AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TEMPLE WITCH — “MAKER’S BREATH”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 302026
 

(written by Islander)

We are very happy to welcome the doom metal band Temple Witch to our pages for the first time (and we think you’ll be happy about it too). They’re a trio based in Kent, Ohio and have released two albums so far, 2021’s Hand in Hand with Chaos and 2024’s Ocean Thousand, Mountain Thousand.

They also have a third album on the way now, one named Veiling the Void, and we’re helping introduce it by premiering a great video for a viscerally compelling song off the album named “Maker’s Breath“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOVAE MILITIAE — “ABYSSAL DOMINION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 302026
 

(written by Islander)

Today we assist Serpent Sun Records (UK) in announcing the new album Apocryphon Of The Unborn Light by the French satanic black metal band Novae Militiae. It will be released on September 18th and follows this mysterious band’s second album Topheth (2020) and their debut full-length Gash’khalah (2017). The label provides this ominous but intriguing description of the album’s conceptual framework:

Apocryphon of the Unborn Light presents itself as a revelation preceding all creation, where light itself has yet to be born, and where the order of the world already appears destined for its own dislocation. The album unfolds through a non-linear yet cyclical progression, where fall, knowledge and inversion intersect, within a vision where the end is not an outcome, but an original condition.

Each composition acts as a fragment within this whole, forming a coherent structure in which the visible and invisible frameworks of the world gradually fracture toward a point of rupture. Musically, the album is built upon a dark and incantatory form of black metal, alternating between extreme tension and more atmospheric passages, reinforcing an overall dynamic in which the distinction between creation and dissolution progressively dissolves, within a movement of dislocation confronting that which lies beyond.

As a first sign of what the album brings to listeners, today we’re premiering a song aptly named “Abyssal Dominion“. Continue reading »

SABERTOOTH – BLESSING RAGE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 302026
 

(Andy Synn is back with a recommendation from the Indonesian underground today)

It’s perhaps not entirely surprising to note that the majority of bands we write about tend to be located on one of two continents, Europe or North America.

That’s not to say we don’t try our best to cover bands from other locales – though, as of yet, I don’t think we’ve ever written about any bands from Antarctica – but the fact that two of the three core members of the NCS crew are based in the USA, and the other one (me) is based in the UK (which are also the two places we get most of our audience from), means these are the areas which we get the most exposure to.

Of course, the counterpoint to that is we probably should be making more of an effort to cover bands from further afield – and, all credit to him, Islander already does a pretty damn good job with all his various round-ups of new releases from around the globe – which is why today we’re travelling to Indonesia to take in the sights and sounds and savage riffery of Metallic Hardcore crew Sabertooth.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ORBSTRUCT — “A DECADE OF TRANSCENDENCE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 292026
 

(written by Islander)

This is the tenth year of existence for Orbstruct, the blackened death metal band founded in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and later driven by war to a new home in Poland. During that decade Orbstruct has released three albums, the most recent of which (Ostracism) dropped last year.

To mark this year’s milestone anniversary, Orbstruct performed a live show this past May at the Hype Park Club in Kraków, a show that featured nine songs selected by the band from across their three albums, creating a convergence of their past and present.

Orbstruct’s performance was captured in a recording that will be digitally released under the title A Decade of Transcendence on July 30. It was also captured on film — and today we present that video of this commemorative show. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAHATY — “SCORCHED BENEATH THE SOLAR SEAL”

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Jul 292026
 

(written by Islander)

Today we help spread the news that in August Sentient Ruin Laboratories will release the debut album of Rahaty — the one-man death metal side-project of Belarusian black metal act and musician Pa Vesh En — and we’re also premiering the album’s first advance track, “Scorched Beneath the Solar Seal“.

Sentient Ruin’s proprietor always presents vividly evocative descriptions of the label’s music, and has done so again in the case of Rahaty’s first release:

Here proclaimed with its debut album Bestial Lustmord is an unholy conquest within death metal’s most pestilent drift. Putrid atmospheres drenched in sickness. Downpours of death-reeking riffs collapsing into mangled, deformed aberrations. A tectonic rhythm section rupturing into seismic deflagrations, and a bestial vocal regurgitation retching obscenities through the disemboweled carcass of oblivion.

Other descriptions of the record provided by the label include such adjectives as “deranged”, “enigmatic”, “violent”, and “gruesome”. Of course, we have a few descriptors of our own to offer in preparation for your submission to the song we’re about to present. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KRALLICE, BEASTLOR, SEKTION VASORÉ

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 282026
 

(written by Islander)

I only had one song premiere to prepare for today and nothing else for us to share with you besides the review from Andy that opened our day. So I impetuously decided to pull together this roundup of new music.

The first two choices attracted my attention because their overlapping lineups include people who I think it’s fair to say are luminaries among discerning metal listeners, those of us who search for more than “the same old, same old”. These artists’ creative interests and impulses also often lead them in unexpected directions, so there was an important intrigue factor in making the choices.

The third choice was much more impulsive. I just decided to listen to the music of the last band to e-mail us yesterday, a band with no reputation I knew of, and only two demo songs to their name. I’m so glad I yielded to that impulse, and I hope you will be too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRITICAL DEFIANCE — “RIVERS OF BLOOD”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 282026
 

(written by Islander)

As we sometimes do, we’re going to jump right into the Critical Defiance song we’re about to premiere and then come back and fill you in on the details.

The name of the song is “Rivers of Blood“, and it’s the title track to this Chilean band’s fourth album, which is forthcoming from Dying Victims Productions on September 25th. Continue reading »

VULGARITY – BECKONED BEYOND

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 282026
 

(Andy Synn wants you to stop what you’re doing and play this one as loud, and as often, as you can)

We’ve been accused of being “pretentious” here at NCS a few times… which is actually pretty funny if you really know any of us.

True, we do have a lot of love for weird, proggy music, and we certainly have a lot of fun playing around with language and using some of those “big” words certain people find so frightening, but you know what we also love?

Big riffs, big hooks, and bands that just put out banger after banger after banger.

Which is why I’ve been jamming the new album from Missouri Metalcore menaces Vulgarity over and over again recently.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PLAGUEWIELDER — “TO THE CALL OF MY MASTER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 272026
 

(written by Islander)

Plaguewielder, those gritty bearers of black sludge from the Ohio rust belt, have recorded a new single that will eventually appear on their next album, Year Of The Plague, and we’re bringing it to you today with a suitably scary video.

The name of the song is “To the Call of My Master“, and it’s the second single Plaguewielder have released this year, following “Son of The Serpent, Son of The Whore” (premiered here). The band also released the first single from the new album last year, “Blood of the Astral Gate” (premiered here).

Lyrically, “To the Call of My Master” expresses the glorification of a vampire by the vampire’s familiar, and the familiar’s vows of obedience. Musically, the song is as fiendish as the lyrical subject matter, and as highly infectious as a vampiric plague. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOLUBILIS — “UNUKHALAI SUPERNOVA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 272026
 

(written by Islander)

Occasionally some of us play a mind game in which we imagine how people who know almost nothing about metal would interpret words and phrases we throw around about the music on a daily basis. Like, how would they interpret “tech death”? The possible or hoped-for demise of Silicon Valley? AI reaching its Skynet moment and promptly deciding to wipe out humanity? Some slang term for the precise definition of when a person has expired, even if they might still be breathing?

And yet there are also occasions when the “tech death” label may not really mean what even we think it means, or at least when it falls short in some way. Which brings us to the Montréal band Volubilis.

It’s convenient to label them a “tech death” band, and that label might be better than any other single genre descriptor if you had to choose just one, but it also falls short. Among other things, it tells you nothing about the rather spectacular nature of the tale encompassed by the band’s recently released debut album Theasterion. Continue reading »

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