Jun 112022
 


Panzerfaust – photo by Samantha Carcasole

I got an unreasonably early start on the day. On the plus side, that gave me the time to pull together the following large roundup of new discoveries before too much daylight burned. All these songs and videos came out since the first of June.

Fair warning: I have equally exorbitant plans for tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

PANZERFAUST (Canada)

When I saw Panzerfaust at this year’s Maryland Deathfest I wrote this on my FB page: “A wizard of a drummer seated in a garden of cymbals and using all of them; a man-mountain of a frontman who by his mere presence enhances the frightfulness of the music; a pair of axe-slingers who play their instruments near-upright; the creation of an aura of ritual but with visceral thrusts: an amalgam of hallucination and hammering. Well, I’ve missed a lot of sets at MDF but the one by Panzerfaust tonight is the best of the bunch so far and it isn’t close.” Continue reading »

Nov 292017
 

 

(Our ally Gorger from Norway returns to NCS with an even half-dozen underground gems from 2017 that we haven’t previously reviewed. To find more of his recommendations, type “Gorger” in our search bar or visit Gorger’s Metal.)

 

In an attempt at getting up to speed, I’m presenting no fewer than six releases. Short ones the lot of them. Mostly EPs, but also a split and a single. Last time around, I made the error of including a formerly presented release. To make sure I don’t do the same mistake again, I start off by doing the same mistake deliberately this time. Continue reading »

Dec 162015
 

The Wakedead Gathering-Fuscus

 

Gaze upon the frightening album art above (created by the talented Karmazid), and imagine the Great Grey Witch lurking in the ooze of an ancient festering swamp, watching and waiting in the Stygian blackness for the time of her revenge. It accompanies the new album by Ohio’s The Wakedead Gathering, an album that presents an allegory about those who would dismiss scientific inquiry in favor of religious fanaticism — “the story of of a witch hunt that turns hunter into prey and the children of those so-called ‘righteous’ perpetrators into something… not entirely human!”

The name of the new album is Fuscus: Strings of the Black Lyre, and it has been scheduled for release on February 5, 2016, by the always fascinating I, Voidhanger Records. The music on the record — which follows the band’s two previous full-lengths, Tenements of Ephemera (2010) and The Gate and the Key (2013) — displays a variety of terrifying sounds as it follows the narrative concept, and today we give you a sample of what lies in wait with our premiere of the fifth track, “Lungwort“. Continue reading »

Mar 202011
 

We’ve got an NCS reader and commenter who uses the nom de plumeSurgical Brute.” Every now and then in his post comments, he’ll mention a band whose music is new to me. I usually try to check out those bands, and so far, he hasn’t steered me wrong.

Recently, I invited him to send us five new recommendations, because it’s pretty clear to me that my tastes and his coincide to a significant degree. He responded with five bands whose music I’d never heard. I’ve been saving up those recommendations for a MISCELLANY post, which is the series that recounts my adventures into the musical unknown. I’m splitting up those five bands into two MISCELLANY posts, with the second one to follow next weekend, if not sooner.

So, here we go: For each band, I’m including Surgical Brute’s brief description of the music, my own reaction to a single song (or two) picked at random from each band, and then the song itself for you to hear and judge for yourself. Here’s the line-up for today, in the order that Surgical Brute described them to me via e-mail: The Stone (Serbia), Graveyard Dirt (Ireland), and The Wakedead Gathering (U.S.). Bear in mind that I hadn’t heard the music before sitting down to listen for this post. It turned out to be quite a varied offering of music.

THE STONE

This Serbian band formed in 1996, originally under the name Stone To Flesh, and in the following years they’ve produced quite a lot of music. Their most recent full-length — the band’s fifth — is called Umro (which seems to mean “died” or maybe “dead”). It came out in 2009 on Folter Records. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »