Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INVICTUS — “BLEED ME OUT”

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Oct 072022
 

To say that Maurizio Iacono has nothing left to prove is to state the obvious. After 14 studio albums from Kataklysm (and a host of other releases), four more full-lengths from Ex Deo, numerous global tours and festival performances, and many other endeavors in prominent aspects of the music business, he’s already secured a rare level of success in the world of heavy metal and a secure position in its history.

Having nothing left to prove, however, doesn’t mean having nothing left to say. How else does one explain his decision to create a new band at this very mature stage of his career? That is in fact what Maurizio has done with the formation of Invictus, a group that makes its recording debut with an album named Unstoppable on October 21st via the MNRK Heavy label. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UPON YOUR GRAVE — “GOLD & DECAY”

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Oct 062022
 

The image of a golden heart amidst black roses which welcomes listeners to the new EP by the Quebec-based death metal band Upon Your Grave isn’t just appropriate for the EP’s title — Gold & Decay — it also meshes with some of the music’s manifold ingredients. There’s head-spinning brilliance in these five songs, but also a surrounding yet alluring darkness in some of the melodies.

But the cover doesn’t clue you in to all of the ingredients, most prominently the fact that in this EP Upon Your Grave routinely inflict the kind of brutally obliterating beatings and unchained demolition work that spawns images of shattered bones and buildings reduced to rubble. And while there are moments that are mesmerizing, the main probable effect of the EP will be to leave people hyperventilated and gasping. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: VOIDOATH

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Oct 062022
 

(Costa Rica’s VoidOath have recently released an album inspired by John Carpenter‘s “The Thing“, and the music is a match for its terrifying concept — deeply unsettling, but so well-made that it’s relentlessly immersive. And today Comrade Aleks has brought us an interview with the band that reveals further insights into their history, their conception of the music, and what may come next.)

Did you see the artwork of VoidOath’s album Ascension Beyond Kokytus? Something familiar, isn’t it? John Carpenter’s The Thing is a cult movie, there’s no doubt, but I don’t remember a band who would build an entire album around this story. Now we have VoidOath and this world seems to be a little bit better place.

VoidOath was founded in San José, Costa Rica four years ago by Allan Salas (bass), Gabriel Ortiz (drums), Jose Rodríguez (guitars), and Christopher G. De Haan (guitars, vocals). Three of them played in different local bands, so VoidOath’s first EP Illumination Through Necromancy was recorded pretty fast, and they had 32 minutes of sludge doom madness ready in 2020.

I don’t know if this release helped the band to spread the word effectively, but the Irish label Cursed Monk Records noticed them and Ascension Beyond Kokytus was released on the 28th of September, preceded by the album premiere and review here at NCS. I think it was Jose with whom we spoke about The Thing, metal, and the underground of Costa Rica.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLACK ROYAL — “GHOSTS OF THE DEAD”

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Oct 052022
 

 

The heart is a pump. It drives the pulse. It sets the beat. Whether it slowly thumps or hammers in your throat, it’s the body’s rhythm section. When music makes us move, isn’t it because it connects to those primal grooves that keep us alive? (Anthropologists and other scientists have probably proven this, but at the moment we can’t be bothered to hunt for the proof.)

But the fact that the reaction is reflexive means that it’s easy for even mediocre musicians to lay down songs that make listeners move. Even extreme heavy metal bands do that all the time, easily triggering the headbang reflex, even though other groups obviously believe that putting too much groove in their music cheapens their “artistry” or clashes with their “ethos”. And indeed, taking the easy way out is rarely the basis for respect.

Which brings us to Black Royal, and what has made — and still makes — their deathly sludge ‘n’ roll so special. It’s undeniable (or at least your reptile brain won’t deny it) that in both their music and their vocal phrasings these Finns know how to lock in with the beat of your heart, and make it both slowly pump and hammer like a well-fueled piston.

But their expertise in doing that isn’t the sole basis for the allure of their music, and in the case of their new album Earthbound, which will be released on October 21st by M-Theory Audio, a strong case can be made that it’s the artistry and ethos of everything else they do which makes the album stand out. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MASTIC SCUM — “ICON”

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Oct 052022
 

(On October 7th MDD Records will release a new album by the Austrian band Mastic Scum, and it’s our honor to premiere a full stream of it today, preceded by an extensive review prepared by NCS writer DGR.)

It is wild to think that were it not for 2017’s Defy EP almost nine years would have passed between releases for Austria’s Mastic Scum. As it stands. almost nine years between full-lengths is getting up there in time, and five years between an EP and a full-length is pretty lengthy as well. Usually when you get gaps like that it is because the band have gone through massive lineup changes or things behind the scenes, usually resulting in some sort of change in sound. Long-lost groups will return and it will play out like a relaunch of the band in those ways, the prior history something for the books and the current format the defining sounding.

It’s hard to even fathom the amount of shit the world has gone through in the span of time between the December 2013 release of Mastic Scum‘s album CTRL and the impending release of their new album Icon. You’d think that with everything we’ve all been through it would be reflected in the Mastic Scum sound, but Icon is kind of incredible because it’s like the band looked at the ever-shifting sands of heavy metal and the constantly changing scenes in death metal, glanced at their own brand of industrial-strength Terminator-murdering death metal, and just said, “Haha, nope”, things are going to stay exactly the same.

Because Icon picks up right where CTRL left off… like almost from the exact moment, down to the four-letter album title that has been every Mastic Scum full-length. The biggest difference here is that Icon is the first Mastic Scum album since 2005’s Mind not to feature a skull up front and center on the album art in some form. Icon is  Mastic Scum once again pummeling the planet for ten songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORBID STENCH — “MACABRE INTROSPECTION”

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Oct 042022
 

The process of rot after death may seem like a slow and stultifying process, but in fact there is a feverish busyness beneath the surface. Decomposition begins immediately, as a multitude of a body’s organisms join forces to create putrefaction, releasing compounds such as cadaverine and putrescine, which produce the unmistakably putrid odor of decay. Where possible, they are aided by worms and other external creatures satiating their own hunger from the stinking flesh.

No, this isn’t a science class today, but merely some morbid meditations spawned by the Central American necrotic doom-death band Morbid Stench and their new album The Rotting Ways of Doom. And it’s not just the name of the band and the title of their new album that prompt such thoughts, but also the music itself — and we have a prime example of that in our premiere of a track off the new album named “Macabre Introspection“. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, SEPTEMBER 2022

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Oct 042022
 


ColdWorld

(Our friend Gonzo rejoins us with a collection of reviews and music streams for albums released in September that got him enthusiastic.)

Confession time: A lot of the music I was going to feature in this month’s column was already covered by our own Andy Synn and DGR. Such is the nature of contributing to a blog that runs on well-intentioned chaos, but let me tell you – even though seeing my byline is less common these days, I wouldn’t have it any other way here.

Anyway, I could sit here pontificating about life or personal updates or the change of seasons or the fact that we may be closer to armed nuclear conflict than any of us would care to admit, but I’d like to just make this month’s post about the music. Besides, I’m about to see Meshuggah on a live stage for the first time in way too long and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

Here’s some of the September releases I put together that Mr. Synn and DGR didn’t cover – and let me tell you, that took some digging. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CULTIC

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Oct 042022
 

(Last spring we had the pleasure of premiering a song from the fantastic new album by Pennsylvania-based Cultic, a duo consisting of Rebecca and Brian Magar (who have recently expanded into a trio), and now we have the pleasure of presenting Comrade Aleks‘ very informative interview with Brian.)

Cultic is a York-based death-doom duet with a recognizable primordial sound and a dark fantasy concept behind both of their albums. They started as a trio in 2017: Brian Magar (bass, vocals, guitars), Rebecca Magar (drums), and Reese Harlacker (bass) recorded their demo Prowler back then. The full-length album High Command was released by Eleventh Key in 2019, and their most up-to-date album is Of Fire and Sorcery, which saw the light of day in April 2022 with the help of the very same label.

One of Cultic features is grim, absolutely eerie synths which work perfectly with low, distorted riffs and Brian’s raw vocals. High Command offered a plenty of it and Of Fire and Sorcery grants even more! Surely it’s worthy of listening, as this interview with Brian Magar is worth reading. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SPECTRUM MORTIS

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Oct 032022
 

(The Spanish band Spectrum Mortis just released their new album Bit Meseri -The Incantation last Friday through Listenable Records, and to remind you of that signal event and provide great insights into it, today we present Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview of the band’s mysterious members.)

A few weeks ago we published an interview with the Finnish traditional doom metal band Spiritus Mortis, but constant NCS followers rather remember the Spanish secret band Spectrum Mortis!

We promoted the band’s debut album Bit Meseri -The Incantation insistently, and I bet that you remember the album’s remarkable artwork (by Khaos Diktator Design)! I love that macabre Messopotamian twist. They call it “ritualistic doom metal”, and though it’s a more complex blend of genres you can track Spectrum Mortis’ influences anyway.

Honestly, I don’t see a reason to tell you more, as the interview (which I prefer far more than any review) offers the band an opportunity to say it in the most straight-forward way, and Spectrum Mortis’ collective mind does it in detail. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLASPHEMOUS PUTREFACTION — “WEATHERED”

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Oct 032022
 

It’s not often that we’ve premiered two songs from the same release three years apart (well, actually we’ve never done that before), but in the case of Blasphemous Putrefaction‘s Festering Plagues EP, that’s what we’re now doing.

You see, this EP was first released on cassette tape (by Death In Pieces) back in 2019. It was this German duo’s second release, following the Abominable Premonition demo two years earlier, and we greedily premiered a song from the EP named “Grief” shortly before the release.

Since then Blasphemous Putrefaction have released a debut album — 2020’s Prelude to Perversion — via Dunkelheit Produktionen. And that album made such a fabulously disgusting impact that it’s no wonder someone decided to reissue Festering Plagues, which is what the Crawling Chaos label will do on October 28th, capturing the EP in a CD edition for the first time.

So, strictly speaking, the song we’re presenting today isn’t a premiere, but more like a re-introduction, though it’s highly likely it will indeed be a first-listen for many of you. Continue reading »

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