Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: VALGRIND — “MILLENNIUM OF NIGHT BLISS”

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Mar 312023
 

We’ve been following the music of the Italian death metal band Valgrind for many years, and for good reason. But if you happen to be discovering them for the first time, despite how often we’ve written about them, they released four demos and an EP between 1995 and 2002 — and then seemed to go into hibernation until the appearance ten years later of their debut album, Morning Will Come No More. Another four years passed, and then Valgrind’s second album, Speech of the Flame, was released by Lord of the Flies Records. The wonderful 2017 EP Seal of Phobos tided over Valgrind fans until the 2018 appearance of the next album, Blackest Horizon, via Everlasting Spew Records.

And then came their Condemnation album released in 2020 through the Spanish label Memento Mori, followed by their From the Viscera of Darkness EP in 2021. Now, the same Memento Mori is poised to release Valgrind‘s mind-blowing fifth album, Millennium of Night Bliss, on April 24th, and we’re able to share the title track with you today. BUT… before we get to that song, we want you to lend your ears to the new album’s previously released opening track “Teshub“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: LUNAR CHAMBER

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Mar 312023
 


photo by Marissa Godinez

(On April 28th 20 Buck Spin will release the debut album of Lunar Chamber. As the label says, it offers “a deluge of jarringly brutal metal, overwhelming progressive physicality and instinctively accomplished memorability inspired by Buddhism, the East and esotericism.” It piqued the interest of Comrade Aleks, and he reached out for the interview that follows.)

20 Buck Spin just released two albums by the bizarre and progressive death/black crew Ulthar, and if you scraped your brains off the wall after listening yo their Anthronomicon / Helionomicon albums then here’s another challenge for people of strong spirit and thirsty minds.

Lunar Chamber’s debut EP Shambhallic Vibrations is a concept work of spiritual journey through the sonic plains of all things extreme and progressive. The album was mastered by Colin Marston of Gorguts and mixed by Greg Chandler of Esoteric; these two bands serve as good references to the avant-garde and complex music of Shambhallic Vibrations.

The band’s line-up is Timeworn Nexus (guitars, vocals, programming, songwriting), They, Who May Not Be Perceived (guitars, vocals, songwriting), Æther Lotus (fretless bass), and K. Paradis (drums). Right, the Lunar Chamber crew mostly keeps their anonymity and there’s no information in Metal-Archives yet, but Timeworn Nexus holds few secrets from our readers.

(Thanks to Jan of Sure Shot Worx for organizing the interview.)
Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PRONOSTIC — “BARE AND WRETCHED”

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Mar 302023
 

The darkest clouds of the covid pandemic didn’t have many silver linings, but one of them is that the lockdowns gave musicians a chance to bring to fruition ideas that had been long-gestating. The Montreal-based technical/progressive melodic death metal band Pronostic is a prime example of that. The dead times allowed them to complete their second album, Chaotic Upheaval, which is set for release on May 12th. It follows their formidable full-length debut (An Atomic Decision) by a long eight years.

It’s fair to say that with this new album Pronostic pulled out all the stops. New participants have come on board, including Fleshgod Apocalypse‘s piano and orchestration maestro Francesco Ferrini; world-renowned drummer Samuel Santiago, known for his time in First Fragment, Gorod, Black Crown Initiate, and more; and fretless bassist extraordinaire Xavier Sperdouklis, whose resume includes work with Killitorous and Ignominy. Moreover, the new album includes a host of impressive guest appearances (which we’ll identify later in this feature). And they got Cryptopsy‘s Christian Donaldson to produce and record it along with the band’s Charles “Butcher” Pilotte.

And none of that is intended to take away from the songwriting and performance skills of continuing members Pilotte (Low Vocals / Guitar) and Alex Lauzon (High Vocals / Guitar).

What all these talents have accomplished on the new album has already been previewed by the release of a single called “L’impureté Globale” (accompanied by an ambitious post-apocalyptic music video), and today we’ve got a further preview in our premiere via a lyric video of the album track “Bare and Wretched“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NECRONOMICON EX MORTIS (SELF-TITLED)

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Mar 302023
 

What you’re about to experience is likely to be the most electrifying 18 minutes of your day, unless you lose control of your car, the brakes fail, and you’re surging toward a concrete pylon at Formula One speed.

Those 18 minutes of full-throttle, mind-boggling music are wrapped within the self-titled debut EP by the Chicago quintet Necronomicon Ex Mortis, which will be released tomorrow (March 31st). Their brand of death metal is so fast, so technically head-spinning, and so devilishly inventive that it allows no room for any calm contemplation. All you can do is hang on for dear life and enjoy the flame-throwing madhouse thrills while they last — and then yield to the impulse to throw yourself back in right away. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PUSTILENCE — “ASPIRANTS OF INTEMPERANCE”

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Mar 292023
 

We’re going to leap right into the music we’re now presenting, and then backfill with some details about who’s responsible for it and the album that includes it.

The song is “Aspirants of Intemperance“, and it is indeed a belligerently intemperate death metal outburst. With little more than a noxious grunt to announce it, the song quickly begins bludgeoning listeners and broiling their brains with squealing, siren-like strings and viciously roiling riffage. The raw madness in the seething and swarming fretwork channels rabid savagery as the rhythm section rapidly jackhammer syour spine and horrific gutturals vent their vitriol.

And there’s more violent lunacy to come, including a freaked-out guitar solo, gut-plundering bass-lines, crazed screams, bursts of jittery and jolting fretwork, weird channel-shifting yowling tones, constant shifts in rhythmic patterns and tempos, and even more macabre vocal howling and roaring. It’s all bizarre and bamboozling, not just gruesome and barbaric but also intricate and elaborate. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SOLNEGRE — “VESSEL PART I: THE NIGHT WITHIN”

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Mar 292023
 

We are premiering a powerful song in this feature, but we’re also doing much more than that. We’re introducing you to a new band (this is the first of their recorded music to be revealed); we’re presenting the new single’s cover art for the first time; and we’re sharing insights into what inspired the music, and news about what will be coming next.

The band is SOLNEGRE, from the Balearic Islands near the eastern coast of Spain. The band is new, but the members are not newcomers to heavy music. Indeed, the two founders have been bandmates since 1995 and members of the Doom Metal sextet Helevorn. They chose to part ways with that band but quickly re-united in this new project, later joined by two other performers, who also has extensive experience in underground metal.

They have taken their musical inspiration from the old school greats of Doom/Death metal from the ’90s, referring to such bands as My Dying Bride and and early Anathema and Opeth, and more recent comparative references might include the likes of Shape of Despair, Ahab, and Doom Vs.

SOLNEGRE have inked a deal with the Armenian label Funere for the release of their debut album this fall (which includes guest appearances), but in the meantime they will be releasing their first single on April 7th, a song named “Vessel Part I: The Night Within”, and that’s what we’re premiering today through a visualizer video. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEMONSTEALER — “THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 282023
 

Sahil Makhija (aka “The Demonstealer“) began a long road to recognition in the global metal community roughly 25 years ago. At least in terms of recordings, the road began with Sahil’s band Demonic Resurrection, whose debut album Demonstealer saw release in November 2000. Four more Demonic Resurrection albums followed, along with opportunities to perform outside their native India, and for a time it’s fair to say that DR was India’s best-known and most-celebrated extreme metal band.

Along the way, Sahil activated other vehicles for his musical output, including Reptilian Death and his solo project Demonstealer, and he gained further recognition through hosting the online cooking show “Headbanger’s Kitchen“, which gave him a chance to rub shoulders with members of metal bands scattered far and wide across the globe. And that’s not to mention his founding of a recording studio, a record label, a PR agency, and a consultancy service.

The road to recognition hasn’t been easy. It still isn’t. As Sahil explained in a recent interview with our man Comrade Aleks, he has experienced a fair share of moments when he wanted to give up, not because of a lack of desire to continue creating music but because of all the shit constantly shoveled up by “the business side” of releasing music and performing. And then there’s the fact that metal music is still an alien art form in India — “culturally strange and also sonically not appealing” to the vast majority of the population. “Metal music, unlike in the west, is music that people of a certain privileged and economic background listen to. It’s not the music of the common man.”

Nevertheless, Sahil forges ahead, with music still the mainstay of his life as he approaches his 41st birthday. And more than ever, disturbing conditions in his native land (and around the world) became the subject matter of his songwriting as he returned to his Demonstealer project. Reflecting that subject matter, the name of the new Demonstealer album which we’re presenting today is The Propaganda Machine, which is now set for release on March 31st by Black Lion Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HOPELESSNESS

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Mar 282023
 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Ion Santos, a member of the Basque Country melodic death metal band Hopelessness, whose roots go back more than two decades, and who are now alive and well after a long recording hiatus, with a new EP released last year.)

The Basque melodic death metal outfit Hopelessness never hurried. Founded 22 years ago, this band lived through two splits and released only one album, Broken Tears in Solitude, back in 2005. Their road was rocky, but it seems that they found the way out and returned to an active creative pace. I found Hopelessness‘ EP Mukuru, which saw the light of day in November 2022, a decent example of melodeath, and I invite you to taste it right now as you’re reading this interview with band guitarist Ion Santos. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THØRN — “INFERNO”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 272023
 

For those of our visitors new to the band Thørn, they’re a Milanese group formed by members of the Italian hardcore DIY scene. And hardcore/crust-punk does provide a key ingredient to their music, but that’s only one of many, which also include black metal, grindcore, and more besides. Not for naught do they cite the diverse influences of such bands as The Secret, Trap Them, Baptists, Cursed, and Oathbreaker.

They released their first EP (self-titled) through Indelirium Records in 2018, and followed that with a split with the Estonian crust-punk band Ognemot. Now, they’re ready to hit the streets again with a debut album fittingly named Inferno, which will see a limited tape release on March 30th through the collaboration of Vita Detestabilis Records and Fiadh Productions — and today we present the album’s full stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OLD FOREST

 Interviews  1 Response »
Mar 272023
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with Kobold from the UK black metal band Old Forest, and under other guises a participant in Ewigkeit, Nattehimmel, Jaldaboath, and more.)

The first stage of Old Forest‘s career wasn’t robust: The band started in London, 1998, released the debut album Into the Old Forest in 1999, and was disbanded in 2001. It was re-formed in 2007 and the wheels turned faster this time. Despite the band’s mastermind Kobold’s occupation in a few more bands since then, Old Forest recorded six more full-length albums and some smaller releases.

Kobold played with the famous In the Woods…, did some “Monty Python” with Jaldaboath, and experimented in his solo project Ewigkeit, but he always had enough time to keep his black metal Old Forest alive, and this March the new album Sutwyke is to be released through Soulseller Records.

So here we are… ready to breathe deep the smell of rotting foliage and the raw soil, and feel the cold wind of ’90s black metal while reading the interview we did with Kobold.

(Thanks to Jan of Sure Shot Worx for organizing the interview.) Continue reading »

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