OVERFLOWING STREAMS ON A SATURDAY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 072024
 

From midnight on Thursday to midnight on Friday we received 221 e-mails about recent and forthcoming heavy metal releases. That’s not counting the e-mails that were just trying to sell us clothing or physical editions of records that have been out for a while, or to announce tours and shows, or to promote music that’s utterly foreign to anything we cover here (no idea how we get on some of these distribution lists).

That’s what Bandcamp Fridays do to our in-box, and the same thing happens on social media. It’s no longer surprising. Bands and labels know that lots of metalheads wait for these days when more of the money they spend will go to bands and labels. But it sure as hell makes me feel like I’m drowning when I look for things to include in Saturday roundups following Bandcamp Fridays.

And that’s not counting all the new songs and videos that were already on my plate before Friday arrived. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, OCTOBER 2021

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 012021
 


Light of the Morning Star

 

(October has ended, Halloween has concluded, and so it’s time for Gonzo to spotlight four of his favorite releases from the month.)

We’re officially at that point in the year when I’m taking stock of my favorite music that’s been released, subtly preparing to create a monster best-of list by the time December rolls around.

The trouble with this is good heavy music is still being released with impunity, which complicates everything in ways that I welcome. October hasn’t made this any easier. My fellow NCS scribes have uncovered some seriously bowel-shaking heaviness in recent months, and I am more fulfilled for having paid attention.

And that brings us to right now. Because I’m about to get on a plane to Iceland in a few hours, this intro (and column) may be a little shorter than usual, but I am nothing if not verbose when it comes to describing music (and most everything else). Let’s bang this out while my liver still functions, shall we?

Let’s go. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DIABLATION, DUSK CULT, EOS, HEGEMON, LANGENNEET, LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR, NON SERVIAM, VELKA, WITHERING SOUL

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Sep 122021
 


After completing the humongous two-part roundup of new songs and videos that I posted earlier today I nearly gave up on the idea of making this regular Sunday column. Just not much gas left in the tank, and the first Seahawks football game of the season is already under way. But I know some people come here on Sundays for this column, and I don’t want to completely disappoint.

So, I did here what I did with those previous roundups — skimping on the artwork and links, and abbreviating my own commentary, in the hope that mainly tossing out the music is better than nothing at all. And so, with apologies to the bands and to people who actually enjoy the usual format, here we go… presented alphabetically by band name.

DIABLATION (France)

This first song is a frightening yet entrancing one. It reveals eerie, preternatural keyboards that seem to ring from fracturing heavens, and combines those with viscerally powerful rhythms, terrorizing vocal battalions, and racing storms of searing riffage and rampantly hurtling bass and drums. The effect is nightmarish yet intoxicating, menacingly magisterial and marauding. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR, BEASTIAL MAJESTY, THUNRAZ, CULT OF EIBON, SUN DESCENDS BLACK, NUUMMITE

 Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Aug 222021
 

 

I’m going to dispense with an introduction to today’s column, other than to say that what I’ve chosen is going to give you a strange trip from beginning to end.

LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR (UK)

I was quite taken by both of this band’s first two releases, a 2016 EP named Cemetery Glow, and a 2017 debut full-length named Nocta, both of which were released by Iron Bonehead. Now there’s another album headed our way, via the band’s new label Debemur Morti Productions. DMP describes the new one in these words:

“Potently blending cinematic Deathrock, ghoulish Doom, heavy Post-Punk and atmospheric Black Metal, Charnel Noir is a hook-ridden exploration of the necromantic Undead which captures the restraint, tension and dark romanticism present in the great canonical Gothic works”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MORDBRAND, TCHORNOBOG, LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR, JUPITERIAN, JUSTIN C.

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 062017
 

Mordbrand – photo by Łukasz Jaszak

 

It’s been a busy week here at NCS, one in which I’ve spent many (many!) hours readying year-end lists for posting, as well as starting the roll-out of our (i.e., my own) list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. We’ve also had some premieres and interviews and other things. And on top of all that, I got slugged yesterday by a nasty cold. The combined effect of all this has been to prevent me from preparing our usual round-ups of new music.

I’ve still been watching the appearance of new songs and videos and adding them to a list. It’s a long list. I picked a few items off of it for this post. Since the weekends at NCS are essentially all my own, I might prepare some more round-ups for Saturday and Sunday. It’s also possible this cold will cause me to curl up in a ball on the floor and whimper in misery until Monday.

By the way, it looks like we’ll finish LISTMANIA next week. I still have a few excellent lists in hand to post on Monday and Tuesday, and a few more might arrive, but I think we’ll be done soon. The Most Infectious Song series will of course continue until I pick some arbitrary stopping point, which will probably be January 31.

That’s it for an update. Onward to new music…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GODLESS ANGEL, LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR, DECOMPOSED, ADVERMIX

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Apr 042016
 

Godless Angel-The Conjuring of Four

 

If you look at what I posted at the site this past weekend, you’ll see that I was caught up in the throes of a blogging frenzy and threw a large amount of new music at your head. Having done that, I took some deep breaths — and then almost immediately discovered a bunch of other new songs that had appeared while I was scribbling thoughts about all the others. From that batch of new discoveries I’ve sifted these four — in part because I really enjoyed all of them and in part because they make for a diverse playlist of new metal with which to start the week.

GODLESS ANGEL

A very good friend of our site, Derek Neibarger from Lawrence, Kansas, has just released The Conjuring of Four, the third album of his solo project Godless Angel. It follows last year’s Harvester of Shadows (released by Inverse Records). For a pretty complete narrative of the interesting musical journey that led to the creation of Godless Angel, peruse my interview of Derek from last October (here). And for a taste of this new album, check out our stream of the album’s first single — “The Worms Are Eating Him Now”. Continue reading »