Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALKALOID — “THE MALKUTH GRIMOIRE”

 Premieres  11 Responses »
Mar 092015
 

 

We discovered the existence of Alkaloid quite by accident last July after learning of the departure of Christian Muenzer and Hannes Grossman from German technical death metal overlords Obscura, and wrote about them at a time when not much information had been publicized — but what was known was certainly enticing. In the months since then, the reasons for excitement have only grown. This supergroup’s debut album The Malkuth Grimoire is now set for release on March 17 — and today we bring you the premiere of its title track.

The word “supergroup” is overused, but it’s entirely justified in the case of Alkaloid. The band’s members have histories with an impressive list of groups: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANIMALITY — “BLOODSPATTER BRAINMATTER”

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Mar 092015
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli introduces our premiere of a new song by Animality from Nashville, Tennessee.)

Going to make this short and sweet to accommodate our humble editor getting ass-slammed by work.

This is Animality.  They are from my home state of Tennessee and perform some downright bestial bloodthirsty technical death metal/deathcore.  You are about to hear “Bloodspatter Brainmatter”, the first single from their upcoming EP and I’m proud to present it to you and hope you’ll dig it. Continue reading »

APOCROPHEX: “SUSPENDED FROM THE COSMIC ALTAAR”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 092015
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the debut album by Apocrophex from New Jersey, which is being released on March 10.)

They say variety is the spice of life, but in a musical context, it’s how you arrange that variety and spice that makes the difference between music that’s merely a rehash and something that’s varying degrees of remarkable.

Instead of mixing all their influences into one singular synthesis dispersed in the same manner across every song, as many derivative tech-death bands do, Apocrophex shift between countless styles and technical death metal influences in separate contrasting passages and songs. In isolation, this can make some moments come across as too obviously close to their influences and thus seem weaker, but when taken as a whole in terms of how the music is constructed, Suspended From the Cosmic Altaar is very interesting and varied for technical death metal. And that’s especially when you consider that this is the band’s debut album, coming very soon after their initial two-song EP, Wheels Within Wheels (which I wrote about last year here at NCS). Continue reading »

BLOG SLOWDOWN — TOTAL VOMIT EXPERIENCE

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 082015
 

 

The maniacs out there who actually visit our putrid site on a daily basis will have noticed that I didn’t post anything yesterday, which I think is only the sixth day in more than five years when that’s happened. It wasn’t because of fucking off. “Fucking off” isn’t in the NCS dictionary. Once again, it’s because my fucking day job is fucking with me — and that will continue to happen for the next two weeks.

Once again, I’ve been dispatched away from home on a project that keeps me ridiculously busy both day and night. Yesterday I didn’t even have time (or the right frame of mind) to listen to a single song, much less the time to scribble something for the site. There will be days here and there between now and the end of the project when I can throw something together for NCS, or edit, format, and post the scribblings of other people. But I’m afraid there will be a noticeable drop in the volume of content on the site. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOVOKA — “CHOSEN”

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Mar 062015
 

 

Wovoka are a relatively new sludge metal band who come our way from Los Angeles, and their debut album Saros is set for an April 14 release by Battleground Records. As a herald of the album’s advent, we bring you today the premiere of a powerful track name “Chosen”.

The galvanizing drumbeat of the song’s opening rumbles like cascading boulders during an avalanche, soon joined by big, thick riffs that ring as if sounding a clarion call of awakening to a dark new future. When the earthshaking force of the song’s initial section subsides, what unfolds next is something like the vista of a vast, desolate plain, scoured of life, blasted yet clean under an ominous sky. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PERDITION TEMPLE — “GODDESS IN DEATH”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Mar 062015
 

 

In the years that have followed the 2010 release of Perdition Temple’s debut album Edict of the Antichrist Elect, the band’s line-up has undergone changes. Now, the group’s founder, guitarist Gene Palubicki, is joined by Immolation guitarist Bill Taylor (a comrade of Palubicki in Angelcorpse during the ’90s) and Black Witchery vocalist Impurath — along with drummer Ron Parmer and bass player Gabriel Gozainy.

This new Perdition Temple collective have recorded an album entitled The Tempter’s Victorious that will be released imminently by Hells Headbangers, and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s fourth track, “Goddess In Death”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RED MOON ARCHITECT — “BETRAYED”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Mar 062015
 

 

Red Moon Architect are a melodic doom metal band who make their home in what has been described as Finland’s gloomiest town, Kouvola. Their debut album Concealed Silence was released in 2012, and today marks the release of their new album Fall via Playground Music. To help introduce you to the music of the new album, we’re pleased to bring you the premiere of an official music video for the new album’s second track, “Betrayed”.

“Betrayed” is cavernous and vast, the kind of crushing music that finds beauty in misery and truth in despair. Anchored by titanic riffs that move at the pace of a wounded leviathan and powerful drum strikes, the song is a striking contrast, its melody as captivating as it is forlorn. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: A NEW GORGOROTH ALBUM AND IMMORTAL SOCK PUPPETS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Mar 062015
 

 

I have a lot of new music and videos that I spotted earlier in the week that I still need to throw your way, and with luck I’ll be able to do that later today, but for now, here are the first two things I saw this morning after firing up my computer and visiting Facebook.

GORGOROTH

My NCS comrade Andy Synn posted the album cover that’s at the top of this post. It appeared on the Facebook wall of Gorgoroth, with this announcement:

Gorgoroth has signed to Soulseller Records, who will release the band’s new album Instinctus Bestialis on 8. June 2015 on CD/vinyl and digital (available through Amazon, Spotify, iTunes etc.) Continue reading »

MALADIE: “…STILL…”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Mar 062015
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by the German band Maladie.)

My problem with bands such as Slipknot is not merely a distaste based on personal likes and dislikes, but one rooted in the fact that their music has never seemed to sound like the collective efforts of their many members. It seems limited and small, compared to what might actually be possible had a band with that many members truly tried to include and incorporate each player’s talents in a way that added richly to the band’s sound.

While they are worlds away from Slipknot, I think this is part of the reason why I love the German metal super-group Maladie. They truly make full use of each of their nine members, to create an ensemble effort that defies the norm in search of a highly progressive musical path that never loses its venomously monstrous aggressive edge in the pursuit of this enlightening and forward-thinking aim. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “DORMANT HEART”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 052015
 

 

(DGR reviews the latest album by Sylosis.)

For a long time, there were few bands out there that I was willing to evangelize as much as Sylosis. Long before I ever got into the writing game, I would tell anyone who would lend me their ear about the band — a group I had initially checked out on a whim when my policy for checking out new music consisted of looking into albums that scored an eight and above on Blabbermouth.net’s review scale, a criterion that Sylosis’ 2008 release Conclusion Of An Age happened to satisfy.

To explain why the group held such a strong appeal to me, I have to own up to the fact that three genres were really my entryway into heavy metal, and they were melodeath, metalcore, and thrash metal. It’s probably a common event that those three tend to be the welcome mats, since a lot of what I view as “gateway bands” tend to fall into those genres, but I just had to highlight it, in part because, to be incredibly reductive, Sylosis‘ sound is a combination of those three genres. Continue reading »

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