SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BALEFIRE, BENEATH MOONLIGHT, DREAMING DEATH, FRACTURED INSANITY, KONKHRA, OCELOT OMELET, PLAGUEFEVER, PRIMEVAL MASS, PYRE

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 302024
 

I have to remind myself that less than half of our visitors had a Thanksgiving Day holiday last Thursday. I checked, and only the U.S. and Brazil celebrated the holiday that day. Here in the U.S. it launched a 4-day holiday, because most people who are relieved from working on Thanksgiving get Friday off too, so it’s a time when lots of people check out of their routines.

It’s not an entirely lazy holiday for a lot of people because the Thanksgiving Day tradition usually involves getting together with family and friends and cooking, and the day after is the ridiculous shopping splurge of Black Friday. But for me, the holiday does make me feel lazy.

I didn’t completely check out of all my routines. We still had lots of NCS posts on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, because I’ve never believed in honoring holidays at our site, and for our writers outside the U.S. those were just two more nothing-special days.

But I admit I did succumb to long bouts of laziness and therefore didn’t listen to much new music the last couple of days. I thought seriously about taking today off from NCS, but as you can see, the old compulsion wouldn’t surrender. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 6): NOCTURNUS AD AND KONKHRA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  2 Responses »
Jan 112020
 

 

The two songs I decided to join together in this 6th installment of the list come from bands who made comebacks last year — and not the kind of comebacks that tend to produce yawns or regrets. Both of the albums were excellent, and I’d go so far as to say that the first of those was one of the best comebacks ever recorded. Obviously, both of them were also home to some very addictive songs as well.

NOCTURNUS AD

Nocturnus carved their name in the death metal history books with the groundbreaking 1990 album The Key, after which certain members of the band trademarked the name and then fired the band’s founder Mike Browning (who also co-founded Morbid Angel). He carried on with other members of Nocturnus under the name After Death, releasing a handful of demos between 2002 and 2009, and a split with Unaussprechlichen Kulten in 2012. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KONKHRA, GATECREEPER, THE HOLEUM, TYRANT GOATGALDRAKONA, ATAVISTIK DEATH POSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 042019
 

 

Sometimes there’s a through-line or organizing principle of some kind in the selections I make for these round-ups. Sometimes it’s just what the category tag says, the one I chose almost 10 years ago for posts like this one — Random Fucking Music — just a random scattering of things I’ve happened upon and enjoy.  Today, I do think there’s a through-line: Almost all of the following tracks are neck-wreckers, though I’ve put one track in the middle of the run that’s less brutishly head-moving and more progressively dynamic (though I think you’ll want to move your head to that one as well).

KONKHRA

Formed in 1989, the Danish death metal band Konkhra had quite a run, releasing six studio albums, a live album, and a handful of other shorter releases from 1990 through 2009 — and then the machine ground to a halt. However, now ten years later, Konkhra have revived, and if Metal-Archives is to be believed, the current line-up dates back to the recordings of the early and mid-90s. Continue reading »