AN NCS PREMIERE: SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH — “THE PENDULUM OF NECROPATH”

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Apr 192023
 

You could say that this is Sporae Autem Yuggoth week at NCS. Yesterday we presented a very good interview of this Chilean band, which presents lots of background about how they came to be, as well as intriguing insights about their debut album …However It Still Moves, which is set for release by Personal Records on May 19th. And now we’ll help introduce you to music from the album.

As our interviewer Comrade Aleks explained in his own introduction yesterday, “Their death-doom is balanced – it’s old school, but it isn’t obsolete, it’s grim and yet it has its bright moments.” Aleks also quoted some accurate words from a press release: “‘Dark as fuck’ is one way of describing However It Still Moves, but ‘bittersweetly beautiful’ is another, depending on what minute of the hour-long album you land on – many movements and many moods, but all dripping into (and reverberating back up from) a bottomless well of despair”.

As an even more tangible sign of what the album brings us, today we’re premiering the song that appears second in the album’s track list — “The Pendulum of Necropath“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CATACOMB

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Apr 192023
 

(In late March of this year Xtreem Music released the monstrous debut album by the French death metal band Catacomb, and today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the band’s co-founder Ben Bussy.)

Catacomb is such a cool and grim title that Metal-Archives shows us over ten bands with that name, though some of them have been inactive for years. I believe that Catacomb from Toulon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur was one of the first who chose it.

This death metal crew started to praise the Ancient Ones in 1990 and was a quite active unit of the French death metal underground even though the band went through two splits in 1994 and 2003. However, its founders Ben Bussy (bass, vocals) and Tony (guitars) were able to resurrect the monster once more in 2018, and with the help of Bress (drums) and Ronan Kermarec (guitars) they started to record new stuff.

The result of this returning from the grave are the EP Back to Unknown Kadath (2022) and the fresh and meaty LP When the Stars Are Right from Xtreem Records. It’s mister Bussy who says today: “Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn!!!” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENOID — “MES ÉTRANGES PENSÉES TISSENT LEUR SOLITUDE”

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Apr 182023
 

The prolific Swiss multi-instrumental musician and vocalist Bornyhake is an artist of many musical guises, with a resume that includes nearly three-dozen bands and personal projects, both within an expansive sphere of metal and outside the boundaries altogether. Among them, the solo project Enoid is one to which he has repeatedly returned, with eight albums being released since 2006 and a ninth one now on the way.

That ninth full-length, Ô Nuit, emporte-moi !, is now scheduled to see the light of day on April 23rd via Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile). In a nutshell, it confirms that Enoid is the vehicle to which Bornyhake returns when in the mood for crushing, hate-fueled black metal ferocity. and the dominance of death It is the burning ground where its creator locks arms with revolutionary forebears from the ’90s.

And lest there be any doubt about that, we have for you today the premiere of a song from the new album named “Mes étranges pensées tissent leur solitude“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WRACK — “RUINEN”

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Apr 182023
 

The creative processes of the German black metal band Wrack are atypical. They have not been in a rush. Thirteen years have passed since the release of their debut album Gram und gleißende Wutwork, and since then they have worked simultaneously on four albums, creating numerous songs and continually revisiting them, allowing them to connect or diverge and to experience a kind of intuitive evolution. In that evolution, during which Wrack say the subconscious plays a greater role than the rational, other genre influences have been brought in.

One of the albums that have taken shape over those 13 years, Altäre der Vergänglichkeit (German for “Altars of Transience”), was released earlier this month by the Crawling Chaos label. It features guest contributions from Stef of Minas Morgul, Rigor Mortis of Hallig, and Frida Nordlys of Miscreation.

In its conception, the album “describes the spiritual atmosphere that emanates from the aesthetics of external and internal decay” — “the decay of the man-made, as well as the refuge and violence of the natural realm, draw a deeply connected, but also rapt relationship to nature”. In its expression, it provides a mixture of atmospheric black metal and death/doom, accented by acoustic guitars, 7-string guitars, and ambient drones, as well as considerable vocal variety.

What we have for you today, to help draw attention to this captivating record, is the premiere of a video for a two-part song on the album, the name of which is “Ruinen“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH

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Apr 182023
 

(On May 19th Personal Records will release the debut album of the Chilean band Sporae Autem Yuggoth, and it had a strong appeal for our friend Comrade Aleks, so he reached out for the following interview of the band.)

The Chilean metal scene hides a lot of secrets, and sometimes I’ve discovered some absolutely killer bands there. Doom bands usually. And Sporae Autem Yuggoth is one such band, which is ready to spread the Word of Death and Doom all over the world with their forthcoming release.

It was founded in Talagante, Santiago in 2019 by Alexis Gutiérrez (bass), Diego Guzman (drums), José Gallardo (guitars), Patricio Araya (vocals), and Juan Drey (guitars). Juan left after the release of the EP The Plague of the Aeons and Luis Morales took the vacant place of the second guitarist. He didn’t get there time, and the full-length album with the creepy title …However It Still Moves was recorded without him, but with Johanna Sánchez on keyboards.

Their death-doom is balanced – it’s old school, but it isn’t obsolete, it’s grim and yet it has its bright moments. As the press release says: “‘Dark as fuck’ is one way of describing However It Still Moves, but ‘bittersweetly beautiful’ is another, depending on what minute of the hour-long album you land on – many movements and many moods, but all dripping into (and reverberating back up from) a bottomless well of despair”.

That sounds true to the matter. I hope that you’ll like the album and this interview with  Sporae Autem Yuggoth‘s collective mind.

(Thanks to Nathan Birk, Suspicious Activities PR, for organizing the interview.) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LAVA INVOCATOR — “PSYCHO-TERROR WORLDWIDE”

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Apr 172023
 

When the Ukrainian black metal band Lava Invocator released their debut album Mörk in March 2017 Russia had already illegally “annexed” Crimea, and pro-Russian “separatists” had declared “independence” in the eastern region of Donbas, leading to persistent fighting that had killed thousands. But at that time Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was still five years away. Now, of course it is a brutal reality.

And it was in the midst of that brutal reality that Lava Invocator wrote and recorded their second album, and gave it a name inspired by what was happening around them and in the world at large: Signs Of Apocalypse.

You can imagine the harrowing destruction of modern warfare when listening to the album’s music, and you’d expect nothing less from a band named Lava Invocator. But their music is far more multi-faceted than that. There’s a fascinating dynamism in the songwriting, a compelling use of melody, and the generation of mood-changing atmosphere, not to mention a lot of attention-seizing instrumental inventiveness.

We have an excellent demonstration of all this in “Psycho-Terror Worldwide“, the song we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s April 20 co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and The Ritual Productions (Netherlands). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FIAT NOX — “OPIUM TO INSIDIOUS SLUMBER II”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 172023
 

In 2021 we had the honor of premiering In Contemptuous Defiance, a new EP by the German black metal band Fiat Nox, which followed their 2021 debut album The Archive of Nightmares. In an accompanying review we wrote that the EP “further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies”. In Contemptuous Defiance was also home to a song (“Amok Hymn“) that we named to our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Allowing no grass to grow beneath their iron-shod hooves, Fiat Nox followed that EP with another one in 2022 — Demanifestation (Hymns of Destruction and Nothingness). Unfolding across three tracks and 30 minutes, it provided a bracing amalgam of blistering and blasting blackened fury, engrossing melodies, and frightening, esoteric atmosphere worthy of the record’s magnificently hellish cover art.

With their creative fires still burning hot, Fiat Nox have readied yet another EP for release later this month. Entitled Opium To Insidious Slumber, it consists of two songs, and today we’re premiering a lyric video for the second of those — “Opium To Insidious Slumber II“. Continue reading »

ALTARI – KRÖFLUELDAR

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Apr 172023
 

(Andy Synn bathes in the pyroclastic flow of the debut album from Iceland’s Altari)

I promise you, at some point I’ll write about something a little more… normal.

Maybe some stupid, stompy Death Metal or some chunky, chuggy Hardcore. How does that sound?

But, for whatever reason, there’s been so many brilliantly weird and wonderful albums released over the last few months – especially on the Black Metal side of things – which I’ve felt compelled to write about that you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re in the middle of some sort of renaissance in the field of Avant-Garde extremity (and maybe we are!).

And, providing yet more evidence for this, may I present the debut album from Icelandic iconoclasts Altari.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MORIBUND MANTRAS, DACCAR-TCHUV’S CAVE, PINCER CONSORTIUM, NON SERVIAM, ALTAI-SAYAN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 162023
 


Moribund Mantras

Humans continue sending cameras into the deepest waters on Earth and continue seeing strange creatures that live there. If those creatures have minds, they may be thinking we should mind our own goddamned business, especially the two snailfish that were physically caught in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench last September at a depth of 8.022 meters (just under five miles below sea level). Even the snailfish that were only videoed at a depth of 8,336 meters, making them the deepest fish ever captured on film, might have felt annoyed. (The film was released earlier this month, reported here.)

But the snailfish aren’t the deepest sea creatures discovered so far. There’s an octopus that’s been found at an estimated 9,800 meters below sea level in the Marianas Trench. And the deepest part of the Marianas Trench measured so far (the deepest surveyed point of all the Earth’s oceans) is 10,971 meters (6.817 miles) below the water’s surface. There’s probably life down there too — we just don’t yet have the technology to go look.

Why the hell am I sharing this info here? It’s because I’ve been thinking about the allure of oddities (for want of a better term). Life-forms found at depths once thought unsurvivable bear resemblances to creatures that dwell far closer to the surface, but their appearance has been twisted in unusual and often frightening ways as they adapted through evolution in their epochal descents. Their strange fascinations lead us to keep searching for them, and to attempt to comprehend how they have survived.

Some (but not all) of today’s music bears resemblances to more familiar forms of black and blackened metal, but it is also twisted into unusual and sometimes frightening shapes. Searching for such oddities is one of our pastimes, because the results can be fascinating. (The risk of operating in a blog where there’s no one telling you what to do is that it permits strained analogies that consume a lot of space.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: TORTURE RACK, INFERNAL CURSE, STRAHOR, MISMATCHED, SHADOWS, SCHEITAN, DRUNK MOTHERFUCKERS, FLORES Y FUEGO

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 152023
 

I don’t know where you live. If I were some tech-savvy spook I might be able to find out, but I’m not one of those. I only know where I live. Where I live spring is valiantly trying to become sprung. Leaves and blossoms are gradually appearing on deciduous trees, some faster than others, but when the rains come again tomorrow they may regret that.  A few flowers have blossomed, but not many. I hear a lot more birds at sunrise.

However, the overnight lows are still in the 30s F, the daytime highs still mired in the 50s, and the sun is either pale or obscured by clouds. Spring will have to fight harder. Mind you, I’m not complaining. The last few unbroken links of winter’s chains have made it easier to connect to the some of the music I picked for this Saturday’s recommendations. And of course, delirium and rage are not seasonal, but ever-present, as is alcohol.

TORTURE RACK (U.S.)

Death metal, foul and hulking and savage, seemed like the right way to begin. “Decrepit Funeral Home” will put you on the torture rack and a roaring monster will turn the crank until your bones groan and sinews stretch in agony. You know you deserve it. Continue reading »

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