Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: BESTIALORD — “BLESS THEM WITH PAIN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 282022
 

With two albums to their credit, released in 2018 and 2019, Bestialord may already be a name familiar to you, but for newcomers it’s a trio who came together in Wichita, Kansas in the fall of 2016. That trio — guitarist/vocalist Mark Anderson (ex-Manilla Road), drummer Chris Johnson (Sanctus Infernum), and bassist Rob Harris — pulled together strands of occult doom, primitive death metal, and other old-school influences to create some evil magic on those albums, but now they’ve got a third one on the way that might be even better.

The new album, Bless Them With Pain, is set for imminent release on April 29th by Satanath Records‘ label-partner GrimmDistribution, and today it’s our pleasure to share the title track with you. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ULTAR

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 282022
 

 

(Comrade Aleks has completed a long-gestating interview with Denis Susarev from the excellent Russian post-black metal band Ultar, who will have a new album coming in 2022, and the results of this very interesting are set forth below.)

Post-black metal band Ultar from Krasnoyarsk was re-formed from Deafknife in 2016 and soon gained a reputation as a creative band with with good taste and vision. Speaking about Ultar’s creative side, I need to mention abother outfit featuring four of Ultar’s members – it’s Grima. Both bands perform black metal in a similar vein and yet both follow their own paths. While Ultar’s last album Pantheon MMXIX saw the light of day in 2019, Grima’s fourth album Rotten Garden was released in 2021, as well as the live album The Mighty Spirit.

I had my own interest in interviewing Ultar but the process dragged on for months, and you know what happened in February. However we’ve made the decision to complete and publish the interview now right after Grima‘s return from their short tour abroad. Naturmacht Productions brought Grima’s Siberian sorrows in Tallinn. Here are the words of Denis Susarev (guitars, keyboards):

“We recently returned from Estonia, where most of Ultar played a show in Tallinn as members of the Grima project, which may have been a bit of a precedent given what’s been going on in the world over the last few months. In spite of everything, the concert went just fine, Tallinn met us with a full hall of wonderful, kind and open people who received us wonderfully. It’s nice to see that our listeners understand that art in general and music in particular can and should be perceived outside the context of any political events, no matter what people around say about it. This is extremely valuable and we are grateful to everyone who shares this.”

And here we have Denis’ answers regarding Ultar and its perspectives. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THORIUM — “DANMARK”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 272022
 

The heavyweight Danish death metal band Thorium are just a few days days away from releasing their fifth album in a career that’s now more than two decades in the making. With Denmark, they again prove both their devotion to undying traditions of the old school(s) and their talent for making them come vibrantly and viciously alive in the here and now.

Students and lovers of death metal know that there’s not just one old school of the craft, and Thorium draw their influence from multiple institutions — from the chainsaw chugging and creepy eeriness of Swedish death metal to the faster and more vicious variants from the old Floridian scene, and more besides (including a bit of “blackening” on some tracks). They engage in mayhem, but make abundant use of punishing groove, and they have an ear for ear-worm melody that makes the songs catchy as well as gruesome and exhilarating.

And so it’s a genuine pleasure for us to host a premiere stream of Danmark in its entirety, in advance of the April 29 release by Emanzipation Productions. Continue reading »

HURAKAN: “VIA AETERNA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 272022
 

(On April 15th Lacerated Enemy Records released a new album by the French band Hurakan, and DGR has given it the following review.)

Confession: I find the times when a band becomes a completely different group within the span of a few years fascinating. As if a giant, historical brainwipe happened and the group essentially had to rebuild themselves from the ground up and the only thing that remained was the name. Now, the band must define themselves again and make the name fit the band, not the band fit the name, as if to justify moving into the name of the group like a crab upgrading its shell – or in this case, insectoid font logo for an image more sharp and pointy – for something else.

French bruisers Hurakan are still a young-ish group, as we’re still at the point where a debut release only having come out five years ago doesn’t seem like that long. Yet Hurakan find themselves in an interesting position with their latest release Via Aeterna, which landed on April 13th, 2022. Subject to a pretty sizeable lineup shift in the three years between the release of 2019’s Abomination of Aurokos and their newest album, Hurakan are a different beast.

You get the sense that with the mostly single-word song titles and the single-minded focus on a more deathcore-oriented form of brutality, the Hurakan that wrote a song called “Slamming Brutal Shit” and dropped it right before the end of a sci-fi maelstrom of brutal death style album may have their eyes focused elsewhere. The question that rises with Via Aeterna, then, is just where are the band looking? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FERALIA — “UNDER STIGE / OVER DIANAM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 262022
 

 

As the title of Feralia‘s new record suggests, it’s a two-part work, combining the album-length Under Stige with the EP-length Over Dianam. They are conceptually linked, focusing on “the rituality of Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Roman traditions”, but musically they are different.

The band and the label that will release it on April 28th (Time To Kill Records) characterize the two parts in gender terms: “As Under Stige is extreme, nocturnal, ritualistic and manly, Over Dianam develops in the opposite direction. Four folk-oriented tracks that carry more of a bright, ambient, feminine mood, overall giving life to a play of opposites that is the essence to the new album.”

However one might choose to classify and characterize these two companion works, the combination of them creates a fantastic listening experience from an extremely talented band, and one that we’re delighted to share with you in complete form today. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CHURCH OF DISGUST

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 262022
 

(On May 27 Hells Headbangers will release the new third album by the Texas death metal band Church of Disgust, and in this extensive new interview Comrade Aleks talked with Church vocalist/guitarist Dustin James.)

You see the band’s name, their albums’ or song titles, and you already know what’s it all about. Church of Disgust has twelve years of savage sonic mayhem behind it – Unworldly Summoning (2014), Dread Ritual EP (2015), Veneration of Filth (2016), Consumed by Slow Putrefaction EP (2020), and now Weakest Is the Flesh (2022)… For sure you can expect distilled macabre death metal built on influences of some classic bands and inspired by horror literature and sometimes movies.

Church of Disgust’s four priests run this mass knowing not doubt or mercy, and they are Dustin James (guitars, vocals), Joshua Bokemeyer (guitars), Travis Andrews (bass), and Dwane Allen (drums). And today is the day when we’ll learn more about the good old death metal ways of Texas. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEATHCRUSH — “UNDER SERPENTS REIGN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 252022
 

The Sardinian band Deathcrush have been growing in hideous strength over the course of a career that’s now almost two decades long. For such a long life, their discography is relatively limited, with the most prominent releases being two studio albums and one live album (the sign of a preference for quality over quantity). Their third album, Under Serpents Reign, is now set for release on April 26th (tomorrow!) by Time To Kill Records.

If you knew nothing about the band’s music, their name alone would give you a clue. And most definitely, crushing death metal inspired by the likes of Morbid Angel, Immolation, and Deicide, has been a key ingredient in their blasphemous discharges of fury. But it’s not the only ingredient, as you would know if you heard the changes reflected in their second full-length, 2017’s Hell, as compared to their debut album Collective Brain Infektion (2013).

The new album seems like a continued evolution, one that integrates the more brutal ravages of the debut and the more blackened atmospherics of the second full-length, and then does even more to distinguish itself. You’ll have the chance to learn this for yourselves today as we present a full stream of Under Serpents Reign. Continue reading »

MISERATION: “BLACK MIRACLES AND DARK WONDERS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 252022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the comeback album released last Friday by the Swedish death metal band Miseration.)

It has been almost ten years since the previous Miseration album Tragedy Has Spoken. If the band had held on to their newest entry back into the death metal fray, Black Miracles And Dark Wonders, for another two months, it would’ve been a full decade. Talk about coming in just under the line of having that broadcast everywhere.

Miseration is one of a few long-running collaborations between constantly writing multi-instrumentalist Jani Stefanovic and legendary metal vocalist Christian Älvestam. Black Miracles and Dark Wonders is their fourth album; the group’s previous three were launched on a nearly every-three-year cadence before the Miseration project would find itself sidelined for nine years. In that span of time they found themselves increasingly busy, with both of them collaborating in the Solution .45 project as well – which would see two more albums added to that discography in that time. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (NOT TODAY)

 SHADES OF BLACK  8 Responses »
Apr 242022
 

 

This will be much shorter than I expected. Overnight, one of my family members was seriously injured and will need surgery today. I’m now crossing the water from the NCS island headquarters in order to be with him in the hospital. I know everyone here will understand.

I’ll leave you with a new Rotting Christ song, “Holy Mountain,” which features guest vocals by Lars Nedland of Borknagar and Solefald. In turn, Nedland‘s band Black Void released a new song last week that included guest vocals by Sakis Tolis (I wrote about that one on Friday). Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (15 NEW SONGS AND VIDEOS!)

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 232022
 

I’m pretty sure this is the single biggest roundup I’ve ever created. The streams of music were indeed overflowing over the past week, and I felt compelled to get out to you as many of the good ones as I could — though I still have more, drawn from blackened veins, to push your way in tomorrow’s column.

I will say that there’s more rocking out to be found in this collection than usual, and a couple of exceptions to our no-singing rule. But don’t worry your pointed little heads, there’s plenty of savagery in the mix too. I’ll also say that I played DJ, trying to arrange these in a way that would pair up like-minded songs here and there. But some of the segues are still probably jarring, which is how I like it.

BLACK VOID (Norway)

I decided to begin with music from forthcoming releases by a big label before clawing deeper under ground. The first pick is a video for “Dadaist Disgust“, a new single from this Norwegian band’s upcoming debut album Antithesis, out May 27th on Nuclear Blast. Continue reading »

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