SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ΣΧΕΔΟΝ ΝΕΚΡΟΣ, VENEFIXION, SERPENTRANCE, IN THE COMPANY OF SERPENTS, TRIACANTHOS

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 252021
 

I’m taking a chance calling this Part 1, since Part 2 exists only in my head at this point. But we need goals, right?

At least Part 1 is complete. What I chose for it is a collection of four singles from forthcoming releases and one complete album that just surfaced today. A couple of these aren’t black metal, strictly speaking, but I got so excited about them that I didn’t want to wait, and at least from my perspective they don’t seem out of place. My goal for Part 2 is a few more complete recent releases.

ΣΧΕΔΟΝ ΝΕΚΡΟΣ (Greece)

Erstwhile NCS contributor KevinP has been banging the drum among friends for this first song, and the song is a banger too. The big rumbling riff that opens the track is an immediate head-snagger, and the song just gets more addictive as the riffing becomes increasingly feverish. Embellished by a nasty tone, the guitars viciously roil, jab, and jolt, backed by viscerally compelling drumwork and bestial bellows and barks. It’s an adrenaline-fueling mix of skull-slugging grooves and boiling chaos…. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SERPENTRANCE — “THE BESEIGED SANCTUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 022015
 

 

I first came across the Russian band Serpentrance almost one year ago because a Facebook friend had posted a link to their first single, a killing track named “Obeisance To The Antiquity of Sin”. Details about the band were virtually non-existent, but I wrote about the song and I became their 60th “like” on Facebook. Two months later, a second Serpentrance hymn surfaced, a track named “Aphotic Temples”, and I wrote about that one, too. I still couldn’t find any details about the band, though by then their Facebook presence had risen to 294 likes. The word was spreading by word of mouth.

More months passed, and then in February of this year I saw the announcement that those worshippers of Total Death in Canada’s Vault of Dried Bones had released the first Serpentrance EP, a limited cassette edition named The Besieged Sanctum. It includes both of the songs identified above (though the title of “Obeisance” has been shortened to “Sin”), plus two others — and today we shudder to bring you a premiere of one of those other songs, a monstrous offering of primeval death metal named “The Tongueless Oracle”. But first, a few words about the EP as a whole. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (Part 2): INTO DARKNESS, SABBATIC GOAT, SERPENTRANCE, TREPANATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  8 Responses »
Jun 292014
 

This is Part 2 of a round-up I began earlier today (here). The new songs collected in both parts of this post are the result of my recent submergence in the deepest, dankest pits of black, death, and doom, from which I’ve surfaced with some kind of necrotizing disease that I feel the need to communicate to my fellow lepers. Enjoy!

INTO DARKNESS

After only one listen, I proclaimed the debut demo by Italy’s Into Darkness “one of the best death/doom releases of 2012″. After a line-up change, they then followed that auspicious start with a 7″ EP entitled Transmigration of Cosmic Creatures Into the Unknown (reviewed here), which proved that the 2012 demo was no fluke.

In between those two releases the band produced another demo named Cosmic Chaos (2013) (discussed here and available on Bandcamp), which included a rough mix of a song entitled “Shifted To the Red End of the Spectrum”. Finally, that song is going to be released on a vinyl split with San Diego’s Ghoulgotha, and today it became available inn revised form on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEATHCULT, SERPENTRANCE, FŌR, COGNITIVE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 202014
 

Here are a few new things that have been wrecking my ears over the last 24 hours.

DEATHCULT

Yesterday I posted (here) a new song by the Swiss band Bölzer, and today I begin this round-up with music from another Swiss band. This one is named Deathcult and it happens to include one of the members of Bölzer (guitarist/vocalist KzR, who also now seems to be the vocalist in Witchrist).

Deathcult released a four-song demo in 2012 that I haven’t yet heard, though it’s available on Bandcamp, and earlier this year Me Saco Un Ojo Records released a new vinyl EP entitled Pleading for Death… Choking on Life (copies are still available there and elsewhere). Continue reading »