Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORGAN — “DOGMA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 102026
 

(written by Islander)

A long seven years ago we prepared a feature called “Where Doom Meets Death“. One of the bands we spotlighted then was Organ from Belluno, Italy, and their extensive EP Eterno. We summed up the music as “massive, mountainous, megalithic music, and equally immense in the scale of its bleakness” — “both crushing and celestial, mortifying but mesmerizing, apocalyptically desolate yet also delirious, reaching frenzies of intensity that seem to straddle the line between shattering grief and the rapture of being burned by holy fire.”

Eterno was indeed a stunning release, and left us looking forward to what the future would bring for Organ. It has been a very long wait, but at last Organ are returning, with a new album named IMMOBILISM that will be released on April 8th through Invisible Order Records. In addition to helping announce this eagerly anticipated event, today we’re premiering one of the new album’s five nightmarish tracks — “DOGMA“. Continue reading »

“RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE CHILDREN”: FOUR COMPILATIONS IN AID OF THE PALESTINE CHILDREN’S RELIEF FUND

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 102026
 

(written by Islander)

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Hungry is a UK-based charitable organization that has been releasing music to raise funds for various causes. On February 6th they released four massive compilations of music with the pledge that all proceeds will be contributed to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Each compilation has its own title and artwork, and they organize tracks contributed by bands into these four genre categories:

Death Metal & Grindcore (33)
Black Metal & Noise (35)
Heavy & Atmospheric (35)
Punk, Hardcore, Thrash & Madness (34)

Altogether, the compilations include music from 137 bands, and many of them will be familiar to our visitors. The number of songs included on each comp is in parentheses above. Each compilation is very modestly priced — £3.50 per comp — but purchasers can pay more if they wish, and of course the charitable purpose of this endeavor provides a good reason to do so. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLADIUM REGIS — “DURINDANA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 092026
 

(written by Islander)

Gladium Regis was born in the early 2000s in Italy, and later moved forward in London to produce a dungeon synth release named Kingdom in 2020 (during the intervening years, the project’s alter ego Arcanist Augur Svafnir co-founded and fronted the Italian pagan black metal band Draugr). Now Svafnir has re-directed the music of Gladium Regis in a way intended to re-capture “the unpolished grandeur of early 1990s symphonic and epic black metal”, and the results are manifested in a new album named Quest.

Although Gladium Regis is Svafnir’s solo project, he is accompanied on Quest by some talented guests: Davide Straccione (Shores of Null) provided guest vocals on three songs; Lupus Nemesis (Atavicus) joined Svafnir on additional instrumentation, choral arrangements, and final mixing at Genxia Studios; and Tamoth (Obscura Nox Hibernis) contributed acoustic guitar passages for the album’s intro and intermezzo.

What we have for you today is the premiere of the second single from Quest, a song named “Durindana“. But before we get to it, we want to share some of the words of introduction provided by the Dusktone label, which will release the album on February 27th: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AZIMUT AND OCTOPUS KRAFT — “AGNI PARTHENE APOLEIA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 092026
 

(written by Islander)

In September 2023 the Ukrainian band Azimut independently released their debut album Stuma, which interwove a wide range of influences, including sludge, post-metal, and black metal. Now the boutique Ukrainian label Robustfellow Prods. is releasing Stuma on a limited edition of cassette tapes, with a special bonus track.

The bonus track is a musical collaboration between Azimut and the Ukrainian project known as Octopus Kraft (now the solo endeavor of Yurii Dubrovskyi). It’s two-part title is “Agni Parthene / Apoleia“, and we’re premiering a lyric video for it below. The piece is described as follows: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PILORI, SAILLE, DOODSWENS, FOGHAZER, PETRICHOR, 3 T

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 082026
 

(written by Islander)

I was out with my spouse and two other couples last night. Didn’t get to bed until after midnight, didn’t wake up until the morning hours were well underway, didn’t feel very human at that point or at any other points leading up to the present.

Fortunately, I had already made my choices for this column yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I would be in the best position this morning to explain why I like them so much. But in listening to the songs again, they completely blew away the mental cobwebs. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PANOPTICON, UPRISING, LUCERNE HAMMER, BIAŁYWILK, VANISHING EARTH, LAST SADNESS, FOTOCRIME, EGREGORE, TRANSILVANIA, KATHAREIN

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 072026
 

(written by Islander)

At this point Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” is probably the most widely heard protest song to emerge from the ICE invasion of the Twin Cities and the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. But it hasn’t been long, only 14 days since ICE agents shot Pretti to death, even though it seems much longer than that.

Undoubtedly other songwriters have already started releasing their own protests across many genres of music, though I wouldn’t know (you’re looking at the wrong dude if you want insight into the breadth of modern musical culture). Where I do tend to notice things are in the genres of extreme metal, and I guess a few “metal adjacent” realms.

Over the last week I noticed a handful of songs from those realms that were either protest songs or tracks designed to raise money in support of the resistance in Minneapolis to the sweeping seizure of immigrants (and racially profiled U.S. citizens). In the first section of this Saturday roundup I’ve collected those songs, and one other that seemed appropriate. Fortunately, the music’s good, in addition to the artists’ hearts being in the right place. (If you know of more, please leave a Comment.)

To round things out, I added three other very good songs that surfaced last week. I could have added 20 more, because it was a big week for new metal, what with yesterday being a Bandcamp Friday. But we do what we can. Continue reading »

FINAL DOSE: “ENDLESS WOE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 062026
 

(Below we have Todd Manning’s review of a new EP by London’s Final Dose, released in late January by Wolves of Hades.)

Less than a year after the release of their full-length Under the Eternal Shadow (premiered and reviewed here at NCS), London’s Final Dose is back with a new EP, Endless Woe. Under the Eternal Shadow made it on my year-end list for 2025, so this latest release deserves some attention.

Most press refers to Final Dose as hardcore-influenced black metal. While that’s not necessarily wrong, it definitely minimizes what the group actually does. Certainly, they deliver the visceral assault such a descriptor implies. Opener “Golden Chalice” blends d-beats and punk moments with savage black metal, but Final Dose manages to maintain the atmosphere of black metal as well. The opening guitar figure evokes all the frost-bitten phantoms one can hope for, and then they segue into icy blasts. But just under two minutes in, a riff enters that splits the difference between Darkthrone and Minor Threat. It all works, whether one is meditating by candlelight or dancing in a pit; these guys have the magick. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GJALLARHORN’S WRATH — “THE ABYSSWALKER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 062026
 

(written by Islander)

Last year the multi-national (but largely Spanish in origin) symphonic blackened death metal band Gjallarhorn’s Wrath released their debut album The Silver Key through Non Serviam Records. We published an enlightening interview with bassist Lord Ashler and had the pleasure of making video premieres for two songs off the album in advance of its release. Today, with equal pleasure, we’re premiering a third video from the band, this one for the song “The Abysswalker“.

The video, directed by bandmember Javi Iron, is quite a spectacle, interweaving fast-cutting and eventually rain-drenched footage of these raging heathens throwing themselves headlong into the song’s performance, along with striking imagery of an armored figure, presumably the Abysswalker of the song’s title.

The music is quite a spectacle too. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: IN AETERNUM

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 062026
 


Photos by Magnus Eklund Izarra

(Today Soulseller Records is releasing the first new In Aeternum album in more than 20 years, and to help commemorate the event we’re now presenting Zoltar’s interview with founding member David “Impious” Larsson.)

No matter what some would say, the late ’90s and early ’00s were when both the black and death metal scenes collided, with various results. In Sweden, despite Jon Nödtveidt landing in jail from 1997 onwards, you could still feel the aftermath of Dissection’s gigantic Storm Of The Light’s Bane and how it redefined a whole scene. If on the old continent No Fashion Records picked up the baton and ran with it, so did Necropolis Records on the other side of the Atlantic. By the time the next millennium was just around the corner, the Californian imprint seemed to mostly put out one future Swedish black/death metal classic after the other: Dawn’s Slaughtersun, Arckanum’s first three albums, Ophthalamia, Nifelheim, etc.

Originally called Behemoth, In Aeternum showcased on Forvever Blasphemy, their debut for the label back in 1999, everything fans of that particular genre could hope for with a massive Fredman production, some ripping Necrolord cover artwork, and songs about the end of the world and the reaper. Even if things went a bit south in between the two parties after the release of their equally great second album The Pestilent Plague, those Swedes nevertheless did carry the torch all the way ‘til the end of the ’00s when they seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth.

After a first attempted yet short-lived reunion in 2016, the band are finally back with a vengeance thanks to …Of Death And Fire, their fifth full-length and first proper material in over a decade. We caught up with founding member David “Impious” Larsson to see if his inner flame still burns bright or not. Continue reading »

BLACK RABBIT: “WARREN OF NECROSIS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 052026
 

(Below we present our warren-dweller DGR’s review of the most recent release by the Dutch band Black Rabbit.)

Reminder for self at end of year when going backwards for year-end purposes: This is a review for a 2025 release.

I find myself musing on this constantly, if not just because it serves as a suitable cattle-prod to the brain to lure me from my “catch up on a whole year’s worth of sleep in two-weeks” stupor that the post-holiday season seems to have lulled me into. It is interesting that the first few releases of the year always find themselves entangled with a demented form of catch-up from the previous year.

Time being the non-infinite resource from a mortal standpoint, it has not allowed us to cover the myriad things we wish to write about. There will always be one more, one late discovery, and often we invent excuses to continue looking backwards because a signal cast off into space still exists in some form of radio wave. We quest to find it and ackowledge it, and so the tail end of one year hangs on like the most stubborn bastard out there, refusing to let us continue forward into the next series of unending car-crashes that we adoringly refer to as our favored musical genre.

We also, as a result, have compulsions and imagined debts that must be repaid and a mused-over line in a year-end list quickly becomes a one-way directive of something owed, whether a band is aware of it or not. Thus, it was promised that we would dive into Black Rabbit’s December-released EP Warren Of Necrosis and goddamnit here we are, only two months later – as opposed to say five or ten as our previous records have been – looking at the continuation of the death and thrash metal act’s conceptual universe, the follower EP to May 2025’s Chronolysis. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries