Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTAR OV ASTERIA — “ÉNA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 222024
 

If you’ve heard the first single released from Altar Ov Asteria‘s debut album you know these two German women (Satyra and Melpomene) aren’t cautiously feeling their way forward, haltingly trying to figure out who they are musically. They named that song “Kataklysm“, and a sonic cataclysm is what they made — a devastating, exhilarating, and wholly engulfing experience.

The rest of the album, entitled Éna, is equally self-assured, both in its music and in its conception. Altar Ov Asteria liken it to “a storybook of hellish Sodom”, imagining (as Dante and Homer did) “a world full of mysteries and realities woven into each other”, creating allegories of human dystopia through an intertwining of viscerally assaulting, immensely heavy black metal and unorthodox atmospherics.

What we have for you today is the premiere stream of Éna as a whole, all five songs, in advance of its release by the Dusktone label on November 29th. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEBELKRÄHE

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Nov 222024
 


photos by Afra Gethoffer-Grutz

(On November 29th the Crawling Chaos label will release a re-recorded version of Entfremdet, the 2009 debut album by the distinctive German black metal band Nebelkrähe. What the production of that entailed, and how it came to be a reality, are among the subjects of the following interview by Comrade Aleks of Nebelkrähe‘s Morg.)

“Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret”. This quote from the Bible just popped up in my mind, when we finished the interview with Nebelkrähe’s guitarist Morg a few days ago and I learnt that NCS prepared a track premiere as well.

Actually, I interviewed Morg one year ago, because these German black metal intellectuals just released their third album Ephemer (2023) back then, and I was excited with it (although they didn’t have any song based on Lovecraft’s stories). This year the trio of Nebelkrähe’s founders re-recorded their first album Entfremdet (2009), and they had their reasons to do that.

As always, Morg proved himself to be an interesting and focused conversationalist.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE GREAT OLD ONES, OBSCURA, YOVEL, CONCRETE AGE, SPERE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 212024
 


The Great Old Ones – Photo by Daphnea Doto/Solweig Wood

(written by Islander)

This week I’ve done a better than average job staying abreast of new songs and videos that have surfaced since last weekend which I thought would be worth checking out. The result is that my list of things to investigate is now 40 links longer than it was on Monday morning! Anyone who thinks the rollout of heavy new music slows down near the end of the year must have just awakened from a very long slumber.

Fortunately, I had some time this morning (which I usually don’t have on the weekdays) to make a small dent in that list and pull a few things together to get a head-start on my usual Saturday and Sunday roundups at our site. I confess that today I erred on the side of bands who I think of as “proven commodities,” just to make the winnowing process a bit easier — though I did decide to include one I’d never heard before. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LACOLPA — “WHERE GOD LIVES”

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Nov 212024
 

(written by Islander)

Over the course of two previous albums the Italian band LaColpa have musically and lyrically elaborated their philosophy of pain, “deeply rooted in the human condition of eternal suffering,” through “different stratifications of sonic nightmares.”

I’ve quoted there from the introduction provided by Brucia Records to LaColpa‘s recently announced third album, In Absentia Lucis. The label also describes the album as “a pitch-black magma of suffering in music, combining Sludge, Doom and Dissonant Black Metal with some of the most painful soundscapes of improvisational Noise and Drone.” Regarding the new record’s thematic focus, they say:

After having explored themes like guilt, awareness of own mortality and the condition of pain which inevitably grips our existence, In Absentia Lucis closes the circle by bringing back the reflection on our own condition of impotence.

We are lost in the immense solitude of our Ego, masters of Nothing.
We are the Lords of Nothingness.
Lost in Our Vast Loneliness. Continue reading »

HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY TO US!

 Birthday Posts, Metal News  41 Responses »
Nov 212024
 


Dawid Figielek – KNIGHT (2013)

For another year we’ve raced through the ongoing firestorms of heavy new music without being thrown off and trampled, and so it’s time to celebrate survival again.

On November 21, 2009, I made the first post at this blog. On the 21st day of every November since then (except one year when I forgot to do it until a few days later) I’ve made a post commemorating our birthday.

In these annual posts I used to explain how I had no ambitions or expectations when I started the blog, nor any training or experience as a music writer, and that the sum total of my motivation was to create an enjoyable diversion for myself from the grind of daily life, and to indulge my burgeoning interest in heavy music. And there, I just did it again, albeit in fewer words than some earlier years.

In these annual observances I also tended to reminisce about how many things about NCS have changed from the early days, and about how surprising it is to me that we’re still here. Some of you remember the early days, because you were here with us then. Others who have begun checking in here more recently might yawn if I indulged in that kind of nostalgia, so once again I’m going to skip that and get right into expressions of gratitude and the annual tradition of mind-numbing statistics. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNALIVM — “CONQUERING THE MOST HIGH”

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Nov 202024
 

Infernalivm is a new name, but one you will soon remember. A satanic death metal weapon from France, their lineup includes members of such notable and notorious groups as Novae Militiae, Merrimack, Benighted, and Ritualization. That info alone is enough to make extremist listeners pay attention to Infernalivm‘s debut EP, Conquering the Most High, and the music ruthlessly seizes attention too.

Sentient Ruin Laboratories, the label that will release the EP on November 29th, has described its four songs as a “dark and violent abomination with an immensely evil and antihuman atmosphere” — “dark, sanguinary, and inescapable,” “absolute sonic brutality,” “an authentic horror of creation.”

As you’ll learn through our premiere of the EP’s title track, those aren’t overstatements. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SORROW

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Nov 202024
 

(The NY death metal band Sorrow‘s first records were released in 1991 and 1992, and their third one followed decades later in 2023. How it came to be, and the dual meaning of its title, are among the subjects that Comrade Aleks discussed with three of the band’s members in the following very good interview.)

I think that I interviewed Brett Clarin for the Doom Metal Lexicanum project a few years ago, and for sure there was the interview with him here focused on his symphonic black/death metal band Journey Into Darkness. But his “main band” was the angry death-doom outfit Sorrow based in New York in the late ’80s and disbanded in 1993 after the EP Forgotten Sunrise (1991) and the LP Hatred and Disgust (1992).

A bad deal with Roadrunner Records disappointed the guys so much that they left without finishing the recording of the next full-length. And all of a sudden Sorrow’s original lineup returned in 2022 in order to complete that recording.

Andy Marchione (vocals, bass), Brett Clarin (guitars), Bill Rogan (guitars), and Mike Hymson (drums) released Death of Sorrow through Xtreem Music in August 2023, and I skipped it somehow. But support is never enough, and here we have the interview with Brett, Andy, and Bill discussing true death of Sorrow. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIRROR NEURON — “INTERIOR SEMIOTICS”

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Nov 192024
 

(written by Islander)

As a band name, Mirror Neuron is an intriguing choice, and so is the artwork on this Toronto duo’s spectacular debut album, Great Content.

A “mirror neuron” is an actual thing, present in the brains of humans, primate species, and birds. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge: “A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron ‘mirrors’ the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.” Its function has been the subject of much speculation, which you can read about via that link above.

As for the cover art, it’s a painting by Justyna Koziczak (used with her permission) called “Dante and Virgil in 4th circle of hell” (that’s the circle for the greedy).

But the intrigues don’t stop there. Consider the way the Mirror Neuron duo have characterized the music on their album: Continue reading »

DJEVEL: “NATT TIL ENDE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 192024
 

(Today we welcome to NCS a Croatian metal writer currently based in Oslo, Norway, who goes by the name Chile. He brings us the following review of the new album by the Norwegian black metal band Djevel, just released by Aftermath Music.)

Yes, talk about being on a roll. While some bands would take their sweet time to release an album or two, Norwegian forces of otherworldly nature and all things black in the form of Djevel, have come back to us with their ninth album in just fifteen years of existence. Some would raise an eyebrow or two to this prolific manner in this day and age, but we are raising our glasses and horns to another devilish masterpiece.

Appropriately titled Natt til ende (Night to the End) and released in the middle of the dark November by Aftermath Music, the album packs a punch so fierce that the fury unleashed can be felt up to high heavens, which makes even more sense when we heed the words of T. Ciekals, the creative force behind Djevel: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BARATHRUM

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Nov 192024
 

(In this brief interview Demonos Sova, a co-founding member of the long-running Finnish black metal band Barathrum, answered questions posed by our Comrade Aleks about their new album Überkill.)

One of the oldest Finnish black metal entities Barathrum is here again, and as you saw in our Shades of Black department, Demonos Sova and his circle have not returned empty-handed.

The new album Überkill is out thanks to Hammer of Hate, and it’s easy to predict what you’ll get from it – a portion of concentrated black metal nihilism with savage heavy metal touches. So I welcome you to take a short quest to the Mountain of Bones to fulfill symbolic Ritual Murder through the Dark Sorceress’ Black Magic Rites and accept the Death by Steel for Überkill’s sake. Continue reading »

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