UADA: “CREPUSCULE NATURA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 072023
 

(We welcome guest contributor Didrik Mešiček, who makes his first NCS appearance with the following review of a new album by Portland-based Uada which is set for release by Eisenwald on September 8th.)

I didn’t know I liked Uada up until this spring. Sure, it was vaguely alluring, with a sense of a woodland ritual and thus I had respect for the band, but their music never truly grabbed me. However, I got to see them live in March and while the sound was actually really bad, it was still very enjoyable.

In the following weeks, having listened to the setlist a few more times, I realised I absolutely adore their melodic and ritualistic black metal sound, and that means this album could not be released at a better time for me. Crepuscule Natura will be released on the 8th of September on the Eisenwald label, almost exactly three years after their previous album, Djinn. Continue reading »

UADA: “DJINN”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Aug 112020
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by Portland’s UADA. The album will be released by Eisenwald on September 25th. Kris Verwimp created the cover art.)

After falling for an exchange in the comments on a Facebook post comparing this album to the likes of Alkaline Trio and New Model Army, my dark heart was sparked to check it out. Yes, this album might be more melodic than what I remember this Portland band doing before, but you can put away the cloves as it is still very solidly black metal.

I think the misunderstood excitement of my Facebook friends was based on them becoming content with lazy bands who stick close to the pack, doing little to set themselves apart as individuals. Ironic, considering black metal is the outsider genre. On this album UADA expand their sonic arsenal with new tones to create some cool, powerful metal riffs. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 10): IMMORTAL, UADA, SKELETONWITCH

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  10 Responses »
Jan 212019
 

 

After a weekend break, I’m resuming the rollout of this series, which will continue every day this week (and beyond). Today I decided to group together tracks from some of the bigger names in the corpse-strewn battlefields of our beloved ear-gouging genres. There are some other well-known names scattered among the rest of this week’s episodes of the list, along with lesser-known names that deserve a lot more attention.

To check out the previous installments of this expanding list, you’ll find them behind this link, and to learn what this series is all about, go here.

IMMORTAL

I suppose Northern Chaos Gods surprised more than a few people, and at least provided a resounding answer to the questions about what Immortal might be able to accomplish if and when they re-surfaced following the acrimonious departure of Abbath. If there was a surprise (and for me there was), it was that the band’s ninth album, arriving nine years after All Shall Fall, would turn out to be one of their best in such an unusually long career. Continue reading »

A DIRTY HALF DOZEN: ACHERONTAS / ASCENSION / UADA / WIEGEDOOD / WILT / WOLVHAMMER

 Album Reviews  13 Responses »
May 242018
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn has combined reviews of new albums by a sextet of bands from both sides of the Atlantic.)

Phew, I’ve been trying to get this particular column written for quite a while now, but a cruel convergence of work, illness, and prepping for this year’s MDF meant that I’ve honestly been struggling to find the time to sit down and put finger to keyboard.

On the plus side, however, this has given me a little bit more time to absorb each album, and will hopefully result in a better overall product, so perhaps I/we shouldn’t complain too much.

Anyway, without further ado, here are six albums, all of them Black Metal, yet all subtly different and differentiated, originating from a variety of different locations around the globe (Greece, Germany, Belgium, Canada, and the USA), which I think are well worth your attention. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): GUÐVEIKI, TRNA, UADA, RAAT

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Mar 182018
 

 

Three weeks have passed since the last of these columns, mainly because of my vacation to Iceland, so I decided to double up today. I’m also still experiencing postpartum depression from the severance of myself from Iceland. To treat the condition, I chose to include some new music from Icelandic black metal bands, one in this Part of the column and another in Part 2. Other parts of the world are also included, before the flood of Icelandic black metal covers them like the deluge of Genesis and reduces the globe to a state of watery chaos.

GUÐVEIKI

Mystískaos is a record label (or perhaps more accurately, a creative collective) formed through the collaboration of American musician Alex Poole (Skáphe, Chaos Moon, Entheogen) and Icelandic musician H.V Lyngdal (Wormlust, Ljáin, Martröð). Its list of releases principally consists of the projects of those two creators, but includes participation by other people within their circles, and now also includes a partnership with Fallen Empire. Continue reading »

CULTHE FEST 2018

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Feb 262018
 

 

The fifth edition of Culthe Fest will take place on March 31, 2018, in the city of Münster, Germany. When the festival’s organizers invited us to help spread the word about the event as a co-sponsor, the answer was a no-brainer, based on one glance at the line-up. Feast your eyes upon these names:

UADA (USA)
THE GREAT OLD ONES (FR)
VERHEERER (DE)
HEMELBESTORMER (BE)
TURIA (NL)
ALBEZ DUZ (DE)
BELTEZ (DE)
VYRE (DE)

With only one exception, these are all bands whose music we’ve enthusiastically praised at our site — and the one exception (Vyre) are a band we’ve happily discovered for the first time as a result of their confirmed appearance at Culthe Fest 2018. So it wasn’t a difficult decision to lend our own putrid name to the event. The difficulty is that we’re far away from Münster and haven’t yet gotten the teleporter operational, because this would be a hell of a show to attend in person. If you can be there, you damned well should! Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: BEHEMOTH, GORGUTS, UADA, BLACK SPACE RIDERS

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 072016
 

Behemoth-Nergal

 

We had such a big line-up of premieres and reviews yesterday that I didn’t have time to pull together a round-up of new things, so I’ll do some of that today. As a consequence of waiting, the first couple of items in this round-up of new videos (and one new song excerpt) will no doubt have been seen by most of you already. I still want to leave them here because they’re so good — though I don’t think I need to say much about them. The second two are somewhat more recent, and are by bands who don’t have quite the name recognition among metal heads as the first two, so I’ll spill a few words about those.

BEHEMOTH

Nergal has a reliably interesting artistic vision for Behemoth’s videos, and a knack for enlisting help from talented people in making them a reality — including Sharon Ehman of Toxic Visions for the costume and prop design in this video, among a long list of others (who are identified in the notes to the video here). Of course, the dramatic natural setting for this video is the real star. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): CRIMINAL, GRAVES AT SEA, UADA, INTO ORBIT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 282016
 

Criminal-Fear Itself

The flood of new metal, which has been especially torrential over the last 10 days, continues unabated. We’re really not even keeping our heads above water, despite posting a slew of round-ups since the weekend, but I think we’ve at least got our nostrils in the air.

With welcome help from Grant Skelton on today’s second item, I’m again collecting lots of very good and very diverse metal discovered over the last 48 hours. A second part of the collection will appear later today.

CRIMINAL

There’s a really long, twisting and turning story behind the name Criminal. I’m sure it’s a name well-known to many of you, so I’m going to severely truncate the history lesson before moving to what really counts — a new song from a new album. Continue reading »