the ambient funeral-doom worlds that I’ve done in some time, especially since the last two that come to mind for me are Texas’ The Howling Void and Italy’s Void Of Silence. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 162022
 

 

This weekend hasn’t been conducive to my NCS plans. I didn’t have time yesterday morning to post a round-up of new songs and videos, only time enough to share some artwork and news. During Saturday afternoon I plowed through a lot of new tracks and videos that mostly surfaced over the last week, and found a whopping 23 of them that I enjoyed to varying degrees.

Obviously, that’s way too many to post about, even for an OVERFLOWING STREAMS type of round-up. Some sifting was required. But sifting takes time, and for reasons I won’t bore you with it turns out that free time has been in very short supply this weekend. What to do?

Well, what I decided to do was just to say Fuck It and foist all 23 of those songs and videos upon you, with almost no commentary about the music and not even the usual links and artwork, just a small amount of info about the releases that include them. Even with that approach I’m dubious that I’ll get everything ready to go before I have to depart my computer for the rest of the day. So I alphabetized everything by band name and cut the group into two parts.

Part 2 might come tomorrow instead of later today. Sadly, I won’t have time for a SHADES OF BLACK column, though there is some black metal sprinkled through this giant collection, along with music across a big range of other sub-genres. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): THE LURKING FEAR, ENTHRALLMENT, THE HOWLING CHAOS, RAZOREATER, INFIRMUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 212021
 

 

Even by my own standards I went a little crazy from Friday through Sunday. By my count, the posts I made on those days about new music and videos (including the Shades of Black column on Sunday) included recordings by 29 bands — more than any reasonable human (other than myself, because I’m unreasonable) could possibly have paid close attention to. Even having done that, I already have a huge list of other discoveries that I could begin launching today — but decided instead to scale things back to a somewhat more manageable size.

And so, this is a smaller handful of recommendations. Of course, it’s still eleven bands and divided into two Parts — I’m not going to change my spots that quickly! — but it could have been bigger. For example, though I’m beginning with what I consider “a big name”, in the hope that it will lure people into testing other music they might otherwise overlook, I did omit a few other big names — but you can find new songs and videos from Carcass, Pig Destroyer (covering a Perturbator song), Insomnium, and Full of Hell by clicking those links I just left you.

Part 2 will come tomorrow.

THE LURKING FEAR (Sweden)

This band of Swedish stalwarts, whose line-up includes well-known members of At the Gates, have a second album on the horizon, led by the first song and video I’ve chosen today. On the one hand, it’s a hard-charging assault of pummeling, chainsawing Swe-death mayhem. On the other hand, when the band shift gears a bit, it sounds spooky, and then blares like sirens. If you need a quick fix of adrenaline, this is your prescription. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY: TRIBULATION, INFIRMUM, NOCRUL, KAVYK, TAUR-IM-DUINATH, ZVIJER, MAESTUS, MANY SUFFER, KRASSEVILLE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 152020
 

 

One look at the title of this post tells you it’s a mega-sized round-up. Deprived by my fucking day job of the time to do round-ups during the work-week, I’ve been left to do them on Saturdays. But I had to do non-NCS work yesterday too, so here we are, with a Sunday collection of new songs and videos.

Big as it is, this post barely dents my list. But picking the music of these nine bands made sense to me, because I was again lucky to listen to songs which seemed to line up nicely into a playlist that flows rather than jars. For those of you who come here on Sundays for SHADES OF BLACK, fear not because I still plan to write that column too (though it will be short), and you’ll find some black metal below as a head-start.

TRIBULATION (Sweden)

To begin, I’ve chosen a new song and video named “Leviathans” by the Swedish band Tribulation. My appreciation for their music took some time to grow after they began changing their musical course, but witnessing their amazing performance at Iceland’s Ascension Festival in 2019 made me a true believer, and this new song does nothing to shake that. Continue reading »