(written by Islander)
This past week has provided yet another flood of new metal, maybe even more than usual. I’m staring at dozens of new open tabs on my beleaguered computer, stacked on top of dozens more from the previous couple of weeks, and getting that anxious feeling that comes from the certain knowledge that I’ll barely make a dent in what’s there.
But I did have time to make a small dent today, thanks to waking up even earlier than usual and with a relatively clear head. No matter the clarity, I don’t have a very well-understood reason for why I picked the following three selections. They just kind of jumped out at me, I guess because they’re all very recent and from bands who’ve got a very appealing track record, at least for me.
With any luck, I’ll make some bigger dents in this weekend’s NCS roundups. For now, get your heads dented with these:
DOWNFALL OF NUR (Italy-Argentina)
In his guise as Downfall of Nur, Italian-born Antonio Sanna (who now resides in Argentina) released debut album Umbras de Barbagia in 2015, followed that the next year with an album-length collaboration with Selvans, then released nothing further in the decade since. But we’re told that Downfall of Nur continued working, and has now completed a new album described as “not a return — but the continuation of a path that never truly stopped”. It is further described as “a profound reflection on the ancestral memory and deeply rooted symbols of Sardinia”.
The new album’s name is And the Firmament will Burn to Quench the Pain of this Earth, and today one of the new songs was made public. Why did I pay attention to it? Here are a couple of clues. In considering the first signs of Umbras de Barbagia I wrote (while under the influence of alcohol):
It cuts to the bone, it heats the blood, it quickens the breath, it pulls you out of your mundane surroundings and sends you soaring on astral waves, it floats you down to earth on the wings of sublime violin strings. It’s the kind of music that makes you feel life worth living, even in dark days…. [T]his should outlast all of us, if there is any justice in this damned world. It’s a brilliant record….
Probably not inebriated, my friend Andy Synn wrote many more words about it, including these:
This is one album which demands your total attention and total immersion, one which rewards patient dedication far more than a desire for instant gratification, and whose gorgeously melodic and atmospheric nature is matched only by the raw power and unparalleled emotion which drives it at its heart. Give it the time it deserves. I promise that you won’t regret it.
So now let’s consider this just-revealed new song, which is the 14-minute title track from the album.
The song swells quickly and raises grand but grievous fanfares of sound above heavily pounding and vividly rattling drums. As those towering manifestations diminish, a lead guitar cries out in pain and keyboards miserably quiver in sparkling tones. The anguished darkness in the song towers again as severely tormented vocals explode, and the guitars convulse in greater pain just before the rhythm-instruments erupt in rock-smashing onslaughts of violent turbulence.
Given the song’s name, one might be waiting for the pain of the Earth, so viscerally rendered in the music and so increasingly stressed to the breaking point, to be quenched. The music’s pain and anguish does eventually diminish, replaced by distant winds, ethereal ambient shimmers, ghostly moaning tones, and slow violin voices — a more mystical experience, but also a more heart-broken one. Now the music grieves, expressing a different kind of pain.
Even as the classical violins continue their stricken wailing, the vocals scream their wrenching torment again and the drums generate earthquakes and avalanches. The layered violins won’t be silenced even when the heavier music heaves and jolts. If you’re expecting succor, I don’t think you’ll find it in this song. But its emotional power is undeniable.
The album is set for release by Avantgarde Music on May 22nd. A great deal more information about the album’s inspiration and concept is available at Bandcamp.
https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/and-the-firmament-will-burn-to-quench-the-pain-of-this-earth
https://www.facebook.com/downfallofnur
NON EST DEUS (Germany)
Non Est Deus is another highly favored band around these parts. The first three albums were the subject of one of Andy’s Synn Reports in 2022, and those were followed the next year by Legacy. After that nearly year-over-year flurry of full-length releases we’ve had to wait three years for the next one, but that’s probably because the band’s mastermind Noise has been busy with his tremendous Kanonenfieber project.
Anyway, there’s now a new Non Est Deus album named Blessings and Curses that’s being released today by Noisebringer Records. This morning Non Est Deus released a live-performance video for the song “Transgression“, and as this column goes to press the whole album is now streaming at this location or this one. I haven’t listened to the whole album yet, so here are just some thoughts about “Transgression“.
The live-performance video is quite an attention-grabber, and so is the song itself. Menacing and even dismal at first, the music soon heavily hammers, furiously blasts, and violently swarms. And so it goes, back and forth, alternately sorrowing and savage, though the haughty, serrated-edge growls are always fanatically savage.
Though come to think of it, the song also joins the sorrow and the savagery together, until the thundering force of the song vanishes and a lone guitar rings its melancholy moods alone, eventually joined by mystically shimmering tones and another dose of malicious vocal fanaticism. Fire and fury bring the song to a close — the music sears and sores, races and riots, driving up the adrenaline again.
https://noisebringer.de/index.php/de/shop
https://noisebringer-records.bandcamp.com/album/blessings-and-curses
https://www.facebook.com/nonestdeusbm
STARER (U.S.)
I think it’s more than fair to say that Kentucky-based Starer made a big splash with its 2025 album Ancient Monuments & Modern Sadness, one that opened the eyes of a lot of people to just how tremendously good Starer is, and has been for a lot of years. Wasting no time, Starer surprise-released a new EP today, a four-song collection named Skeleton Claim His Being. Let’s let Starer’s creator explain what’s in it:
Surprise release drop. How about the world’s only known black metal cover of John Mellencamp for your Friday?
Don’t consider this EP as a follow up to Ancient Monuments and Modern Sadness. That’s pretty far along at this point and will likely come out next year. This is a collection of unreleased material that will hopefully raise some money for the ESMA animal rescue in Egypt that I’ve been with for almost 16 years….
I attempted to stretch some different muscles and try some different sounds with these songs. Here we have a cover of John Mellencamp’s “Rain on the Scarecrow“, a demo for my band Primeval Well that ended up not getting pitched [“A Verier Ghost Than I“], the song that was cut from Ancient Monuments [“Alas For Youth“], and a new song I threw together using some lyrics I wrote a couple years ago as a guest on VENUS-426’s album [“A Soliloquy for Humanity“].
That Mellencamp song, recorded back in 1985 when he was 34 years old and then made the subject of a video that many of us of a certain age will still remember, is an angry song focused on the dwindling of family farms in the U.S. The song is still relevant, given that Trumpist tariffs and his unprovoked war in Iran are driving small farms into crisis again, and the rage in Starer’s take on it is even more blistering.
The cover still carries strands of the original melody, but in a form that makes them more viscerally bleak and desperate, and at a key moments Starer’s vocals switch from incinerating screams to harrowing roars and vehement singing.
“A Verier Ghost Than I” unfurls a hill-country folk song with an old-school bass-line, fervent singing, fiddling fretwork, and nimble banjo-picking, but also contorts it into chaos through a black-metal prism, whereas “Alas for Youth” blasts and swarms from the very start before flashing tones flare, wailing vocals arise, and bounding beats jump in. Much like “A Verier Ghost Than I“, that song also elevates and expands, but it’s unsettling, even frighteningly distressing, in all its changing phases — all of which will also get your pulse pounding.
Finally, “A Soliloquy for Humanity” rings like bells warped by grief, eerily clanging and quivering around grim spoken words. The pace doesn’t pick up, but the music swells and greatly magnifies the music’s daunting aura of corrosion and calamity, further magnified by throat-lacerating screams.
I suppose it’s fair to say that the whole EP is unsettling in varying ways, with not much hope in it, but it reflects the times we live in now, doesn’t it?
https://starer.bandcamp.com/album/skeleton-claim-his-being
https://www.facebook.com/starermusic