NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: DECEPTOR — “STREET GENERAL”

Jul 152026

(written by Islander)

Let’s cut to the chase and then come back and fill in the details.

What you’re about to hear is a song called “Street General“. Its lyrical protagonist is an evil force, a leader of killers who stalk the streets at night in search of innocent souls to destroy.

The song as a whole is also evil to the core, a generally high-speed death/thrashing attack with murder on its mind, but with the kind of multi-faceted dynamism calculated to keep listeners on the edge of their shaking seats (and to start heads spinning). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FEBRUUS — “SUICIDE BY PROXY”

Premieres No Responses »

Jul 152026

(written by Islander)

The Swedish musician Andreas Karlsson has been on a creative hot streak since 2021. Beginning in that year his solo project Februus has pumped out a demo, three EPs, and a debut album named Surveillance Orgy. These releases caught the attention of Transcending Obscurity Records, which will enthusiastically release the second Februus album on September 4th of this year. Its name is Construction of Conflict.

“Fascinating and eccentric”, “packed with plenty of deviations and surprises”, “while maintaining a deceptively rough, clamorous demeanour”. These are among the descriptions of the new album proffered by Transcending Obscurity, along with FFO references that include the likes of Edge of Sanity, Pan.Thy.Monium, Demilich, Disharmonic Orchestra, and Defect Designer.

“Progressive Death Metal” is a logical label for what goes on within Construction of Conflict, though the breadth of that classification leaves a lot un-said. The songwriting displayed within Construction of Conflict has its own logic, though the music is so spectacularly head-spinning and exhilarating that it might not be immediately obvious.

You’ll understand when you listen to the song we’re gleefully premiering today — “Suicide By Proxy“. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BEYOND DEVIATION / FERAL WOUND / SALT DIVINATION

SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Jul 142026

(Andy Synn is a busy man right now, but still found time to recommend three killer EPs today)

Despite the fact that our work here at NCS may give the impression that we’re a professional, well-oiled machine (right?), the truth is that we don’t necessarily plan out everything we do here in advance.

That’s not to say there’s no plan at all – Islander in particular tries to stay on top of upcoming and new releases for his various round-up columns, and we’re all indebted to DGR for putting in the extra effort to produce a plethora of reviews in advance of our blog-break in May – but we do like to leave a little wiggle room in our schedule so we can be spontaneous and adapt to changing circumstances.

Case in point, today’s article includes three EPs (devastating down-tempo Deathcore from Canada, ugly, uncompromising Death-Grind from Indonesia, and vicious Blackened Hardcore from the good ol’ US of A) that I only recently discovered, and decided – pretty much at the last minute – that I wanted to write about.

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SOOTHSAYER — “SOONER ACCEPTANCE”

Premieres No Responses »

Jul 142026

(written by Islander)

The Irish blackened doom band Soothsayer released their debut album Echoes of the Earth in 2021. In the context of premiering a song from it, we described the music as “harrowing in the extreme, and also transportive”, the kind of experience that “makes such a transfixing and mind-bending impact that it’s very hard to forget, no matter how unreal and disturbing it can become”.

Soothsayer didn’t hurry in creating their next album, but we would have been surprised if they had. The first album was so carefully crafted and so accomplished in its rendering of changing visions that any follow-up was likely to involve unhurried effort if it was to successfully build upon the debut’s formidable foundations.

But now their second album, The Unbinding, has at last been released (just 10 days ago) by Soothsayer’s new label Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recordings. It includes five songs of substantial length and tremendous emotional force. To help draw deserved attention to it, today we’re premiering a video for the song “Sooner Acceptance“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TERATUM — “TOTAL VOID”

Premieres No Responses »

Jul 142026

(written by Islander)

The Swedish group Teratum rose up from the ashes of the band Beastiality in 2024, and the next year they viciously announced themselves with a two-song promo tape made available in extremely small quantities. They are now following that with a debut EP named Ordnance of Spiritual Warfare, which will be widely released by Dying Victims Productions on August 21st.

The EP includes re-recorded versions of both songs from the demo, and two more. For those who weren’t exposed to the demo tape, Teratum’s music does draw upon the violent black/thrashing antecedents of Beastiality, but it has other dimensions as well, which become evident in the song we’re premiering today, “Total Void“, which Teratum present with a frightfully occult video. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AZHIROCK — “EROTIC PANIC”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres No Responses »

Jul 132026

(written by Islander)

As we occasionally do, we’re about to step off our usual well-beaten musical paths and premiere a song whose changing facets include a lot of singing, a lot of industrial-strength groove, darting keyboards, and other features that might brand it as hard rock or maybe nu metal. But don’t worry, the song gets much more extreme too.

The name of the song, which is presented through a lyric video, is “Erotic Panic“. It’s from a conceptual album named The Killer I See In Me by the band AzhiRock, who originated in Tehran, Iran. The album is projected for release in 2027 by Satanath Records, and it will follow the band’s 2025 full-length, Echoes of Drifting Stones. Its concept is described in these words:

This album is about a person who has grown up in Terror, Pain, and sadistic family and society, Trauma which pushed him/ her to be a antisocial one…

He/She feels a killer is living inside….

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVOCATION RITUAL — “THREAT BY EXAMPLE”

Premieres No Responses »

Jul 132026

(written by Islander)

Last summer the Seattle-based death metal band Invocation Ritual self-released a two-song debut demo, and now they’re following that with a debut album named Altered Reality which Iron Fortress Records will release on August 14th.

Even if you missed out on that demo, Invocation Ritual should command attention based on the fact that their lineup includes current and former members of Oxygen Destroyer, Kontusion, and Reburied (among others).

The name of their new album expresses an overarching theme. As summarized on behalf of Iron Fortress, its ten tracks “chart a harrowing descent through psychological collapse, where mounting paranoia, violence, and personal turmoil steadily erode the boundary between reality and delusion”.

We’re presenting one of those tracks today, a furious and stunningly vicious song called “Threat By Example“. We have this comment about it from Invocation Ritual guitarist Paul Richards: Continue reading »

FUMING MOUTH – THE RINGING BELL

Album Reviews No Responses »

Jul 132026

(Andy Synn asks for whom the bell tolls… and it turns out it’s for him)

There are lots of different ways we could begin a review of the new Fuming Mouth (which comes out Friday).

We could, of course, talk about frontman Mark Whelan’s diagnosis with, and subsequent recovery from, Acute Myeloid Leukemia and how this has – unsurprisingly – influenced the band’s musical and lyrical approach.

We could also just as easily talk about how divisive the band’s second album, Last Day of Sun was, due to its more Punk/Hardcore influenced approach – though I still think that tracks like “Out of Time”, “The Silence Beyond Life”, and “I’ll Find You” are absolute bangers – and occasional (if not always successful) dash of moody melodic crooning.

But instead I’d like to start off by mentioning the one and only disappointing aspect of the record… which is the underwhelming cover art (which, to be fair, I’m sure must have some deeper significance to the group, but which really doesn’t live up to the high bar set by the eye-catching artwork of Lewandowski and Todorovic that adorned their first two albums, respectively).

Thankfully, however, this is one occasion where you definitely can’t judge the proverbial book by its literal cover.

SHADES OF BLACK: LABOR OF THE NEGATIVE, AURI, TEARS OF NEMAN & СХИЗМА, MIASMES, HAMMERFILOSOFI, DRAPE, ORANSSI PAZUZU

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Jul 122026

(written by Islander)

As you can see, I have a lot of new music to recommend today. I hope the volume won’t deter you from investigating each entry. I will say that I’ve arranged the selections in a way that my cause your head to whirl around as you move through them. At least I hope that will happen!

Because there’s so much to discuss, I’ll dispense with further introductory comments and get right to it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: NORILLAG, POACHER, LITOST

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jul 112026

(written by Islander)

My spouse and I are going to an early lunch with a friend we’ve known for… ahem… decades. She’s always a ton of fun to be with, but the timing’s not great for this column. I had added dozens of new songs and complete releases arriving over the past week that I intended to check out. And I didn’t get a head-start yesterday because I spend a chunk of the afternoon and early evening watching a Mariners baseball game that was… ahem… dispiriting. Don’t ask me why I did that, because I knew our opponents were very good and the odds were very high that my team would… ahem… suck (again).

Anyway, I had a lot of hard choices to make this morning and a rapidly vanishing amount of time in which to make them and then peck out some thoughts. I hope I’ll be able to catch up with more new music for the usual Sunday collection. Continue reading »

Older Entries