Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AMAUROT — “…TO TREAD THE ANCIENT WATERS”

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Sep 292022
 

In the broad domain of Doom its musical denizens often dwell in subterranean caverns, moldering crypts, or dingy weed-steeped squats. But others, like Amaurot, make their home in ancient gothic halls, elaborately embellished and richly furnished, even if still swathed in darkness and with catacombs beneath that lead to perilous caves where beasts growl their laments.

To lead you on a grand tour of their haunted dwelling, this Sweden and Germany-based group have recorded a debut album named …To Tread the Ancient Waters, which will be released tomorrow by Obelisk Polaris Productions. They welcome you to their bleak but fascinating abode with these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DAIUS — “JĂLIRE”

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Sep 292022
 

Many members of the Romanian band Daius will be best known to listeners as current or former members of the widely beloved Clouds (and a dozen other groups), but the music of Daius takes them in other directions, which could be crudely summed up as a fashioning of atmospheric/pagan black metal. Those directions were first revealed in the debut album of Daius, named Ascuns, which was released in February of last year. Consisting of five substantial tracks, three of which were 10 minutes or longer in length, it deserved much more attention than it received.

Hopefully, the word about Daius will spread further, and their new single that we’re premiering today through a lyric video should help do that, especially because it foreshadows the creation of another Daius album in the coming months. The name of this song is “Jălire“, and the band describe its conception in these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORBIFIC — “SUICIDE SANCTUM”

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Sep 292022
 

Contemplate the artwork of Chase Slaker that introduces people to the second album by Morbific. Take in the wretched, lifeless vision of skeletons strewn about and piled high in chilling monoliths. Consider also the album’s name — Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm — and song titles such as “Meal From An Open Skull”, “Initiation Into Oblivion”, “Malignant Germination”, or the track we’re premiering today, “Suicide Sanctum“.

All of that foretells death (metal) and the presence of the supernatural.

These signposts are also very accurate. Morbific‘s brand of death metal is undeniably raw and foul, well-calculated to channel sensations of disease, putrefaction, and madness while giving your bones a brutal beating — and creating an atmosphere of supernatural horror while they do all that.

That would be enough for most fans of rotten-to-the-core death metal, but it turns out that Morbific are ridiculously good at making their creations head-moving and “catchy” as well as hideous. Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “KING OF THE NORTH”

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Sep 292022
 

(We present DGR‘s extensive review of the latest album by Finland’s Wolfheart, out now on Napalm Records.)

Right before Tuomas Saukkonen launched Wolfheart way back in 2013 as his only musical endeavor he had his musical tendrils spread pretty wide across a collective of projects. Over time he had become quite prolific, and each of those projects started to blur together save for one defining trait of each that was often the one identifiable thing that still made it that separate project.

Wolfheart‘s launch felt like an acknowledgement of that, coming soon after the release of the then-final Before The Dawn album Rise Of The Phoenix – and what a wild world that’s become with the recent release of the song “Downhearted” on that end – which in a lot of ways felt like a proto-blueprint for what Wolfheart would eventually become.

Even though Wolfheart began under auspices of being bitter cold and doomier flavored melodeath – which has been the core of many of Tuomas‘ projects – it didn’t take long before the high-energy blastbeat drumming and energetic aggression of the band became its trademarks; Wolfheart morphed into a band that was more often than not bathed in fire. The group’s final release with Spinefarm Records, Tyhjyys in 2017, contained two songs named “World On Fire” and “Call Of The Winter” for instance, if you’re hunting for the sort of dynamic that has come to define this group. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNIVERSALLY ESTRANGED — “DEVOURED FROM ANOTHER TIME”

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Sep 282022
 

Last year we had the chance to premiere a song from a debut album that seemed to come out of nowhere and landed on the Blood Harvest Records label. At that time we wrote this:

“Blood Harvest Records has unearthed a real gem. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the label has caught a comet that came unexpectedly rocketing into the atmosphere from some distant constellation. Universally Estranged seems to have no prior releases, instead immediately blazing across the sky with a full-length that truly is eye-opening in both its extravagant adventurousness and its technical acumen, presenting a vision of sci-fi-inspired death metal that is (in the vivid words of the label’s publicist) ‘both cosmically levitational and grossly subterranean'”.

That album, Reared Up in Spectral Predation, delivered one mind-boggling, bone-breaking escapade after another, collectively creating a pan-dimensional thrill-ride that we forecasted was likely to stand out from the pack in 2021, even though it was “just” a debut effort from what seemed to be an anonymous solo creator.

Letting no solar flares or satellite traffic deter it, Universally Estranged is swooping into our atmosphere again with a follow-up album named Dimension of Deviant Clusters, and we again have a chance to present another song premiere (in the midst of another torrent of words). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROMUTILATOR — “CREMATION SORCERY”

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Sep 282022
 

“Ripping riffs, bursting artillery, blood-spilling bass pulsation, and vomit from the infernal pit for eight hymns of black death and damnation, all forged in Satanic power and hammering darkness throughout endless morbidity.”

That’s how Osmose Productions has vividly announced Oath of Abhorrence, the forthcoming third album by the Italian decimators in Necromutilator. And if that message isn’t clear enough, we have these words from the band themselves: “Your god is still dead and we, servants of the Adversary, are still vomiting blood and pissing acid on his corpse and soul”.

No finesse or nuance there, and certainly no mercy. But words are one thing, and the sound is another, and the former must be tested against the latter. We give you the test today through our premiere of a track off the new album named “Cremation Sorcery“. Continue reading »

ACID WITCH: “ROT AMONG US”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 282022
 

(Detroit’s Acid Witch have a new album headed our way (of course the release day is on Halloween), and in the following review Wil Cifer shares his thoughts about it.)

This morning, I took a break from checking out the updates as to when Hurricane Ian will be coming to rock my neighborhood like the Scorpions, and found the new Acid Witch in my in-box. The anxiety left me when I pressed play. While Ian might rain on my Halloween parade going into the first weekend in October, these guys kept my spirits up.

The bar is set high since these guys are one of my favorite bands. Dressing death metal up like a Spirit Halloween Store on LSD is a beautiful thing that speaks to my soul on every level. The first track is spooky intro with just enough metal to foreshadow what is to come. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FALL OF SERAPHS — “PSYCHOTIC TROUBLED SENSES”

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Sep 272022
 

As you can see, Mark Erskine of Erskine Designs has created cover art for the debut album by Fall of Seraphs that’s guaranteed to seize attention with its colorful rendering of supernatural monstrosity and fiery, storm-tossed chaos. It really is the kind of eye-catcher that’s likely to pull listeners into the record, even those who know nothing about the music. But more than that, it also provides a great match for the kind of death metal this French band have created on this debut album, which is both dazzling and monstrously malignant.

The album’s name is From Dust to Creation, and like the title it flips lots of things on their heads. The music is brutish in its skull-busting thuggery and as hostile as rabid wolves, but incorporates the kind of guitar work that spins heads and sends them shooting off into the stratosphere, and the band blend it all together with a vivid sense of dynamism and infectiousness in the songwriting.

You’ll learn that for yourselves through today’s premiere of the album’s fifth track, “Psychotic Troubled Senses“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABYSSIC — “MIRROR OF SORROW”

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Sep 272022
 

 

Abyssic‘s last album High the Memory, which we reviewed and premiered here, prompted us to wax poetic

“In these complex and richly textured compositions, which draw upon ingredients of funeral death/doom, black metal, and prog, augmented by classical orchestration (and the use of Mellotron, Minimoog, and upright bass), Abyssic create combinations of crushing power and mystical evanescence, of oppressive gloom and fragile, gleaming beauty. Dread and devastation stalk this vast musical landscape, furrowing the earth with great troughs of misery and despair, while brilliant stars wink overhead, blazing comets streak the night sky, and the borealis shimmers in unearthly brilliance. The effect of these juxtapositions is harrowing and hypnotic, magisterial and monstrous.”

Well, “poetic” is of course a relative term here at our putrid enclave, but you get the idea: This Norwegian band’s music has a way of firing the imagination, and trying to describe it in more conventional terms falls flat by comparison. Now we find ourselves in a similar place, because Abyssic have a new album on the way, and we’re again hosting a premiere to help advance the cause. Continue reading »

OMOPHAGIA: “REBIRTH IN BLACK”

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Sep 272022
 

(On September 16th Unique Leader Records released a new album by the Swiss death metal band Omophagia, and DGR takes a deep dive into it in the following review.)

The day that Omophagia put out an album where the first song isn’t called “Intro” is going to feel like a period of mourning isn’t it? Other than a clockwork two-to-three-year release schedule, there are fewer long-standing patterns out there that one can rely on quite like a band being four albums in and the first song still being called “Intro”. One more album and Omophagia will be able to release an “Intro” song EP.

It is good to see this crew still going though, as the Switzerland-based bruisers are one of the more severely underrated tech-death bands out there. Perhaps due to the unassuming nature of the band or just a general sense of how consistently ‘good’ they have remained throughout their three releases up to their latest one, Rebirth In Black, it seems like Omophagia constantly get the undersell.

What you can say about Omophagia is that despite the appearance of five dudes just making complicated death metal imagery, every one of their releases has sounded different from the one before it. You’ll note the natural evolution in song-writing and just how much Omophagia like a good jackhammer-groove, but that also comes not so much with a move forward but a complete leap somewhere else on the musical explosion map, just to keep things different on the fringes. Rebirth In Black continues that trend. Continue reading »

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