I know it has been a pretty hefty amount of time since I last touched bases here at NCS. I’ve found that the queue of reviews continues to build up and I fell victim to it, allowing the tremendous amount of stuff that I wanted to talk about to become absolutely paralyzing, to the point where I just couldn’t cohere thoughts anymore. In this case, it was because a handful of releases were clogging up the works — discs that I had been enjoying for the better part of half a year now but for some reason or another we just never got around to talking about.

So, this collection of smaller reviews is an experiment, an opportunity to try writing something briefer and more concise. Much as I love to dissect an album and romp around in its innards until I’m a gore-soaked mess from time to time, I also feel like this is a collection of discs that I need to get out there, especially as we draw closer and closer to the year-end collections, when there’s a good chance that some of these discs will be popping up on there. At the very least, I want to get these bands out there for people to listen to, as some of these are flying under the radar and absolutely shouldn’t. Continue reading »