AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ETERNAL MOURN — “WINDS OF SORROW”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 162026
 

(written by Islander)

The Italian metal band Eternal Mourn is a new name, but their lineup is a group of experienced musicians whose resumes include participation in Black Oath, The Rite, Extirpation, Funest, Araphel, and Demonomancy. In this new formation (as their name suggests) they’ve paid homage to the great death-doom traditions of the ’90s as expressed through the music of Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Anathema, and Cemetary.

Of course, many other bands have drawn upon those august influences over the past decades, with widely varying degrees of emotional power and memorability. Eternal Mourn’s debut EP Winds of Sorrow stands out from the pack. These first three songs don’t sound like a debut release. They are so well-crafted and so expertly executed that they sound like the work of people who’ve been delving into this kind of music for a long time, and the results are unmistakably desolate but still head-hooking, spine-shaking, and even mystically beautiful. They are also immediately memorable.

Those are among the reasons we quite enthusiastically agreed to premiere the EP today in advance of its July 21 release by Terror From Hell Records. More reasons follow…. Continue reading »

KILL BY MOUTH: “NECESSARY EVIL”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 162026
 

(Wil Cifer has caught up to a debut EP by the British band Kill By Mouth, and enthusiasticaly recommends it in the following review.)

The biggest hindrance to the thrash revival has been how tied to ’80s nostalgia it is, while the bands that defined the genre got the memo and progressed. This plays into why a band like Power Trip made such an impact, because they were not trying to dial in the sound, but took the sound of modern hardcore and made great thrash albums with it. This British band, Kill By Mouth, wisely do not try to turn back time, but find their own place in the genre. They do this by blending some of the darker corners the genre had evolved into by the time the ’90s rolled around.

This EP was released back in March, so went under the radar, but is a worthy entry in today’s thrash scene and deserves more recognition. Pre-nu-metal-leaning Prong can be heard in the thunderous syncopation they kick into at this album’s powerful onset.The vocals are howled in a baritone bark to accent the commanding grooves they deal in. They also keep things at a deliberate headbanging tempo rather than getting lost in breakneck punk frenzies. This can be heard in the chug of “228“. They use admirable restraint and never give into the urge for speed that might forsake the purpose of the songs. This makes for catchier songs, though you can still hear the influence of both S.O.D and Sepultura here, but without the devotion that solely pays homage to an era. Continue reading »

CLEARING THE SLATE ISSUE ONE

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Jul 162026
 

(DGR is playing the game of review catch-up. Is today’s four-album installment the first inning of nine, or the first half of two? We shall see.)

I say this every time I’ve done it in its twice-yearly fashion, but smaller review collections like this are not ones that I feel good about doing. It doesn’t feel fair to the bands not paying the imagined debt I have with them, that I’ve done something so criminal as enjoy their music and yet not find the time within myself to dedicate toward the usual essay-long dissection and exploration of their newest release.

Yet, it is festival season now in Europe which means that metal’s biological clock is seeing fit to give birth to a ton of new releases. You may have noticed during the last month or so there has been a steady drip of reviews coming from my corner of the world, but truth be told, all of those were done just prior to our unwitting heavy metal May that we’ve created. The assumption being that they would run once a day so the site would always have something to post while we were out and about witnessing music or drinking ourselves into apocalyptic stupor.

You’ll note, that’s not how it happened, and instead the collective of releases that I had fished up from the world’s murky musical depths ran well into June. That doesn’t mean the exploration and listening stopped, either. Just as many were caught up in the nets or came out while we were on that aforementioned vacation, and we now find ourselves at the doorstep of a collection of music spanning months that needs to be caught up on.

You, dedicated reader of the site that you are, know next what is coming. It has traveled by many names: review roundup, things you may have missed, clearing the slate, material befitting the ethereal, music by swedes for long-haired plebes, a million other names that all translate to one basic idea – we need to catch up on stuff so we can maintain some semblance of being current yet refuse to leave these albums sitting in the dust. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DECEPTOR — “STREET GENERAL”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
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.

Continue reading »

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….

Continue reading »

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 »

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