Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OLDE OUTLIER

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 192025
 

(Today is the day when Iron Bonehead Productions releases the debut album by the eldritch Australian death metal band Olde Outlier, and coincidentally it is the day when we publish the following excellent interview by our Comrade Aleks of the Olde Outlier songwriter and current drummer Beau Duer.)

The Australian group Olde Outlier is the successor to the disbanded death-black metal act Innsmouth, whose members already had years of experience cutting extreme metal. The names of these underground scene veterans are Beau Duer (drums), Ben Askew (guitars), Mark Appleton (vocals), and Greenbank (bass). Together they bring back to life the spirit of early ’90s death metal, with a lean toward rough death-doom in the spirit of early Tiamat, resulting in four solid, well-developed tracks.

The first track, “The Revellers,” is a good start: eight minutes of inventively performed, focused, old-school death metal, but with pure, abstract, atmospheric melodies. The ravenous mid-tempo “The Sounding of Hooves” quickly transports us into the catacombs of Paradise Lost-esque death-doom, and it’s not the only time Olde Outlier changes the track’s direction in its 11-minute runtime. “Swept” doesn’t disappoint either, captivating us with its unabashed retro charm, embedded in the instrumentation, the melody, and the vocalist’s raspy growl. The technically proficient “From Shallow Lives to Shallow Graves” exudes the innocence of the extreme metal scene’s early years, as does the closing track, “All Is Bright.”

But I’m not going to do another review, as we had a conversation with Beau himself, so here’s a better narrator regarding Olde Outlier and everything around it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVICTUS — “WANDERING ASHDREAM”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 182025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to spill a considerable volume of words about a single song of death metal that ends just shy of the four-minute mark, because it is such an explosive reminder that even the last month of the year is a bad time to sleep on new music.

The song is “Wandering Ashdream” and it’s from the forthcoming second album by the Japanese band Invictus which will be released next month by Memento Mori and Me Saco Un Ojo. As mentioned, it’s the kind of track that inspires a great flooding of words, but the album as a whole does the same thing, witness these portions of the labels’ press statement about the record: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM SEB PAINCHAUD (TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

 LISTMANIA 2025  No Responses »
Dec 182025
 

(For the 10th year in a row (but who’s counting?) we’re delighted to share a year-end music list from Canadian musician Seb Painchaud — whose band Tumbleweed Dealer finally came out with a new album this year! “Eclectic” has always been the first word that comes to mind in perusing Seb’s lists, and as you’ll discover, this year is no different. )

In this day and age, releasing music is like screaming into the abyss, except the echoes of your screams are interrupted by ICE advertisements. So, let’s give a nod to not only the following releases that grabbed my attention this year, but to every artist participating in the futile process of vomiting their art into this digital age. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: AFSKY

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 182025
 


photo by Naya Buch

(In October of this year the Eisenwald label released a new album (Fællesskab) by the Danish black metal band Afsky, and that led our Comrade Aleks to reach out for an interview with Ole Pedersen Luk, which we present today.)

Arguably the most promising black metal entity in the Danish realm, Afsky still exists as a solo project, although its founder, Ole Pedersen Luk, toured with guest musicians in the fall of 2025 to support the release of his fourth full-length Fællesskab. While Afsky’s previous albums have displayed Ole’s interest in ancient literature and history in general, in his new songs Ole offers a critical assessment of modern society, going somewhat beyond banal misanthropy.

However, Ole has, again, framed his views on society in a universal format. The six tracks on Fællesskab are written in the spirit of harsh yet melodic black metal, with an extremely focused and intense delivery. This unique poetic perception of reality, coupled with perfectionism and, to some extent, a talent for storytelling, allowed Ole to articulate his ideas into a coherent artistic narrative.

At first, it seems like piercing vocals, signature black metal tremolos, and high-speed riffs leave little room for stylistic variation, and yet ghostly folk motifs flit by like shadows across a couple of tracks, and although all these features could be met in different proportions in a few up-to-date black metal albums, Ole managed to keep his original vision of black metal as it is. Due to the tour’s schedule it wasn’t that easy, but finally here it is – an interview with Ole himself. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A TOP 20 LIST FROM WIL CIFER

 LISTMANIA 2025  No Responses »
Dec 172025
 

(We present NCS writer Wil Cifer’s list of the Top 20 metal albums of 2025.)

Still waiting on the world to end, this slow-burning apocalypse is more like the awkward silent pauses in a David Lynch movie. And much like this unease, 2025 felt like an odd year in music to me, but in the fifth year of every decade, there is a shift, so that transition is being felt for sure. Not as death metal dominant as last year’s list, and more balanced genre-wise, really only one entry rides the line on what is metal, but it’s sonically heavy enough to belong here.

With my neuro-spicy brain, these kinds of lists can be a bit of an obsessive sticking point for me that can lead down a rabbit hole of procrastination until I feel it’s perfect. Though the funny thing is, perfect does not exist, so I chose between obsession and acceptance, and accepted the fact I would just go with the albums I listened to the most, since at the end of the day, if you only give an album a couple of spins it really matters little what the Anthony Fantano’s of the world think about it if it does not resonate with you and hook you in. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOID MONUMENTS — “THE SIGN OF BLASPHEMY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 172025
 

(written by Islander)

Occasionally in these premiere features we dive right into the music we’re showcasing, just for the pure hell of it, and then afterward come back and give you some details about who’s doing it and where the music comes from. This is one of those times.

The name of the death metal song you’re about to hear is “The Sign of Blasphemy“, and it’s as brazenly wicked at its core as that title signifies. It’s also vicious, poisonous, revelrous, frighteningly sinister, grimly oppressive, supernaturally chilling, furiously bone-smashing, and so well-written that it quickly drives its many fiendish hooks deep into a listener’s head. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF THE OUTSIDE: A 2025 LIST BY NEILL JAMESON

 LISTMANIA 2025  4 Responses »
Dec 172025
 


photo by Kassandra Carmona

(One of the perennial highlights of our year-end LISTMANIA series are the articles Neill Jameson (of Krieg) has contributed, and we’re very happy that he’s doing so again this year.)

If you’ve paid any attention over the last few years the first thing you’ll notice is my hair looks fucking wonderful, thank you. You’ll also notice this is my only list for the site this year. It’s actually my only list for any site besides my Substack, where the entirety of my list is, for better or worse. Since you asked, I’ve spent the better part of the year trying to carve that out as my main place where I drop the shit that falls out of my head. And what a year it’s been. Jesus Christ.

I don’t need to really tell the readers of this site why this year has been a motherfucker because I’m pretty sure the bulk of you didn’t vote for it. But it just seems like 2025, more than most, will not make too many “best years of my/your life” lists, whenever those get posted, April probably.

If we want to focus on whatever “positives” came out of this year, the main theme has been a massive flow of quality music, regardless of what genre you’re into. I don’t really remember a year starting so strongly and finishing with the same gusto, or zest if you will. I could have had a top 40 by fucking May. But the subtheme (minor to this year’s major? I haven’t slept in two days) is the amount of outsider records that came through the gates, artists who really stopped giving a fuck about convention and decided that rules were merely a suggestion, which can either be intoxicating or infuriating, especially if you have no patience for whimsy like me.

So for my contribution to the grand tradition of No Clean Singing lists which, frankly, are always outsider to the norms of the metal journalistic masses anyway, I wanted to focus on bands who colored outside the lines, either in their forms or in what expectations people may have had for them. 

And with that, let’s get cracking. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BIZARREKULT — “BLIKKET HENNES”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The creation of music and its exposure to listeners is, as we all know, an inherently synergistic phenomenon. At least when the music is honest and authentic, the artist thinks something, feels something, is driven by the need to express those thoughts and emotions, maybe even as compulsively as the need to eat and drink. But the listener exposed to musical creations reacts based on their own thoughts, feelings, and histories. What they interpret, whether reflexively or through a thoughtful contemplation, is as much a function of themselves as it is the intention and spirit of the artist.

Bizarrekult is the black metal musical vehicle of Roman V., a native of Siberian Russia who moved to Norway roughly 20 years ago and then began recording music as a lone wolf, accompanying poetic verses he’d been writing since childhood. A demo emerged in 2006, followed by an early split with Theosophy, but then nothing surfaced until an EP in 2019 and then a first album in 2021, Vi overlevde (“We Survived”), followed by a second one, Den tapte krigen (“The Lost War”), in 2023.

Now a third one is on the way. Its title is Alt Som Finnes (“All There Is”), and it includes guest vocalists from Predatory Void, MØL, and Dødheimsgard. What inspired this one? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DAIDALOS — “DIS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 162025
 

(written by Islander)

The German symphonic black metal band Daidalos was founded in 2020 by Tobias Püschner, originally as a one-man project. For the band’s debut album, The Expedition (2022), Daidalos drew inspiration from a truly harrowing tale from history, the Arctic journey led by the British explorer Sir John Franklin in 1845, an expedition that ended in disaster as Franklin’s two ships (Erebus and Terror) became trapped in the ice, suffering for more than a year; both Franklin and the entire crew perished.

Daidalus now has a second album coming our way in February 2026. For this one the band took its inspiration not from history but from the realm of imagination, and specifically from one one of the greatest works of global literature, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

But rather than simply retelling the epic through music, Püschner has crafted the new album (titled Dante) as a “reinterpretation” of the descent into Hell, one that “explores doubt, despair, and the hidden truths between faith and fear – a symphonic black metal audio drama, melancholic rather than evil.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALIGNANT AURA — “BENEATH A CROWN OF ANGUISH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 162025
 

(written by Islander)

About 3 1/2 years ago we premiered a jaw-dropping debut album named Abysmal Misfortune Is Draped Upon Me by the Australian death/doom band Malignant Aura. We called it “a towering and soul-shuddering success, one that’s just as capable of kicking your heart into over-drive as it is of dragging you into abyssal netherworlds where dread and grief endlessly reign.” And now Malignant Aura return, building upon the success of that debut with their second full-length, Where All of Worth Comes to Wither.

The new album is more concise than the debut — five songs and 46 minutes versus six songs and 53 minutes — but it surpasses expectations that the band’s compelling debut generated, which is no mean feat. We have a sign of that achievement through our premiere today of the album’s second single, “Beneath A Crown of Anguish“, in advance of the album’s collaborative release by Memento Mori, Grindhead Records, and Primitive Moth. Continue reading »

 Older Entries