OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 1): WHITE WARD, TRIBAL GAZE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  4 Responses »
Jan 022023
 

 

We seem to pick up new readers every year, even as some older readers finally give up and bid us an adios, with or without middle fingers raised. So I guess it’s still worth telling people what they’re getting themselves into with this series, though it’s not worth writing a brand new preface, hence my copying of the one from last year.

This is traditionally the last part of our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza, which is why I’m beginning it today, since the other main part of the series ended today with this post. This particular series isn’t about best albums or best shorter releases, and it isn’t even about best songs. As the title says, it’s about “most infectious” songs. Some of those might be among the year’s best songs, but in every year there are stand-out songs that aren’t immediately infectious, and actually might never be. Conversely, there are some highly infectious songs every year that most people wouldn’t critically acclaim as great works of art.

The process of compiling this list is a bit bizarre, or at least very poorly planned. Let me explain: Continue reading »

WHITE WARD – FALSE LIGHT

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jun 132022
 

(Andy Synn continues our ongoing love-exchange with Ukraine’s White Ward)

To be honest with you, for the longest time I really wasn’t sure how to start this review.

After all, White Ward hail from a country that is still, over 100 days on, in the throes of an invasion, and to fail to acknowledge that fact seems somehow wrong.

And yet, at the same time, I don’t have the words to describe how this must be affecting the band… because I truly can’t imagine what they’re feeling or what they’re thinking right now.

So if I choose to just focus on the music, I hope that’s ok.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DOLDRUM, WHITE WARD, ESCHATOLOGY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 222022
 

My day job continues to pound the crap out of me, so I have to turn away from NCS pretty soon. But I thought I’d use the brief window of time I have left to pick out a few new songs and videos you might enjoy. Because the music is all “blackened” in different ways, I might have called it “SHADES OF BLACK (Weekday Edition)”.

The day job will continue to hammer me this weekend, but I should have time for at least another brief round-up tomorrow, plus the usual Sunday column.

DOLDRUM (U.S.)

We begin with an enormous surprise (at least to me), the first song revealed from the debut album by Denver-based Doldrum, which unites members of Erraunt and Gallows. The album’s name is The Knocking, Or The Story of the Sound that Preceded Their Disappearance, and Doldrum describe the music within as “Haunted Black Metal rooted in American folklore and the occult”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: OBSCURA, WHITE WARD, CELESTE, COGNITIVE, EX DEO, ENSHINE, ELDINGAR, ONE WITH THE RIVERBED, EDEN, OUR PLACE OF WORSHIP IS SILENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 162021
 

 

We’re not paid by the word around here (we’re not paid anything around here). But if we were, I wouldn’t make enough from this post to buy a cheap beer. Being short on time today, I’ve resorted to what I seem to be doing with increasing frequency in these round-ups, i.e., just foisting music and videos on you without commentary, artwork, or links.

Rest assured, however, that I’m foisting the following songs and films for a reason — because I think they’re worth your time. Or at least some of them will be worth your time, while others might not be your genre-cup of tea. I don’t expect that everyone out there will be as small-c catholic in their tastes as I am.

I did have enough time to briefly summarize the release info for the records that include the music I’ve chosen — or, regarding the first item, the artwork I’ve chosen, because there’s no music yet from that album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WHITE WARD — “INHALE MY DESPAIR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 242020
 

 

The distinctive Ukrainian band White Ward should need no introduction to our regular visitors, or for that matter to any attentive and adventurous metalheads. Their 2017 debut album Futility Report (which we premiered and reviewed here) introduced many new listeners to the band’s ingenious, genre-splicing musical alchemy and immediately put them on the global metal map. Two years later their second album, Love Exchange Failure, only solidified their reputation as an unpredictable but completely beguiling musical force.

To borrow the words of our own Andy Synn from his review of that most recent album, it presents an “unusual mix of biting riffs, moody jazz inflections and neo-noirish vibes that purposefully eschews the more ‘traditional’ aspects of Black Metal – the nature worship, the rustic spirituality – in favour of a sound that’s distinctly urban in both tone and texture, all neon and glass and cold concrete”.

“It’s the soundtrack to the world outside your window, a world of digital prophets and ephemeral profits, social media sirens and vicarious virtual violence. A world where what we put in no longer equals what we get out. Where what we give no longer balances what we take. A world on the brink of total Love Exchange Failure.”

But those two remarkable albums were not White Ward‘s first creations. Those were preceded by a sequence of shorter works that began in 2012 with the release of their first demo. Many of those earlier works were collected in an album-length compilation named Origins that the band digitally self-released in 2016. But now Debemur Morti Productions, who released the band’s two albums mentioned above, will also be releasing a physical edition of Origins on January 22, 2021. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 8): ABIGAIL WILLIAMS AND WHITE WARD

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  6 Responses »
Jan 152020
 

 

As mentioned earlier today in the last installment of this growing list, I’m making an effort to catch up after a couple of missed days, and so we have two Parts today instead of one. For this one I’ve chosen tracks from two stand-out 2019 releases. To catch up yourselves on the choices that preceded these, follow this link.

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS

I recognize that this first choice might be controversial, not because it’s a song from the latest Abigail Williams album, which rightly received plenty of acclaim in our own year-end lists as well as others, but because many of the people who embraced the album may have other favorite tracks that I didn’t choose.That’s the “problem” with an album like Walk Beyond the Dark. It’s so accomplished and so memorable that it makes the job of picking just one track, even for a list defined principally by “infectiousness”, a tough one. Continue reading »

WHITE WARD: “LOVE EXCHANGE FAILURE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 162019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Ukrainian band White Ward, which will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on September 20.)

To say that White Ward are the band Ulver might be today if they hadn’t totally abandoned the Black Metal aesthetic would, probably, be an over-simplification.

Both bands are, after all, distinct entities in their own right, and to imply that the former are simply a more metallic variant of the latter would be to do them a major disservice.

And, yet, there’s more than a hint of Perdition City to the Ukranian quintet’s new album, whose unusual mix of biting riffs, moody jazz inflections and neo-noirish vibes purposefully eschews the more “traditional” aspects of Black Metal – the nature worship, the rustic spirituality – in favour of a sound that’s distinctly urban in both tone and texture, all neon and glass and cold concrete.

But whereas Perdition City was billed as “music to an interior film”, this one is much more physical and grounded. It’s the soundtrack to the world outside your window, a world of digital prophets and ephemeral profits, social media sirens and vicarious virtual violence.

A world where what we put in no longer equals what we get out. Where what we give no longer balances what we take. A world on the brink of total Love Exchange Failure. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WHITE WARD — “DEAD HEART CONFESSION”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Aug 272019
 

 

In 2017 we devoted significant attention to Futility Report, the debut album of the Ukrainian iconoclasts White Ward, hosting the premieres of two songs and then of the album as a whole. It was (and still is) brilliant in a way that few albums are in any year. In its extravagant inventiveness and unexpected stylistic juxtapositions it could have been a train wreck, mangled bodies strewn about like broken toys, and fractured machines burning in a jumble of warped iron and splattered diesel. Instead, like mad scientists who are in fact visionaries, White Ward produced something through their unorthodox splicing of diverse musical genres (which included black metal and jazz) that was as enthralling as it was deviant.

In the abstract, contemplating how White Ward might have improved upon Futility Report in a second album is an odd exercise, because it assumes the possibility of gauging greater or lesser degrees of success when there is no objective measuring stick at hand for their kind of bohemian rhapsodies. At a minimum, however, it’s possible to say that the band’s second album, Love Exchange Failure (due for release on September 20 by Debemur Morti Productions), is still non-conformist, still surprising, still electrifying. And while it’s obvious that White Ward still have no inclination to follow any straight and narrow path, their new compositions seem more cohesive, and more powerful in their capacity to evoke strong emotional responses, without at all repressing the adventurous spirit that drove the first album from beginning to end. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SARCASM, THE GREAT OLD ONES, WHITE WARD, SIGHT OF EMPTINESS, WĘDROWCY-TUŁACZE-ZBIEGI

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jul 252019
 

 

You wanna know how many new songs I added to my listening list over just the 48 hours since I posted the last round-up of new music? Of course you don’t, but the number was 45. Don’t even bother trying to guess how many were already on the list from preceding days. There is a reason why the category tag on these posts is “Random Fucking Music”, because there’s not much rhyme or reason to making these selections from such a large universe of choices.

Of course, I haven’t listened to all 45 of those new songs I was curious to check out. Of the ones I did hear, I picked these five, going with my gut, and of course my highly refined sense of good taste. With luck, I’ll collect some more for tomorrow, to bring the week to an end with a BANG.

SARCASM

From their formative years in the early ’90s through today, the Swedish death metal band Sarcasm have had their fair share of obstacles, including personal tragedies, line-up changes, and the other vicissitudes of life that have often led bands of this vintage to sink beneath the waves, never to surface again. But Sarcasm have survived, although their sound has evolved since the earliest years.

Their first album (Burial Dimensions) didn’t surface until 2016, but they followed that quickly with 2017’s Within the Sphere of Ethereal Minds, and now their third album is headed our way via Chaos Records. Entitled Esoteric Tales Of The Unserene, it will be released on October 14th. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WHITE WARD — “FUTILITY REPORT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
May 122017
 

 

Futility Report is brilliant in a way that few albums are in any year. As much as anything else, it’s brilliant because in its vaulting inventiveness and unexpected juxtapositions it could have been a train wreck, mangled bodies strewn about like broken toys, and fractured machines burning in a jumble of warped iron and splattered diesel. Instead, like mad scientists who are in fact visionaries, White Ward have produced something through their freakish gene-splicing of genre families that’s utterly mesmerizing.

We’ve had the pleasure of premiering two songs from Futility Report already, and I could hardly be happier that we’ve been asked now to premiere a full stream of this remarkable album on the date of its release. Continue reading »

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