Oct 072023
 


Wayfarer – photo by Frank Guerra

Another Bandcamp Friday again overwhelmed the NCS in-box as bands, labels, and PR agents sought to capitalize on Bandcamp’s reduced take from sales. A similar deluge washed through social media, and every other channel where I look for new music.

It really is overwhelming, and probably self-defeating. Ironically, releasing new music on a Bandcamp Friday is probably the best strategy for getting overlooked — drowned in the flood.

It certainly adds to the stresses of creating this weekly column. I fantasize that the point of it is to help guide people toward musical gems, even though in even a normal week I know it’s still a very random process because I can’t listen to everything that might interest me or you. In a week like the last one, the process of sifting becomes an even more ridiculous challenge.

All I can say is that I enjoyed what you’ll find below, and hope that you make some valuable discoveries from it too. (And don’t bash me for overlooking a couple dozen more songs, not to mention complete albums and EPs, that would have been just as worthy of attention.) Continue reading »

Mar 042019
 

 

As explained in Part 1 of this post yesterday, I made some especially difficult choices about what to cover this week because I had found so much I wanted to recommend. Splitting the column into two parts in order to include more music helped some, but wasn’t a complete solution. The task was further complicated when I discovered even more yesterday. The first selection below is one of those late discoveries, but it turns out that it fits very well with the music of the first three bands I’d originally chosen to begin this Part 2, and that now comes after it.

MEPHORASH

Yesterday Mephorash released an official video for the third track to surface so far from their fourth opus, the 74-minute Shem Ha Mephorash, which is based on the Kabbalistic 72-fold explicit name of God and now has a release date of April 18th. Before yesterday the band had revealed “777: Third Woe“, which was released as a single last year, and “King of King, Lord of Lords“, which was disclosed last August. We’ve provided reactions to both of those, and now to this new third piece. Continue reading »

Sep 072015
 

Bloodway-Mapping the Moment With the Logic of Dreams

 

My calendar says it’s Labor Day here in the U.S. I am a law-abiding citizen, and therefore I will do as commanded, and labor. But it’s not exactly hard labor. It’s just writing about a lot of excellent new metal that I heard over the weekend. Also, our pal Grant Skelton made it even easier by writing one of the following features himself (I’ll point out which one when we get to it.) This collection is a fine example of the diversity of metal — hope you’ll enjoy it, while you are laboring.

BLOODWAY

When I last wrote (here) about Bloodway, the Romanian group led by talented graphic artist Costin Chioreanu (Twilight13 Media), it was to praise a song called “Walking Past Near the Lighthouse” (and its accompanying video) from the band’s then-forthcoming album Mapping The Moment With The Logic Of Dreams. The album is now out, and in recent days the band released another video for the album’s second track, “The Transfinite Castaway”. Continue reading »