Rotting Christ Archives - Page 2 of 6

SEEN AND HEARD ON CHRISTMAS DAY: ROTTING CHRIST, SWALLOW THE SUN, ÖRNATORPET, DEATHCHANT, MORTAL SCEPTER (AND A LOT MORE)

Dec 252018

If today is a holiday for you, we hope you’re enjoying it, regardless of whether it has any ecclesiastical meaning to you. If it’s not a holiday for you, we hope it will be a good day for you, too.

We don’t observe any holidays at NCS, not because we’re against them, but because from our first year the goal was to post something every day of the year, a goal we’ve kept with very rare exceptions. I can’t exactly remember why I set that goal (come on, it was 9 years ago!), but probably because I thought our best chance of getting readers was to be out there on days when there was no competition. Now, we keep doing it out of sheer stubbornness.

Since it is Christmas Day, I thought about exclusively going with metal that has some kind of holiday theme, but with a trio of exceptions at the end of this giant new-music round-up, I tossed that idea out the window, unless you count the introductory music from Rotting Christ. And why wouldn’t you?

ROTTING CHRIST

My NCS colleagues and I seem to be having a disagreement about RC‘s new album The Heretics. One of us, who shall remain unnamed, thinks it’s repetitive and boring, a distillation of the sound of the last three or four albums but lacking in dynamic peaks and troughs. A couple of us (including me) acknowledge that it’s basically Rotting Christ firmly in their established groove, but is nonetheless a whole lot of fun. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ROTTING CHRIST, POPIÓŁ, WARDRUNA

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Nov 292018

Last Sunday when I wrote about my imminent two-week vacation I though it was unlikely that I would be able to assemble any new-music round-ups. But for my traveling companions, yesterday was an especially lazy day, and so I found a bit of guilt-free time to explore new music.

Not a lot of time, mind you, and so I didn’t cast a very wide net over everything of interest that had surfaced since the last of these round-ups, nor was I able to choose as many songs as I usually do. But these three struck a strong chord, and I’m happy with the choices.

ROTTING CHRIST

Season of Mist uses the term “anthemic” to describe the new Rotting Christ song it released yesterday, and so it is — in a way that’s distinctively Rotting Christ. If you’re familiar with their music, you would know it’s them even if no one told you. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SCORCHED, PREZIR, BOSSE-DE-NAGE, ROTTING CHRIST

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jul 192018

Continuing where I left off in Part 1 of today’s round-up (and I do plan on yet another round-up tomorrow, by the way), I’ve selected four more tracks that really can’t be grouped in any kind of logical order, and there’s really almost nothing that any of the songs have in common other than their appeal to yours truly. I’ve again kind of up-ended my usual tendency to move from better-known names to lesser-known names.

SCORCHED

This Delaware band is certainly better-known than they used to be, due in part to 20 Buck Spin’s release of Excavated For Evisceration earlier this year, which compiled the band’s non-LP material in one place, but they still need to become a lot better-known because THEY’RE SO GOOD! I have a feeling that will happen when the same label releases their new album on September 28th. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ROTTING CHRIST, WOMBBATH, MORTUOUS, DIABOLIC OATH

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

May 012018

We have a couple of premieres coming later today (what a shock), but I found myself with a little extra time on my hands before we get to those, so I thought I’d package up a few new things that I heard yesterday. The first two come from established bands who are always dependably good. The second two come from new names that should become better known once the songs below get spread around.

ROTTING CHRIST

First up is a pro-shot live video of Rotting Christ performing the title track from their 2013 album Κατά τον δαίμονα εαυτού. It was filmed on June 30, 2017, during the band’s headlining anniversary concert in Athens. From the looks of this (and of course the sounds), I really wish I’d been able to astrally project myself into that venue. And I think that’s all the introduction this video needs. Enjoy: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 1): AUGURY, THE CROWN, DRUDKH, ROTTING CHRIST

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Feb 172018

Augury – photo by Mélany Champagne

I made a resolution last night: I resolved that henceforth I will post no more than two premieres a day, and only one per day if it’s a full album stream. During the week just ended, I posted 14 premieres, and two of those were full albums.

I might not care about the volume if I could be content to write little more than, “Here — listen to this!”, and then just provide the music stream. But where’s the fun in that? Besides the fun, I feel a compulsion to include reviews with the premieres, even if only the bands or labels might pay attention to what I write. Given that mindset, working on a big flood of premieres tends to constrict my ability to do anything else — such as compile round-ups like this one.

Full disclosure: I’ve made resolutions like this one before, and couldn’t stick to them. Did I mention that we’ll have another premiere tomorrow? It’s really good!

Anyway, as you can see, this is a two-part round-up. I decided to collect some older arrivals in this first part, organized alphabetically. My colleague DGR suggested all of them for a newsy post that would have been timely if I’d been able to get it done when he made the suggestions. Maybe some of these will still be news to a few of you despite the delay. They also involve higher profile bands; I’ve got some lesser-known groups for Part 2. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 1): MISERY INDEX, DEMONICAL, LECHEROUS NOCTURNE, ROTTING CHRIST

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Feb 052018

(DGR compiled a round-up of new music to launch our Monday at NCS, an eight-song collection that we’ve divided into two parts, with Part Two slated to come very quickly after this first installment.)

I’m not going to lie to you all, I’ve been pretty distracted around the NCS office as of late. Usually I’ve unleashed a handful of ridiculous-length reviews by this point, but so far the beginning of 2018 has had your buddy here firmly ensconced in the news trenches, freeing up some of the other folks around here to fully dive into the deep and murky waters of all things underground and unlistenable.

It doesn’t help that I’ve also had tabs open alongside the news haul consisting of album streams from Dagon’s victorious return on Back To The Sea, Bloodshot Dawn’s surprisingly tech-death oriented Reanimation, Afgrund’s mean and urgently-now The Dystopian, and even the occasional leap back into 2017 with Ireland’s Weed Priest and their stoner doom throwback; all of which are seeing constant listens and hopefully time to deep-dive in the near future. Shit, there is even a new Apophys disc entitled Devoratis that we covered very briefly but need to dive back into.

Of course, now that all of that has been written down, the news flood will get worse and I’ll get something done just in time to watch the moon finally escape Earth’s gravity and go sailing off into space as we’re devoured by the Sun’s outer layers as it goes red giant.

But enough jokes about things that seem preferable to going outside and facing the world. Let’s get on with the music. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): ROTTING CHRIST, HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, PSYCHOTIC PULSE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jan 292018

(DGR presents the following round-up of new music.)

My last appearance with a news roundup was, admittedly, a little ridiculous. I will say, however, that I was not initially aware it had gotten so huge as I just kept adding things that I had noticed we had missed in my vain effort to cover everything I thought the NCS crowd might be interested in.

The nice thing about that method, though, is that the act of doing so with such a large dragnet, combined with the massive three-part Shades Of Black post that went up shortly after, means that we’re able to keep this roundup small, covering just three groups that barely missed the bus when those posts went up. One in particular was released right after the post that was perfect for it went up.

So, we return once again to do a little globe-trotting, skirting around the edges of heavy metal and talking about three more newly released songs that have popped up over the past week and a half. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2016’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 2): VREDEHAMMER, DESTRÖYER 666, ROTTING CHRIST

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2016 4 Responses »

Jan 032017

As you can see, this is the second installment of our Most Infectious Song rollout, following hot on the heels of yesterday’s launch. As was true yesterday, each of today’s picks came from albums that were home to more than one song that could easily be on this list, and I won’t be surprised if some of you think I made the wrong pick. Hell, if I made the picks tomorrow, they might be different.

There are a few other connections between this particular threesome, one of which is that all three albums came out in the first quarter of last year, long enough ago that, for me, revisiting these songs was like a reunion with some old friends. Other connections will become obvious.

VREDEHAMMER

We didn’t give enough attention to Vredehammer’s 2016 album Violator. I wrote about its first advance track (“Spawn Tyrant”), and we published Karina Cifuentes’ interview of Per Valla, though even that focused more on his time as a session guitarist with Abbath and his personal Valla project than it did on Vredehammer. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ROTTING CHRIST — “APAGE SATANA”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Jun 142016

When our man DGR reviewed Rotting Christ’s new album Rituals in February, he made some observations that came back to mind today. He remarked that Rituals “feels more like an event than a collection of singles”, that “the songs feel perfectly placed,” with “more dramatic interstitial sections slotting in well next to faster songs”, earning the name given to the album. He also commented on the intensely rhythmic nature of much of the music, underscoring the thematic union of the album’s ten tracks as musical representations of rites from around the globe that share a certain spiritual essence.

A personal favorite among those “interstitial” sections is the powerful “Ἄπαγε Σατανά (Apage Satana)”, and today we bring you the premiere of Rotting Christ’s mesmerizing video for the song. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, ROTTING CHRIST, KVALVAAG, INCULCATOR, DER ROTE MILAN

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK 9 Responses »

Jun 072016

For almost two weeks I’ve been in the throes of Maryland Deathfest frenzy, taking time away from many of my typical blogging activities to attend the festival itself and then re-living the experience through a five-part recap all of last week. I missed a lot of new music, and of course when you check out for that long in today’s riotously fecund metal environment there’s no way to completely catch up. However, I have spent some hours making incomplete lists of what I missed and then listening… and from that I have some songs I want to recommend.

Many of the new songs I want to write about are connected in various ways to black metal, and I’ve collected some of them here, along with one recent piece of very enticing news. There will be at least one more installment in this blackened catch-up collection, and maybe two if time allows.

HAIL SPIRIT NOIR

I think of Hail Spirit Noir as sonic alchemists, highly adept at combining different stylistic ingredients and transmuting them into strange and wondrous sounds. They’ve proven those alchemical talents through two albums so far — Pneuma in 2012 and Oi Magoi in 2014 — and last month they announced that a third one is on the way. Continue reading »

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