Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLGATA — “VAGABOND”

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Jun 132022
 

We welcome the Swedish black metal band Golgata back to our pages roughly 18 months after they first caught our attention and admiration with their last album, 2020’s Tempel, which spawned comparative references to the likes of Skogen, Grift, and Fellwarden. The occasion of their return is a forthcoming third full-length named Ur Eld Och Aska, which will be co-released on July 7th by Satanath Records and Ketzer Records.

As the title implies, the album is a journey through fire and ash but it’s also a journey through time, inspired by the history and natural surroundings of the dark, forested region that gave birth to this duo. It has the capacity to scathe the senses in raw and unbridled fashion, but it’s equally powerful in its capacity to mesmerize and to transport listeners away from modernity and into a much older age, creating grim and haunting visions of yearning and sorrow.

And thus we’re proud to present today the album’s fourth track in the running order, a song named “Vagabond“, revealed through a lyric video in the band’s native tongue. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEVENIAL VERDICT — “ASH BLIND”

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Jun 132022
 

From from 2009 through 2016 the Finnish band Devenial Verdict released a pair of demos and a pair of EPs, and now, six years later, their debut album is on the horizon. Entitled Ash Blind and adorned with cover art by the great Mariusz Lewandowski, it will be released later this year by Transcending Obscurity Records.

Time brings change, and thus Ash Blind represents alterations in Devenial Verdict‘s sound, revealing more prominent dissonant and atmospheric elements in the music. The band show themselves capable of creating vast sonic vistas that are as entrancing as they are unnerving. But while Devenial Verdict have clearly spread their creative wings in expansive fashion from where they began, the songs also make for potent adrenaline fuel through bursts of obliterating hostility and grooves that hit hard enough to give your spine and skull a terrific jolting.

All these facets of their music (and more) come through in the album’s riveting title track that we’re bringing you today through an official video Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ANTILLES — “HUMANITY IS CANCER”

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Jun 122022
 

 

Who knows when you may read this and listen to the song we’re presenting? Whenever that day may come, we’re first presenting it on a Sunday, a rare day for premieres at this site. But having heard this new song by the German band Antilles, it was an easy decision to make the rare effort.

The song title proclaims that “Humanity Is Cancer“, a bleak and angry sentiment, but one that’s regrettably backed by mountains of deplorable evidence that shows humankind’s persistent use of the Earth as a sewer, befouling and degrading it in a headlong rush toward what we imagine in our hubris as “progress”, and simultaneously turning the climate into an oven.

Much of that evidence is assembled in the video that accompanies Antilles‘ lyric video, interspersed with footage of the band explosively expelling their disgust and fury through the music. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PANZERFAUST, THE WAKEDEAD GATHERING, NORDJEVEL, BLACK ROYAL, GODTHRYMM, TRIUMVIR FOUL, ENDROT, TELESTERION, ZORYA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 112022
 


Panzerfaust – photo by Samantha Carcasole

I got an unreasonably early start on the day. On the plus side, that gave me the time to pull together the following large roundup of new discoveries before too much daylight burned. All these songs and videos came out since the first of June.

Fair warning: I have equally exorbitant plans for tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

PANZERFAUST (Canada)

When I saw Panzerfaust at this year’s Maryland Deathfest I wrote this on my FB page: “A wizard of a drummer seated in a garden of cymbals and using all of them; a man-mountain of a frontman who by his mere presence enhances the frightfulness of the music; a pair of axe-slingers who play their instruments near-upright; the creation of an aura of ritual but with visceral thrusts: an amalgam of hallucination and hammering. Well, I’ve missed a lot of sets at MDF but the one by Panzerfaust tonight is the best of the bunch so far and it isn’t close.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BEGRIME EXEMIOUS, PILORI, OISEAUX-TEMPÊTE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 102022
 


Begrime Exemious

In the olden days I was able to put together a couple of new music roundups every work-week. Nowadays I’m usually able to do it only once, on Saturdays, when the NCS audience tends to dwindle. I do miss those old days, but to return to them, something else would have to give way, something related to what else I do for the site (e.g., all the daily premieres) or something related to the rest of my life (e.g., speaking to my wife).

As you can see, however, I did manage to find a small margin of time for a round-up today, so small that I nearly didn’t even bother. But the thought of shaving even three worthy songs off the gigantic list I’ll be staring at when contemplating tomorrow’s Saturday S&H seemed worthwhile. So here we go…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TRUENT — “THROUGH THE VALE OF EARTHLY TORMENT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 102022
 

The press materials for Truent‘s debut album Through The Vale of Earthly Torment recommend it for fans of early Revocation, early Gojira, Fit For An Autopsy, and Archspire. Those turn out to be good clues to what this Vancouver-area band have achieved on their first full-length following a pair of EPs.

Across eight tracks, most of them rushing ahead at a turbocharged pace, Truent create an electrifying death metal amalgam that features tour de force technicality, non-stop prog-metal adventurism, eye-popping vocal barbarity, and grooves that hit hard enough to cause visions of ruptured organs. To leap ahead in our review, which precedes a premiere stream of the entire record one week before its release, it’s a true spectacle of sound, an experience that’s both head-spinning and bone-smashing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PLAYTHROUGH VIDEO PREMIERE: THE SECOND FOVEA — “MANTA”

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Jun 102022
 

The Second Fovea is a band with its origins in India but with a current location in the San Francisco Bay Area. They’ve released two singles so far, 2021’s “Headshot” and the song “Manta” that came out just a couple months ago. We’ve written about both of them here, not only because the music grabbed us but also because of the songs’ conceptual themes.

“Headshot” was a condemnation of global hate crimes and racism, and “Manta“, as is obvious from the name, was “dedicated to appreciating the majestic manta rays and spreading awareness about their conservation”. Two very different subjects, but we can get behind both of them.

What we’re bringing you today, in an effort to shine a bigger spotlight on “Manta“, is a playthrough video for that song which features the performance of the band’s drummer, principal spokesman, and co-songwriter Priyam Srivastava. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PURIFICATION

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Jun 102022
 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Field Marshall William Purify from the Portland-based doom metal band Purification. You will not be bored.)

I don’t remember where I heard of this band from Portland for the first time, but it was Count Karnstein himself who gave me a kick and reminded of Purification when his own band Cardinals Folly recorded a few songs for a split album with them. So it’s true doom metal time!

Purification was started four years ago and there are already four full-length albums in their discography – Destruction of the Wicked (2019), Perfect Doctrine (2020), Dwell in the House of the Lord Forever (2020), and The Exterminating Angel (2021). Add to this list the new Possessed in the Ritual Grove split and you’ll see how this band is hyperactive.

We’re used to doom bands not hurrying usually, but Purification seems to be a bit unusual, so let’s break some cliches with this interview. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE ATROPHIC — “COAGULATING MIRTH”

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Jun 092022
 

What we have for you here is yet another welcome sign that even the darkest of times can’t black out artistic creativity, and can indeed become the inspirational fuel for something new and vibrant.

Today’s case in point is The Atrophic, a North Carolina band formed in 2021 that combines the talents of vocalist Sean Irizarry and guitarist/bassist Kyle Kuffermann. Working our of their home studios, they recorded a four-song EP named Coagulating Mirth, augmented by the performances of session drummer Robin Stone (Ashen Horde, Norse, ex-live for Augury). And then they had it produced, mixed, and mastered by Hannes Grossmann (Alkaloid, Blotted Science, ex-Hate Eternal, ex- Obscura, etc.) at Mordor Sounds Studio in Germany.

And if that alone doesn’t tell you how much they believed in what they had accomplished, they enlisted one of our favorite visual artists, Vladimir ‘Smerdulak’ Chebakov, to create both the cover art for the EP and a separate piece for its first single, and they turned to the talented sci-fi and horror artist Sanskarans for the creation of an artwork piece for the title track — which we’re premiering today in advance of the EP’s release on July 8th.

You can see the work of Sanskarans above, and here’s Smerdulak‘s cover for the EP: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INSTIGATE — “INDOCTRINATED REBORN”

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Jun 092022
 

We are fast approaching a day we’ve been hoping would come — the June 24 release of a debut album by the Italian death metal band Instigate. Their first release, a 2020 EP named Echoes of A Dying World, elicited praise at our site from both myself (here) and Andy Synn (here), with comparative references being dropped to the likes of Misery Index, Suffocation, Dyscarnate, Hour of Penance, and Hideous Divinity. And we weren’t alone in our praise — that EP triggered lots of positive reactions across the metalverse.

So we’ve been both eager and curious to find out what Instigate might do on a first full-length. Now we’re getting our answers, and you’re getting them too, thanks to the debut of two singles already (“Witness of the End Times” and “Haruspex“) and a third one we’re bringing you today — “Indoctrinated Reborn” — which is paired with an electrifying video made by Maurizio del Piccolo (Movidel Production). Continue reading »

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