AN NCS PREMIERE: SREFA — “A DREAM, NEVER ENDING”

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Apr 012024
 

What we have for you today is the premiere of a song that carries us into an unnerving dreamscape, a venture into a hostile void that’s cold enough to chill the blood, venomous enough to create fear, and mentally afflicting in the way of an alien encounter — no fooling.

The song is “A Dream, Never Ending“, and it comes from the debut album Solstice by the Israeli black metal band Srefa, which will be co-released by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile) on April 26th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTAGONYZE — “HIDDEN WISDOM”

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Mar 292024
 

The Chilean death metal band Antagonyze first began coalescing in 2019, on the unknowing eve of a global pandemic. Despite the ensuing hardships of the plague, the band released a demo cassette in May 2020 (Echoes From Soul), but that year and the next year brought line-up changes even as the band continued to work on new songs.

Eventually they began to play new shows, and by the end of 2022 they decided to re-record the best songs of Echoes From Soul and added new songs to create a full-length work titled Interpretations of the Unknown Wilderness, which drew the attention of the great Mexican label Chaos Records.

That label will release the band’s debut album on April 19th, and as a sign of its marvels, today we present the album track “Hidden Wisdom“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VATICINAL RITES — “CORPOREAL AFFLICTION”

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Mar 292024
 

The UK band Vaticinal Rites made an extremely impressive debut with their self-titled EP in 2021, a definite silver lining to the black cloud of our pandemic existence, which was itself the awful spawning ground for the band.

As they explained then, they played “a visceral form of death metal inspired by the classic Floridian bands of the early – mid ’90s, with a special homage also paid to the European underground sound” and with lyrical and visual themes that “explore spirituality, loss, the occult and escapism”.

Those four songs (as we wrote at the time) were technically impressive and often lightning-fast, but also ferocious, heavy-grooved, and capable of generating supernatural auras.

It is thus very good news indeed that these London-based extremists are now returning with a debut album, Cascading Memories Of Immortality, which will be released on May 10th by Everlasting Spew Records — and very good news for us when we got the chance to premiere a song from the new album today. Its name is “Corporeal Affliction“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MONASTERY DEAD — “EGO SUM DOLOR”

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Mar 292024
 

Today we premiere a full stream of Ego Sum Dolor, the fourth album to emerge, after four years of work, from the Saint Petersburg death metal band Monastery Dead. It will be co-released on March 31st by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile).

If your Latin is rusty, the album’s title translate to “I am pain”, or perhaps “I am in pain”. Consistent with that title, the concept of the album is described as follows:

This is a story about a man doomed to experience all the suffering and torment destined for him in his life, here and now. He bears the burden of merciless retribution, which, like stigmata, he acquired by birthright, experiences pain and inflicts pain, is obsessed with destruction and destroys himself. His own wounds and those of his victims will never heal and will bleed forever.

Or to put it more succinctly: “The basis of the concept of the release is the idea that the real hell is our current existence on Earth.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MOUNTAIN SHADOW — “MOUNTAIN SHADOW”

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Mar 282024
 

As you can see, we’re premiering a full stream of the self-titled debut album by Mountain Shadow. In advance of the music stream we have delectable teasers to offer, beginning with this preview from Fiadh Productions, which will officially release the album tomorrow:

Mountain Shadow… is Pennsylvanian Folk Death Metal, existing between Archaic Death Metal, Atmospheric Black Metal, Funeral Doom & Bluegrass, exalting Appalachian Horror and the melancholic ruins of nostalgic America.

More teasers: The listing of instruments in the credits for the performances on the album, beginning with the two childhood friends who are the band’s members: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM/VIDEO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HIEROPHANT — “GATEWAY TO THE ABYSS”

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Mar 272024
 

In August 2022 Season of Mist Underground Activists released Death Siege, the very impressive fifth album by the Italian extreme metal band Hierophant. In his review at our site, Andy Synn noted that the album revealed the band “making an unexpected heel-turn away from the crusty, sludgy, Blackened Hardcore sound of their previous records to instead become a full-blown Black Metal band (albeit, one with a distinctly deathly tinge) in the vein of Death Fortress, Rites of Thy Degringolade, Panzerfaust“. Andy further wrote:

“[T]here’s no denying that this new, more blackened version of the band are still very, very good at what they do…. As a result I’d say this is the perfect jumping on point for potential new fans since – if the oppressive atmospherics and visceral sonic violence of closer “Nemesis of Thy Mortals” are anything to go by – Death Siege looks, and sounds, to me, like the beginning of a whole new era for the band”.

Following the release of Death Siege, Hierophant performed on some very big stages, honing their live rendition of the songs on Death Siege and burnishing their reputation. This led to the decision to record their performance at Hellfest 2023 in France, and to release it as Hierophant‘s first live album — Gateway to the Abyss — which will be released on Match 29th by the Dusktone label.

As icing on the cake, that show was also caught on film, and today we premiere the new album in tandem with an exceptional video. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABOVE AURORA — “MYRIAD WOES”

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Mar 262024
 

Four years ago we premiered and reviewed at length The Shrine of Deterioration, the second album by the Polish “black/doom” band Above Aurora. It followed the dark and desolate path whose first steps were marked by the band’s 2016 debut album Onward Desolation and their 2018 EP Path To Ruin.

That second album created an almost relentlessly shattering and yet also wholly enthralling experience. No surprise, we leaped at the chance to premiere the band’s forthcoming third album, Myriad Woes, which we do today in advance of its March 29 release by War Anthem Records.

It’s obvious from the album’s title alone that Above Aurora‘s worldview has not brightened over the last four years, and the music is as dark and devastating as you might expect from their previous works, but they have managed to increase the scale and colossal power of the traumas they transmit, as well as providing dramatic contrasts in tone, volume, and speed, variations in style, and melodic nuances that are piercing in the midst of cataclysms. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOKTURNAL — “DAGGER OF WILL”

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Mar 252024
 

On May 3rd much of the world will be deep into spring or entering summer, but it will still be a very dark day, cast into deep and sinister shadows by Pulverised Records‘ release of Nokturnal‘s debut album Shades of Night.

The album by these Indonesian necromancers is well-named, because the darkness of their music does have different shades, and reveals many shifting shapes within the gloom, as you shall witness through our premiere of an utterly diabolical and relentlessly dynamic album track named “Dagger of Will“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENGULFED — “CURSED ETERNITY”

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Mar 252024
 

The capacity to create sonic scenes of crazed and cataclysmic conflict, weaponized by technically eye-popping instrumental armaments and urged on by monstrous proclamations — these are among the achievements of the Turkish death metal band Engulfed, whose name encapsulates the experience of being caught and consumed by their ravenous music.

The engulfing savagery and racing technicality of the band’s music would by themselves be enough to put Engulfed on the global map, circled in red, but they also manage to insidiously infiltrate their music with mood-moving atmospherics both grim and grievous.

After only one album and a pair of EPs, Engulfed are already at the point when news of a new release whets appetites for angry and exhilarating music, and a new Engulfed release is what we’ll have on on April 19th when Me Saco Un Ojo and Dark Descent release the band’s second album, Unearthly Litanies of Despair.

So far, one song has erupted from the album, and today we un-cage a second one through our premiere of “Cursed Eternity“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFIN CURSE — “REEKING FILTH OF AGES”

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Mar 222024
 

When is a curse also a blessing? The answer is Coffin Curse, the demon-spawned Chilean death metal band whose thoroughly evil new album The Continuous Nothing is now racing hell-for-leather toward an April 22nd release by Memento Mori.

We were blessed four years ago to premiere a song from this duo’s mortifying debut album Ceased to Be, and now we get to make another premiere today for the new album, presenting “Reeking Filth of Ages“. Continue reading »

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