SEEN AND HEARD: THE CORONA LANTERN, WOUNDVAC, OLDBLOOD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 272020
 


The Corona Lantern – photo by Tom Šrejber

 

I had plans for a “Thanks Giving” post yesterday, ruminating on why the holiday still means something to me, even though as a godless heathen the only spirit in the sky I’m thankful to is this one. It was going to include observations based on this fascinating article about how the science of the brain helps understand why this time of year can be so melancholy, why the stresses of the pandemic have made the sadness (and the anger) even worse, and why we could all get some good out of not using our prefrontal cortex so much.

I was even going to explain what I had just learned, based on this absurdly detailed article and this video, about how toilet paper is made, and in particular about how the hell they perforate such fragile sheets of soluble cellulose. I even had a way of connecting that subject to the others, which will now remain a mystery, because I obviously ran out of time yesterday before I could write it.

Now that we’re on the other side of Thanksgiving Day I don’t feel up to writing the post I had conceived of, and will just say that somewhere along the way I intended to thank all of you who make NCS possible and all who support it, as well as all the bands — though I already did that when celebrating our 11th birthday not so long ago. But it can’t hurt to renew expressions of gratitude, and it might actually be therapeutic, so thanks again.

And now here’s a bit of music, a very tiny bit compared to my usual round-ups, but time is again about to run out. More coming this weekend. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOLFBRIGADE, KING, PNEUMA HAGION, WOUNDVAC, IDLE HANDS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 012019
 

 

Well, I had every intention of compiling a round-up of new metal to post on Halloween, with music suitable to the occasion. Unfortunately, life got in the way and left that plan in tatters. Now that I’m a day later, I’ve made a few adjustments in the original plan, although there are a couple of holdovers from what I originally conceived, including the opening song below. As now formulated, this round-up is quite a stylistic smorgasbord.

Be sure to come back to NCS tomorrow and Sunday, because this post doesn’t come close to exhausting all the new music from the last week or two that I’m eager to recommend. Unless life gets in the way again (always a strong possibility) I’ll have another round-up on Saturday and then the usual blackening of Sunday.

WOLFBRIGADE

I still have amazing memories of Wolfbrigade’s explosive show at Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle earlier this year, and of getting to spend time with the members off-stage. It was therefore doubly exciting to see September’s announcement that Southern Lord would be releasing the tenth album by these Swedish Lycanthro Punks — The Enemy: Reality — on November 8th. There’s only going to be one “single” from the album in advance of the release, and it was presented yesterday through a music video directed by MeANkind and edited by Henrik Norsell. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ARES KINGDOM, LIMOS, WOUNDVAC, VEIN COLLECTOR

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 022018
 

 

“Short But Sweet” is the tag we usually apply to reviews and streams of EPs and other releases that are less than album-length; we would apply the tag consistently except sometimes I forget to add it. Today I’m adding it when in one instance I probably shouldn’t, since one of the following releases is classified as an album — though it’s only about six minutes longer than one of the following EPs. But I’m late getting to it and wanted to say something about it without further delay.

This post is “Short But Sweet” for another reason: Pressed for time, I’m not able to write respectable reviews, just brief words of praise about each of these four items. I’ll add that each of these occupies a different genre space from the others, so you should check out all of them even if some don’t hit your own sweet spot.

ARES KINGDOM

My interest in this Kansas City death-thrashing band, whose recording roots go back into the mid-’90s, extends to the very early days of this site — the first review I wrote about their music was in May 2010, about six months after I launched NCS. I’ve written more things about them since then, not only because their music is so damned good but also because I also got interested in their personal stories. Continue reading »

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET: EXPANDER, WOUNDVAC, KEITZER, THE DEVIL WANTS HER SWAGGER BACK

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 192017
 

 

We usually begin Sundays here on our metallic island with a REARVIEW MIRROR post, but I decided this week I’d rather use the time to spread around some more new music — even though I did a shitload of that yesterday.

I was also motivated by the fact that the music of the following four bands — three of whom I discovered in the last 48 hours — seemed like it would all go together pretty well, because they’ve all got varying degrees of punk or hardcore in their DNA (though they’re all metal as hell, too). By the time you get to the end of this post, you’ll be smiling through broken teeth.

EXPANDER

First up is Expander. They’re ensconced in my old hometown of Austin, Texas. I paused in my musical explorations to check out some music from their new album Endless Computer when I spotted the very recognizable artwork of Luca Carey on the cover. The fact that the album is being released (on May 16th) by Nuclear War Now! was an added inducement, and another nail in the coffin came when I saw that the album was engineered by Kurt Ballou and mastered by Joel Grind. Continue reading »