Mar 022022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the new album by Pittsburgh-based The Neologist, which was released a couple weeks ago.)

It’s probably a sign that I miss Sybreed more than anything else but the combination of neck-turning whiplash and thoughts of ‘y’know what, more melodeath albums should have an out-of-left-field techno breakdown in them’ at the same time was enough to leave my head spinning.

Yet that was only one of a smattering of thoughts that crossed my mind while listening to Oracle, the newest release from Pennsylvania-based melodeath project The Neologist – a group we haven’t really checked in with since the early 2010s. Continue reading »

May 102016
 

choking

 

(We applied the squeeze to DGR and he coughed up not one, not two, but three reviews all at once…)

I’ve actually been taking a quick breather from the giant review slate that I’ve built up for myself at this lovely site. After the humongous swath of death metal (with a handful of releases to go, as well) and some upcoming more doom-flavored tracks, I figured I’d pull away from the names I’d recognized and try to find some stuff that we’ve never really crossed paths with before. One of the ways I’ll do that is to go fishing through our various social media contacts, because although there is a gigantic pile of music to work through, I’ve had pretty good luck in finding stuff.

Even though an absolute torrent of new releases is coming our way here over the next few months, I occasionally like to go back and sift through earlier releases to see if there is anything interesting that we missed. Often, it has usually boiled down to me surfing through our various messages to see if there have been any bands who have contacted us recently, and among the few of us at the site we start slowly filtering our way through them. So yes, this process does seem to take forever but it is also because I like to deep-dive into most things, rather than take a cursory glance at it and give it the up vote/down vote scenario.

That’s the case with this collection of music, as I found myself getting yanked and driven all over the globe. In this particular roundup, I have two bands that we’ve never covered before and one that should be intensely familiar to very seasoned NCS readers, but three very different styles of music on top of that. Let us charge forth, shall we? Continue reading »

Sep 232012
 

Our Sacramento-based contributor DGR hit me with a flurry of e-mails this morning, bringing to light a multitude of musical developments for your entertainment. I’ve now packaged them in this Sunday edition of the “Seen and Heard” post.

THE NEOLOGIST

DGR began covering the work of this East Coast duo during the days of the sadly departed The Number of the Blog, and he introduced their work to NCS beginning last January. In addition to creating their own original songs, The Neologist have also been recording cover songs as tributes to their influences. They’ve made an entire In Flames cover album titled In Flames We Trust: Volume I, and they’ve also been releasing tracks from a work in progress by the name of Working the Soil, which will eventually become a complete album of Soilwork covers. And everything they’re doing is . . . free (or available on Bandcamp with a “name your price” option).

Today’s news is that The Neologist have just released their sophomore album of original music, The Promise of Eternal Separation.  This new album comes with a variety of “extras”, including a cover version of “Red Clouds” by Disarmonia Mundi, a dub-step remix of “A Call To Harms” by Jester Strikes, and two bonus tracks from the band’s Kazakhstan release and Vatican City release (both of which are due in October 2012).

DGR promises a review of The Promise of Eternal Separation, but the music is already streaming and available for download on Bandcamp (here), so go check that out. But that’s not all we have from The Neologist camp. Continue reading »

May 212012
 

This morning our buddy DemiGodRaven delivered a short round-up of new songs or videos that struck his fancy, and it came at a time when I was trying to figure out how to publicize a new song and video that I had also recently discovered. So I decided to lead with the one I found and then finish with DGR’s contributions.

FROM EXILE: “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” Video

From Exile is an Atlanta band we’ve written about frequently at NCS. You can see a collection of all our previous features via this link. Having said that, a year has passed since our last post about the band. That time, the occasion was an amazing music video (featuring guest guitarist Emil Werstler) for a song called “A Warm Place” that appeared on Just Like You Imagined, which was a collection of Nine Inch Nails songs covered by From Exile.

Now, a year later, I’m happy to report that we have a new From Exile song called “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” and a new music video to go along with it. The video is a live performance of the band filmed at the studios of Digital Arts Entertainment Lab on the Georgia State University campus in downtown Atlanta. It was filmed as part of a video series focusing largely on Atlanta-based bands called indieATL (check out their web site here).

From Exile is a three-guitar outfit, and on this song guitarist Eric Guenther steps up to provide lead vocals. They’re all clean, but this qualifies as an Exception to the Rule around here, not only because the vocals are quite good but also because the song itself is so damned excellent — and you can download the live track for free, on top of everything else. Continue reading »

Apr 222012
 

In celebration of yesterday’s fifth annual Record Store Day, various people have made metal available for free download. For example, the organizer of the Death Metal Decapitation 2 festival in Toronto (scheduled to explode on May 4), Blacktooth Entertainment, has put together a free compilation of music from extreme bands who will be playing at the fest. The line-up includes Toronto’s Nephelium, an excellent band who we’ve previously featured at NCS. The comp includes two songs from Nephelium’s new album, Coils of Entropy.

Also on the comp are two tracks from a Montreal band named Derelict, who are also excellent (and we’ll be reviewing their new release, Perpetuation, shortly). We haven’t yet explored the music of the other bands on the comp — Deamon (Ottawa), The Unborn Dead (Toronto), and Blastmycosis (Toronto) — but this comp will make it easy to do that. To stream the music and download it for free, use this link:  http://blacktoothmay4.bandcamp.com/

But wait, there’s more! Free music from The Neologist and Dreaming Dead . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

Jan 122012
 

(Ex-TNOTB stalwart DemiGodRaven gifts us with another post, and this one brings news of free new music from The Neologist. Also, there’s something in here about Seattle. Personally, I love when people tell the rest of the world how grey and wet it is here.)

I have been to Seattle once before in my lifetime. Back in 2009 I was invited rather suddenly and without warning to join some friends on a pilgrimage to the Seattle Convention Center where the Penny Arcade Expo was being held, and so naturally that resulted in three other dudes and myself packed into a Ford Focus driving up I-5 for 11 1/2 hours so that we could arrive at seven in the morning, about an hour before the show started.

In a way it was everything I had imagined Seattle to be — it rained for two days and was pretty grey the rest of the time. Looking at it long enough, you can almost see how a movement like Grunge grew out of the Pacific Northwest. I personally didn’t find it that miserable, but you’re talking to a guy who enjoys Swallow The Sun, Katatonia, Before The Dawn, and Insomnium. If it’s the sort of beauty you’d find in a field completely blanketed with snow, a desolate city, or in Seattle’s case the sort of melodramatic grey that seems to permeate everything, then you’d better believe that I’m the first in line to enjoy every second of it. Of course, that doesn’t explain why I’m here now but then again there are a lot of things that need explaining.

Such as why this asshole does his job interviews in person. Continue reading »