AN NCS PREMIERE: DOGTAG REMAINS — “HILL 731”

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Apr 092024
 

Dogtag Remains are a death metal band from Greece, and their debut album Forgotten Battlefields is now set for co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile) on April 25th.

As both the band’s name and the new album’s title suggest, the band have focused the subject matter of their music on war and all its madness, terror, and destruction — and the music itself renders those themes with devastating power and electrifying intensity, while also oppressively dragging listeners into the sinkholes of agony and hopelessness that inflict warfare’s victims.

Many of the new album’s 8 songs are apparently based upon historical events that the band wish us to remember, and that includes the one we’re premiering today — “Hill 731“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERITERAS — “THE DARK HORIZON”

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Apr 082024
 

Sometimes a relatively new band’s love for a relatively old and well-established brand of music is so evident that it runs the serious risk of having nothing new to say. The risk exists even when the love is genuinely earnest and not a cash grab (though about the only cash-grabbing most underground metal bands are capable of achieving is by looking for lost coins in the crevices of couches).

The relatively new Seattle band Veriteras wear their love for old-school Scandinavian melodic death metal on their sleeves, and it is clearly an earnest and genuine love, with the influence of such bands as early In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and Kalmah reverently embroidered on such sleeves.

So, the question arises: Do they have something new to say, and if so, what is it? The answer arrives in their second album, The Dark Horizon, which we’re premiering today in advance of its April 11th release. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WARDRA — “SATURN’S CUTTING BLADES”

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Apr 052024
 

Seven years have passed since the Russian black metal band Wardra released their debut album Небо медного цвета, but at last a second one is on the way, now set for an April 17 release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Onism Productions (UK). The name of this one is Страж звёздных склепов (“Warden Of The Stellar Crypts“).

While the band’s first album could be considered an amalgam of traditional black metal and primitive mysticism, they’ve moved in a different direction on their new release — a movement into the endless darkness of space. As they describe it:

This is a story about the death of worlds on the endless fields of nuclear harvest and about a silent witness who will endlessly wander through the carpet of fragments of time, waiting for the beginning of a new world that writhes in endless convulsions of sleep, without hope of awakening. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SWELLING REPULSION — “SULLEN LIGHT OF EXPIRED STARS”

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Apr 052024
 

We decided to begin our introduction to this song premiere by displaying the phenomenal artwork by The Masked Observer that adorns the cover of the album that includes the song, un-interrupted by the band’s logo or the album title. Gazing at it, you can surely understand why.

The choice of this cover art is the first clue that the style of death metal crafted by Swelling Repulsion on their album Fatally Misguided is itself unusually colorful and engaging, one that takes a familiar landscape soundscape and morphs it into something that the releasing label (Transcending Obscurity) rightly calls a “quirky hidden gem” unearthed from the underground.

But we have an even better clue about what this multi-national trio have done in their forthcoming second album, a clue provided by the song you’re about to hear — “Sullen Light of Expired Stars” — whose title is almost as intriguing as the artwork. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFESTUS — “FUGA NOCTURNA”

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Apr 042024
 

Our site has had a long history with the German black metal band Infestus. Unlike some musical histories marred by mishaps and mediocrity, this one is fondly remembered, because although the music encompassed by the succession of Infestus releases (which is about to be six albums long) has never been entirely predictable, it has never been disappointing.

The history now continues with the newest Infestus album, Entzweiung, which is set for release by the band’s new label Talheim Records on April 19th. We’ll have more to say about the album as a whole in due course, but today our focus is on the song “Fuga Nocturna“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ICOSANDRIA — “A SCARLET LUNAR GLOW”

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Apr 042024
 

Albums such as the one we’re presenting today tend to invoke thoughts of tapestries, kaleidoscopes, or panoramas — visual metaphors of change, often rich in detail and sometimes startling, that occur as the scenes pass across our eyes.

In the case of Icosandria‘s new album, the title itself invokes an unusual vision — A Scarlet Lunar Glow. Like the title, the music kindles the imagination into its own glow, though the glow also becomes fire as the manifold changes unfold. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TENEBRIFIC — “LABYRINTH OF ANGUISH”

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Apr 032024
 

Tenebrific is a new band from Australia, a studio project created by Adam Martin of Golgothan Remains and Sarcophagum, in collaboration with Cris Bassan from Decrepid. Their debut release (in which they’re aided by some special guests) is an EP fittingly named Labyrinth of Anguish, which is set for release on April 8th.

The band have described the EP (quite accurately) as a release that “offers a glimpse into the abyss of existential despair, inviting listeners to confront their own inner demons and navigate the labyrinth of anguish.” “Throughout 22 minutes,” they say, “we summon monstrous and hallucinatory blackened death deformations that echo the howls of tortured souls and the whispers of malevolent entities.”

Over the course of three substantial tracks, the EP progresses as a single cohesive and carefully planned journey, one that really must be heard straight through to get the full effect — and fortunately, that’s what you’ll be able to do further down in this article as we premiere the full stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OSSILEGIUM — “THE GODS BELOW”

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Apr 022024
 

“In the days of antiquity, after the embers of a funeral pyre had died, the bones of the deceased would be gathered together in a funerary box and given a place of reverence to withstand the ravages of time. OSSILEGIUM stand upon these burnt offerings of the past while forging onward into new realms of darkness, where even light fears the eventual entropy of universal death.”

That’s an excerpt from the press materials distributed by Personal Records for this Chicago band’s debut album The Gods Below, which is set for release on May 3rd. We don’t usually copy/paste from PR materials, but maybe you see why we just did that — and why we’re doing it again next:

“Indeed, the record is aptly titled, for the alternately ice-cold / burning-hot majesty the duo unleash here reinvigorates noble old tropes – namely, the days when melody was married to death metal crunch and when leathery black wings enclosed it, flying far and free across a landscape of blue-purple emotion.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NUCLEAR TOMB — “PARASITIC (LIVE A LIE)”

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Apr 022024
 

Since August 9, 1945, the world has somehow dodged becoming a nuclear tomb, though at times that seemed inevitable. But don’t give up hope, it could still happen!

It certainly seems to be a vision embraced by the Baltimore band Nuclear Tomb, reflected not only in their own moniker but also in titles such as Terror Labyrinthian, the name of their new album, and “Fatal Visions“, the album’s second single following the title track.

The terrifying absurdities of our existence under the nuclear shadow, and a multitude of other self-created shadows, are also well-represented in Nuclear Tomb‘s music, which has been labeled “weirdo death thrash”, and we’ve got a fine example for you in our premiere today of the third single from the new album — “Parasitic (Live A Lie)“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PHANTASMAL ABYSS — “THE SPAWN OF LYCAON”

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Apr 012024
 

It’s a silly day today, or rather, sillier than usual. But the silliness is superficial, a temporary skin-deep covering for deplorable conditions and events world-wide that will be every bit as wounding tomorrow as they were yesterday.

That’s a reality not lost on the Oakland band Phantasmal Abyss, whose new single that you’re about to hear they describe as a song that “presents a bleak, raw and savage sonic landscape that is consumed with darkness and ferocity”.

The name of the song is “The Spawn of Lycaon”, a title that invokes the mythological king of Arcadia who (per this source) “killed and cooked his son Nyctimus and served him to Zeus, to see whether the god was sufficiently all-knowing to recognize human flesh”. Continue reading »

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