Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IN LOVING MEMORY — “FRACTURED”

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Oct 152021
 

 

The video we’re presenting today includes stunning scenes of sunrise and of cold flowing waters, of haunted souls, the descent of winter, and of graveside grief. The words tell of emotional wounds that won’t heal and of the approach of a time to die.

Like the video, the music brilliantly soars like the sun, and ebbs and flows like tidal waters. It has the majesty of nature in its vast ringing sounds, and the gloom of hopelessness and death in its gripping melodies. Its stately rhythms are viscerally compulsive, its heaviness is crushing, and its feelings of resignation and despair are heart-shaking. It casts a spell that penetrates deeply, and the spell survives the end of the song.

The name of that song is “Fractured“, and it comes from the third album by the Spanish band In Loving Memory. Entitled The Withering, it will be released on January 14, 2022, by the Funere label. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZETAR — “DEVOURING DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 142021
 

 

“The Lights of Zetar” was the 18th episode in the third season of Star Trek, originally broadcast in January 1969. It clearly made an impact on R.G., the central Texas musician who chose Zetar as the name of the metal project he created in 2019, choosing to carry forward (as he has written) “the name of a planet of telepaths who’d transcended into a roaming mass of pure psychic energy to curtail their own meteoric extinction”.

Sci-fi inspirations have also carried forward into the band’s striking debut album, Devouring Darkness, for which R.G. enlisted the aid of French vocalist T.P. and Ecuadoran drummer David Lanas to help realize his vision for Zetar. And it is indeed an arresting vision, both thematically and in the unusual and unpredictable amalgam of influences which make their way into the music, including ’90s death metal, synth-laden and thrashing black metal, and classic science fiction scores.

Today we invite you to experience those visions of horror and wonder through our complete premiere stream of Devouring Darkness in advance of its October 15 release by Spirit Coffin Publishing. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: Ил / IL

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Oct 142021
 

 

Today we have a translated conversation between two Russians, one of them our ally Comrade Aleks and the other a member of the impressive sludge/doom band Ил (IL), and a very extensive and interesting discussion it is.)

 

Okay, it’s time to learn one more word in Russian and it’s IL. Il / Ил translates as “slit”, and as you can guess that fits right for a sludge band… But you know this band started back in their early days as a drone doom band, then they turned onto a hazy stoned doom path, and now ∫ performs an amalgam of hard-boiled doom metal with a tight delivery, a sludgy vibe, and authentic (!!!) pagan atmosphere.

Their fifth album Heresy / Ересь was published in December 2020, and sometimes you need time to sort things out and find how beautiful the world is around you! Il was always here, but I guess it was the video for the title song from Heresy that opened my eyes. This album is one level higher than its predecessor, Nechist / Нечисть / Evil Spirits (2017), but at the same time it’s a logical development of the grim images that Il channeled through Heresy’s forerunner.

I welcome you to research Russian sonic-chthonic ritualistic life together with Vlad Stepanenko, who has performed vocals and guitars in the band since 2013. If you ask me (and if you don’t) Il seems to be one of the three most solid and impressive Russian doom bands nowadays. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRYSTAL COFFIN — “THE STARWAY ETERNAL”

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Oct 132021
 

 

Before listening to a note, I loved the idea of Crystal Coffin‘s new album, The Starway Eternal. So let’s begin with that idea, which also helps explain the cover art and the adventurous sensations afforded by the music. As presented in the press materials:

“Cast against the historical realities of the Chernobyl power plant meltdown of 1986, the assumed protagonist – an operator at the power plant – discovers the portalway behind an inoperable console and soon finds that her longing for meaning in this chaotic world answers the opportunity to seek out the purported gods and angels that live among the cosmos in our known solar system.

“To find such entities would be to imbue a sense of importance in our collective existence beyond the daily disorder and existential despair that one accepts. Her trips into various corners of space reveal little to no such beings, and during one such fruitless endeavor, her portalway back to earth is shut permanently; reactor 4 at Chernobyl back on earth has suffered its meltdown during shutdown operation.

“Frantic, she makes the decision to return to earth by falling through the fiery atmosphere as a lonely, final and futile act of desperation. Of course, survival is impossible, and such an act becomes a metaphor for our time, wandering the earth with little connection to anything beyond the physical world”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: EXTREME COLD WINTER

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Oct 132021
 

 

(Comrade Aleks connected with Pim Blankenstein to discuss his band Extreme Cold Winter and the impending release of their debut album World Exit by Hammerheart Records, plus the latest news concerning his main band Officium Triste, the Dutch Doom Days festival, and a lot more.)

I learned about Extreme Cold Winter from Pim Blankenstein some years ago, I think. We’ve done interviews with Pim on a regular basis; it’s almost routine, as it seems that I’m the biggest fan of his main band Officium Triste here in Russia. And in some of these interviews he told about Extreme Cold Winter, the promising doom-death band he takes part in alongside A.J. van Drenth (guitars, bass) and Seth van de Loo (drums).

A.J. played in one of the first Dutch doom-death bands, Beyond Belief, he took part in Asphyx, and now he does deafening deathly noise with Beast of Revelation. Seth played with ten bands or so, and most of the time it was death metal. He even sang in Deicide during their tour in 2007. You see? Serious stuff.

But long story short: the trio proclaimed the start of Extreme Cold Winter in 2009, recorded the EP Paradise Ends Here in 2015, and… and… and I did check from time to time to see if there was some news on their side and didn’t find any. So I was surprised to see in my main box a promo pack with their debut full-length album World Exit some weeks ago. There was no chance to avoid it, so we get in touch with Pim and pretty swiftly this interview was organized. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SUPERSTATIC — “GLIMMERING VEIL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Oct 122021
 

 

Glimmering Veil is the second album by the Irish band Superstatic, and you’ll have difficulty finding a 2021 record that’s as simultaneously unnerving and fascinating. It’s a work of extravagant and unpredictable imagination, labyrinthine in its movements, fantastically textured in its sounds, and both deleterious and awe-inspiring in its moods.

It extends through seven long tracks across one hour and 12 minutes, but never allows the listener’s attention to wander. To borrow from the following review, we can recognize downcast and distraught human emotions in the music, but really, nothing sounds truly eartb-bound.

“Death/doom” is the simplest label one might affix to the music, but it would be an absurdly simplistic label, unless perhaps you add “avant-garde” or “experimental” as another descriptor, as a way of hinting at how wide-ranging the experience becomes.

We have a lot more to say about the album below, but beyond the torrent of linguistic impressions we also have a full stream of the album in advance of its imminent October 15 release by Solitude Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VATICINAL RITES — “DYSPHORIA” AND “TELEKINETIC BLOOD RITUAL”

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Oct 122021
 

 

We have yet another silver lining to the immense black cloud of our pandemic existence, and the silver here is shaped by a band whose name sent us scurrying to the dictionary. What might “vaticinal” mean? Authoritative sources explain that the word means “having the nature of or characterized by prophecy; prophetic”.

And yes, this UK band was formed in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, social upheaval, and isolation. As the band themselves explain, they “play a visceral form of death metal inspired by the classic Floridian bands of the early – mid ’90s, with a special homage also paid to the European underground sound” and with lyrical and visual themes that “explore spirituality, loss, the occult and escapism”.

The debut EP of Vaticinal Rites is a self-titled four-track affair that arrested the attention of three highly-regarded labels — Redefining Darkness Records, Caligari Records, and Dry Cough Records — who will jointly release it on November 12th. Today we present the first two tracks on the EP, and when you hear them it will become obvious why the band’s debut release attracted such support. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: HEILUNG, RED ROCKS AMPITHEATER, OCT. 5, 2021

 Concert Reviews  3 Responses »
Oct 122021
 

 

(Our Denver-based friend Gonzo had the good fortune to witness a recent performance by the multinational European collective Heilung at the extraordinary Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado, and he sent us the following impassioned review plus photos that he took.)

There aren’t many words in the English language that describe what it’s like to watch Heilung perform their ritual in a live setting.

Captivating? Yes.

Immersive? Also yes.

Spellbinding? Definitely.

But just as their self-proclaimed moniker of “amplified history” seems to imply, you’d almost have to come up with new expressions to adequately describe their show to someone who’s never seen it, let alone heard of the band at all.

How else could you describe the thunderous booms of massive drums made from deer skin and painted with human blood? The hypnotic throat singing of Kai Uwe-Faust? The piercing siren songs of Maria Franz? And the modern-day portrayal of an ancient Iron Age ritual that features about 15 other performers, dancers, singers, actors, and enough ambience and atmosphere to be one of the most memorable live shows you’ve ever seen?

I have no idea, but it’s more than worth a try. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONJURETH — “AN OCCULT MOSAIC”

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Oct 112021
 

 

At last, the diabolical death metal band Conjureth from San Diego, California will be releasing their debut album on October 25th, via a label conspiracy with Memento Mori and Rotted Life.

In fashioning this beastly offering, emblazoned with the name Majestic Dissolve, Conjureth (whose line-up includes current or former members of such stand-out groups as Encoffination, VoidCeremony, and Ghoulgotha) creatively rooted themselves in the filth and fury of DM classics from the late ’80s, ranging from Florida to Finland, and the results on display in Majestic Dissolve are electrifying…

…and “electrifying” is definitely the word for the well-named song we’re premiering today: “An Occult Mosaic“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORS VERUM — “PURGE”

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Oct 112021
 

 

The titles of the five tracks on Mors Verum’s new EP The Living consist of single words — but they collectively create a sentence: “Inside Death’s Womb Purge the Living“. As this Canadian death metal trio explain, The Living is a concept EP “that beckons the listener to inspect life as an artifact of death and its infinity”, and that sentence is “a statement reflecting our observations of conscious existence”. “Though the subject matter is grim”, they say, “the music implores the listener to seek beauty in the vast emptiness of mortality.”

Dissonant and dizzying, the music does indeed create a kind of terrible and transfixing beauty, a mind-warping and continually jaw-dropping vision of delirious exultation and ruinous destruction. As to how they do this, the press materials invite you to consider a collision of such bands as Artificial Brain, Fuck the Facts, Imperial Triumphant, Plebeian Grandstand, Morbid Angel, Incantation, and Ulcerate.

More to the point, we invite you to listen to the second single from the EP that we’re premiering today in advance of its November 5 release, a track named “Purge” that will send your head somersaulting. Continue reading »

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