Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PSILOCYBE LARVAE

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Feb 042022
 

 

(In this interview Comrade Aleks spoke with fellow St. Petersburg resident Vitaly Belobritsky, a founder as well as vocalist/guitarist of the Russian band Psilocybe Larvae, whose newest album (their fifth) was released last December.)

Psilocybe Larvae turned out to be a constant element of Saint Petersburg’s metal underground. Being formed in 1996 on the Baltic shores of Vyborg, they relocated to the Russian “Northern capital” soon and firmly established there. Usually they tagged their music as “melodic death doom” but they were always different genres in-between.

Psilocybe Larvae developed from album to album and if you compare, let’s say, Stigmata (2000) and The Labyrinth of Penumbra (2012), you’ll find both a lot of common ground and a lot of differences. It’s always a pain in the ass to categorize Psilocybe Larvae’s material, but it’s the last thing they care about, and that’s the right attitude indeed.

The band’s only remaining founding member Vitaly Belobritsky celebrated Psilocybe Larvae’s 25th anniversary with the release of their fifth album Where Silence Dwells in late 2021, and for me, as always, it’s easier to talk with the music’s author than to waste my time trying to explain an author’s  intentions. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 24): NECRONAUTICAL, CÂN BARDD, HUMAN SERPENT, NIGHT CROWNED, NORDJEVEL, FLUISTERAARS

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  3 Responses »
Feb 032022
 

 

Even if you didn’t already know, the fact that today’s installment of this list includes seven songs would be a clear sign that I’m about to bring it to an end (really, I am).

Unlike some of the more recent segments, this one focuses on a single but fairly broad sub-genre, which for want of a better term could be called “melodic black metal”. But that still doesn’t mean these songs sound alike, and in fact they’re quite different from each other. The appearance of many of them shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who hung around our site last year, but this group does include one big surprise; it surprised the hell out of me, that’s for sure.

NECRONAUTICAL (UK)

My compatriot DGR wrote of Necronautical‘s latest album that it’s one “you’ll be buckling up for as wave after wave of black metal buttressed by a healthy dose of keyboard synth washes over you in an attempt to drag you under the tide”. He also wrote that “it’s also easy to understand how they band would make the title track one of the keystone songs of the disc”: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PESTILENGTH — “TAMM”

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Feb 032022
 

 

We were late in discovering the ruinous and mind-boggling talents of Pestilength from the Basque Country of Spain, having overlooked the slew of EPs and singles with which they began their career, but their 2020 debut album Eilatik changed all that. It was so eye-opening, as was the band’s Apore Flesh EP and their split with Mexico’s Reverence to Paroxysm, both of which were also released in 2020, that we’ve been hungry for the next album — and now we have it.

This new eight-song record is named Basom Gryphos, and it will be released on March 7th in a variety of formats by Nuclear Winter Records in collaboration with Sentient Ruin and Goat Throne, accompanied by the chilling cover art of Namurian Visions that’s emblazoned at the top of this post.

One track from Basom Gryphos has already emerged, and today we present another, the name of which is “Tamm“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RITUAL NECROMANCY — “ENTER THE DEPTHS (CODA)”

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Feb 032022
 

 

On February 25th Everlasting Spew will release a split between two monstrously formidable death metal bands, Brazil’s Fossilization and Oregon-based Ritual Necromancy. One of Fossilization‘s two tracks on the split has already been revealed, and today we present an excerpt from Ritual Necromancy‘s long single song, “Enter the Depths“.

It’s likely that most of our visitors are already well aware of Ritual Necromancy‘s blood-congealing and exhilarating powers. With a well-experienced line-up that includes members of Rites of Thy Degringolade, Ascended Dead, Bloodsoaked, Decrepisy, Lord Gore, and more, the band have released two albums (2011’s Oath of the Abyss and 2018’s Disinterred Horror) and an EP (2014’s Void Manifest), which have propelled them into tours of Europe as well as the U.S. This new split is another timely demonstration of their hideous talents. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEATH HAS SPOKEN

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Feb 032022
 

(The Polish death/doom band Death Has Spoken released their excellent second album three months ago, and it prompted Comrade Aleks to reach out for an interview, which we now present.)

I don’t remember how I discovered the Polish death-doom band Death Has Spoken, but I decided to interview them as soon as I found titles of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories in their second album Call of the Abyss (2021). Lovecraft and death-doom metal – that’s enough for me to reach out and get in contact with the band.

Thus the interview with Death Has Spoken‘s collective mind was an absolutely spontaneous thing, so heed the ‘Call of the Abyss’ and feel ‘Lurking Fear’ in our discussion with vocalist and guitarist Karol Pogorzelski! Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 23): THE AMENTA, UNFLESH, IN MOURNING, GATEWAY, ZORNHEYM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  2 Responses »
Feb 022022
 


The Amenta

 

When I announced that I was blowing past Monday’s deadline for completing this list I wrote that I might possibly continue it through Friday. Now I would say that’s a certainty. Which means I have three days, including this one, to finish the list.

Today’s choices are a musical smorgasbord, wide-ranging in their styles and moods, and “infectious” in different ways. To check out the songs that preceded these four on the list, GO HERE.

THE AMENTA (Australia)

Release-wise, The Amenta had a busy 2021 after allowing 8 years to go by since their preceding album, Flesh Is Heir. They brought forth the new album Revelator, a split with Aborym, and an EP named Solipschism.

We’re big fans of The Amenta around these parts and accordingly devoted quite a lot of attention to them last year, but our man DGR is probably the most devoted fan. He reviewed both the full album and the EP, and so even though I’m solely responsible for this list, I deferred to him in the choice of song (among several that were strong candidates). Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THEOMACHIA — “THE THEOSOPHIST”

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Feb 022022
 

We are pleased to introduce you to an unusual black metal project from Rome. Born from the mind of instrumentalist/vocalist F.M., who is joined in the project by lyricist and visual artist I.G.Tataru, Theomachia crafts an idiosyncratic and mercurial style of music defined as “gnostic black metal”. As revealed through a debut EP named The Theosophist, it draws inspiration from such prominent Norwegian bands as Emperor and Ulver (as well as Sisters of Mercy), but undeniably marches to the beat of its own mad and mysterious drummer.

In its lyrical themes, The Theosophist poetically visits vast and daunting questions, building upon elements of Greek philosophy that range from Socrates to Neoplatonism. In its sounds, which change constantly within each of the EP’s three songs, it is both ceremonial and violent, haunting and harrowing, dismal and dazzling. It juxtaposes sharp and riveting contrasts, in the vocals as well as the instrumentation and melodies. The music is head-spinning and unsettling, and exerts a strange but strong grip on a listener’s attention.

On February 4th The Theosophist will be released on cassette tape by Xenoglossy Productions and on CD by Onism Productions, but you can explore it in full today through our premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LES CHANTS DU HASARD — “LES MILLIERS D’UNE FOIS”

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Feb 022022
 

 

Today we return to the spine-tingling musical world of Les Chants du Hasard, a world of imagination and extreme emotion that is simultaneously enthralling and frightening, seemingly connected to milieu of centuries past but may never have existed at all except in dreams — submersive and astonishing dreams that are both seductive and shuddering, haunting and breathtaking, daunting and fierce, and much more.

This solo project of Hazard has so far produced three albums that combine neoclassical bombast, gothic opera, and a blackened metal spirit, presented with lyrics that are astonishingly absorbing. The first two, Livre Premier (2017) and Livre Second (2019), were released by the distinctive I, Voidhanger Productions. The third, Livre Troisième, was self-released in the spring of last year.

From among the eight movements on that most recent album Les Chants du Hasard chose the fifth one — “Les Milliers D’une Fois” — to become the subject of a music video that we’re privileged to premiere today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FALL OF STASIS — “BAAL ARISE”

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Feb 012022
 

The Montreal band Fall Of Stasis originally formed in 2014 with the intention of creating original music that couldn’t be defined by a specific genre, and in that they surely succeeded, as abundantly demonstrated by their forthcoming debut album The Chronophagist which will be released on February 25th.

We’re told that all the band members bring different influences to the table, and that all of them had creative input into every song, resulting in considerable variation from track to track and a melding of styles that include death metal, black metal, prog, and folk metal.

Such an eclectic approach has its obvious benefits in terms of attracting and maintaining the interest of listeners, but it also means that a single song premiere isn’t likely to provide a completely representative snapshot of the 50-minute album as a whole. Nevertheless, a single song premiere is what we have for you today, and although it’s a compact offering, it still gives you vibrant hints of the band’s eclectic creativity. The name of the song is “Baal Arise” and it’s presented through a demonic lyric video. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 22): FIRST FRAGMENT, OPHIDIAN I, HANNES GROSSMANN, STORTREGN

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Feb 012022
 


First Fragment

As explained yesterday, I decided to plow through my self-imposed end-of-January deadline for finishing this list because it became apparent to me that I had overlooked a number of tracks that really needed to be included. Worse than that, I had really given short-shrift to a few entire genres of extreme metal. Since one of my objectives for the list has been to give a snapshot of what the preceding year brought us across a range of genres, that deficiency needed to be remedied, at least to some extent.

Technical death metal is one of the genres that hasn’t really gotten the exposure it deserves in the list as it exists so far. Today’s installment is an effort to at least partially make up for that, and I’ve also included a technically adept band whose music is often classified as melodic black/death.

FIRST FRAGMENT (Canada)

“Let’s face it, 2021 has been a ridiculous year for the Tech Death scene.” That’s how Andy Synn began his review of First Fragment’s Gloire Éternelle, and who could argue with that? But it’s also fair to say that despite the intensity of the competition First Fragment still stood out. Continue reading »

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