Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: DE PROFUNDIS — “EMBRACE DYSTOPIA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 282022
 

On the distant horizon we’re glimpsing the ominous approach of another full-length record by De Profundis , their sixth album since this UK band first coalesced roughly 17 years ago. In that span of time  line-ups have changed, and so have the group’s interweaving strands of metallic extremity. The changes have made each album an experience of discovery, undermining anyone’s effort to claim, “It’s De Profundis, you know what you’re going to get”.

The band’s latest creative endeavors are captured in a new album named The Corruption of Virtue, and it’s pegged for release on October 7th by Transcending Obscurity Records. So far, fans have received two excerpts from the album — a video for the song “Religious Cancer” and a stream of “Desecrating Innocence” — and today we’re bringing you a third one, in a track that invites us to “Embrace Dystopia“. Continue reading »

PSYCROPTIC: “DIVINE COUNCIL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 282022
 

 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by Australia’s Psycroptic, which is in line for release on August 5th via Prosthetic Records.)

Technical death metal is an old enough genre now that you can have a tier of bands considered progenitors and a tier considered pillars of the genre. It’s a wild thought, considering it didn’t seem that long ago that the genre was the one where all the younger musicians were heading, younger bands breaking into the scene, and a whole bunch of baby-faced instrumental wizards who could play miles around even the simplest riffs.

The thought came to mind with Psycroptic‘s latest album Divine Council, because it is the group’s eighth full-length release in a career dating all the way back to the early-00’s. They’ve been such a known entity that Psycroptic albums were predictable highlights of the year. You know for the most part what you’re in for with the band, and if you really, really love that kinetic and manic writing style that has the band bouncing all over the place, then generally you couldn’t go wrong with a Psycroptic disc.

It’s not often you get to describe a tech-death artist as sounding like they’re bordering on an anxiety attack but Psycroptic‘s rapid vocal delivery and quick songs have kept them there for a while now. It was in the margins, and how the group augmented their sound, that there would be differences. Divine Council doesn’t move the needle that much from its immediate predecessor, but in the case of the album that came before it, that may not be such a bad thing, no? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CELESTIAL WIZARD — “REVENANT”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  4 Responses »
Jul 272022
 

Of all the genres of heavy metal our site covers, power metal is the one least-noticed by far. One glance at our site’s name suggests a reason, though that’s not the only one. However, we’re about to prove that there’s a way to present power metal that even attracts scoffing extremists such as ourselves, and we have Denver, Colorado’s Celestial Wizard to thank for that.

Should you happen to be familiar with this band’s 2018 debut album A Sinister Awakening, it must be said up-front that their second one, Winds of the Cosmos (just released on July 15th), reveals significant changes in their sound (plus the addition of drummer Tim Gillman to the line-up). Where the debut featured healthy doses of strings, choirs, and symphonic synthesizers to accompany their fantasy-inspired narratives, the new one places a big emphasis on hard-charging riffs — and extremely tasty ones at that — albeit without wholly abandoning their previous ingredients.

The band have continued to deploy death metal vocals (and other ingredients of melodic death metal), as well as the kind of singing familiar to power metal addicts, and that juxtaposition is certainly a big reason why this band’s hybrid sound has become appealing in dark corners such as ours. But those tasty riffs have a lot to do with the appeal as well, and the song “Revenant” is a fierce example of that. No wonder, then, that we happily agreed to premiere a guitar-playthrough video for that song today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SINISTER DOWNFALL — “SOULS ENSLAVED”

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Jul 272022
 

In October 2018 when we premiered a song from Sinister Downfall‘s first album Eremozoic, we introduced it this way:

“It will become immediately apparent, through the song we’re about to premiere, that the shadowed ranks of funeral doom practitioners spread across the globe must make way for another band in their vanguard. The band is Sinister Downfall, the work of a single individual who in this debut album has already demonstrated an impressive mastery of these very dark arts.”

A follow-on album in 2020, A Dark Shining Light, strengthened that conviction, and now it will be cemented through the band’s third full-length, The Last Witness, which will be jointly released on September 24th by Funere (Armenia) and Weird Truth Productions (Japan). You’ll begin to understand why this is one of the most impressive funeral doom albums of the year when you listen to the song we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MONASTERIUM

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 272022
 

(Last month the Polish “epic doom” crew Monasterium released their third album, Cold Are The Graves, via Nine Records, and that prompted Comrade Aleks to reach out for the following interview.)

I believe that my colleges here will confirm this simple thing: the best reward for our job here is any support we’re able to provide to the bands we’re talking about. And a good interview is a rewarding experience in itself, so it’s easy to return to some bands I interviewed before when they have news to share. Well, that gives an illusion that life isn’t bad in the end and there’s a bright side after all.

Today Monasterium‘s new album Cold Are the Graves brings this silver lining among dark clouds of daily news. This epic doom metal band from Kraków, Poland keeps on providing heroic and triumphant hymns to obscure memories of our past and fantasy realms for nearly eight years, and despite a relatively short career there are three full-length albums in their discography as well as a good reputation due to their dedicated approach to epic doom as it should be.

One of the band’s merits is its stable lineup, because Tomasz Gurgul (guitars), Michał Strzelecki (vocals), Filip Malinowski (bass) and Maciej Berniak (drums) have played together since 2014 (and three of them played before that in the same band, named Sadman Institute). However two are enough to tell the story of Cold Are the Graves, so here are Tomasz and Michał. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLOODBOX — “EAT RAPE POPULATE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 262022
 

 

“A New Zealand-based grindcore/power electronics trio that take grindcore and fuse it with jungle, power electronics, and distorted sub-bass stabs. Imagine Atari Teenage Riot vs Napalm Death or Full of Hell and you’re halfway there”.

That’s the come-on we received for the new music of Bloodbox, a grotesquely masked trio who’ve bounced around the world and now seem intent on bouncing the world around, and cutting it up with knives. We’re told that after the dis-banding of the New Zealand based experimental death metal act Vext in 1999, the core members (CyZERNOBrG and Megalith X) moved to London and eventually to Ireland, and that during that time they were inspired to push their music in a more radical and chaotic direction, and in early 2001 Bloodbox was born. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WYLD TIMEZ — “BURN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 262022
 

 

The Cleveland band Wyld Timez began life in 2019 during the pandemic as an off-shoot of the formidable black metal trio Burial Oath, whom we’ve praised repeatedly at this site, but they’ve really caught fire in the last year, with a self-titled EP released in April 2021, and another one named Let the Devil In that hit the streets just last month.

The releases so far were written and tracked by vocalist/guitarist J, creating a blend of speed metal and metal/punk in the vein of Venom, Motörhead, and The Casualties, but the live band also now includes drummer Luis and bassist Rob. You’ll get to see all three of them in action in the video we’re premiering today for a hell-raising track named “Burn” off the latest EP. Continue reading »

SARATTMA: “ESCAPE VELOCITY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 262022
 

 

(Todd Manning has turned in this extravagant review of an extravagant album by Philadelphia’s Sarattma, which will be out on August 12th.)

It may take years for us to know all the things we missed during the early days of Covid. Apparently, Philadelphia-based duo Sarattma recorded their debut album Escape Velocity in 2019 but it’s just now about to drop, courtesy of Nefarious Industries.

The duo consists of guitarist Matt Hollenberg, best known for his work in various John Zorn projects, along with Cleric and John Frum as well, joined here by Sara Neidorf, who did a stint with Brian Jonestown Massacre and played with doom metal band Aptera and doom-jazz duo Mellowdeath. Both those outfits are vastly underrated and deserve investigation. Sarattma, though, finds Hollenberg and Neidorf at the pinnacle of their instrumental abilities. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VORARE — “THIS BODY AWEIGH”

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Jul 252022
 

What you’re about to hear is a piece of music that may make you imagine you’ve been taken hostage, with no real understanding of how it happened or why. Blindfolded and hands bound, strapped to a chair in a cold, lightless place, you hear the workings of brutal machinery and eerie vibrations that don’t seem to originate from any earthy transmitter. Your unseen captors go on horrific tirades that seem un-moored from sanity and magnify your fear and confusion. Trembling, you become convinced — this isn’t going to end well, and there’s no escape.

Well, those are one person’s nightmare impressions of the unnerving experience created by “This Body Aweigh“, which is the track we’re premiering today along with a video that manages to make the disorienting audio even more chilling. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MRTVI — “HOME”

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Jul 252022
 

 

In March of this year we premiered a remarkable video for a remarkable song off the then-forthcoming fifth album by the experimental black metal band MRTVI. Entitled The ExiZentialist, the album was released last month by Life As A Dream Records, and today we premiere yet another video for yet another song off that fascinating record.

When we made that previous premiere we explained that although all of MRTVI‘s albums have been rooted in the experiences and thinking of their sole creator, Damjan Stefanović, this newest one is even more autobiographical. It was inspired by his own experience of being uprooted long ago from his homeland in Serbia (to escape from war), transported to live for roughly 20 years in the UK (where he began MRTVI), and much more recently returning to the country of his birth.

In that previous premiere we also included extensive comments from Damjan about the album as a whole and the song in particular that we premiered (“Lake of Memories“). All of that is well worth reading, but today we’ll focus on this one song that’s the subject of the video, a song called “Home“. Continue reading »

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