SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OPETH, OMINATION, ORANSSI PAZUZU, THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR, AGRYPNIE , MAUL, TRIBULATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 032024
 


Opeth photo by Terhi Ylimäinen

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that I’m starting this Saturday’s roundup with Opeth‘s new song.

Okay, I see no hands. Well, almost none; I see my own because I’m a self-taught typist and therefore hunt and peck.

But I’ll try to be more surprising after we talk about Opeth.

OPETH (Sweden)

Based on the small dose of social media I’ve seen, Opeth‘s first single from their next album is proving to be divisive. (I can only stomach social media in small doses, like beets or eggplant). In one camp are people who are unhappy with the dominating return of Mikael Åkerfeldt‘s death growls for the first time since Watershed. In the other camp are those who’ve welcomed the return with open arms and gleeful grins. Can you guess which camp I’m in? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOD DETHRONED, TRIBULATION, AGRYPNIE, WORMED, VAFURLOGI, RÖTUAL

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 292024
 

Last weekend I didn’t pull together new music for a Saturday SEEN AND HEARD or a Sunday SHADES OF BLACK. I was away from home at a Pacific Northwest beachfront on a short vacation with family and friends. That led to late nights and late mornings and a desire to pay attention to physically-present human beings instead of communing with headphones and computers.

The consequence is now staring me in the face: Two weeks’ worth of new songs and videos to choose from for today and tomorrow, instead of one, when even one week’s worth is usually overwhelming. I made lists of links but of course could only listen to a small fraction of them. I was first drawn to some familiar justified names and then just threw mental darts, though the aim was not completely random. Here’s the result:

GOD DETHRONED (Netherlands)

No matter how deafening the racket or how urgent the whispers around the mouldering halls of the NCS HQ, we’ll always make time for new God Dethroned, and count ourselves lucky that Henri Sattler & co. are still alive and kicking. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY: TRIBULATION, INFIRMUM, NOCRUL, KAVYK, TAUR-IM-DUINATH, ZVIJER, MAESTUS, MANY SUFFER, KRASSEVILLE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 152020
 

 

One look at the title of this post tells you it’s a mega-sized round-up. Deprived by my fucking day job of the time to do round-ups during the work-week, I’ve been left to do them on Saturdays. But I had to do non-NCS work yesterday too, so here we are, with a Sunday collection of new songs and videos.

Big as it is, this post barely dents my list. But picking the music of these nine bands made sense to me, because I was again lucky to listen to songs which seemed to line up nicely into a playlist that flows rather than jars. For those of you who come here on Sundays for SHADES OF BLACK, fear not because I still plan to write that column too (though it will be short), and you’ll find some black metal below as a head-start.

TRIBULATION (Sweden)

To begin, I’ve chosen a new song and video named “Leviathans” by the Swedish band Tribulation. My appreciation for their music took some time to grow after they began changing their musical course, but witnessing their amazing performance at Iceland’s Ascension Festival in 2019 made me a true believer, and this new song does nothing to shake that. Continue reading »

TRIBULATION: “DOWN BELOW”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jan 222018
 

 

(Wil Cifer turns in this review of the new album by Tribulation, which will be released by Century Media on January 26th.)

 

The new album from this Swedish band is labelled by my iTunes as “gothic metal”. This is a bit of a misnomer as it sounds nothing like Type O Negative or My Dying Bride. They have been wearing a bit of make-up for some time now, but that affects their complexion more than their sound. The bells and whistles giving them a layer of atmosphere have multiplied. There are more synths on this album, but it makes it more melodic not darker.  But I have a high bar for what I call “goth”. If there are not less than six degrees of separation between a band and The Cure’s Pornography album it’s not “goth”.

What seems to have occurred in the time that has passed since they released The Children of the Night is this band has listened to a ton of classic metal from the ‘70s and ‘80s. While a logical progression for their sound, this makes for a much more streamlined version of their already melodic take on death metal. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: TRIBULATION, DDENT, TRESPASSER, CAVEMAN CULT, LEFT ALONE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 252017
 

 

It seems that the four-day Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. has made mincemeat out of our site’s traffic, and while we don’t depend on traffic for money, it’s not much fun to put a lot of work into a post and then realize that few people will see it. It’s a test of the severity of my own blog compulsion. As you can tell, my compulsion passed the test with flying colors.

These are a few recent things I enjoyed last night and this morning, and hope you will enjoy too.

TRIBULATION

Well, this is sort of recent. I somehow missed it when it came out 8 days ago. Not sure how that happened, but anyway, I found it last night. It’s a video for a new song named “The Lament” off the next album by Sweden’s Tribulation. Continue reading »

DEATH PSYCHEDELIC: JOHN FRUM, ARKHAMIN KIRJASTO, HEAVYDEATH, DRUID LORD, ABSTRACTER, TRIBULATION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Feb 172017
 

 

A couple of nights ago NCS contributor Grant Skelton asked if I knew of any “psychedelic death metal”. He said he’d been hunting for that and was finding the search to be a difficult one. One song in particular leaped to my mind immediately, but I decided to do some further thinking and word-searching through previous posts at NCS. And by coincidence, I also came across an announcement about a new band that seemed relevant.

What I’ve compiled below is the playlist of songs I sent Grant later that night. I’m probably stretching the boundaries of the term “psychedelic death metal”, though it’s not exactly a recognized genre label. But I had fun putting this together and thought I’d share it. But I’d also like to ask you to chime in with ideas of your own in the Comment section.

JOHN FRUM

So I thought I’d start with that announcement about a new band (pictured above), the name of which is John Frum. The announcement caught my eye both because of who’s in the band and because of the source of the band’s name, which is quite interesting. Here’s the explanation: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 22)

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015  1 Response »
Feb 102016
 

Tribulation-The Children of the Night

 

For today’s second trio of tracks that I’m adding to our list of 2015’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, I’ve grouped together songs that strike me as similar in spirit if not precisely in sound — and they complement each other when played back-to-back, too.

To check out the songs that preceded these in the rollout of the list, you’ll find them collected behind this link.

TRIBULATION

I confess that I was late diving into The Children of the Night, even after reading Wil Cifer’s NCS review of the album, which included these tantalizing words: Continue reading »

LIVE UNDEAD: A SNAPSHOT OF LIVE METAL IN 2015

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 302015
 

 

(Wil Cifer penned these reviews of three November shows in Atlanta, Georgia.)

Here’s a snapshot of metal onstage and in the flesh. Over the course of the past week I caught three different metal shows at three different venues with the genres spanning from industrial to thrash to black metal.

The first of these was almost on the periphery of what most might consider metal when Author & Punisher played The Earl, a hipster dive bar with a venue in the back.

We arrived just in time to catch the Portland duo Muscle and Marrow. Never really gave their last studio album The Human Cry the time to immerse myself in it, but their live show changed the way I think of them. There are metal elements to what they do, but I would not call them a metal band. Even then, of the three shows, I would say they were the most emotionally heavy band of the week. This was channeled in a very honest physical manner. Singer/ guitarist Kira Clark’s voice goes from an almost black-metal-like scathing scream to a vulnerable soprano. The duo implemented samples and layers of vocals triggered from a laptop off stage, but in comparison to Author & Punisher they were very organic. Continue reading »

TOURISM: THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR 2016 — ABBATH, HIGH ON FIRE, SKELETONWITCH, TRIBULATION

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Nov 162015
 

Decibel Magazine Tour

 

We just received the announcement of the line-up for the 2016 edition of THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR, and it’s a blockbuster: Running from mid-March to mid-April next year, the fifth installment of the tour will feature Abbath (performing not only songs from the band’s forthcoming debut album but also tracks from Immortal’s back catalogue), High On Fire, Skeletonwitch, and Tribulation. There will be regional openers in select markets announced soon.

Here’s further info that accompanied this announcement: Continue reading »

ESSENTIAL ENTRIES: APRIL 2015

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
May 132015
 

(In this post Dan Barkasi continues his monthly series recommending music from the previous month.)

Welcome back to Essential Entries. April has already passed, and it’s hard to believe. It feels like we – at least those unlucky enough to live in areas that deal with winter – were just freezing ourselves stiff, and now the temperatures are in the 80s. Thank goodness. Winter is awful. Thankfully, good music is the antithesis of such, and we’re loaded this month.

Also, my apologies for getting this up a bit late. Yours truly was out of town for over two weeks, and that resulted in a ton of catch-up listening in order to do this right. No way will this column ever be done half-heartedly!

With that out of the way, let’s get to the tunes.

 

Abyss – Heretical Anatomy

Gritty Canadian death metal. Abyss proves that it’s not all maple syrup and politeness up there. Equal parts catchy and punishing, this proves to be a great debut full-length. Continue reading »

 Older Entries