OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 24): NECRONAUTICAL, CÂN BARDD, HUMAN SERPENT, NIGHT CROWNED, NORDJEVEL, FLUISTERAARS

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  3 Responses »
Feb 032022
 

 

Even if you didn’t already know, the fact that today’s installment of this list includes seven songs would be a clear sign that I’m about to bring it to an end (really, I am).

Unlike some of the more recent segments, this one focuses on a single but fairly broad sub-genre, which for want of a better term could be called “melodic black metal”. But that still doesn’t mean these songs sound alike, and in fact they’re quite different from each other. The appearance of many of them shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who hung around our site last year, but this group does include one big surprise; it surprised the hell out of me, that’s for sure.

NECRONAUTICAL (UK)

My compatriot DGR wrote of Necronautical‘s latest album that it’s one “you’ll be buckling up for as wave after wave of black metal buttressed by a healthy dose of keyboard synth washes over you in an attempt to drag you under the tide”. He also wrote that “it’s also easy to understand how they band would make the title track one of the keystone songs of the disc”: Continue reading »

NECRONAUTICAL: “SLAIN IN THE SPIRIT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 242021
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the latest album by the UK extreme metal band Necronautical, recently released by Candlelight/Spinefarm.)

Necronautical are a band we’ve been lucky enough to cover since their first record. They’re a somewhat familiar name around these parts since all of their releases have been here and they’ve been the subject of a Waxing Lyrical piece too. In fact, the group’s newest record – and second for Candlelight Records – Slain In The Spirit is now my own third go for a review with this group. So there’s something of a written record of the band here as they’ve grown and evolved into the creature they are today.

We’ve watched as they’ve shifted in terms of both subject matter and the meaning of their name, expanding the group’s lyrical and philosophical reach into explorations of the mind. What was initially a sea-inspired voyage started to become journeys into deeper recesses of spirituality — still nautical, but less literally than before and, given the creeping influences of symphonic black metal on the group’s sound, increasingly ‘necro’ with every release.

Slain In The Spirit is the latest expansion of that, as it works as a natural evolution of what the band started on Apotheosis. The songs presented here are about as expansive as they were on the previous release but this time around, Necronautical have become a little bit more focused in the two years since Slain’s predecessor. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BASTARÐUR, CARONTE, NECRONAUTICAL, LOW FLYING HAWKS, DAGOBA, ZAKULA, ANNIHILUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 212021
 

 

This is one of those days when we risk overwhelming even the most voracious listeners who visit our site. I’ve already posted a round-up of blackened metal and a full album stream, but can’t resist using some unexpected free time to pull together another collection. This one is rife with videos, most of them accompanying advance tracks from forthcoming releases, but there’s another full album stream in the mix as well. There’s a lot of stylistic variety in the mix too.

BASTARÐUR (Iceland)

This first track came as a big surprise (at least to me). It turns out that Bastarður is the crust punk project of Sólstafir singer/guitarist Aðalbjörn Tryggvason, drawing upon the influence of such bands as Entombed, Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Motörhead, and Disfear.

He made Bastarður’s debut album, Satan’s Loss of Son, with drummer Birgir Jónsson (Dimma), and the album also includes guest vocals by Marc Grewe (Morgoth, Insidious Disease) and Prmordial’s Alan Averill, as well as guest guitar leads and soloing by Ragnar Zolberg (who has performed live bass for Sólstafir) and Þráinn Árni Baldvinsson from Skálmöld, among others. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: NECRONAUTICAL

 WAXING LYRICAL  No Responses »
Jun 122021
 

 

(Eleven months have passed since Andy Synn delivered an installment of his Saturday interview series on lyrics in metal, but as the following article reveals, the series has been hibernating rather than dead.)

Damn, it’s been quite a while since we’ve published one of these articles hasn’t it?

The reason for this is both simple and complex. While I really enjoy doing them, and quite a few of our readers seem to enjoy them too, the existence of Waxing Lyrical as an ongoing column is predicated both on me having time to put each entry together (and my time has been stretched pretty thin over the least year) and finding enough bands who are willing and eager to participate (oddly enough, not as easy as you might think).

Still, I’m hopeful that today’s edition is going to be the first in another long run of pieces highlighting the art (and effort) behind the lyrics behind the music we love, and I/we couldn’t ask for a better way to resurrect the column than by talking with bassist/co-vocalist Anchorite (aka Matt McGing) of NCS-approved Black Metallers Necronautical, whose fourth album, Slain in the Spirit, is scheduled for release on August 20 via Candlelight Records. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MAYHEM, DARKTHRONE, NECRONAUTICAL, EXITIUM SUI, SEA MOSQUITO, HAPLESS WRETCH, UNDERDARK

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jun 062021
 

 

I nearly didn’t include the new Mayhem and Darkthrone songs in this column, because I thought anyone who would visit us today would have already heard them. Plus, as is generally true of NCS as a whole, I tend to focus on less-heralded bands than the ones whose names are household words. On the other hand, those are two of black metal’s most influential bands, and getting new songs from both of them in the same week seems like something especially noteworthy, especially for a column like this one. So, they’re both here.

After that I shifted the focus to more obscure names, and by coincidence almost all of them are UK groups.

MAYHEM (NORWAY)

Atavistic Black Disorder/Kommando is a Mayhem EP that will be released on July 9th by Century Media. The dual title signifies that the EP includes three original tracks (“Voces Ab Alta,” “Black Glass Communion,” and “Everlasting Dying Flame”) as well as covers of classic punk tracks from Discharge (“In Defense Of Our Future”, Dead Kennedys (“Hellnation”), Rudimentary Peni (“Only Death”), and the Ramones (“Commando”). The song that emerged last week is one of those original tracks, which was initially recorded during the band’s Daemon sessions. Continue reading »

NECRONAUTICAL: “APOTHEOSIS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 102019
 

 

(After a hiatus due to personal obligations, DGR returns to our devoted cadre with this review of the new album by the UK band Necronautical, which will be released by Candlelight Records on CD and gatefold vinyl on September 30th.)

It’s funny that in total run-time, black metal group Necronautical’s latest album Apotheosis is actually two minutes shorter than its predecessor, The Endurance At Night. There exists a temptation after a few spins, to describe Apotheosis as a much bigger album than its predecessor but in terms of actual time spent that is clearly not the case.

Apotheosis marks Necronautical’s third foray into the black metal void, adding their own cinematic and melodic flourishes along the way. It is also the group’s third album to feature seven songs, re-establishing one of a handful of patterns now recognizable throughout Necronautical’s music. Continue reading »

NECRONAUTICAL: “THE ENDURANCE AT NIGHT”

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Aug 112016
 

Necronautical-The Endurance At Night

 

(DGR wrote this review of the new album by the UK’s Necronautical.)

Let’s lay all our cards on the table up-front here. I was very excited when England’s Necronautical announced a follow-up disc to their album Black Sea Misanthropy. I genuinely enjoyed the nautical-themed group’s debut full-length, and for a while was worried that they wouldn’t do another after they went radio-silent for a brief spell.

I was actually introduced to the band via a review of that album on this very site by our own Andy Synn. Though I am loathe to admit this in public, as the man’s ego hardly needs any more inflating, and knowing that he was right about a recommendation might just provide more reason for it. His homeland may not be sure what part of the planet it wants to be located on at this moment, but I don’t need it to literally float off the map via Andy Synn‘s head-shaped balloon.

Black Sea Misanthropy was a symphonic black metal disc and, as the name implied (as well as the band’s own name), it focused heavily on ships, the ocean, and the brutality involved in many of those sea-going adventures. It was at times thrashy, full-blown death metal, raging and teeth-bared symphonic death, and frustratingly catchy (look, years out and I still get chunks of “Ghosts Of Men” stuck in my head), so I had high hopes for the band to have a follow-up. The Endurance At Night is that follow-up. Released in the middle of July, it continues the band’s nautical explorations but manages to do so in a much more mature package, one that shares a lot of similarities with its predecessor but also comes off much more fierce. The two years between discs have given Necronautical enough time to come up with one hell of a record. Continue reading »

NECRONAUTICAL: “BLACK SEA MISANTHROPY”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jul 252014
 

(Andy Synn delivers the following review of the debut album by England’s Necronautical.)

Let’s keep this one simple, shall we?

Do you like Old Man’s Child?

How about Naglfar?

Or Hour of Penance?

Do you like your metal Deathly, Blackened, and antagonistically heavy, yet brimming with scything melodic hooks?

Then head on over to their Bandcamp page and check out the debut album by misanthropic metal mariners Necronautical right now.

For those of you who want a little more to chew on before making that move, however… read on. Continue reading »