Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAUFAR — “VIA NECROPOLIS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 312025
 

(written by Islander)

Everything that happens today will be the last this or the last that or the last that other thing that happens in 2025. This is the last NCS premiere of 2025, and it’s a very good one.

To help ring out 2025 and to help ring in the New Year we’re premiering the first single and the title track from a new Graufar album named Via Necropolis. We present it with a lyric video that includes live footage of the band’s performances filmed across 9 different shows, including Wacken Open Air Festival.

Graufar, whose name is an old German word for the color “grey”, are a relatively new group but have quickly achieved some notoriety. Founded in 2020 in Linza, Austria, they released their debut album Scordalus in 2024 and in that same year won Wacken Metal Battle Austria and went on to place ninth in the international finals at Wacken Open Air. The forthcoming second album builds on these foundations. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM THE GOAT TAVERN

 LISTMANIA 2025  5 Responses »
Dec 312025
 

(Last May we published an excellent interview of the Polish band Polish band Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi by a metal enthusiast with some roots in Poland but based in the UK whose moniker is The Goat Tavern. With that as our introduction, today, as part of our 2025 LISTMANIA series, we’re sharing The Goat Tavern’s year-end list of 25 favorite albums. To follow The Goat Tavern, go here and here.)

Whenever it’s time to look back at the year that’s just passed, I always face the laborious task of selecting the albums that have tickled me the most and the ones I think are worth a special shout-out. I try to take different things into account but, in the end, it’s the emotions that matter to me in the first place.

Extreme metal is in a fantastic place at the moment. Each year brings more and more astonishing albums and 2025 was no different. The variety and range of music within the metal scene is overwhelming and it might be a real battle to follow everything that’s coming out.

This year, I selected 25 full-length releases that I consider my favourite ones that I’ve been listening to the most this year. The definite majority involves black metal and, this year, the list has been dominated (again!) by Polish bands.

I hope you can find something new there that you like. Enjoy! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

 LISTMANIA 2025  2 Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(For the 15th year in a row, our friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus (find them here and here) has again allowed us to share with you his year-end Top 10 list, originally presented on Johan’s own music blog here.)

Lists like this are always somewhat arbitrary, it’s ten releases I picked, from the longer list of albums I liked, whittled down from albums I’ve heard, released in 2025. Often times which get picked and which get left off is mood dependent, and that is only the albums which I’ve heard; experience has taught me that I will sometime down the road find albums released this year which could easily have made the list. As at least a few of the releases below I’ve not seen on other lists published here, I hope you find something you enjoy which you may otherwise have missed. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DENOMINATE — “LIMINAL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(written by Islander)

The Finnish band Denominate have been on an increasingly fascinating musical journey as they’ve moved from release to release over the last decade. In one sense, they’ve always been a death metal band, but they’ve been consistently exploratory since the advent of their 2015 debut EP, Realms of Confusion, and their music is now best described as progressive death metal.

Our last encounter with them was in the context of their second full-length in 2020, Isochron, reviewed here by our Andy Synn. Even then, Andy highlighted the band’s prog-metal magic in an album that had its fair share of ingredients from the realms of technical death metal.

And now Denominate are returning with a third album, Restoration, which represents the culmination (to date) of their adventurous evolutions. It still displays a lot of eye-opening technical skill and includes a fair share of ravaging attacks, but it’s also the most multifaceted (and prog-inclined) release by Denominate so far, one in which captivating melodies and atmospheric passages play prominant roles — as you’ll learn for yourselves through our premiere of a stunning second single from the album today. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ILLA

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(Here we present our Comrade Aleks’ interview with Saїmon Ramov, frontman of the Siberian black metal band ILLA, whose new albnum Dialogue was released this past September.)

Born in Novosibirsk two years ago, ILLA claimed to be quite an active project as it took just one year to give a birth to the first full-length, Sarva-Saktan (2024), and one more year was spent on finishing the sophomore work Dialogue, released on September 16th by SoundAge Productions and Svarenne Music.

One of ILLA’s main features is their sheer interest in Hindu mythology and culture. Thus their (mostly “post-“) black metal has its atmospheric and epic charm. As Saїmon Ramov, the band’s frontman, states: “Each track is a journey into unexplored corners of consciousness, where culture, tradition, and music intersect. We strive to convey to listeners not only sound, but also the significance of stories shrouded in mystery”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEAD SUN

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 292025
 


L-R: Thomas Ohlsson, Rogga Johansson

(On December 19th Emanzipation Productions released This Life Is A Grave, the latest album by Rogga Johansson’s long-running melodic death metal band Dead Sun. And that event led Zoltar to contact Rogga for the interview you’ll find below. We’ve stitched in some of Dead Sun’s new music too, which is well worth your time.)

Oh yeah. Rogga Johansson. Like again. I know what you’re thinking: with no less than 48 (!) bands/projects listed as ‘active’ on his metal archives page, and don’t get me started on those considered ‘inactive’ as there are as many, it may be hard sometimes from an outsider point of view to take the man seriously. I mean, who does have 48 bloody different aliases, especially since in most cases it more or less is to do the same kind of chuggin, old-school and full of ‘ugh!’ style of death metal whose foundations were laid out by his main band PAGANIZER back in 1998? Isn’t it all the same all over again?

Well, as one of the few psychos who own, if not all, say, most of his works (give or take, over 120 + albums dude), I (slighty) beg to differ. Yep, you need first of all to be a sucker like me for this brand of Swedish mid-tempo rudeness but believe me when I tell you you’ll find different flavors here and there, that is if you know where to look.

Case in point being DEAD SUN: next to his solo albums or EYE OF PURGATORY, this is probably as close as ‘melodic death metal’ goes, Rogga Johansson-style. Meaning: catchy as fuck, because let’s face it, the man knows a thing or two about coming up with instantly memorable in-your-face crusty riffs. Yes, This Life Is A Grave is their (his?) official ninth full-length, but next to the criminally overlooked 2019 Night Terrors one of their best under that moniker. Plus it’s DEAD SUN’s first under the banner of Emanzipation Productions, who already has a long history of partnership with Mr. Johansson thanks to STASS or THORIUM.

So come on, don’t be shy, come on and have a taste! Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2025 EDITION)

 LISTMANIA 2025  9 Responses »
Dec 292025
 

(This marks the 12th time in our history when our ornery old friend SurgicalBrute has weighed in with a year-end list of favorite albums and/or EPs. As expected, his list (in alphabetical order) adds many names that haven’t appeared before in our 2025 Listmania series, and this year there’s a lot of variety on offer, though the prose is just as curmudgeonly as ever.)

It’s been about three years since I last did one of these lists for No Clean Singing. Since then, hardcore kids have taken over old school death metal, black metal has become a meme on TikTok, slam metal continues to exist, and for some reason there are still people convinced Deafheaven is a black metal band.

What the hell, people!? I step away for five minutes, and all hell breaks loose! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: ROLLING STONE’S LIST OF “THE 15 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2025”

 LISTMANIA 2025  6 Responses »
Dec 292025
 

(written by Islander)

The first two parts of our year-end LISTMANIA festivities are nearing conclusion — our sharing of lists from sites and zines with much bigger audiences than our own (but often, audiences who aren’t as devoted to metal as ours) and lists compiled by our own writers and old friends. In this post we’re again including Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the year’s best metal albums because it has become a tradition, a largely comical tradition at this point which dates back to the halcyon days of 2013 when a commenter somehow just skipped past all our introductory text, looked at Rolling Stone‘s list, and chastised us for not naming Gorguts as AOTY instead of Deafheaven.

Of course, Rolling Stone hands-down qualifies as the kind of “big platform” site or zine that we pull from in this part of our LISTMANIA orgy, as a way of getting a glimpse into what the top-side world perceives as great metal.

This year, Rolling Stone compiled a Top 15 list (the number seems to vary from year to year). Ususally their list displays a lot of “scatter”, for want of a better term. Often, it includes albums you wouldn’t be surprised to see on one of the lists assembled by our own writers, and often it includes others that makes us cringe. By our lights, the rankings themselves are often eye-rolling. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GATES OF DAWN, HANDFUL OF HATE, THE BLOOD MOUNTAIN BLACK METAL CHOIR, ISLEPTONTHEMOON, WOUNDS OF RECOLLECTION

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 282025
 

(written by Islander)

We’ve arrived at the last SHADES OF BLACK column for 2025.

If you read yesterday’s column (and surely you did, and no I’m not calling you Shirley) then you’ll know I’m flying the coop mid-morning today to watch a football game at the local sports bar (there’s only one), accompanied by my spouse and a good old friend. Despite that plan I did not wake up extra early (it is a Sunday, after all) to finish today’s column, and I wasn’t able to make much of a head start yesterday due to watching a very long movie set on a planet where the indigenous peoples have tails (watching in 3D, no less), followed by dinner at the very same sports bar where we’ll be returning in a couple of hours.

Given my limited time, I had to make some hard choices, but also some extremely impulsive ones. How impulsive? Well, despite the fact that I had my own very long list of candidates from which to select, I chose one thing I didn’t know about until this morning. However, the first thing below has been on my radar for a while. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: JUODVARNIS, ANGERSEED, MAGNACULT, SKULLD, GAMO GRIND, GRAVETAKER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 272025
 

(written by Islander)

We all made it through Christmas week more or less intact, not just those of us who toil here at NCS but you too, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Taking some deep breaths, we now look ahead to the final five days of 2025. We have a few more year-end lists to share from friends of our site, although I think one or two of those won’t appear until on or after New Year’s Day. And somewhere around the first day of 2026 I’ll start rolling out the last part of our year-end LISTMANIA celebration, the only one I’m responsible for — our list of 2025’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

In the meantime, here’s one last 2025 edition of SEEN AND HEARD, and tomorrow I hope to bring you the year’s last edition of SHADES OF BLACK (it’s more hope than promise because there’s a mid-morning start on Sunday to an NFL football game that will rivet my attention; one does not live by metal alone).

As usually happens, the flood of new music diminished during Christmas week, although there was plenty of actual flooding out here on the U.S. West Coast. However, the diminished music stream still included some very good offerings, on top of what had breached the levees in the weeks before that. As you try to recover from the week just ended and begin peering ahead toward 2026 with some combination of fear, loathing, and maybe glimmers of hope, I hope you’ll enjoy what follows. Continue reading »

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