Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABOVE AURORA — “MYRIAD WOES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 262024
 

Four years ago we premiered and reviewed at length The Shrine of Deterioration, the second album by the Polish “black/doom” band Above Aurora. It followed the dark and desolate path whose first steps were marked by the band’s 2016 debut album Onward Desolation and their 2018 EP Path To Ruin.

That second album created an almost relentlessly shattering and yet also wholly enthralling experience. No surprise, we leaped at the chance to premiere the band’s forthcoming third album, Myriad Woes, which we do today in advance of its March 29 release by War Anthem Records.

It’s obvious from the album’s title alone that Above Aurora‘s worldview has not brightened over the last four years, and the music is as dark and devastating as you might expect from their previous works, but they have managed to increase the scale and colossal power of the traumas they transmit, as well as providing dramatic contrasts in tone, volume, and speed, variations in style, and melodic nuances that are piercing in the midst of cataclysms. Continue reading »

THE ABSENCE: “THE ABSENCE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 262024
 


artwork by Dan Goldsworthy

(On March 28th The Absence will release a new self-titled album via Listenable Insanity Records, and we’ve got DGR‘s extensive review of it below.)

You could argue that it’s a common enough situation that it shouldn’t warrant a raised eyebrow, but six albums in is usually not the expected timeframe for one to get the honor of being the self-titled one.

Maybe it’s just us, but there’s a lot to be said for being the ‘self-titled’ album. It usually marks a few things within a group’s history; it’s either the one with the definitive sound for the band, or the complete reinvention. Sometimes the event of the ‘self-titled’ is usually two or three albums in, when it seems a group has finally honed its craft. The self-titled album is stating to the world that this release is such and such band.

You usually don’t get the self-titled album this late unless the band have opted for the second of our two above-mentioned scenarios, wherein the group are completely reinventing themselves and taking a serious gamble. It’s a way to dodge the curse of naming your release after a phoenix or some new-born flame because that almost wills your group into breaking up soon after. Yet with The Absence‘s The Absence we’re not really facing any of those scenarios. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SPIRITUAL VOID

 Interviews  No Responses »
Mar 252024
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with bassist Mat from the German doom band Spiritual Void, whose latest album Wayfare saw release last summer.)

As we interviewed Iron Void, why don’t we do the same for Spiritual Void?

This doom metal trio is located somewhere in the Lake Constance area, at the northern foot of the Alps in Germany. That explains why the band prefers themes related to Nature in the artworks and lyrics of their albums White Mountain (2017) and Wayfare (2023). Spiritual Void’s members weren’t involved in any other bands before, so for Mat (bass), Schlunsky (drums), and Rob (guitars, vocals), Wayfare was only the second album in an entire career, so to speak.

And yet this material is remarkably solid, loud, and mournful, as any traditional doom metal album should be. Now come and taste it, while reading this interview with Mat.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOKTURNAL — “DAGGER OF WILL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 252024
 

On May 3rd much of the world will be deep into spring or entering summer, but it will still be a very dark day, cast into deep and sinister shadows by Pulverised Records‘ release of Nokturnal‘s debut album Shades of Night.

The album by these Indonesian necromancers is well-named, because the darkness of their music does have different shades, and reveals many shifting shapes within the gloom, as you shall witness through our premiere of an utterly diabolical and relentlessly dynamic album track named “Dagger of Will“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENGULFED — “CURSED ETERNITY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 252024
 

The capacity to create sonic scenes of crazed and cataclysmic conflict, weaponized by technically eye-popping instrumental armaments and urged on by monstrous proclamations — these are among the achievements of the Turkish death metal band Engulfed, whose name encapsulates the experience of being caught and consumed by their ravenous music.

The engulfing savagery and racing technicality of the band’s music would by themselves be enough to put Engulfed on the global map, circled in red, but they also manage to insidiously infiltrate their music with mood-moving atmospherics both grim and grievous.

After only one album and a pair of EPs, Engulfed are already at the point when news of a new release whets appetites for angry and exhilarating music, and a new Engulfed release is what we’ll have on on April 19th when Me Saco Un Ojo and Dark Descent release the band’s second album, Unearthly Litanies of Despair.

So far, one song has erupted from the album, and today we un-cage a second one through our premiere of “Cursed Eternity“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SCARCITY, SIDUS ATRUM, STRYCHNOS, SVDESTADA, SVRM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 242024
 


Scarcity — photo by Caroline Harrison

Today’s selection of black and blackened metal was partly the result of coincidence and partly by design. Coincidentally, out of all the worthy songs I listened to in searching for selections, many of them were by bands whose names begin with “S”. By design, I limited this column to those bands. Chalk it up to some need for order out of chaos.

Also coincidentally, two of these songs were accompanied by videos that are among the best I’ve seen this year in any genre, and by arranging this column alphabetically by band name, they come first. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLAZE OF PERDITION, CAVE, CORPUS OFFAL, HIDEOUS DIVINITY, INSECT ARK, THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, ОБРІЙ (OBRIJ), TEN TON SLUG

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 232024
 


Blaze of Perdition – photo by Justyna Kaminska

My day job is in an extended period when it’s leaving me alone. This is a double-edged sword for my unpaid work at NCS. I’m able to notice a lot more new songs and videos, but that also leaves me feeling overwhelmed. The flood of new stuff is insane, and equally insane is how much of it is good.

A lot of listeners are so wedded to specific sub-genres that they’re unimpressed by much of what falls outside their solemn vows. I guess I’m wedded too, but am very much a polygamist and feel the need to give all the brides, even the ugliest ones, their fair share of attention.

OK, that was gross, but the point is that I’m enamored of metal from many sub-genres (the more extreme ones), as today’s large roundup demonstrates (though I still think power metal wears too much makeup and flashy clothes). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFIN CURSE — “REEKING FILTH OF AGES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 222024
 

When is a curse also a blessing? The answer is Coffin Curse, the demon-spawned Chilean death metal band whose thoroughly evil new album The Continuous Nothing is now racing hell-for-leather toward an April 22nd release by Memento Mori.

We were blessed four years ago to premiere a song from this duo’s mortifying debut album Ceased to Be, and now we get to make another premiere today for the new album, presenting “Reeking Filth of Ages“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRAWL — “THRONE OF MOLTEN BONES”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 222024
 

Six years after their debut album Rituals and a year after their split-release with Feral, the Swedish death/crust band Crawl are making a rampaging return with their second full-length Altar of Disgust, which is set for release on May 3rd by Transcending Obscurity Records.

In listening to the new album, the phrase “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” comes to mind, because Crawl still revel in delivering ugly, adrenaline-fueled mayhem and skull-busting punishment, steeped in an atmosphere of ghastly horror and well in line with a rich tradition of Swedish-style, punk-influenced death metal.

But that’s not to say that Crawl have stood still since their debut album. While still unmistakably a Crawl release, the songwriting is more nuanced and more adventurous, and as Transcending Obscurity correctly previews, they’ve brought a bit of blackening into the mix here and there as well. Continue reading »

HAMFERÐ: “MEN GUÐS HOND ER STERK”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 222024
 

(Didrik Mešiček wrote the following review of a new album by the Faroese band Hamferð, which is being released today by Metal Blade Records.)

The Faroe Islands, a harsh archipelago, technically belonging to Denmark, with a population of roughly 54k people has 14 bands listed on Metal Archives. Ten of those are active and one of those is Hamferð, which is the band whose new release, Men Guðs hond er sterk, I’ll be covering in this article. The band has been around since 2008 and won the Wacken Metal Battle competition in 2012, after which they’ve released two full-length albums, with this being their third, which will come out on March 22nd on Metal Blade Records.

I can’t say I’ve been overly familiar with this band before and mostly only knew them by name, but what really drew me to this record immediately was the title. Men Guðs hond er sterk or, in English, “but God’s hand is strong”, is for some reason one of those phrases that automatically make me very intrigued, as it’s filled with promise and romance.

If we take into account the harshness of the Faroes, the phrase is so much more impactful, as life on the islands can truly be rough and, from what I’ve seen and been told, it truly feels as if you’re at the mercy of some sort of a god and its whims, whether on land or in a fishing boat not far off shore, a lesson captured in the tragic 1915 whaling event that inspired the record. Continue reading »

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