Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE TROOPS OF DOOM — “ANTICHRIST REBORN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 142022
 

 

The stars have aligned on Antichrist Reborn, the debut album by The Troops of Doom from Brazil. There are many stars within the underground firmament who have joined forces to create the album, and the music itself reaches us like lights across a void from a distant time, gleaming like brilliant obsidian arrays lit by hellish flames.

Among the human stars are the troops of doom themselves — former Sepultura guitarist Jairo “Tormentor” Guedz, bassist/vocalist Alex Kafer (Enterro, Explicit Hate, ex-Necromancer), drummer Alexandre Oliveira (Southern Blacklist, Raising Conviction), and guitarist Marcelo Vasco (Patria, Mysteriis, and acclaimed graphic artist for the likes of Slayer, Kreator, Machine Head, Soulfly, and Hatebreed).

In addition to them, the album includes guest performances by João Gordo (Ratos de Porão) and Alex Camargo and Moyses Kolesne from Krisiun.

And that still doesn’t touch every point in the constellation. The album was mixed by Peter Tägtgren (Hypocrisy, Pain) at the The Abyss Studio and it was mastered by Jonas Kjellgren at Blacklounge. Moreover, the cover art was painted by Sergio “AlJarrinha” Oliveira, the artist behind the original artwork for Sepultura‘s Bestial Devastation. And physical editions of the album will be released by Alma Mater Records, the label owned by Moonspell frontman Fernando Ribeiro.

All those stellar names seize attention, but for serious metal listeners only the music will count — as is only right. The names build expectations, but those hopes must be fulfilled in the sounds or the album will soon be forgotten.  We’ve already hinted at our own opinion — that Antichrist Reborn won’t soon be forgotten — but you can decide for yourselves today because we’re presenting a full stream of the record on the eve of its April 15th release. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLASPHEMATORY — “FLOODED GRAVES”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 142022
 

The New Jersey death metal band Blasphematory boasts a line-up that includes members of Abazagorath, Death Fortress, and Altar of Gore, and for anyone who knows the music of those bands there should be no further encouragement needed to check out Blasphematory‘s forthcoming second album, aptly titled The Lower Catacombs, even if you missed their first full-length (2019’s Depths of the Obscurity).

But perhaps all those names may have eluded some wanderers among the tombstones and sepulchral crypts of dank and devastating death metal or the freezing moons of black metal. Or maybe the music of Blasphematory alone has escaped the attention it deserves. Certainly, The Lower Catacombs deserves a lot of attention. It’s as macabre as the cover art, and turns out to be as addictive as it is filthy and ferocious.

The song we’re presenting today, “Flooded Graves“, is unmistakably soiled in its sound, and it’s also preternaturally maniacal, a ghastly, hard-charging barrage that’s a huge thrill to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ET MORIEMUR

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 142022
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks re-connected with Zdeněk Nevělík from the unpredictable Czech metal band Et Moriemur, whose compelling new album was just released a few days ago by Transcending Obscurity Records.)

Seven years ago or so we sat with Et Moriemur’s frontman Zdeněk Nevělík in a pub somewhere in Prague and talked about doom and other stuff, knowing nothing about how the world would change in the next few years. I wonder if there’ll be a chance to do it again…

However, music helps to keep the connection as I found the promo pack from Transcending Obscurity with Et Moriemur’s fourth album Tamashii no Yama in my mail box about two months ago, but it took time to clear my mind and find the energy to absorb these grim and exciting vibes. The band went aside from the death-doom path to a more experimental blackened sound and – as the album’s concept demands – even further.

This material is full of nontraditional and quite fresh ideas; it looks like the band revealed a new source of creativity inside their own inner resources. So I made my best effort to find out how it happened. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FADEAD — “TERRA FERITA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 132022
 

 

Later this month Lethal Scissor Records will release the raging debut EP of an Italian grindcore band who call themselves Fadead and whose experienced line-up includes Y. (Vomit the Soul, ex-Precognitive Holocaust Annotations), V. (Spells of Misery, Bolvangar, Vertebra Atlantis), and R.

The name of the EP is Terra Ferita, and it comes recommended for fans of Nasum, Cripple Bastards, and Napalm Death. To help spread the word about it, last month we premiered a lyric video for a brutal two-minute assault named “L’estremità del mondo“. Today we prolong the assault by un-caging the entire EP so it can run rampant through your skull for… a whole nine minutes. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HELIOSS — “L’INSONDABLE CRÉPUSCULE DES MORTS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 132022
 

 

Today marks the third opportunity we have seized upon since 2017 to help spread the word about the music of Helioss through a music premiere. Today the subject of the premiere is a song called “L’insondable crépuscule des morts” from this French band’s forthcoming fifth album Contre ma lumière, which is set for release by Satanath Records on April 21st.

Once again, Helioss mastermind and multi-instrumentalist Nicolas Muller directed the enterprise, again joined by vocalist D.M. (Celestial Swarm, Gravefields, etc.) and guest drummer Mikko Koskinen (The Lifted Veil, Proscription). And once again Helioss has pushed its expanding musical boundaries of progressive black/death metal outward into even more inventive and genre-bending territory. This newest song premiere from the album, which comes with a lyric video, provides an extravagant demonstration of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW AND REVIEW: EGREGORE

 Album Reviews, Interviews  1 Response »
Apr 122022
 

(We welcome Vancouver-based writer Hope Gould, who describes herself as “unconditionally committed to the underground, unreservedly devoted to riffs that fuck.” For her first NCS post she brings us this highly entertaining interview of Vancouver-based Egregore and a brief review of their forthcoming debut album.)

From the belly of Covenant, Canada’s Black Magick Inner Circle, Vancouver’s Egregore disgorge a potent elixir of Abraxian invocation on their debut album to be released by 20 Buck Spin on April 15th. On The Word of His Law, Egregore immerse those brave enough to traverse their bizarre labyrinth on a journey from the depths of evocative mental unrest to illuminating spiritual ascension.

The Word of His Law offers quality Black Death reverence in earnest, all while unravelling a masterclass in the unorthodox with unsettling synth, hypnotic chanting, and supplication by way of a Neo-folk passage. Emotive solos and leads are on dazzling display by guitarist and vocalist ESSENTIA COLLAPSE on tracks like “Howling Premonition” and “Libidinization of Will Azothic”, backed by utter percussive gluttony wielded by CATASTROPHE SATURNA. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEFECT DESIGNER — “TROLLS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 122022
 

Anyone who has dabbled in the discography of either Diskord or Defect Designer, who share a pair of members, know that both of these Norway-based bands revel in severely discombobulating their listeners, and beating them almost senseless.

At the risk of our own sanity and skeletal integrity we’ve done our own fair share of dabbling across their releases, and have always come up wildly smiling, albeit through broken teeth. And so the news of the first Defect Designer album in seven years, following on the heels of Diskord‘s own 2021 full-length (reviewed here), set our nerves a-tingling.

Sure enough, it’s a goddamned bonanza, and so insane that it makes Ian Miller‘s  bizarre cover art seem understated and entirely intelligible. The name of the album is Neanderthal, and from that album we’re really fucking delighted to drop a brain-bomb on you named “Trolls“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZORNESTRIEB – “LICHTBLICKE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 122022
 

 

“A gentle spring wind blows on these lonely days. A star shines brightest in the endless and still cold night, in this pain-filled silence…Thousands of empty hearts, exposed to their fate. In this world we don’t want to be without you… ‘Memory breaks the desolate silence, awakens the ray of hope in all of us'”.

Those words accompany a song we’re premiering today from Der Eskapist, the forthcoming debut album by the Thuringian atmospheric black metal band Zornestrieb. The song’s name, “Lichtblicke“, itself translates in English to “rays of hope” — but the music itself seems to reach for those rays through dark and turbulent clouds of torment. Continue reading »

DESERTED FEAR: “DOOMSDAY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 122022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the latest album by the German band Deserted Fear, which is out now via Century Media.)

I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the list of stuff I’ve recently been cycling through for listening, trying to find some sort of overarching theme. Usually you can pin it down to the predictable seasonal shifts at work or the somewhat more nebulous ebbs and flows of heavy metal releases – both of which have been solidly upended over the past few years.

What I did notice, though, was the presence of a few releases early on in the year of the kind that I usually only expect to find one or two of throughout the year. Those are the melodeath releases that seem to revolve around a big, anthemic songwriting core. Those have been a recent development as of the mid-2000s as the genre began to fling itself around more and more in search of ways to stick out amidst an increasingly crowded style – many would argue it has been a stagnated style since the metalcore scene exploded.

While many bands would stick to the tried and true, and wound up with pretty much tried and true results, others would write these big, almost arena-rock-esque ‘us vs the world’ types of songs; many mid-tempo and often about as filled with a million guitar lines and melodies, as one might expect from the big auditorium-filling style. For some reason, it seems like many bands have had this sort of release in them, and at some point they’ll default to it for an album or two, with results that can be as vast as the number of bands doing it.

Which brings us to the deceptively death metal looking March release Doomsday by Germany’s Deserted Fear, which has somehow turned out to be their take on the big pyro-launching, guitar stomp spectacle. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CIRCLE OF CHAOS — “PURGATORY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 112022
 

On April 22nd Satanath Records (Georgia) and The Ritual Productions (Netherlands) will co-release Forlorn Reign, the third album by the Swedish death metal band Circle of Chaos. It comes a long eight years after the band’s second full-length, and represents the work of a changed line-up in pursuit of a new musical direction for the band, one that’s more extreme and aggressive and brings elements of black and thrash metal into the mix.

As a prime example of what the new album holds for listeners, we present the band’s official music video for a venomous, vicious, and preternatural track named “Purgatory“. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries