SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, SAVAGE LANDS, FRONTIERER, ASS TO MOUTH, ROTTEN SOUND, RITUAL FOG, SKAPHOS, THE SWORD, SOLIPSISM, PLAGUEFEVER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 162024
 


Mantar photo by Sonja Schuringa/Chantik Photography

I have my second miserable cold in two months, and how are you doing? I’ve been focusing on music that I thought would help blast the snot out of my head. I’ve included a lot of that below. I can’t tell that I’ve really come un-clogged, but it has made me feel better in other ways, including providing catharsis for being so pissed off that the virus has hit me again so quickly.

As you can see, I had time enough to do lots of listening and watching yesterday and this morning. As usual, the music from the 10 bands featured below isn’t all I heard and liked, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I moved some of my choices to tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, and others I hope I’ll get too somewhere down the road. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SKAPHOS, AKRAIA, SACRILEGION, AARA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 082022
 

Last weekend I was able to compile and write about a typhoon of new songs and videos, but this weekend will be different. The Seattle Mariners baseball club made the major league playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and won the first game of their first playoff series yesterday in Toronto. The second game is this afternoon, and I’ll be glued to the TV watching that with friends.

Afterward will be a dinner party in Seattle that will likely go late, and that won’t bode well for Sunday morning work on Shades of Black whenever I get back to my island home. Also ominous is the fact that I’ve got to do shit for my fucking day job tomorrow, which makes tomorrow’s usual column even more unlikely. So don’t be surprised if I have to skip it this week.

I’ve got to make my way to Seattle pretty soon for that ballgame, so I’ll have to make the following collection short, but hopefully sweet. I wish I could have done more, and really wish I could have done it yesterday when there was an extra incentive for fans to spend money on Bandcamp, but my job hammered me then too. So it goes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLACK HOLE DEITY, REX DEMONUS, SKAPHOS, OREAMNOS, STAGWOUNDER, INTEGRAL RIGOR, DUMA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 052020
 

 

For me, Friday nights always create severe risk for Saturday mornings. I know this, yet am doomed to have to re-learn the lesson. So it was that my latest lesson began last night, mixing all sorts of intoxicants over the course of two Zoom get-togethers with different groups of friends, and today the lesson has been completed in hangover hell.

Strangely, listening to raucous music seemed to help rather than hurt, though trying to write remains… challenging. Hope you get some good out of the music I picked, along with whatever guidance comes through my meager words.

BLACK HOLE DEITY (U.S.)

To begin, I’ve chosen “Railgun Combat“, the first single off the forthcoming debut EP of Black Hole Deity, whose line-up includes members Chaos Inception and Malignancy (the full line-up is Chris White, Alec Cordero, Cam Pinkerton, and Mike Heller). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SVART CROWN, REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER, SKAPHOS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Dec 052019
 

 

Time is short, and always fleeting, so I’ll dispense with further introductory comments and get right to these three new songs (and a new video) that caught my attention.

SVART CROWN

We’ve been writing about the music of Svart Crown at NCS since the fall of 2010, when we got the chance to hear and review their second album Witnessing the Fall in advance of its release. Since then they have released two more terrific albums, 2013’s Profane (reviewed here) and 2017’s Abreaction (discussed in part here). And now Century Media has announced that it will release this French band’s fifth album, Wolves Among the Ashes, on February 7th next year. The first song in today’s small collection is the first track made public from that new album. Continue reading »