Islander

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: MALAURIU — “DE NATURA OBSCRURITATIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 242022
 

The Sicilian band Malauriu have been a prolific source of black metal and dark experimental sounds for almost a decade. As detailed in an interview of mainman Schizoid published here at the beginning of 2022, Malauriu have tended to release their music mainly through EPs and splits. In March of this year they departed from the tradition by releasing their second (self-titled) full-length, but they now return to shorter works with a new EP named De Natura Obscuritatis that’s set for release on September 15th by the Italian label Black Mass Prayers.

To help spread the word about this new EP, we have already premiered a profoundly disturbing yet also frighteningly spellbinding song from it named “The Locust“, and today we reveal the whole soul-staggering work. Continue reading »

DOWNFALL OF MANKIND: “VILE BIRTH”

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Aug 242022
 

(DGR catches up with another release from last spring, and this time it’s a new album by the Portuguese maulers in Downfall of Mankind that was released by Lacerated Enemy Records in April.)

Blame it on the combo of Hurakan and Sensory Amusia both releasing on Lacerated Enemy, blame it on the absolute need for something that doesn’t really challenge the listening tastes, blame it on work. Whatever the reason is, I’ve found that lately the shorts/muscle-shirts scene of the prefix-core genre has been incredibly kind to me.

Granted, there are a few of us at NCS who are pre-disposed to having a taste for this sort of stuff, and while we happily highlight some of the more artistically challenging bands out there and our premieres can cover enough sub-genres of the metal world so as to orbit the planet seven or eight times, there’s a case to be made for a well-followed blueprint. That, and having a triplicate of beatings from that scene and also knocking another off the April releases that found its way into the personal review archive. We all have our reasons.

You can guess pretty easily what sort of circles Portugal’s Downfall Of Mankind run in just by glancing at their logo, but also from the rotating list of guests that join this particular batch of bruisers on their latest release Vile Birth. This is an album where the only challenger in terms of loud breakdowns would be a recording of the side of a highway. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: EMASCULATOR — “DEPRAVED DISFIGUREMENT”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Aug 232022
 

(It appears that DGR has become captivated by the recently released debut demo from the brutal death metal band Emasculator, and he explains why in this review, hopefully with gonads still intact.)

Let’s try something shorter for a little bit, huh? Especially since we seem to have been caught in a vortex of hour-plus releases recently.

The world of brutal death metal remains as lively as ever, with musicians willing to forever add to the endlessly squelching pile of musical gore that is the endless barrage of drumming, literal guitar shredding, car-engine bass tone, and earth-rumbling vocals that the genre entails. Emasculator represent a recent addition to the pile, comprising musicians based out of the US and Czech Republic, issuing forth their first demo Depraved Disfigurement at the beginning of August. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VISERION — “REBORN IN DARKNESS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 232022
 

For their first new music since the 2021 album Natural Selection, the New York band Viserion (who took their name from Game of Thrones‘ resurrected ice dragon) chose to tell a narrative inspired by the the video game Destiny. They explain the choice in these words:

“Reborn in Darkness” is a story about rebirth, inspired by the character Oryx from Destiny. Oryx goes through transformations and becomes more powerful with each. This motif stood out to us particularly due to our own lineup changes. The instrumentation of the song was very raw and brutal as well, mirroring Oryx‘s campaign of destruction against the light.

With the influence of new members in the fold, this new song which we’re premiering today portrays the malice and heinous ferocity of its protagonist through a fusion of death metal, black metal, and hints of grindcore, and the combination yields an immersive and nightmarish experience that stays with you. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GREBER — “TREE CARVING”

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Aug 232022
 

The Canadian duo Greber have been making heavy and harrowing music for roughly 16 years. My first exposure to their hard-to-define creations was the 2018 album Cemetery Preston, which made me feel like like I’d been backhanded across the mouth, and then punched in the kidneys while having my skull hammered with a tire iron. It included other sensations, but the sense of experiencing marauding obliteration was the first and lasting impression.

Since then they’ve continued on with their campaign, such that their discography has swollen to four full-lengths and six splits. Their newest album, Fright Without, is marked for release by a group of labels on September 9th. It houses 10 tracks, most of them compact, for a totsl run-time that’s just shy of half an hour. Once again the band’s members — Steve Vargas (The Great Sabatini) and Marc Bourgon (ex-Fuck the Facts) confine themselves to drum and bass and share the vocals, with guests who contribute noise, vocals, and an actual guitar on one track.

So far, two tracks have been revealed from the new album, and today we add a third, which happens to be both the album closer and the shortest of the 10. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD VOID — “ENTRAILS OF CHAOS”

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Aug 222022
 

The discomforts of our lives are multitudinous and multifarious, ranging from niggling annoyances to traumatic terrors and crushing catastrophes. Though some people recoil from re-living such discomforts in the music they make or the music they listen to, some bands, at least in the expansive sphere of metal, throw themselves into the most unnerving ends of that spectrum with great relish and no remorse.

Dead Void are one of those bands. On their debut album Volatile Forms what they recoil from are half measures. They wholly devote their impressive talents to the creation of death metal that’s horrifically hostile, bestially savage, stunningly hopeless, and fiendishly unpredictable and unsettling. The music is brutally crushing and authentically unhinged, and just as likely to force listeners into claustrophobic caverns of doom as it is to gut you or shake you to pieces. As proof, we offer the song “Entrails of Chaos“. Continue reading »

ABSTRACTED: “ATMA CONFLUX”

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Aug 222022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the new album by the Brazilian band Abstracted, which was released by M-Theory Audio this past April.)

It’s hard to remember how I came across Brazil’s Abstracted and their 2022 release Atma Conflux. The best guess would likely be the eye-catching cover art with its hues of blue and green. Cover art has often served as an impetus to looking into a band we probably wouldn’t have crossed paths with, though we are also the sorts who constantly dig around the underground for new music. I’ve dived head-first into releases for dumber reasons, and my review history here is a record of my atrocities.

Atma Conflux is an interesting prospect for Abstracted. Officially, it’s their first full-length but also feels like a new debut overall. Prior to the April release of this album, the band had put out a debut EP called Ophidian in 2015 and since then, a small sprinkling of singles – all of which have found their way onto the album.

With such a time-gap between releases you get the sense that this is a group who’ve spent a long time in the musical forge, working on their songs and playing with what direction they wanted to pursue musically. You also get this idea when you look at Atma Conflux‘s run time, divided up between seven songs and clocking in at nearly an hour and five minutes. If nothing else on Abstracted‘s first full length, they are clearly ambitious as hell. Continue reading »

DUSK: “THE RELIC”

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Aug 222022
 

Amidst a time when industrial black metal regains considerable ground in the urban surroundings of COVID isolation, Costa Rica’s DUSK attempt to offer a peculiar recipe of their long-lost youth. An in-depth review by Axel Stormbreaker.

I always enjoy a good scavenger hunt. It’s tricky, spicy and refreshing in ways that contradict the mundanity of a busy city life. Same reason why I tend to avoid people who don’t like, or even appreciate, the first three chapters of the Indiana Jones film series. They lead lives of stolid mediocrity, yet shall revolt hastily when real change is imminent. They desire excitement, yet feel complacent in the safety of the norm. They don’t quite get it’s not the destination, but the journey itself, that broadens one’s horizon. Especially since everything could become the same bland fare, when provided to one a bit too freely.

All in all, Costa Rica’s Dusk do meet the said criteria of an exciting discovery waiting to be made. Especially when the vast majority of listeners either prefer to stick to the classics, or follow the bands others seem to enjoy. Certain metal labels also do pay attention to trends, or even a band’s country of origin, as their investment requires some ground fertile enough to cultivate a growing fanbase. Add to that how Costa Rica is known to mainstream metal for… basically nothing, and you can’t help but appreciate a (hypothetical) dose of well-concealed sarcasm. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ESCARNIUM — “DELUGED IN MIASMA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 192022
 

When we present song premieres we usually begin with information about the band and the forthcoming release, quickly followed by impressions of the music, and maybe, after all that, something about the conception of the song or its lyrical themes, assuming we know anything about those subjects. But for the Escarnium song “Deluged In Miasma” we’re reversing the usual order, and we think you’ll soon understand why.

Here is what Brasilian guitarist/vocalist Victor Elian tells us about the song’s inspiration and significance:

So, there is an expression in the area I grew up for when you have a place that kind of has a bad vibe/aura around it. You say, this place is ‘full of miasma’. Or, for example, if you have something like an old jacket of someone that has died, some people may say… ‘Don’t wear it, it is full of miasma.’ It’s sort of like a local superstition.

When the numbers of the dead from COVID started to get really high, our president ignored all the signs causing even more deaths. With all that was going on, I was thinking about the history of Brasil, all the bad things that we face on our daily life living in Brasil… so this song became sort of a metaphor of the dark side of Brasil. It’s a place that always believes things will get better, but it never gets better. Every good idea, or any good initiative, never comes to fruition. Life in Brasil is cheap. So, our land is full of miasma…

On the news recently one doctor said, Brasil now is like a leprosy home isolated from the rest of the world. Basically, every line of the lyrics is based on the dark side of Brasil from the coming of the Portuguese and slavery up to modern-day atrocities. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PUTERAEON

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 192022
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the formidable Lovecraft-inspired Swedish death metal band Puteraeon, who pride themselves on creepiness, catchiness, and aggression.)

The titles of the first demos recorded by Puteraeon in a short period (2008 – 2009) clearly shows the band’s ideology. The demos Fascination for Mutilation (2008), The Requiem (2008), and The Extraordinary Work of Herbert West (2009) formed the foundation of the first full-length, The Esoteric Order (2011)…

And since then Jonas Lindblood (vocals, guitars), Daniel Vandija (bass), Anders Malmström (drums), and Rune Foss (guitars) have kept on providing us their morbid Swedish death metal with a clear and sharp message of inevitable death, unavoidable legions of zombies, and inescapable cosmic horrors.

The Esoteric Order was only a start for a series of a few more EPs and full-lengths, but there was not much news from the band since the release of their fourth album The Cthulhian Pulse: Call from the Dead City in 2020. To allay our concerns about the band’s fate, we contacted Jonas Lindblood. Continue reading »

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