News flash: If you don’t get shit-faced at night, sleep half the next day away and wake up with a crippling hangover, you can get more stuff done. Unlike last weekend, I didn’t do any of that this weekend. Turns out that parking on the couch with snoozing cats and watching movies while sipping moderate amounts of booze works out a lot better when it comes to writing for NCS the next day. And so I got this column done in time to blacken the sabbath, as usual.

The following selections are a reminder that lots of new music is still coming out near year-end, even though it’s less likely to get noticed now. We still have the winter solstice ahead of us, and especially in the pagan-influenced realms of black metal we’ll undoubtedly see a surge that day, even with only 10 days left in 2021 at that point. By all means, enjoy all the YE lists that are coming out here and elsewhere, but don’t completely take your eyes off what else December is bringing us.

USTALOST (U.S.)

Anything connected to the NYBM band Yellow Eyes is going to be worth a listen, and that’s certainly true of Ustalost, even if you missed the project’s tremendous full-length debut in 2016 (The Spoor of Vipers). The connection in this case is that Yellow Eyes vocalist/guitarist Will Skarstad is the man behind Ustalost. Under the Ustalost name he released a new album named Before the Glinting Spell Unvests on December 17th (via Gilead Media). Continue reading »