AN NCS PREMIERE: THE SCALAR PROCESS — “FAR FROM THE FLESH”

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Apr 132026
 

(written by Islander)

“Seductive”, “surreal”, “spellbinding” and “sublime” aren’t words usually deployed in describing the music of a band whose principle genre partition is technical death metal, even for an alliteration-addicted writer such as me. But those aspects of the song we’re about to premiere are precisely what make it stand out so memorably.

Those are also among the aspects of The Scalar Process’s new album Agnomysticism that led their label Transcending Obscurity Records to describe it as reflecting “simply staggering” progress beyond the band’s debut full-length Coagulative Matter five years ago.

To be clear, progressive tendencies and a penchant for creating mysterious and meditative moods were already evident on the band’s debut, and to be further clear, the new album still often includes instrumental performances of fast-paced, eye-popping dexterity, but the new one is far away from a non-stop thundering waterfall of notes and beats, and you need look no further than “Far From the Flesh” to find convincing proof of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOROTH — “REMNANTS OF A FORMER FORM”

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Apr 132026
 

(written by Islander)

We’re at the start of a new week here at NCS and it’s usually a good idea to get a running start unless you’re running into a throng of heavy traffic, so let’s rush right into the Voroth song we’re about to premiere and fill in the details once we’re on the other side, assuming we get to the other side unscathed.

Getting to the other side of “Остатки прежней формы” (Remnants of a Former Form) unscathed isn’t a foregone conclusion, because it’s as vibrantly wild as the cover art on the album that includes it. Continue reading »

AT THE GATES – THE GHOST OF A FUTURE DEAD

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Apr 132026
 

(It’s with a heavy heart, and a deep sense of responsibility, that Andy Synn sets out to give the new album from the one-and-only At The Gates – featuring the final recorded performance of the dearly-departed Tomas Lindberg – a proper eulogy in advance of its release next week)

Ever since I first received my copy of The Ghost of a Future Dead I’ve been struggling… not just with what to say about it, but how to say it.

After all, any time a new release from a seminal, life-changing band like this one – I’m sure that a fair few people reading this now probably owe their Metal awakening to the seminal Slaughter of the Soul – appears people are inevitably going to come at it with a whole host of preconceived notions, opinions, and expectations, and the last thing some of those people want to hear is any actual criticism.

And when you add in the fact that not only is this the last At The Gates album featuring their much-loved, and much-missed, vocalist Tomas Lindberg, but it also might even be the last At The Gates album ever (as the band, understandably, have acknowledged that they have no idea if they’ll want or be able to continue without their fallen frontman) that makes it even harder to know exactly how to approach things.

But, thankfully, messrs. Lindberg, Larsson, Erlandsson, Björler and Björler were kind enough to make at least one part of my task easy… as The Ghost of a Future Dead is the band’s best album in over a decade.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SZNUR, ACOLYTHUS, SCYTHE OF MEPHISTO, NON SERVIAM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Apr 122026
 

(written by Islander)

You could make a nearly endless list of traumas experienced by human beings that are more severe than having a sick pet. But having a sick pet can still be traumatic. I speak from experience — uncomfortably recent experience.

My wife and I live with two brother cats to whom we’re intensely attached. They have the run of our house but they’re never more than a few feet away from us. They’re very affectionate, very smart (for cats), very beautiful. We’re careful not to let them outside because they’re small, they’ve never been in the wild since birth, and we live in a forest full of predators of different species.

Last night after my wife and I had returned home from dinner and watching a ballgame, one of the cats began foaming at the mouth and manically racing around the room. We keep anything that might be an ingestive danger to them out of their reach, so it was perplexing. We scurried around trying to help him and trying to discover what might have caused this.

After about 15 minutes passed with no change, we managed to catch him and put him in a cat carrier, got in the car, and started driving to a 24-hour emergency animal-care clinic. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AT THE GATES, EINHERJER, BLACK ROYAL, LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR, DISORIENTATION, LONESHORE, HEIDEN, CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 112026
 


photo credit: Artemis II crew and NASA

(written by Islander)

As you can see from the post title, I decided to pack a lot of new songs and videos into this week’s SEEN AND HEARD column. To make that possible (because I got another late start and my free time this morning is limited), I’ve had to skimp on the verbiage and truncate this introduction — which ends now. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUICIDE FOREST — “CRUSHING WAVES OF GRIEF”

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Apr 102026
 

(written by Islander)

The Arizona atmospheric/depressive black metal band Suicide Forest began life in 2016 as the solo project of A. Kruger. Following a sequence of demos and a live recording, the band released its self-titled debut album in 2018 and a second album (Reluctantly) in 2021, as well as splits and an EP.

The third album, 2025’s IX of Swords, marked Suicide Forest’s studio debut as a more complete lineup. It included a revisiting of demo-era material as well as a new instrumental piece and a cover of Ceremonial Castings’ “Sweet Misery I Foresee”.

With their creatives fires still blazing, the band have now completed work on a fourth album. Titled World of Decay, it’s set for release on June 5th. The band tell us: “World of Decay is a bit of a new beginning for Suicide Forest as it is the first full-length recorded as a three-piece. Though still building on the sound and themes explored in the ‘solo era’ material.”

Today we’re bringing you the premiere of the album’s monumental opening song, a stunner called “Crushing Waves of Grief“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INSANIA.11 — “ABYSSUS”

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Apr 102026
 

(written by Islander)

As another largely abysmal week in global events draws to a close, we’re premiering an animated lyric video for “Abyssus“, a song by the Italian extremists Insania.11 that draws its inspiration from Nietzsche’s famous quotation about what happens if we stare for too long into an abyss.

More specifically, the song “stares at the concept of Cupio Dissolvi, the fierce desire of self-destruction”. The lyrics, mostly in Italian, “are archaic and primordial invocations directed towards an Immortal Mother whose embrace is hard-edged.” To quote further from publicist materials we’ve received:

She’s the primigenial entity who’s ready to tear apart “questa prigione di carne” (this prison of flesh) with her “falce affilata” (sharp sickle)…. According to Insania.11’s protestation, this is the process of self-destruction necessary to be thrown again into the endless spiral of reincarnation.

The song progresses heavily step by step like an unstable, tortuous, dissonant and lacerating organism to harvest and transfigure the lessons tought by “Bardo Thodol – The Tibetan Book of the Dead” and extract from it a corrosive essence of sounds and images. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GLUTTONY

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Apr 102026
 

(On March 13th FDA Records released Eulogy to Blasphemy, the fourth album by the Swedish death metal band Gluttony, and that motivated Zoltar to arrange the following interview with founding member and guitarist Anders Härén.)

Considering the rather ‘modern’ (for lack of better terms, as this had probably more to do with the average age of the musicians involved  than anything else) take on death metal that MY OWN GRAVE had, it was too tempting to some to call them out as posers once the word got out that three quarters of its line-up all of a sudden decided to play it old-school with a full-on HM-2-fueled mindset as GLUTTONY. But if jumping on the SweDeath wagon is one thing, the band’s first proper album Beyond The Veil Of Flesh released back in 2014 was not.

Maybe it had something to do with having a singer (Magnus Ödling) with a more black metal background (the man did front SETHERIAL for fifteen years plus) or the unusually tight rhythmic approach à la VOMITORY, but a cheap DISMEMBER/ENTOMBED throw-off it was not. Twelve years later, the band are releasing their fourth and probably best record to date, Eulogy To Blasphemy, and it was all too tempting to ask their founding member and guitar player Anders Härén why his thirst for the HM-2 hasn’t dried out yet… Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): URLUK — “MEMORIES IN FADE”

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Apr 092026
 

(written by Islander)

Last month we published an interview by our Comrade Aleks with the two members (U. and M.) of the Italian band Urluk, focusing on their new album Memories In Fade. Aleks introduced it with an explanation that although the band had remained true to their haunted lyrical themes, the music has changed direction significantly as compared to their last album More. Urluk’s U. acknowledged the change, commenting in the interview that “[t]he atmosphere surrounding Urluk today is less about aggression and more about reflection, decay, and memory — things slowly dissolving rather than burning violently.”

In the interview, the band’s members provided further insights into their music’s evolution from the doomed black metal of their last album. As U. described, “Memories In Fade draws from a broad palette: Post Black, Gothic Rock, post-punk atmospheres, touches of Dream Pop, and even hints of 60s folk-blues. Keyboards play a larger role this time, sometimes creating that bittersweet, almost life-affirming melancholy reminiscent of Type O Negative.”

What we have for you today is a full stream of this very interesting new album in advance of its April 10 release by Pest Records. Before we get to our own thoughts about it, let’s share one more excerpt from the interview which compares the new album with the one before it:

Conceptually, the albums are connected, but musically they stand quite far apart. More was still deeply rooted in black metal — dense, abrasive, and very direct in its emotional expression. Memories in Fade feels like the aftermath. If More was about the weight of experience, this new record is about the residue it leaves behind: fading memories, nostalgia, and the strange calm that follows turmoil. The sound has become softer in some ways, yet more vulnerable. Continue reading »

SMIQRA — AN INTERVIEW OF MINOTAURIAN MEANDERINGS

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Apr 092026
 

“Das Grausen” (1901-1903) – Alfred Kubin. Sourced from the Obelisk Art History project and serves as the Smiqra and Ὁπλίτης banner image. Expressionist symbolist and at times avant-garde Austrian artist who also wrote one novel.

(The release of the debut album Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! by the Chinese project Smiqra probably provided the motivation for our contributor Vizzah Harri to get in touch with the project’s creator JL, but the interest had already flourished due to JL’s other previous musical projects. In any event, the interview that Harri presents below was the result of a roughly year-long dialogue, and it is a fascinating thing to read at your leisure.)

The multi-instrumentalist, linguist, and shapeshifting artist JL, of Smiqra, Ὁπλίτης and Vitriolic Sage fame, graced us with a correspondence in a language they are not fluent in. It’s remarkable that they set aside time to read, translate, and answer our questions while they were still very busy academically.

The term avant-garde often gets thrown round without much thought as to what it means or pertains to. If you ask a philosopher, art professor, music theorist, and a critic you might come to a bunch of different answers as to how it relates to their context. Generally, it has to do with exactly what it means in the original French, advanced guard. That which pushes the boundaries of convention. In that comfortable niche of discontent with the status quo, Smiqra and Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! comes across as a logical evolution from Ὁπλίτης, an album that was reviewed here last year. Continue reading »

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