Aug 082022
 

(NCS writer DGR has been on a roll, clearing out a backlog of reviews, and our plan is to publish them on a daily basis this week. We begin with his thoughts about the final recording from the French band Svart Crown, which was released in June by Nova Lux Production and Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions.)

In all honesty the events that took place after the release of Svart Crown‘s newest EP Les terres brûlées kind of took us aback when it came to writing about it. Granted, we were already late on reviewing it because it arrived in the post-MDF/pre-NWTF hangover period, but who would’ve guessed that in the time since its release the group would hang it up two weeks later? Yet here we are, now almost two months since its release, and the world is less one Svart Crown project.

Thus, writing about Les terres brûlées now is a little strange because it feels partially like we’re going to be praising the band for recognizing that it was time to call it quits and partially mourning the potential that Les terres brûlées promised, since the four songs and cover track here are some of the more ferocious material within the Svart Crown playbook.

Wolves Among The Ashes may have been divisive among the writers here (I enjoyed it, Andy ranked it as ‘disappointing’), but it’s hard to imagine anyone making it through even just the first song of this final EP without becoming convinced that Svart Crown sound absolutely mean this time around. Continue reading »

Feb 052020
 


God Dethroned

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three forthcoming or just-released albums by God Dethroned (Netherlands), Horresque (Germany), and Svart Crown (France).)

Genre terms are funny things, aren’t they?

While I often find them very useful as a form of rough-and-ready heuristic shortcut, one which helps me, and my readers, quickly get into the right mindset and formulate our expectations accordingly, their misuse (or outright abuse) can be even more confusing than just saying nothing at all.

It’s even worse when we get down to the fine grain of things, as these terms and definitions become even more nebulous, and it gets harder and harder to tell precisely where Death Metal becomes Blackened Death Metal becomes Melodic Blackened Death Metal becomes Progressive Melodic Blackened Death Metal… and so on, and so forth.

The three albums you’re about to read about all fall somewhere in/along this spectrum (whereabouts exactly is sure to prompt some lively debate), and while all have their flaws (which I’ve not been shy about highlighting) I’m pretty sure many, if not most, of our audience will find something to appreciate from their myriad metallic delights. Continue reading »

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 »

Feb 062017
 

 

I decided to give the “Seen and Heard” caption a brief rest, but that’s basically what this post is — a round-up of new songs and videos. It just happens that everything in this round-up is the sound of slaughtering, though translated through difference metallic prisms. In essence, we’ll do a death metal/black metal back-and-forth, though you’ll hear differences even within those broad genre umbrellas, and the boundaries blur as well.

SINISTER

Over the weekend Sinister released an official video (created and directed by Sebastiaan Spijker) for a song called “Neurophobic” off their new album Syncretism, which will be released on February 24 by Massacre Records. This is the 13th studio album by these Dutch death metal veterans, and judging from the new song, it’s going to be lethal. Continue reading »

Dec 242016
 

sol-invictus-daniel-gautier

 

Once upon a time everything seemed to slow down during the holiday season… or at least everything other than the consumerist frenzy of gift-buying. But now in many ways the final weeks of the year seem as busy and eventful as all the other weeks, both at work and almost everywhere else. This year we even got announcements of a new nuclear arms race that no one asked for — what better way to celebrate peace on earth and good will to men!

I did notice a fall-off yesterday in the flood of messages arriving in the NCS e-mail in-box, but there were still a lot of new-music announcements, and I found even more in my Facebook news feed. There’s a risk that much of what I saw and heard will be overlooked, with many metal-oriented sites and blogs taking time off and many fans diverted from their phones and computers by holiday activities. So I decided, for the hell of it, to devote this Christmas Eve round-up exclusively to news and music streams that appeared (or that I discovered) for the first time yesterday.

Mind you, what follows isn’t everything I noticed, or even everything I enjoyed. I’ve made these selections to provide diversity of sound, and I’ve saved a few nasty things for tomorrow because NCS always does its best to reduce Christmas Day to a smoldering ash heap — praise and glory to Sol Invictus! Continue reading »

Jul 312014
 

 

Well, well, here’s some just-announced tour news that gave me a thrill: This fall Belphegor will be headlining the Voices From the Dark 2014 tour in North America and will be accompanied by Rotting Christ (Greece), Beheaded (Malta), and Svart Crown (France). That is one insanely solid line-up.

The schedule is after the jump… and that’s all I have to say about this. Continue reading »

Jul 032013
 

(Andy Synn reviews the latest album by French metal band Svart Crown, which is out now via Listenable Records.)

“Heavy” is one of those recurring words we all like to use when talking about metal. It brings with it connotations of thunderous power and crushing force. Beyond this it can be used to suggest the sheer density of an album’s ominous atmosphere, or the bruising emotional weight it carries.

Sometimes it’s misused. Something simply being loud or well-produced is not the same as being really heavy – or at least, it’s nowhere near the same realms I’m talking about here. I can’t help but smile when I see others refer to certain albums as “really heavy” – whether they’re talking about the current big thing in metal, or even waxing lyrical on the supposed substance of the latest indie darlings – because I sometimes think we’re not even using the same yardstick to measure by.

Let me tell you one thing though, Profane, Svart Crown’s third album, is heavy. Very fucking heavy. Continue reading »

Apr 232013
 

Within the last few days (and mostly today), seven albums I’m very high on (and have written about here) have begun streaming in full on various web sites. They shouldn’t be missed — it’s a great chance to check out the music before deciding whether to plunk down money for them.

Each of the sites where these streams are now available includes info on how to order or pre-order the albums, so I’m not going to take time to repeat that info here. I’m also not going to take the time to write about the music (though we do plan to review some of these albums) because . . . you can hear them right now! The relevant links are below, in alphabetical order.

ALTAR OF PLAGUES: TEETHED GLORY AND INJURY

http://pitchfork.com/advance/81-teethed-glory-and-injury/ Continue reading »

Feb 282013
 

 

I’m still in day-job hell, or more accurately day-and-night-job hell. All personal plans for listening to albums and EPs and writing reviews are on hold. Actually, everything I do here is pretty much on hold except for quickly checking metal news and doing some fast web surfing in search of new songs — and I make time for that mainly to preserve some feeble semblance of balance in my existence.

In this post are new or new-ish things from four bands that I randomly happened upon. By the end of the post, you may conclude that my efforts at preserving balance have failed and I’ve fallen off the edge.

IMPERIUM DEKADENZ

I discovered this German band in the spring of 2010 and wrote a review of their then-current album Procella Vadens (which is superb), except I wrote it as if Suffocation’s Frank Mullen were writing the review. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Continue reading »

Dec 072011
 

When I had my head in the clouds on vacation last month, the French label Listenable Records compiled a sampler of music for free download that I completely missed. Fortunately, it’s still available, and it’s quite a collection of music. There are some bands on the list whose names I don’t recognize and a few whose music doesn’t do anything for me, but on the other hand, it includes songs from some bands that are as strong as horseradish. Just to name a few:

GOJIRA

SVART CROWN

HATE

PANZERCHRIST

CAVUS

DARKANE

LIVARKAHIL

THE RED SHORE

There are 22 tracks in all. After the jump, you can check out the full track list and get the download link. Continue reading »