Someone left a comment on one of today’s earlier posts saying “NCS has always been the most long-winded out of all the metal sites.” Really hurt my feelings. Made me feel real low and pouty. Some people just wanna know if the shit is awesome or not. Makes me wanna just clam up and let all this shit that I saw and heard today speak for itself.
EARLY GRAVES
New Early Graves album. Red Horse. Out 10/30 on No Sleep Records. Pre-Order available at http://
(In this post, DGR reviews the new album by Sweden’s Zonaria.)
Zonaria are one of the first bands I have ever found myself waiting for a long time to produce a new album. The four-year gap between the group’s latest release Arrival Of The Red Sun and their previous disc The Cancer Empire was almost painful. I cannot fathom what it is like being a fan of Necrophagist or Wintersun by this point (I still don’t believe Time exists) and just constantly waiting for that new release to come out.
I got into Zonaria after randomly stumbling upon the group’s video for the song “At War With The Inferior”, which is a pretty slow yet epic-sounding song that picks up a bit at the end. I was overjoyed when I got a hold of The Cancer Empire and found that the band had the chops to go incredibly fast as well, and were a huge-sounding collective who had the melo-death speed but seemed heavily influenced by Hypocrisy. The similarity is commonly pointed out by this point, and yeah, it is very much there, especially if you listen to Hypocrisy’s latest, but Zonaria have nonetheless always felt like their own band anyway.
They’re a young group from Umea, Sweden, who have just nailed it from the get-go, with the only real roadblock being the gap between this latest release and the previous one. I’ve been chomping at the bit for the new one and was excited as hell when I heard the few songs they had released in advance. The music was different enough, and the guitars seemed a little thinner, but it still retained the band’s massive, apocalyptic sound. However, those were only two songs, and there are ten on Arrival Of The Red Sun. So how does the rest of the album hold up? Continue reading »
Over the last 24 hours I saw different kinds of web teasers about new music from four bands whose past material I’ve really liked, and by coincidence I found out about all of them through Facebook posts by the French label, Listenable Records (even though Listenable is not currently the label for all the bands). So it made sense to collect all those teasers in one post, right?
LIVARKAHIL
Last September I featured (here) the new official video from this French band for a song called “Above All Hatred”, which was then due to appear on their second album, Signs of Decay. The music reminded me of Behemoth-style blackened death metal with some DevilDriver groove in the mix, and man, did it have one motherfuckin’ head-smasher of an opening riff. Actually, the whole song was a sweet head-smasher. Signs of Decay was a wonderful album, too — one of many I just never got around to reviewing last year.
Livarkahil are following up Signs of Decay with a free digital EP named Wrath of God, which will be released later this month. I like that strategy of following a full-album release with a free EP. Today, Listenable and the band started streaming a track from the EP called “Through Hatred and Devotion” — and yes, hatred is a consistent theme for Liverkahil. The song proves once again that Livarkahil know how to start a song strong — and how to follow the intro with pummeling rhythms, blistering vocals, and catchy melodies. Have a listen to this brutal beast right after the jump. Continue reading »
No, we’re not talking about the swine flu, or the avian flu, or the next animal virus that decides humans would be a nice host environment upgrade. We’re talking about new metal that has the potential to be sick.
On the first day of the New Year, we posted a round-up of new extreme metal albums forecast for release 2010, along with our list of the 21 we most wanted to hear.
One month has now passed, and we’ve discovered some forthcoming releases we didn’t know about on January 1. Seems like a good time for an update! So, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about forthcoming albums from bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that fit the profile of music we cover on this site (with a couple of Exceptions to the Rule).
So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources over the last 31 days about forthcoming releases we missed in our January 1 list:
AGALLOCH: “So what can we expect from the band’s long-awaited follow-up to Ashes Against the Grain? According to an interview songwriter John Haughm gave to German TV last May, ‘expect the unexpected.’ Haughm says that the next release will be ‘completely different’ from its predecessors — ‘a bit darker,’ closer to black metal, but with the same kind of dynamics that Agalloch is known for. As for when we can expect the new album, Haughm said that he hoped it would be out by May 2010.”
APOCALYPTICA: “Finnish rock cello quartet APOCALYPTICA has entered Sonic Pump studios in Helsinki to begin recording its new album for a spring/summer release.” [This is one of those Exceptions to the Rule.]
APOSTASY: “Four new songs from the Swedish black metal act APOSTASY are available for streaming on the band’s MySpace page. The tracks will appear on the group’s forthcoming third full-length album, Nuclear Messiah, which will be released later in the year.” (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »