(written by Islander)
I’m kicking off this week’s roundup of new songs and videos with a preview of what’s coming at NCS between now and year-end, mainly for newcomers to our site since the old-timers know what the drill will be.
First, we still have a few year-end lists from “big platform” sites and zines that we’ll share. I have two of those in hand now, which I’ve written about for posting on Monday. I suspect next week will bring at least one more, and then we’ll be done with that aspect of LISTMANIA.
Second, having just completed a week’s worth of Andy Synn’s year-end lists, on Monday I’ll also start posting lists from other NCS writers and special guests. I have X of those in hand at this point, and more will roll in. My plan is to spread those out a bit, with the goal of completing the posting of them by the first week in January.
Third, beginning in January I’ll again roll out the one list I’m responsible for, my choices (with lots of assistance from our readers and other writers) of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. On that note, if you want to make nominations for those awards, you can still do that by leaving a Comment on this post.
Of course, in addition to the foregoing we’ll continue posting song or record premieres (I have a whopping 9 of them on the calendar for next week, though only a few after that in what remains of the year), and we have a collection of interviews to catch up on as well. Plus, I suspect some of our writers might try to squeeze in a few more reviews before the curtain falls on 2025 (Mr. Synn, in particular, has threatened to do so).
Now let’s turn to the new songs and videos I picked out for this Saturday’s roundup:
NO/MÁS (U.S.)
Fair warning: the first four songs in today’s collection are ragers, which is to say that the music, in different ways and at different times, sounds enraged. Which suits my own mood quite well.
To lead off, we have a new song named “Manic” from DC’s NO/MÁS, a song described by their label as one that “captures the band at their most unhinged and sharpened — a blast-beat-driven rush of hardcore velocity, death-metal weight, and psychological tension.”
That’s a good summing up. “Manic” is a no-holds-barred attack of writhing, razor-wire riffage, furiously clobbering drums, battering-ram bass, and scraped-raw howls. The music also dismally blares and viciously sears, and it inflicts machine-gun bursts, crazed screams, and equally berserk guitar soloing. It will get your adrenaline flooding for as long as it lasts (which isn’t long).
“Manic” is the first single off a new NO/MÁS album named No Peace, which is set for release by Redefining Darkness Records on March 13th. It’s also being released by Decibel on Bloodied White Marble vinyl.
https://nomasgrind.bandcamp.com/album/no-peace
https://store.decibelmagazine.com/products/no-mas-no-peace
https://www.facebook.com/NOMASGRIND/
NOISE AHOLIC (Finland)
The Finnish crust punk band Noise Aholic began as a side project of Owe Inborr from Ondfødt and Dispyt. In 2022 we premiered the band’s debut record, Narcissistvärld, an experience we characterized as “wild and explosive”, with the music hitting “like electrodes shoved into your neck dialed up to full power while a cudgel-armed gang bludgeons your neck with bloody-minded intensity.”
In the year following Narcissistvärld, Noise Aholic released a second album, Vi är inte värda ett skit, and next spring a third one will arrive. Its name is En värld styrd av lögner. It was written, recorded, and produced entirely by Owe Inborr, but features guest vocals by Kjell Simosas and Otto Kaalikoski (Bob Malmström), Mari Luoma, and Petter Haukland (known from Kaos, Kris och Helvete, among others), as well as soloing by Marco Lindholm (Luponero).
The Elitbolaget label describes the album as “a soundtrack to a world collapsing under its own bullshit”, and that sure as hell fits the first single, “Inget spelar någon roll“, which features vocals by Otto Kaalikoski.
Like the NO/MÁS song above, this one doesn’t last long, but long enough to get the blood hammering in your veins. With drums galloping and the bass throbbing, the riffing slashes with a vicious pulse and then boils over in an even more vicious (and blackened) churn. The vocals bark like a rabid slavering dog that’s striving to get your jugular in its teeth. The song will get its hooks in your head too.
This is a rude tease. It’s really hard to let go after just one quick track. Wish they’d released at least two or three simultaneously. But yeah, I’m greedy.
https://elitbolaget.bandcamp.com/album/en-v-rld-styrd-av-l-gner
https://www.instagram.com/elitbolaget/
https://www.facebook.com/Elitbolaget/
VREID (Norway)
Earlier I forewarned that the first four songs in today’s roundup are ragers. You’ll be perplexed by that description now, because this next song by Vreid begins in a way that sounds like the polar opposite of rage. But be patient, they’ll get there.
The opening, effectively augmented by the setting of the video that accompanies the song, is gentle, folkish, and melancholy in its mood, but it suddenly bursts open in a torrent of electrifying riffage, flickering guitars, and cantering beats. Simultaneously, the song also swells in grandeur, though the mood remains dark, and even stricken.
And then things do get furious, thanks to rapidly scissoring guitars and serrated-edge snarls, though the music’s air of grandeur turns more glorious and less dark, and heroic singing joins the beastly snarls.
Back and forth the song’s intensity goes. An elegant piano melody takes the stage; but the music also strides and stomps like a giant, and it also soars like birds (as do the sung vocals), in a way that channels yearning. The soloing beautifully wails; the piano returns; and the music bursts open again in a discharge of blackened fury, while climbing to epic (yet perhaps tragic) heights in a way that seems calculated to put listeners’ hearts in their throats.
“From These Woods” is off a new Vreid album named The Skies Turn Black. It will be out on March 6th via Indie Recordings.
https://vreid.omerch.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vreidofficial/
TANIN’IVER (Australia)
Now we’ll turn to the first song made available from a new album by Tanin’Iver, an Adelaide band named for “the blind dragon steed of Lilith in ancient mythology, the beast that brought about the union of Lilith and Samael, which spawned pestilence and brought it into the world.”
This song, “Remembrance“, is a hell-raiser of extravagant proportions, and the opening vocal samples (plus others inserted later) make clear what the target of Tanin’Iver’s fury is. When the music finally begins to rage, it does so through blazing and broiling riffage, thunderous drums, and fanfares of sound that seem to writhe.
Scalding, teeth-bared screams bark the words in the midst of violent percussive turbulence and scorching and whirling guitars that seem to channel hellish glory, like the soundtrack to a demon horde spinning and elevating. Although the rhythmic grooves and the riffing change in ways that make the music sound simultaneously even more imperious and more feral, the song remains infernal (and haughty) at its core.
Eventually the song changes again — less furious and more abysmal — but ends in a way that savagely jolts, viciously swarms, and vocally comes for the throats of bible-thumpers everywhere — an exhilarating outpouring of musical pestilence once more.
Save the Rest for the Wicked will be released by Morning Star Heresy on February 25th, and they recommend it for fans of Mayhem, Svart Crown, and Belphegor.
https://taniniver.bandcamp.com/album/save-the-rest-for-the-wicked
https://www.facebook.com/p/Taniniver-61569017996063/
DE L’ABÎME NAÎT L’AUBE (Switzerland)
Now we’ll have a very dramatic change in the progression of today’s collection, with a new song and video by the Swiss collective De l’Abîme Naît l’Aube (whose name is sometimes shortened to DANA).
Lots of bands, especially of the more occult bent, use the word “rituals” instead of “songs” to describe their music. And while there’s often more style than substance to such usage, this next song really does begin in a way that sounds like the start of a shamanic ritual, and the video enhances that impression.
The beginning of the song, “Une Pleine Absence“, also suggests (at least to me) the influence of Pink Floyd — soft, slow, shimmering, astral. When the drums arrive to tumble and thump, they add a primitive and ritualistic accent, as do deep droning vocals and high, angelic ones.
The music gradually swells, mysterious and spellbinding in its effects. It seems like it’s building to something extravagant — but diminishes and stops instead. That just makes what comes next, at the 4:00 mark, even more invigorating.
And what comes next is a big braying riff and muscle-moving grooves, along with tormented snarls and guttural roars (but with those soaring, celestial vocals still in the mix). The guitars ring out but are also abrasive; when the pace slows, the band mount a big stomp and the music seems to claw and crawl in pain, augmented by swarms of tremolo’d feverishness and sky-flying female vocals.
When the music diminishes again, it once more sounds mysterious and haunting. The two vocalists gently sing together, maybe like the discovery of something transcendent after the turmoil through which they passed. But the music intensifies once more, still very heavy and muscle-moving in the low end but sweeping and sparkling in the sonic stratosphere. Perhaps needless to say, the vocals get up there too.
The song is a continual ebb and flow of intensity, but it ends in an ebb-tide of bleakness.
I was induced to watch and listen to this after seeing the following introduction in an e-mail we received:
At the crossroads between the emotional universe of Amenra and the initiatory realm of Heilung, “De l’Abîme Naît l’Aube” (meaning from the abyss the dawn is born) is a project aiming to blend atmospheric and melodic post-metal with tribal rituality, offering a hypnotic, transcendent, and luminous experience.
“Une Pleine Absence” is the opening track from DANA’s forthcoming album Rituel: Initiation. It will be released on CD/Digital format through Hypnotic Dirge Records on February 13, with vinyl coming later.
https://danapostmetal.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/dana.postmetal/
https://www.facebook.com/dana.postmetal/
SINDRE NEDLAND (Norway)
Sindre Nedland was the vocalist of In Vain and Funeral (and the brother of Borknagar’s Lars Nedland). He passed away from cancer last March. While trying to recover from the disease he wrote and recorded a solo album, his first and last one. It was released yesterday. I’ll quote from a statement by Borknagar:
Sindre was a friend of the whole Borknagar camp (we even toured Europe with him back in 2014), and we all mourn his passing.
During his last years Sindre worked diligently on crafting a short but powerful and deeply personal solo album – one filled with love, melancholy, and soul-shaking vocals. Sindre passed away before seeing the physical release, but he saw it through to the final master, and now it’s yours to hear too: 200 vinyls have been printed, and are released by his family for purchase through Bandcamp today. All proceeds go to Sindre’s children.
Sindre Nedland had a remarkable singing voice, with impressive range and equally impressive emotive power, and it’s the centerpiece of all the songs. The songs also pack a muscle-moving punch, with grooves generated by hard-smacking drums and heavily clanging bass-lines, and the melodies are full of hooks, rising and falling along with Nedland’s voice.
The songs channel moods of melancholy and resilience in different ways; the opening pair of songs mostly sound uplifting to these ears, but the ones that follow take darker turns, yet with bursts of vibrant life within them.
They often feature bright piano arpeggios and riveting drum-fills, and lots of different guitar tunings and effects (including some edged with abrasion), along with a variety of keyboards. The music also seems to pull from traditions that extend many decades back rather than anything attempting to embrace current trends.
The album is of course quite different from what we usually focus on around here, much more in the vein of rock or post-rock (and of course there’s naught but singing). But I hope you’ll give it a chance, and help support Sindre’s family. It is, as one Bandcamp comment expressed, “a bittersweet gift.”