Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHOP7X — “TELL YOURSELF A LITTLE LIE / CHOSEN IGNORANCE”

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Dec 092022
 

(Christopher Luedtke introduces our premiere of a two-track blast from the cubergrind project Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop.)

Cybergrind has become a fluid, ever-evolving genre that can be a bear to keep up with. As far as genre conventions go, there the genre seems to be over-trying to move as fast as it can to shatter conventions. But that doesn’t mean it is devoid of more straightforward projects.

Cybergrind is not a young genre, it is just a more recently utilized one. It can be mad-scientist experimental or just straight noisy digital grind. The one-man-band Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop (or Chop7x if you’re nasty) falls into the latter category. Noisy and harsh, the project has been on an unrelenting path and is ready to step up its game on its latest singles “Tell Yourself A Little Lie” and “Chosen Ignorance.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PNAKOTIC MANUSCRIPT — “PETER THE HERMIT’S CURSE”

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Dec 092022
 

What we have for you now is the premiere of a song from the forthcoming debut album Dark Prometheus by the multi-national black metal band Pnakotic Manuscript. Both the album’s conceptual narrative and the band’s own name launched this writer on a series of internet searches.

The band’s unusual name seems to be a reference to mythic ancient and occult writings that may be rooted (at least in part) in Lovecraftian lore, which provide medieval descriptions of alien races populating the earth, strange cosmic deities, and legendary heroes. But this is only a guess.

As for the album, its central protagonist is the historical figure Peter of Amiens, also known as Peter the Hermit. A Roman Catholic priest, he was commissioned by Pope Urban II to command an armed pilgrimage from France to Jerusalem, and thus became a key figure during the military expedition known as the People’s Crusade and the First Crusade. Under his leadership, the crusaders also engaged in the torture and slaughter of Jews along the way. Continue reading »

HEADGORE: “A MEAL FIT FOR GOD”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 092022
 

(Christopher Luedtke reviews a new EP by the Vegas band HeadGore, which just dropped yesterday. Prepare to have your head gored.)

The state of music today is a frankly daunting and overwhelming landscape. In the last few years alone so many sounds have been converged, soldered, and brought together by odd arcane alchemy in very quick succession. And as this internet experiment slouches onward at lightspeed it becomes increasingly more impossible to hear it all at once, much less in individual doses. It is a thought that crosses my mind as I listen to Las Vegas, NV nocore unit HeadGore. There is a lot going on and going down, and their latest EP A MEAL FIT FOR GOD is a snapshot into the alchemy of everything.

HeadGore has been putting out bizarre iterations of grind, cybergrind, death metal, and electronic music since their 2019 split with Shitnoise Bastards. At once they are primarily a band that fits into the grind category. They do blasts, and the music is fast and noisy, but they very easily transition into the noisecore/noisegrind categories, but then will also flip a track into an electronic break or turn it into an uncomfortable, swampy melodic section. The nature of things seems to be not confining or boxing oneself in, hence nocore. And this latest release A MEAL FIT FOR GOD is the band at their most experimental yet. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE GAUNTLET — “DARK STEEL AND FIRE”

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Dec 082022
 

The cover art for The Gauntlet‘s debut album Dark Steel and Fire portrays a hell-raising synthesis of motorcycles and epic fantasy with a distinctly warlike and demonic cast. What you might guess about the music, based on that portrayal is, well, anyone’s guess.

The Gauntlet‘s 2020 debut EP War and Guilt spawned such descriptors as pounding black metal, rocking death, or more jokingly as “stadium Bathory“, and the new record is forecast as an amalgam of influences from the past that include Bathory, Venom, and Celtic Frost.

But let’s quit guessing and find out first-hand what The Gauntlet‘s sole creator Ace Meggido has cooked up this time, and what better way to do that then to check out the debut album’s title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THEY GRIEVE — “TO WHICH I BORE WITNESS”

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Dec 082022
 

The Ottawa-based duo They Grieve (Gary Thibert and Deniz Güvenç) made their advent with the EP I Made My Sacrifice Accordingly in late 2016, and now, a substantial number of years later, they’re moving toward the release of their first full-length, To Which I Bore Witness, which they recorded at Apartment 2 with Topon Das of Fuck the Facts. The band readily acknowledge that this new music is a departure from what you might have heard on the EP, and thus should be considered in its own right, standing alone. As Deniz explains:

“This album, both lyrically and musically, tries to capture the uncomfortable juxtaposition between weakness and weight. We are constantly trying to express the ways in which the ugliness and decay we see in the world sets itself down and plants its roots inside of us—how the weight of the world transforms into our own weakness once it has done so. We try to capture this feeling of juxtaposition and tension within the music itself by oscillating between ambient, textural drones and heavy, doom-laden riffs.”

As a sign of the changes, what we have for you today is the new album’s title track, which is paired with a video that’s as mysterious and as interesting to watch as the song is to hear. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LAERE, I THE INTRUDER, WITCH RIPPER, THE SECOND FOVEA

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 082022
 

The best of intentions often fall like wheat before the scythe of life. No plan survives contact with the enemy. The best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley. And other hoary maxims.

I thought I would get one of these round-ups done before now this week, but events conspired against it. I barely have time to squeeze this one in. It’s shorter than I would like — this week was filled with good new releases, of which these are only a precious few — but it will give you a lot of stylistic twists and turns. I’ll have to try to pick up the list this weekend.

LAERE (Germany)

In hunting for new music I’m often the beneficiary of recommendations from other people, and I’m beginning with Laere‘s stunning new EP because it was the subject of lots of those from internet pen-pals whose opinions I respect. And, well, I also got a Bandcamp alert about it because I bought the band’s debut EP Solve in 2020 (and wrote about it too). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SARCOPTES — “TET” (AND A REVIEW OF “PRAYERS TO OBLIVION”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 072022
 

Everyone who visits NCS regularly knows full well that when I come across music that really electrifies me I have a pronounced tendency to get carried away with words as the music carries me away. I was reminded of that when I re-read what I wrote about Plague Hymns, the 2020 EP by Sacramento-based Sarcoptes:

In the most brutally shorthand way of describing these two songs, they’re a fashioning of blackened thrash, but that label really under-represents how remarkable they are. They do indeed blaze like hellfire driven by gale-force winds, but they also feature beautifully chosen symphonic accents as well as the kind of glorious guitar-work that brings to mind bands from the forefront of classic heavy metal.

And from there the words went on and on and on, with references to the music as “black magic alchemy — sinister and vicious, ecstatically wild, a breathtaking, turbocharged thrill-ride through sulfurous, fire-bright nether-regions”, “diabolical harmonies and the skittering voracious sensation of demonic feeding frenzies in the midst of possessed screams”, “head-spinning dementia leavened with a panoply of sorcerous leads and the shine of supernatural, phosphorescent majesty”, and the kind of “crazed, darting ebullience” that made the music “sound like bats on after-burners, flying with abandon from caverns lit by the blaze of burning souls”.

And there was more, but you get the idea. And it’s about to happen again, because Sarcoptes now have a second album (Prayers to Oblivion) set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on
February 24th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DISCHORDIA — “THE WHEEL”

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Dec 062022
 

Last spring we had the fiendish pleasure of premiering a song from Triptych, the startling new album by Dischordia, which is out now on Transcending Obscurity Records. As we discovered then, and as the label accurately reported in its PR materials, this Oklahoma City crew’s latest full-length is a bone-smashing, mind-boggling hybrid of technical and brutal death metal with a healthy flavoring of dissonance and an impressive degree of adventurousness that matches the virtuosity of the performances.

As we’ve written before, the sound quality of the music is itself very interesting. The guitars have a mangling, mauling, and detonating quality that’s dense, heavy, and brutally distorted, and yet the obliterating drums and the mercurial bass come through vividly, as do the bizarre and often unearthly lead-guitar machinations and the wild howling and roaring vocals.

Moreover, the music is packed with stops and starts, twists and turns, and sudden variations in tempo, and this sonic balance makes it possible to pick out and appreciate even more what’s happening — while still feeling like you’re being scathed and steamrolled into submission.

Many of you have already discovered the disconcerting wonders of Triptych, but you’ll still enjoy and appreciate the full-band playthrough video we’re about to premiere, and for those of you who haven’t been exposed to the album, this should provide a jaw-dropping introduction. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NIDARE — “WINDSPIEL”

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Dec 062022
 

What we have for you today is the premiere of a song whose soul-stirring and soul-stricken passions are unmistakable — music of both torment and tragic beauty, rendered in a way that’s unsettling but in equal measure completely immersive and enthralling.

The name of the song is “Windspiel” (“wind chime”), and as the name signifies, the music rings, and continues ringing in the mind even after it ends. For that, we have Nidare to thank, a Berlin-based black metal band whose members came together from post metal, screamo, and hardcore outlets such as Ancst, Henry Fonda, Ast, Chambers, Afterlife Kids, rýr, and Youth Cult, and who took their name from the old German word “nidar”, which means “below”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: AHAB

 Interviews  1 Response »
Dec 062022
 


Photo by Stefan Heileman

(At last the leviathan Ahab has risen again from the watery depths with a new album that will be released by Napalm Records on January 13th, and we are most happy today to present Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with Ahab co-founder Daniel Dorste.)

It’s hard to believe but Ahab was founded 18 years ago. Back then the trio from Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg consisting of Daniel Dorste (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Christian Hector (guitars) and Stephan Adolph (bass) tried to make funeral doom a bit more exciting and added strong nautical lines in their lyrics and, partly, in their music. So naturally their first album The Call of the Wretched Sea (2006) based on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby Dick was labelled as “nautical doom”.

Ahab strengthened their positions with the second album The Divinity of Oceans (2009), retelling this time the true story of the Whale-Ship Essex, which in November 1820 was sunk in an attack by a sperm whale before the men resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. Such a grim fate… and yet you can’t play funeral doom and develop the same theme eternally, and so the band turned in a more progressive and atmospheric direction with the next album The Giant (2012).

This time Ahab adapted the mysterious novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket written by Edgar Allan Poe, and the plot itself demanded another approach. The Boats of the Glen Carrig (2015) took the band even further to the shores unknown just as it was in William Hope Hodgson‘s novel of the same name.

But then the band sunk to the bottom of the sonic ocean just like some weird fantastic submarine. Seven years have passed and Ahab now returns with The Coral Tombs album, which will see the light of day on the 13th of January through Napalm Records. The band’s sound seems to adopt new influences, even as Ahab’s crew has remained the same since 2008: the band’s founders Christian and Daniel, Cornelius Althammer (drums), and Stephan Wandernoth (bass). It is Daniel who joined our discussion. Continue reading »

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