Islander

VAELRAVYN: “THE VEIL” AND “SUN GOD”

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 072025
 

(In this feature our friend Vizzah Harri shares his thoughts about two singles this year released by the Tennessee collective Vaelravyn.)

Wikipedia lists nearly 150 sun gods throughout human history, roughly 17%, or 26 of them, are Filipino in origin. Interesting fact number one, The Philippines have around 1000 deities listed on the page for Filipino mythological figures. Way more water gods than lords of light, wonder why? Must be wet there or something, perhaps they don’t even have a word for drought? They do, it’s ‘tagtuyot’. Absent father jokes aside, I lost count at around 981 seeing, as I refuse to use LLM’s, and Wikipedia lists both mortals and immortals in their mythological figures of The Philippines article, and quite a few of the gods like Diwati aka D’wata and Kabunyan aka Kabunian crossbred across islands and waterways putting Zeus to shame, so the actual number of gods is hard to count.

Fact number two, if your name is Alan, I have only known two in my life and they both left impressions on me of being pure souls that took life by the horns and lived it to the full, but if your first or last name is Alan, you might want to go read that Wikipedia article up there cos you might get some weird looks if you ever decide to visit the wonderful country of The Philippines. Of the two gods with that name I spotted, one was a shapeshifting corpse thief and the other one a cannibal; someone needed to do the honest work of scouring the internet to make a weirdly adjacent point after all.

I’ve been in Vietnam too long, and one complaint I’ve often heard from students when they bemoan one of their most hated subjects, literature, is that the authors always had this wild-goose-chase tactic in their storylines, going all around the forest to come back to the tree of import. Guess it rubbed off on me. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE GLOOMY RADIANCE OF THE MOON — “TO SURRENDER TO THE ETERNAL”

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Nov 062025
 

(written by Islander)

The Gloomy Radiance of the Moon is a Dutch solo project whose third album in three years will be released tomorrow (November 7th) by the Dusktone label, which introduces it with these words:

With its extremely long, descriptive track and album titles, with the mystery surrounding the identity of the creator but most of all with a new, cosmic, symphonic and pensive black metal album called As The Stars Shatter in Agony. Once again, The Gloomy Radiance of the Moon delivers a powerful, overtly theatrical and keyboard-driven take on black metal demonstrating the Nineties have not been forgotten at all.

The album consists of eight songs, and what we have for you today in advance of the album’s release is its second single, “To Surrender To the Eternal” — a song that manages to be both magnificent and mystical, violent and harrowing, heart-broken and haunting, and perhaps unexpectedly but undeniably poignant. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ØRB — “GHOST KEY”

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Nov 062025
 

(written by Islander)

Ørb is the melodic death metal project of English/Danish solo artist Karl Koch. Ørb’s debut album is a concept record wrapped around a dystopian sci-fi theme that focuses on a very real and urgent phenomenon, described by Ørb as follows:

The full-length album follows a lone resistance figure in a dystopian future where humanity teeters on the brink of extinction under the omnipotent grasp of The Nexus – an advanced AI network that has reduced humanity to obedient cogs in a machine-driven existence. Armed only with unwavering principles and the history of humankind, this stoic survivor embarks on a perilous journey to challenge the AI overlord.

The album’s narrative arc traces a revolt that may be liberation—or only another loop in the machine. Central questions drive the work: Can fate be overcome? What remains of human identity when autonomy is stripped away? Does a belief in determinism empower or limit us? These aren’t abstract philosophical exercises—they’re survival questions in an age where AI increasingly shapes human experience.

The project stands with one boot in tomorrow’s wasteland and one in the world we already feel tightening around us, creating a parable about resistance that resonates beyond the boundaries of extreme metal.

What we have for you today is the premiere of the first single from this forthcoming album, a song named “Ghost Key“. Here is how the song fits into the album’s narrative arc: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CZART

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Nov 062025
 

(Not long ago code666 released a concept album by the Polish band Czart that’s rooted in medieval Polish demonology. It attracted the attention of our Comrade Aleks, who succeeded in conducting the following extremely interesting (and undoubtedly controversial) interview with Czart founder Michał Chrościelewski.)

On October 17th code666 presented a debut album Czarty Polskie by the Polish project Czart. The project’s crew is Michał Chrościelewski (probably guitars and something else), Paweł Smarkusz (drums), and Monika (vocals/keyboards), but I’m not sure, as the album and all videos to its songs were made with the help of IA.

Yes, it’s one of Czart’s cornerstones, and it’s ironic as Czart (or “tchort”) means a minor demon in Slavic tradition, and the entire album is based on Czary i czarty polskie oraz wypisy czarnoksięskie (“Polish Witchcraft and Devils, with Sorcery Excerpts”), “a 1924 book by renowned Polish writer Julian Tuwim”. And besides that, Czart is an “audio-visual” project, and almost each track has its own video, and you need to see them first before you judge. Who would use cutting-edge technologies to transfer an atmosphere of ancient deviltry and folklore? Yet here we go.

You see, what a contradiction we meet in starting a talk about Czart? This interview (a damn worthwhile reading thing) shows a deep artistic philosophy behind Czarty Polskie, an album you will talk about even to your colleagues at work. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CARNAL SAVAGERY — “CURSE OF THE CATACOMB”

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Nov 052025
 

(written by Islander)

Although the Swedish death metal band Carnal Savagery released their first demo only five and a half years ago they’ve kept their feet jammed on the gas pedal ever since, releasing six albums in rapid succession and now with a seventh one on the way. Their album titles brazenly brandish their musical devotion to themes of supernatural horror and foul decomposition: Grotesque Macabre; Fiendish; Scent of Death; Worm Eaten; Into the Abysmal Void; Graveworms, Cadavers, Coffins and Bones; and now Crypt of Decay.

Here’s part of the tantalizing linguistic preview of the new album offered on behalf Moribund Records, who will release it on November 28th: “The band’s seventh full-length album, Crypt of Decay, is a brutal exploration of human depravity, darkness, and death. This savage collection of tracks will drag you through the deepest catacombs of sonic devastation, where death metal, blackened riffs, and dark atmospheres converge in an unholy union of chaos.”

As a more tangible sign of what the new record delivers, we’re now premiering a horrifying video for the album track “Curse of the Catacomb“. Continue reading »

I DON’T DO DRUGS, I AM DRUGS: “I DON’T DO DRUGS, I AM DRUGS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Nov 052025
 

(Vizzah Harri is both back home and back at NCS after a hiatus and has brought with him a group of reviews, with the following typically fascinating one focused on the 2025 album by I don’t do drugs, I am drugs from the UK.)

Delaying things can cause them to grow in size from a molehill into an impassable reach. That sheer face presenting its final summit you can’t even process for the valleys, outright tears and fissures in the earth leading up to it, woods less penetrable than a despot’s drive toward self-preservation, and stacked with ghoulish specters of the darkest deepest reaches of self-nebulized phantasmagoria of your brain that need more than a score of filthy twenties to roll to beat. Internalizing these beasties and challenges as this big thing you’ve got to surpass to attain a summit that does not exist in anyone else’s mind. And that is the scariest part.

Time is only the enemy if one so chooses to enter in melee against it. Harrowers of darkened benthic silts. Grubbing and raking, digging deep with numb appendages in them already murky waters of untruth, to meet that sweetest slice and gash, that prick and tear, that hack and rip, of the bloodletting surety of the acidulous blades and pincers of veritas. Fleeting elation as that sinking in and setting of sedimental disdain for the passage of sands still nascently swishing in the alluvial flow of streams and seas of air. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OUTLYING — “THE RAVEN IS GONE”

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Nov 042025
 

(written by Islander)

The melodic death metal band Outlying hail from the old industrial city of Trois-Rivieres in the province of Quebec, Canada. The band was founded in 2007 by lead vocalist/guitarist (as well as producer and writer) Fred A. Dubeau, and now includes drummer Martin Reithler and bassist Charles Alex Bilodeau.

On November 21st Outlying will release their third album, and their first one since 2016’s Frameworks for Repression. The name of the album is Oblivisci, which means “to forget” in old Latin. They chose the name “to reflect the tendency to withdraw from reality and ‘forget’ society and the existence you live in, so to speak,” and thus the songs “express oppressive feelings of trauma, alienation, grief, loneliness….”

What we have for you today is the premiere of the album’s third single, “The Raven Is Gone“. Fred Dubeau introduces it with these words: Continue reading »

SMIQRA: “RGYAĠDŹÉ!”

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Nov 042025
 

(NCS contributor Vizzah Harri, domiciled in Vietnam since his first appearance here, has now returned home to South Africa. But the change of scene hasn’t affected his unmistakable and inimitable writing style, as you’ll see from his review of the first album by Smiqra, which is a different guise for the person behind Ὁπλίτης [Hoplites].)

I’ll be honest, I’ve been sitting on this review for a long time and it came to the point where I realized it might never happen. It perhaps stems from a feeling of inadequacy. I don’t think anyone will be able to write about this album with an honesty and attention to detail without missing something. The unpronounceable Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! might not make it to the top of many AOTY lists this year, apart from the underground, for music that takes a few leaps outside the bounds of what our usual comprehension of what a ‘type’ of music should sound like can be seen as simply an oddity, flash in the pan.

If an album starts on musical hijinks as an inside joke, breaking the 4th wall so to speak, for heading to Bandcamp the track loaded into the player ready to fire is number 9, Major Revision!; it’s a nice way of informing us that what we’re dealing with is a meme of the highest order. Continue reading »

SELFGOD: “LEFT HAND PAGAN”

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Nov 042025
 

(We present Daniel Barkasi’s review of a new album by Pittsburgh-based Selfgod that was released by Veles Records on October 31st.)

Selfgod’s Serge Streltsov (ex-Necrophagia, ex-Automb) has been busy since the release of debut album Born of Death back in February of 2022, with multiple tours under their belt (one that included a stop at our current location of Tampa at the famous Brass Mug), and timing-wise, the band’s next step felt imminent. There were some rumblings, but nothing concrete, until now. Sure enough, the second full-length Left Hand Pagan was announced in mid-October for a quickly approaching Halloween release, this time by way of his own newly formed label, Veles Records. 

To the uninitiated, Selfgod conjures a technical, riff-driven sort of death metal that dabbles in the occasional black metal aesthetic. Think Hate, God Dethroned, Azarath – that sort of approach, coupled with a Pagan thematic presence, which is emphasized further by the new record’s title. As an aside, we explored Streltsov’s personal beliefs and close connection with his home country of Ukraine in an interview we did here at NCS a few years ago, and they’re front and center with this release, which sadly was marked by a personal tragedy for Streltsov during the lead-up (more on that later). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: OROMET — “THE SINKING ISLE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 032025
 

(written by Islander)

I’m part of a chat group with some long-distance friends who also write about metal (outside the cohort here at NCS). Some of them had listened to Sacramento-based Oromet’s new album The Sinking Isle before I had. One of them acclaimed it as the best funeral doom album of the year, and others agreed.

I thought that was a bold claim, given that this fall had already brought forth a new album by the old gods Evoken and will soon see a tremendous half of a split by Convocation. But while I couldn’t completely avoid some skepticism (not the band) about the assertion, I was certainly left eager to find out for myself what kindled such enthusiasm.

Not that I wasn’t already pretty taken with Oromet, based on their self-titled debut album from 2023 and their phenomenal cover of Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone” released just this past July (which I had some things to say about here). But still, standing toe-to-toe with those other bands mentioned above (and other fine groups not mentioned) would be no mean feat. Continue reading »

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