OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 14): BRODEQUIN, WORMED, KONKHRA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 212025
 

In yesterday’s installment of this list I mentioned that I had a certain logic or organizing principle in mind when I grouped songs together in most of the remaining Parts of the list. Today’s feature is evidence of that.

All three of today’s songs are brutalizing experiences, but they’re also head-spinners, especially the first two. And both of those aspects are key reasons why I think the songs turned out to be infectious.

For those of you who might be stumbling into this list for the first time, you can find the preceding 13 installments via this link. Continue reading »

BECAUSE WITTY YEAR-END LIST TITLES ABOUT RUINING THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR SUCKERS — THE DGR YEAR ENDSTAVAGANZA PART FOUR: 20-11

 LISTMANIA 2024  8 Responses »
Dec 192024
 

(We’ve made it to the fourth installment of DGR‘s Top 50 year-end list, with another block of 10 releases being ranked, and one more section slated for arrival tomorrow.)

You ever do something constantly even though you’ve known for a while that it is taking a lot out of you and driving other people insane? I have habits that I can’t break and sometimes think that long ago we evolved past yearly ‘tradition’ and into something in the warehouse of yearly ‘ritual’ instead.

This YE list series is my closing act in a way, the final signing off, tying of the bow and boot out rifling out the door of my writing for 2024. The final summation in many ways of everything up to this point even though it’s the one time I allow my writing to really veer off the officious sounding mark and into casual territory, as if we’re sitting across the table from one another, and I – in my incredulously drunk state – have achieved inebriated Buddha status and am ready to guide along my vision of the eight-fold path of heavy metal and wild-eyed lunacy.

The realer reason of course is that it helps break up the daily routine and gives me reason to sit cross-legged in front of the computer and just type endlessly, laughing about how I’ve never learned how to type properly and am of the school of ‘whatever finger is closest, thumb is for space bar and I use my pinky if I’m feeling fancy’ yet am still somehow in the one-hundred words per minute range. It’s stupid, but it helps break up the end of the year when I feel like I’m just running in endless loops. Continue reading »

WORMED – OMEGON

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 092024
 

(DGR dives over the event horizon of the new album from Spanish cyber-slam destroyers Wormed)

There was a sort of mad cackle that emerged from me after the first few runs of Wormed‘s newest issuance from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

It was maybe after the third spin of Omegon that I couldn’t help but laugh, a semi-rueful one somewhere between Ralph Wiggum’s “I’m in danger!” chuckle and one that was in awe of the band somehow managing to unleash yet another disc of mind bending tempo shifts and instrumental destruction.

Honestly, what it comes down to is the question facing every writer when they’re handed a Wormed released (Omegon being my second) which is… “how in the unholy hell am I even going to describe this thing?“.

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 SATURDAY: WORMED, 1349, WRACH, WOUND COLLECTOR, CEREMONY OF SILENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 042024
 


Wormed

I think I’ll begin by previewing some likely disruptions in our usual roll-out of posts during next week.

As you may know, our site is a principle sponsor of Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, which will have its latest incarnation on May 8-10. Andy Synn, DGR, and I (islander) will all be working the fest, beginning with a lot of heavy lifting on the day before it begins, culminating in a pre-fest show that night.

Speaking for myself, I haven’t agreed to any premieres from May 8-10 and it’s unlikely I’ll manage any of the usual weekend posts on May 11-12. Rumor has it that Andy and DGR may write some things in advance to keep us from going dark during those days, and maybe some of our other writers will send things in.

Though I expect to be bleary-eyed every morning, I also hope to at least publish more of Comrade Aleks‘ interviews, many of which I have in hand, as well as an interview from Vietnam by Vizzah Harri.

With that notification out of the way, I’ll turn to a few picks for this Saturday’s roundup of new songs and videos. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TRACKS FROM A NEW SPLIT BY WORMED AND COPREMESIS

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Feb 252022
 

Today Buried Zine and Stay Free Recordings are releasing a limited-edition split by two bands who’ve made brutality a hallmark of their music, albeit in very different ways: the Spanish band Wormed and the deceased New York band Copremesis.

Buried Zine has explained that they selected these two bands and recordings for this collaboration “to celebrate the diversity and extremity of the brutal death metal scene, in both musical styles and conceptual approaches: Wormed‘s progressive brutality, extreme musical precision and galactic themes contrast to the base perversity of Copremesis’ raw and darkly humoured ultra brutal death metal”.

The split features two previously unreleased live recordings by both bands, pressed into 7-inch vinyl records of varying colors, and to help spread the word about the release we’re presenting premiere streams of one performance from the split by each band. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WORMED — “METAPORTAL”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jul 192019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new EP by the Spanish technical death metal band Wormed, which was released on July 19th by Season of Mist.)

Wormed are, without a doubt, one of the more ridiculous acts in Metal.

And I mean that entirely as a compliment.

Despite conventional wisdom that “less is more” the Spanish quartet have made a career out of their seemingly endless pursuit of ludicrous excess, with practically every song (and album) attempting to be faster, heavier, and louder – more beats per minute, more notes per second, more babbling sci-fi nonsense – than the one before it.

It’s perhaps ironic, then, to find that the band’s latest EP strongly suggests that sometimes less IS more, as these four tracks prove to be just the right bite-sized portion to allow both new and old listeners to get their fill of brutal techstravagance without feeling like their overstuffed brains are going to explode at the end of it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SORCERY, CRYPT SERMON, BAEST, WORMED, AXIOMA, [4672]

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 012019
 

 

To get this new week off to a rousing start I have a round-up of new music from six bands, culled from the good, the bad, and the ugly sounds that found their way to my earholes this past weekend. As is often the case, part of my design in this culling was to provide a selection of metal that might appeal to a range of tastes.

SORCERY

2019 has already proven to be another banner year for death metal, but the news that Sorcery will be releasing a new album still lit up my head like a Roman candle. I know it seems like my enthusiasm overflows on a daily basis around here (the appearances, by the way, aren’t deceiving), but Sorcery still occupy a special place in my black-hearted affections. (The fact that their new album is adorned with another fantastic piece of artwork by Juanjo Castellano is sweet icing on the cake.) Continue reading »

WORMED: “KRIGHSU”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 292016
 

Wormed-Krighsu

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Spain’s Wormed.)

If there is one overriding theme in a bunch of my reviews here at NCS, it has been a want to describe much of the death metal genre’s method of musical devastation on a cosmic scale. In lieu of the gore-splattered viscera that often seems perfect for describing the various collections of intestines that death metal often romps around in, I’ve found that planetary annihilation, destruction of universes, and universal phenomena have time and time again been perfect for drawing allegories when writing around the differing arsenals of blast beats and guitar-fire trench-runs that many death metal bands get up to.

I have been recently trying to change this up a bit. I know that constantly seeing the same descriptors over and over again can make it seem like authors have copy+paste notebooks next to them when writing reviews. But there is one band for whom I feel I must make an exception, and that is Spain’s sci-fi brutal death metal architects Wormed — because Wormed are death metal on a cosmic scale, and nothing would be more fitting as a descriptor of the gamma rays of a dying star destroying a nearby galaxy than an album by Wormed; that could be what has happened within even one of their songs.

Plus, up until 2013’s Exodromos, it’s not as if we could pretend this was an opportunity that would present itself frequently. But coming in hot three years later is Krighsu, Wormed’s late-March followup to Exodromos, and it promises a return to the maddening sci-fi machinations of a band who occupy their own realm of hammering death metal, with a helping of growls so low they could rumble the Earth. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WORMED, GLORIOR BELLI, NAPALM DEATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 092016
 

Wormed-Krighsu

 

I had planned a very large round-up of recent music for today. It’s not finished yet, but I still have hopes. Yet as I try to catch up on sharing metal that I discovered over the last week, I continue to be overtaken by metal that has appeared within the last hour or two. Rather than try to cram these new discoveries into that planned round-up, I’m setting that aside so I can bring you this trio of items while they’re still hot off the presses.

WORMED

I’m going to assume that everyone knows Wormed has a new album named Krighsu, and that it will be essential listening here in the first quarter of 2016. And now you can get started listening to it, because a full album stream premiered today at DECIBEL. Continue reading »

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