SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE TROOPS OF DOOM, SOL DE SANGRE, WEREWOLVES, COLDCELL, NIHILO, LACABRA, KYBALION, BALWEZO WESTIJIZ, KŌYA, WHARFLURCH, AMORPHIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 182024
 


Troops of Doom – photo by Cissa Flores

I wasn’t able to serve up a Saturday roundup last weekend due to working on Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, and it’s highly unlikely I’ll get one done next Saturday since I’ll be at Maryland Deathfest (if you’re there and spot someone who looks like a heavily tatted escapee from a nursing home, come say hi). So that makes this one kind of important, if only for me.

There’s gobs of new music to choose from, many more gobs than usual since I missed a week. And by the way, I’m using “gob” here as a word meaning “a large amount” and not its other meaning, i.e., “a lump or clot of a slimy or viscous substance”, though I have included a song off an album named Shittier/Slimier.

Ready, set, go! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WAKE, TEMPLE OF VOID, NIHILO, THUMOS, BASTIONS, CRUST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 062022
 

 

It’s another Bandcamp Friday today, when a bigger share of the money you spend on that platform goes to the artists and labels. So I made an extra effort to pull together a roundup of new songs and videos, even though I don’t have time to make it as extensive as I’d like. Here’s what caught my eyes and ears over the last 24 hours — and I’ll have more stuff to recommend on Saturday.

WAKE (Canada)

I’m starting with a new song and video for “Swallow the Light“, a track off these NCS-favorites’ new album Thought Form Descent. Its slashing and searing chords, electrifying drumwork, and torrid vocals will get your blood pumping, even as it creates moods of anguish, fear, confusion, and derangement. Often white-hot in its intensity, it will also give your neck a good workout. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WATAIN, KREATOR, NIHILO, SLUGDGE, CEREMONIAL DECAY, SIDEREAN, BESTIA ATER, OTTONE PESANTE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 052022
 


Photo Credit: Evelina Szczesik

 

I heard a couple of the following tracks last Saturday and saved them for what I hoped would be one of these collections during the last week, but I never had enough time to put one together. The rest of them I checked out this morning (they’re even more recent), along with others I took a pass on, and more that I’ve saved for tomorrow’s Shades of Black column.

In assembling this collection I followed one of our fairly standard strategies: I decided to include some big names at the outset, in the hope that would lure people into the more obscure names that follow, and I included a curveball at the end.

WATAIN (Sweden)

When you know the band is Watain and you see they’ve released a song named “The Howling“, you already have a good idea what’s coming. But Eric Danielsson spelled it out: “‘The Howling‘ refers to the wordless voice of the wild, wailing eerily through the ages, urging us to leave our safe spaces and explore the dark recesses of the great Abyss both within and without. To see it, to learn from it, to know it.” Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ZEALOTRY, FALGAR, RAAT, NECHOCHWEN, NATTRAVNEN, NIHILO, JUNE 1974, CHTHONIC, DRH, DAIRA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 262018
 

 

This was hard. I spent more than an hour yesterday just going through all the e-mails that had landed in the NCS e-mail septic tank in-box since I left on vacation last Friday and, from what I found there, adding to the endless list of new music and videos I thought might be worth checking out. And then I started going through what I’d added to the list, listening and watching until I had to make myself stop.

I found a great many dramatically different things I thought would be worth sharing, so many that I picked 10 of them for this post. And that’s not counting such things as Revolver’s exclusive song premiere for Devouring Star, the just-released split by Ragana and Thou, Terror’s new track, or the new track by Minsk that premiered at DECIBEL, among others. (You see what I did there?)

We’ve got three premiere features of our own today that I need to finish, so I’ve got to keep my own commentary in this post a bit briefer than usual.

ZEALOTRY

First up is the title track from At the Nexus of All Stillborn Worlds, the new album by the Boston death metal band Zealotry. It will be released on December 7th through Unspeakable Axe Records. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 65: NIHILO, VALLEY OF HINNOM, EXISTENTIUM

 Free Shit, MISCELLANY  3 Responses »
Apr 092014
 

MISCELLANY is probably the most irregular of the regular features at NCS.  Though I’ve found that it’s a good way to discover new music, I often let weeks or months go by before revisiting the series. But this week there will be an unusual burst of activity. I have the 65th edition today, and both the 66th and 67th editions are in various stages of completion. With luck, I will post them over the next two days — three in a row!

Here’s how the game works: I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, usually focusing on under-the-radar groups whose names I’ve never heard before either. The selection process is random; for these three editions of the series, I tended to focus on bands who’ve written us recently. I try to limit my listening to a song or two and then write my impressions, while streaming what I heard so you can form your own opinions. I don’t know in advance whether I’ll like the music, so there’s an element of surprise involved (good or bad). For this listening session I investigated the music of three bands.

NIHILO

Nihilo are from Switzerland. They’ve released three EPs, as well as a previous full-length (2010’s Concordia Perpetua). In March of this year they released a new album entitled Dum Spiro Spero, which features cover art by Paolo “Madman” Girardi, and was a promising sign, all by itself. Continue reading »