DIRTY GRAVE — “UNTIL THE DAY I DIE”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 222017
 

 

The power of the riff is important in most forms of metal (though certainly not all), but it’s perhaps especially vital in forms of traditional occult doom and stoner metal. A band in those related genres can go a long way riding a well-muscled riff steed, especially if they can mess with your mind while they’re moving your head. The Brazilian doom metal band Dirty Grave have proven that on their debut album, Evil Desire.

They self-released the album as a digital download back in mid-July as a two-man band (vocalist/guitarist Mark Rainbow and guitarist Victor Berg), but now the Belarusian label GrimmDistribution and the British label Todestrieb Records are joining forces to give it a CD release on October 18. We’re highlighting one song from the album today — “Until the Day I Die” — with a new video for the track. And we’re also able to report that drummer Arthur Assis has re-joined the band, and that the trio are now at work on a second album Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AOSOTH, ANTARKTIS, APOLOGOETHIA, ARROGANZ, ATAVISMA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Sep 222017
 


Cover art for Aosoth by Benjamin A. Vierling

 

Greetings and Happy Fall Equinox, one of two days in the year when every place on earth gets the exact same amount of daylight (almost exactly 12 hours today) and four days since my last round-up. I’m awash in good new music again (always). The fact that I chose songs from five bands whose names all begin with “A” should tell you something: Just imagine how many other new songs fill out the rest of the alphabet.

It may be the end of the working week for many of you (and I hope that’s so), but for us this isn’t really work, though it requires effort, and so we’ll just ramble on through the weekend as usual. For today, until you get to the last band in this post, you’ll hear nothing but new stuff from forthcoming releases. The last one I’ve been meaning to say something about for a while, and the time now seems right… since Atavisma begins with “A”.

AOSOTH

Like many others, I’ve had great expectations for the new album by Aosoth, which has been named V: The Inside Scriptures. The first single from that album validates all the eagerness with which it has been anticipated. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CORTEX IMPULSE — “BROKEN”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 212017
 

 

It’s time to confuse people again. It says so right there on our calendar for today: “Confuse people again — stream some metal with clean vocals”. Right under that entry is a note: “Also bludgeon their heads and centrifuge their minds”.

And fortunately we have just the thing — a song called “Broken” by a new progressive metal project from Moscow named Cortex Impulse. “Broken” is one of six tracks (including a King Crimson cover) on the band’s new forthcoming EP, Once In A Lifetime. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KULT MOGIŁ — “PORTENTAQUE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 212017
 

 

Almost  two years on from the release of their debut album Anxiety Never Descending, the Polish death metal band Kult Mogił (whose name translates to “cult of graves”) have surfaced again with a new EP named Portentaque. It is an immaculate rendering of madness, each of its three tracks intricately plotted, constantly changing, persistently fascinating, and deeply unnerving.

The EP will be released by Pagan Records on September 29, and today we’re helping to premiere what has become one of my favorite EPs of 2017. Continue reading »

SATYRICON: “DEEP CALLETH UPON DEEP”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 212017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Satyricon.)

Back in 2013 it seemed as though I was one of the few people – at least of the ones I knew and regularly interacted with – who genuinely enjoyed and appreciated Satyricon’s self-titled opus.

And although, in the years since then, I’ve seen more than a few of them come to appreciate the album’s proggier, more introspective, charms, it remains a divisive and frequently (though not always fairly) criticised entry in the band’s extensive catalogue.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not also a vitally important one.

As a matter of fact, I said at the time, in light of lines like “the stage is yours / I can no longer rule”, that the album was either going to mark the end of the line, or the beginning of a new age, and that only time would tell which was true.

Well, four long, hard years later, we finally have our answer. Continue reading »

ARKAIK: “NEMETHIA”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 212017
 

 

(Later this month Unique Leader will release the latest full-length by California’s Arkaik, and here we have DGR‘s review.)

Southern Californian tech-death group Arkaik have become something of a slowly gathering storm in the music world for a little while now, having remained on a fairly consistent up-swing since the start of their series of meditative science fiction concept albums with 2012’s Metamorphignition.

Over the years the band have seen a rotation of members — including various members from Deeds Of Flesh, Flesh Consumed, and Brain Drill (even more fun considering former drummer Alex Bent currently sits behind the kit for Trivium) — yet they’ve been able to keep their hybrid of tech-death musicianship, brutal-death slamming, and yes, light deathcore sense and dedication to all things groove relatively unchanged. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRYOSTASIUM — “MAGNETIC”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 202017
 

 

The requests we receive to share premieres of new songs often become a source of discovery for me as well as for many of you, and this is one of those times.

Before listening to the track you’re about to hear, the name of which is “Magnetic“, I was unfamiliar with Cryostasium. Only after becoming captivated by the song did I learn that the EP which includes it — Starbound –is merely the most recent in a very long list of releases that extends back to 2003 (and possibly earlier, when the project was known as The Abhorrer). Because this is such a recent discovery, I can’t tell you how the new EP compares to the five albums or the two-dozen shorter Cryostasium releases that have preceded it.

But I can tell you that the haunting fascinations of “Magnetic” act as a powerful lure, not only into the depths of Starbound but also into Cryostasium’s previous creations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NEKROHOWL — “BLASPHEMY STILL UNNAMED”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Sep 202017
 

 

Nekrohowl were spawned last year in Dhaka, Bangladesh, its members coming together from other local bands with the intent of dedicating themselves to “abhorrent and paroxysmal Death Metal” in the grand and gruesome traditions of the ’90s. In doing so, they become a link in what is now a very long and tangled chain (one crusted in blood) that connects back in time to the likes of Suffocation, Autopsy, Immolation, Morbid Angel, and Hellhammer (among others), from whom they’ve drawn their foul inspirations.

There are, of course, a vast number of links in that globe-spanning chain, but some gleam brighter than others. Or, since we’re talking about old school death metal, maybe it’s more accurate to say that some links are more corroded and plague-infested, more likely to cut you, leave festering wounds, and produce seizures of madness. Based upon the quality of Nekrohowl’s debut EP, Epitome of Morbid, they’re definitely one of the brighter (and uglier) links in the chain — as you’ll discover when you hear the song we’re premiering, “Blasphemy Still Unnamed“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THROANE — “ET CEUX EN LESQUELS ILS CROYAIENT”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 202017
 

 

Great lashing storm gales of guitar sound assault the senses. The pulse of the drum and bass sound erratic, find a rhythm, stop altogether, detonate in massive eruptions, move in deliberate and ponderous footfalls. The melody looms and swirls, heaves and shimmers. Peals of dissonance flower and subside. A maniacal voice hurls caustic, blood-chilling shrieks through the song’s titanic movements. The effect is dramatic, unnerving, sorcerous.

And those are this listener’s impressions of “Et Ceux En Lesquels Ils Croyaient“, the second track on the second album by Throane that we’re premiering in this post. Entitled Plus Une Main A Mordre (“No Hand Left to Bite”), it will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on the 20th of October. Continue reading »

ABIGOR / NIGHTBRINGER / THY DARKENED SHADE / MORTUUS: “ANTM”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 202017
 

 

(With his first appearance at NCS, Apokatastasis brings us this review of the 2017 four-way split by four black metal visionaries:  Abigor, Nightbringer, Thy Darkened Shade, and Mortuus.)

Knee-deep in the year’s third quarter, it may seem a waste to dredge up an album released in February, especially a split. Yet this album, despite its ironclad pedigree, has almost entirely evaded detection. Typical of trve kvlt black metal stalwarts, its purveyors willingly eschewed publicity and allowed 2017’s ceaseless deluge of quality releases to subsume their monumental collaboration. Together, the four bands have achieved a level of inter-artist cohesion nearly unheard of in split releases, and they’ve also just made a damn good record. In the name of promulgating greatness, let’s drag these occultists back to the forefront and bask anew in their obsidian light. Continue reading »

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