AN NCS PREMIERE: “FOUR SORROWS” — A SPLIT BY STARER, MYVANDRER, AMBERGAZE, AND MISTRAL

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Mar 192025
 

(written by Islander)

On March 21st Fiadh Productions and Snow Wolf Records will co-release Four Sorrows, a four-way split among bands around the world who deserve your close attention. Those bands, who are carving their own path through the realms of black metal, are Starer (USA), Myrvandrer (Norway), Ambergaze (Mexico), and Mistral (Poland). As an explanation of how the split came to be, we’ve seen this statement by the person behind Starer (and Snow Wolf):

I have been a huge fan of Mistral since both our debut albums released together on Folkvangr Records back in January 2021. Janek has become a good friend and I’m thrilled to be working together. All credit to him for introducing me to two amazing bands Ambergaze and Myrvandrer and convincing them to share their incredible music with us.

What we have for you today is a premiere stream of this new split, which includes one new song from each band, preceded by a bit of background about the artists and some thoughts about what you will hear. (Here’s a hint: the music is quite diverse and mostly beyond the bounds of traditional/conventional black metal.) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORBIFIC — “CRUSADING NECROTIZATION”

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Mar 192025
 

(written by Islander)

We have some previous experience with the Finnish death metal band Morbific. In considering music (which we premiered) from their second album Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm, we described it as “undeniably raw and foul, well-calculated to channel sensations of disease, putrefaction, and madness while giving your bones a brutal beating — and creating an atmosphere of supernatural horror while they do all that.” We added that Morbific were also “ridiculously good at making their creations head-moving and ‘catchy’ as well as hideous.”

More recently our contributor Chile caught their performance at the 2024 edition of Oslo Deathfest and wrote this vivid description of what ensued:

…the crowd goes wild in a fantastic display of great chemistry between the band and audience, turning the bar area into a warfield of bodies strewn on filthy riffs stretching as far as the eye can see…. Bursting through the abdomen of the stage like some kind of extraterrestrial, Morbific are all teeth and snarl in a seemingly simple, yet very effective display of putrid brutality.

And now this rotten-to-the-core death metal band are upon us again, with a third album entitled Bloom of Abnormal Flesh set for co-release on April 21st by Memento Mori and Me Saco un Ojo (who also co-released the band’s last album), again adorned with blood-congealing cover art by Chase Slaker. And again, we have a song premiere off the album. The name says it all: “Crusading Necrotization“. Continue reading »

GREY AURA – ZWART VIERKANT: SLOTSTUK

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Mar 192025
 

(Andy Synn may not understand “art”, but he knows what he likes… and he likes Grey Aura)

They say that you can’t spell “Avant-Garde” without the letters “A”, “R”, and “T”… and it turns out they – whoever they are – were right!

Of course, Grey Aura have known that for a long time, as both of their previous albums – 2014’s double-disc debut Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien, ter werelt noyt soo vreemt ghehoort (which chronicled the final exploits of Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz) and 2021’s equally ambitious, but considerably more concise, Zwart Vierkant (which retold and reinterpreted the first half of a story of obsession and insanity written by the band’s own Ruben Wijlacker) – more than qualify as true expressions of avant-garde “art”.

So it should come as little surprise that Slotstuk (as I’ll be referring to it) – which picks up, thematically speaking, where its predecessor left off, unravelling the tale of “a 20th-century Modernist painter whose attempt to dismantle physical reality through abstraction leads him to the brink of madness” – continues to push the boundaries, further blurring the lines between not just the various different genres which comprise the band’s creative palette… but also the lines between sanity and insanity as well.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SILVER KNIFE — “RESTLESS BLIGHT”

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Mar 182025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s fair to say that the forward-thinking European black metal band Silver Knife have underplayed their pedigree. They don’t seem to draw attention to the fact that the four-person lineup collectively includes members of some of the most formidable Belgian, French, and Dutch bands orbiting the sphere of black metal. Though Metal-Archives will tell you what’s on their resumes if you’re curious, they don’t trumpet those achievements, preferring to let their music do the talking.

That kind of confidence is merited, given the very impressive nature of Silver Knife‘s past releases — their debut album Unyielding/Unseeing in 2020, and their follow-on EP Ring in 2022. Their self-confidence is evident again in the epic nature of the six songs on their forthcoming second album, which is simply self-titled and is timed for release by Amor Fati Productions and Extraconscious Recordings to roughly coincide with the band’s second appearance at Roadburn Festival.

What we have for you today is a premiere stream of one of those songs (the second to be revealed from the album so far), a heart-bursting experience called “Restless Blight“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DORMANT ORDEAL — “SOLVENT”

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Mar 182025
 

(written by Islander)

No one tells anyone at our humble site what to write about. Everyone makes their own choices based on what appeals to them. Serendipitously, this produces a fairly wide span of musical coverage because the tastes of our writers don’t completely overlap, and sometimes diverge dramatically.

This divergence holds true among the three most senior NCS writers (Andy Synn, DGR, and myself), but there are some bands whose music all three of us whole-heartedly and enthusiastically endorse, and the Polish band Dormant Ordeal is one of those. All three of us have been loudly banging the drum for this band in our writing, going back to 2016 when they released their second album, We Had It Coming.

This year we get to renew our drum-banging because Dormant Ordeal are now set to release Tooth and Nail, their fourth album overall and their first for Willowtip Records, on April 18th. Our raucous hammering began as soon as the first single from the album was revealed, and continues today as we present a second one. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XIV: DARK CHASMS OF BLACK METAL AND STUPIDITY

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Mar 182025
 

(Once again, we welcome Daniel Barkasi and his latest monthly roundup of recommended albums. These were released in February.)

We’re back! Yup, the ole’ brain hasn’t completely capitulated upon itself yet, but the year is young! The country is a fucking laughing stock, but the punchline is to the level of a petulant toddler throwing their toys about. If you didn’t know what a tariff is, you probably do now. Check out this feature from Last Week Tonight from six years ago. I’m no economist, but broad tariffs are stupid, and it’s not hard to figure out. Even worse, trade wars are even stupider. We pay the cost increases, nobody else. But screw Canada, eh? I never thought that Canadian Bacon would become some sort of reality. David Dunning and Justin Kruger were really onto something, am I right?

While we try to survive the insanity, my beloved Liverpool Football Club have sorrowfully exited the exalted Champions League in the cruelest of fashions – the dreaded penalty shootout. Even worse – it was against PSG, a team whose ownership group is exceedingly morally bankrupt, to put it kindly. They also lost the Carabao Cup as I’m writing this, to another face of sportswashing in Newcastle. However, the Premier League title is a realistic possibility, which would be an incredible achievement, in the first year of who has thus far been a brilliant new manager after the departure of an absolute club legend in Jürgen Klopp – now starring in a Trivago ad. Life is weird. Continue reading »

EMBRIUM – TIMEKEEPER

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Mar 172025
 

(Andy Synn dedicates some of his precious time to the recently-released debut album from Embrium)

While we’re not averse to covering some of the “bigger” names – relatively speaking – in Metal now and then (we’ve recently written about new releases from the likes of Whitechapel and Septic Flesh, for example, and will be saying a few things about the new Allegaeon pretty soon) our primary focus is, and has always been, on covering artists and albums who don’t receive as much attention and exposure as they probably deserve.

Case in point, today we’re taking a look (and a listen) at the debut album from San Francisco-based Blackgaze crew Embrium, a band so underground they don’t even have an entry on the Encyclopaedia Metallum yet!

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INSINERATEHYMN — “SEMPITERNAL SUICIDE”

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Mar 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The last time we got a chance to premiere a song from L.A.-based Insineratehymn, we began the introduction this way: “All is fire in the premiere we’re now presenting, from the very name of the band — Insineratehymn — to the conflagration consuming the demonic figures in the album’s fantastic cover art, and the blood-boiling heat of the song we’re premiering.”

The occasion that time was to help spread the word about this raging, rotten, and reaping death metal band’s second album Disembodied. The occasion today is to draw attention to their forthcoming third album Irreverence of the Divine in advance of its April co-release by Memento Mori and Rotted Life. To do that, we present the fifth track in the running order, “Sempiternal Suicide“. Continue reading »

TENTACULT: “UNTAMED REVULSION”

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Mar 172025
 

(On March 11th Transylvanian Recordings released a disgusting new album by Sacramento-based Tentacult. It’s fitting, therefore, that Sacramento-based NCS slave DGR is reviewing it today.)

Like any good proper umbrella genre that has absolutely exploded you can take the phrase “death metal” and draw ever finer concentric triangles from it into a pyramidic tower of subgenres with each sprouting two to three more lines from it until eventually you reach descriptors long enough that you run out of breath before you finish defining the sounds that make up a group.

By the end of it, you can construct a very pretty geometric structure of lines that’ll entrance your local social media “spiritual” influencer. At times it can be like trying to speed-read aloud a complicated dinner recipe in a single breath, your very last utterance of “blank-death metal” usually followed by the sound of you collapsing to the floor due to lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain.

In layman’s terms though, you can often break down the view of death metal into four categories: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DROUTH, DÉMONOS, SVARTA HAVET, LUX INTERNA, AASH, MRAKOMOR

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 162025
 

(written by Islander)

I’m afraid I have a self-imposed deadline to finish this weekly collection of music from the blacker arts so I can turn to other obligations, and so I’ll dispense with an introduction and dive right into all the quite varied music I’ve picked for your entertainment and edification.

DROUTH (U.S.)

To begin, here’s “False Grail“, a startling new song from a new album named The Teeth of Time by Portland’s Drouth. Continue reading »

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