Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VÖLVA — “THE TOWER”

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Oct 162024
 

Sweden’s “avenging witches of black metal,” Völva, opened a lot of eyes and ears with their 2020 debut EP Promises Unfold as Lies, and they will open more with their forthcoming debut album Desires Profane, now set for release on November 28th by Grind To Death Records (CD) and Fiadh Productions (vinyl).

The album is described as “ten hymns to the lost souls of their persecuted sisters, incinerated upon the murderous bonfires of Christianity,” as “a scalding assault of vehement rage,” and as a pursuit of “themes of Satanic feminism both in a spiritual cosmic sense as well as using your free will, body and lust as vessels to sin for a higher purpose”.

As a vivid sign of what the new album brings, today we premiere a video of Völva performing a song called “The Tower,” which opens the album, filmed in the setting of Studio Quaalude, a recording studio located in Malmö. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TROLLWAR — “BANE OF THE UNDERWORLD”

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Oct 162024
 

On November 15th the Quebec-based melodic symphonic metal band Trollwar will release their fifth record, an EP named Tales from the Frozen Wastes. It doesn’t take much guesswork to assert that the EP’s cover art will seize the attention of listeners, even those who haven’t yet encountered Trollwar‘s previous releases. In addition to depicting a fantastic setting it also connects to the album’s music.

As Trollwar have explained (and as you can see): “The artwork represents the journey to the underworld, with a desolate land, ruled by a higher force, where darkness looms over all. Yet still, through this evil sky, light can be seen piercing the night…. This visual representation perfectly captures the essence of Trollwar’s music – epic and hopeful, yet dark and malicious.”

You will have a good chance to investigate these claims today through our premiere of a song from the new album named “Bane of the Underworld“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ELDINGAR — “ARES”

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Oct 162024
 

(written by Islander)

When the Greek metal band Eldingar released their debut album Maenads in 2021, our own Andy Synn extolled it in his review as embodying a “sense of seminal spirit and elemental exuberance which dates all the way back to the dawn of the Hellenic scene.”

He called it an album that “sits proudly at a nexus point between Black Metal, Melodic Death Metal, and good old Heavy Metal, and practically revels in its hybrid identity,” a “tribute to the metallic majesty of a bygone era” and one that might “also help return it to its former glory.”

We are thus fortunate that Eldingar will soon return with a second album, and its name is Lysistrata. What Andy wrote before holds true again. As before, the music is stylistically multi-faceted and emotionally powerful, viscerally affecting in many ways. Also as before, it’s rooted in compelling philosophical concepts that have a current-day relevance, even though often expressed through ancient Greek traditions and mythologies. Eldingar‘s label describes the themes this way: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DETEST THE SUN — “SILENT SUFFERING”

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Oct 152024
 

(written by Islander)

Detest the Sun is a Louisiana-based one-man project started by Howl in 2023, devoted to “the true spirit of southern melodic black metal”. Following a two-song demo self-released last April, Detest the Sun will now see the release by Void Wanderer Productions of the project’s first album (or EP, depending on how you consider a half-hour runtime).

The new record is named Moonspells and Everlasting Sorrow, and Void Wanderer portrays it in these terms:

“As darkness claims over the Earth, with it Detest the Sun unleashes its debut album of pure cold, melancholic grimness. With the beauty of melody behind the ice, wielding invective curses behind each verse, you shall be locked within a trance. A trance so abysmal as a buried spirit beneath the deepest cavern, but with this trance, you shall become victim to its nocturnal rite.”

As a more tangible sign of what the album encompasses, we’re now premiering one of its X tracks, a song named “Silent Suffering“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEAMONOLITH — “THE MONOLITHIC CULT OF DEATH”

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Oct 152024
 

(written by Islander)

The debut album from the Polish band Deamonolith is unusual. First, it comes with cover art by Michał “Xaay” Loranc (based on a concept by the band’s two founders) that will stop most people dead in their tracks when they see it.

Second, the album is just a single song — a single track that’s 35 minutes long.

Third, and most important, although the members of Deamonolith have been active in the metal scene since the 1990s and have made death metal the core of their first album, it’s far away from some kind of “OSDM” re-tread. Instead, it’s an enormously ambitious and thoroughly jaw-dropping extravaganza that pulls freely from multiple genres of music, both within and outside of extreme metal.

That’s a conclusion you might infer when you discover that the album’s music includes such ingredients as saxophone, classical guitar, piano, clean male and female vocals and choirs, and dark ambient accents. But you needn’t rely on inference, because today we’re premiering The Monolithic Cult of Death in its entirety, just a few days away from its co-release by Godz Ov War Production and Ancient Dead Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KAM LEE (MASSACRE)

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Oct 152024
 

(Our Comrade Aleks is best-known at our site for interviewing musicians in the genres of doom and black metal, but he dived deep into the molten core of death metal with this interview of the legendary Kam Lee. Maybe it was the shared love of Lovecraft that created the connection?)

Kam Lee doesn’t need a special introduction. Being one of the most prolific American death metal vocalists, he started with Mantas and Death in 1983, and performed with a lot of bands including Bone Gnawer, Massacre, The Grotesquery, and many more. Lovecraftian horrors, horror movies and related cultural influences were the fundament of his lyrics for almost 40 years and became a trademark of the bands in which he was involved, as well as his primordial growl.

His return to Massacre in 2019 opened a new chapter in the band’s career, as Kam, with the help of Mike Borders (bass) and ultra-prolific Rogga Johansson (guitars), breathed new life into the old entity. The most recent demonstration of their fruitful collaboration is the Necrolution album, which will be released by Agonia Records on November 8th. I’m grateful to Kam for his patience and this great interview we managed to do. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AD VITAM INFERNAL — “SHEMIHAZAH THE GREAT”

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Oct 142024
 

(written by Islander)

Following up their 2020 debut album Infernal Comedy (released by Lavadome Production), the hellish French death metal band Ad Vitam Infernal have completed a new album named Le Ballet des Anges that’s now set for release on November 8th by Dolorem Records.

On the new album the lyrics focus on the Book of Enoch. As the band explain: “It is in this work that the origin of demons and Nephilim is told, as well as the origin of fallen angels such as Semihazah, who was the angel at the head of the Watchers and the instigator of their descent to earth to teach sciences forbidden to Man.”

And it is “Shemihazah the Great” that is the central figure in the song from the new album that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FROM THE VASTLAND — “99999”

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Oct 142024
 

(written by Islander)

Many of our visitors, probably most, are well aware of From the Vastland. Even just focusing solely on our site, we’ve been avidly following and writing about the band’s music for more than 11 years (witness all these reviews and interviews), beginning with a review of the band’s first live performance at Oslo’s Inferno Festival in 2013.

But for those who might be encountering From the Vastland for the first time, it’s the black metal brainchild (and heart-child) of Sina Winter, a project he began in his homeland of Iran in late 2010 and then carried forward to greater heights after moving to Norway, where he has been accompanied in live performances and recordings by an impressive collective of allies.

Since 2010 From the Vastland‘s discography has grown to seven albums, released by an array of respected labels, and an eighth one is now on the horizon. This new one, Tenebrous Shadow, is set for release on November 1st by the German label The Crawling Chaos, and today we’re hosting the premiere of a song from the new album called “99999“, accompanied by an official lyric video. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SORDIDE, PSYCHONAUT 4, AMYSTERY, ALTA ROSSA, APOTHECARY, CELEPATHY, ANCESTRAL CÂNTICO, SILHOUETTE, PAYSAGE D’HIVER

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Oct 132024
 


Sordide, photo by Jeremy Tiercelin

(written by Islander)

Over the past week I added an even 30 new songs or complete releases to my list of black and blackish metal that I wanted to check out in building today’s column. That was on top of how the list stood a week ago, already wobbly from its ungainly height.

As usual, I didn’t have time to check out all 30. In a handful of instances, I defaulted to previously proven names. For others, I had dependable recommendations. And for others, I went exploring, based on glimpses of one thing or another (artwork, lineup, location, conceptual framework) that I thought were interesting.

Here’s what came out at the end of the sifting, with the choices due in part to how the music fit together in my head, sometimes complementing and sometimes contrasting. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: VIDRES A LA SANG, GOLGOTHAN REMAINS, APOSTASIE, EUCLIDEAN, BOMBUS, [4672], SOLAR WIMP, HEXENBRETT, GLORIOUS WOUNDS, YUNCLAS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 122024
 


Vidres a la Sang

(written by Islander)

Last week I came across the word “Alician” for the first time. Pronounced similarly to “elysian”, it means “Surreal, whimsical, or illogical.” Maybe you can guess by now that it’s based on the character Alice, the heroine of Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

By coincidence the word came back to me as I was sifting through a big pile of music in order to make choices for this Saturday roundup. It came back to me because at some point I began to feel like I was tumbling farther and farther down a rabbit-hole, coming across one thing after another that really did sound “surreal, whimsical, or illogical”.

We’ll get to those songs, because I hung onto them, but not right away. Right away, we’ll get to something much more serious — unsettling in a different way. Continue reading »

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