AN A-Z OF EVERYTHING WE’VE MISSED

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Oct 302018
 

 

(Despite what the title of this post says, Andy Synn hasn’t managed to review every fine 2018 album and EP we’ve heretofore failed to write about, but he does catch up with more than two dozen of them.)

While lots of blogs/zines are already (or soon will be) switching their focus away from covering new releases and towards consolidating their annual “Best Of…” lists, here on NCS island we’re still doing our very best to bring as many new (and some not so new) albums/artists to your attention as possible.

Of course the truism that “there’s simply too much music out there” remains as painfully accurate as ever, and it pains me to admit that I/we simply can’t cover all the releases we want to, in the depth we want to, no matter how hard we try.

So consider this article a voluntary mea culpa acknowledging our limitations and a (probably futile) attempt to make amends a little bit to all the bands and artists who we may have missed or ignored over the last several months, as well as to shine a light on a couple of upcoming releases you’ll probably want to keep your eyes/ears open for. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ZEALOTRY, FALGAR, RAAT, NECHOCHWEN, NATTRAVNEN, NIHILO, JUNE 1974, CHTHONIC, DRH, DAIRA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 262018
 

 

This was hard. I spent more than an hour yesterday just going through all the e-mails that had landed in the NCS e-mail septic tank in-box since I left on vacation last Friday and, from what I found there, adding to the endless list of new music and videos I thought might be worth checking out. And then I started going through what I’d added to the list, listening and watching until I had to make myself stop.

I found a great many dramatically different things I thought would be worth sharing, so many that I picked 10 of them for this post. And that’s not counting such things as Revolver’s exclusive song premiere for Devouring Star, the just-released split by Ragana and Thou, Terror’s new track, or the new track by Minsk that premiered at DECIBEL, among others. (You see what I did there?)

We’ve got three premiere features of our own today that I need to finish, so I’ve got to keep my own commentary in this post a bit briefer than usual.

ZEALOTRY

First up is the title track from At the Nexus of All Stillborn Worlds, the new album by the Boston death metal band Zealotry. It will be released on December 7th through Unspeakable Axe Records. Continue reading »

ZEALOTRY: “THE LAST WITNESS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 142016
 

Zealotry-The Last WItness

 

(Bill Xenopoulos, a guest writer from Greece who also writes for Rock Overdose and has his own music blog here, rejoins us with this review of the new album by Boston’s Zealotry.)

Zealotry is a Boston based death metal band and they have been around since 2009, when they released their first demo. The Last Witness is their sophomore album and my first exposure to their music. Their members play in various other known bands. Tougas, for example, plays in Chthe’ilist, who released an impressive debut album earlier this year, and First Fragment, who will release their first full-length in the next month. Zealotry play a unique and difficult-to-approach death metal and The Last Witness is a tough nut to crack, but once you’ve done that, you’ll be exposed to a mesmerizing creation.

But who is the last witness? And what is he a witness of? Let us begin from the artwork and then proceed to the music. Maybe this isn’t a very common approach, but neither is Zealotry’s music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZEALOTRY — “CYBERNETIC EUCHARIST”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Apr 072016
 

Zealotry-The Last WItness

 

Especially as a non-musician, I’m constantly amazed at the enormous array of technical skill that’s on display in the temples of extreme metal worldwide. But as most serious listeners understand, even eye-popping technical skill will only take a band so far… and actually, not very far at all when the performer’s sole objective seems to be displaying dexterity at high speed. Similarly, throwing in such things as a few bursts of discordant noodling or contrasting ambient sections does not make a death metal band “progressive”. Which brings me to the song we’re about to premiere by the Boston-based band Zealotry — a band that includes members of such other notable groups as Chthe’ilist, Serocs, Inhumatus, and Myth of I.

The name of the song is “Cybernetic Eucharist”, and it appears on their second album The Last Witness, set for release by Lavadome Productions on April 22. The technical performances do indeed display top-shelf skill, often at speed levels near the red zone, but there’s an ingenious method to this madness — this is the kind of death metal that in my book genuinely does merit the label “progressive”. Continue reading »