Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAHATY — “SCORCHED BENEATH THE SOLAR SEAL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 292026
 

(written by Islander)

Today we help spread the news that in August Sentient Ruin Laboratories will release the debut album of Rahaty — the one-man death metal side-project of Belarusian black metal act and musician Pa Vesh En — and we’re also premiering the album’s first advance track, “Scorched Beneath the Solar Seal“.

Sentient Ruin’s proprietor always presents vividly evocative descriptions of the label’s music, and has done so again in the case of Rahaty’s first release:

Here proclaimed with its debut album Bestial Lustmord is an unholy conquest within death metal’s most pestilent drift. Putrid atmospheres drenched in sickness. Downpours of death-reeking riffs collapsing into mangled, deformed aberrations. A tectonic rhythm section rupturing into seismic deflagrations, and a bestial vocal regurgitation retching obscenities through the disemboweled carcass of oblivion.

Other descriptions of the record provided by the label include such adjectives as “deranged”, “enigmatic”, “violent”, and “gruesome”. Of course, we have a few descriptors of our own to offer in preparation for your submission to the song we’re about to present. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KRALLICE, BEASTLOR, SEKTION VASORÉ

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 282026
 

(written by Islander)

I only had one song premiere to prepare for today and nothing else for us to share with you besides the review from Andy that opened our day. So I impetuously decided to pull together this roundup of new music.

The first two choices attracted my attention because their overlapping lineups include people who I think it’s fair to say are luminaries among discerning metal listeners, those of us who search for more than “the same old, same old”. These artists’ creative interests and impulses also often lead them in unexpected directions, so there was an important intrigue factor in making the choices.

The third choice was much more impulsive. I just decided to listen to the music of the last band to e-mail us yesterday, a band with no reputation I knew of, and only two demo songs to their name. I’m so glad I yielded to that impulse, and I hope you will be too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRITICAL DEFIANCE — “RIVERS OF BLOOD”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 282026
 

(written by Islander)

As we sometimes do, we’re going to jump right into the Critical Defiance song we’re about to premiere and then come back and fill you in on the details.

The name of the song is “Rivers of Blood“, and it’s the title track to this Chilean band’s fourth album, which is forthcoming from Dying Victims Productions on September 25th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PLAGUEWIELDER — “TO THE CALL OF MY MASTER”

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Jul 272026
 

(written by Islander)

Plaguewielder, those gritty bearers of black sludge from the Ohio rust belt, have recorded a new single that will eventually appear on their next album, Year Of The Plague, and we’re bringing it to you today with a suitably scary video.

The name of the song is “To the Call of My Master“, and it’s the second single Plaguewielder have released this year, following “Son of The Serpent, Son of The Whore” (premiered here). The band also released the first single from the new album last year, “Blood of the Astral Gate” (premiered here).

Lyrically, “To the Call of My Master” expresses the glorification of a vampire by the vampire’s familiar, and the familiar’s vows of obedience. Musically, the song is as fiendish as the lyrical subject matter, and as highly infectious as a vampiric plague. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOLUBILIS — “UNUKHALAI SUPERNOVA”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 272026
 

(written by Islander)

Occasionally some of us play a mind game in which we imagine how people who know almost nothing about metal would interpret words and phrases we throw around about the music on a daily basis. Like, how would they interpret “tech death”? The possible or hoped-for demise of Silicon Valley? AI reaching its Skynet moment and promptly deciding to wipe out humanity? Some slang term for the precise definition of when a person has expired, even if they might still be breathing?

And yet there are also occasions when the “tech death” label may not really mean what even we think it means, or at least when it falls short in some way. Which brings us to the Montréal band Volubilis.

It’s convenient to label them a “tech death” band, and that label might be better than any other single genre descriptor if you had to choose just one, but it also falls short. Among other things, it tells you nothing about the rather spectacular nature of the tale encompassed by the band’s recently released debut album Theasterion. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: NECROLIGION, MOORAH, SÁRR, NAMU, DUSKSEEKER, AKVAN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 262026
 

(written by Islander)

I had enough time between yesterday and this morning to make this week’s SHADES OF BLACK collection a large one. It includes a trio of EPs, a pair of singles, and one full-length album, all of which got their claws on me in very different ways.

I suppose I could have sub-titled this collection “Best of British”, because three of the bands are from that green and pleasant land (that place of clouded hills and Satanic mills, to complete Blake’s famous references). However, my friend Andy claimed that phrase for his own reviews long ago, and anyway the following collection also includes bands from Czechia, Texas, and Iran. Hope you enjoy everything here. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FILTHY ILK, SIDEREAN, WEALTHY WOMEN, THE HU

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 252026
 

(written by Islander)

As you know if you’ve stopped by here in previous Saturdays, I sometimes start with a shiny lure, a new song or video from a well-known band, and then drag people down into much deeper waters, kind of the reverse of conventional fishing (fishing from below).

Today I do have a shiny lure, but decided to put it at the end for reasons I’ll eventually explain. Before then I’ve bounced around among savage, strange, and scintillating creatures spotted in the lower depths. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MISERY INDEX, FEARTILIZER 1492, VENOMOUS ECHOES, THE ABSOLUTION SEQUENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 242026
 

(written by Islander)

I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning. I wake up early every morning, mainly because of this blog, but not that early. No idea why I opened my eyes then but I couldn’t go back to sleep.

The only silver lining to that unfortunate cloud is that after putting the finishing touches on that Agonanist song premiere I posted earlier today, which I hope you’ve explored, I had time on my hands. And so I decided to get a head-start on the usual Saturday roundup of new songs and videos, time enough to focus on four new things from the usual giant list of possibilities. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AGONANIST — “THE GATEWAY”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 242026
 

(written by Islander)

In late August Transylvanian Recordings will release a second album by Agonanist, which is the experimental music project of multidisciplinary artist Tyler Henthorn, who is based in San Francisco. The album’s title is The Spirit of Gravity, and the label describes its contents as: “Dark, Hypnotic, Dissonant & Mystical Black Metal. Somewhere between a fever dream and a claustrophobic nightmare. Sonically unruly, jarring, & entrancing.”

The album has many unusual aspects, which we explored with Tyler in an interview you’ll find near the end of this article. It was produced in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where Tyler lived for many years. Further, in creating the music he used microtonal instruments, experimenting with EDO (Equal Divisions of the Octave), cutting the octave into numerous steps, with side A of the album described as “a mix of 17ET and 12ET, and side B of 22ET” (with ET standing for “Equal Temperament”).

Moreover, Agonanist enlisted the participation of some notable guests. He sent demos of the songs to Andrew Lee (Ripped to Shreds), Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts, Behold the Arctopus), and Kevin Paradis (Benighted, Svart Crown), and gave them the freedom to put themselves into his compositions.

The results are indeed sonically unruly, jarring, and entrancing. Tyler explains: “The Spirit of Gravity represents inevitability, our experience of time being an illusion, causality being a continuous web that spans the entire universe where everything exists at once in a splatter of liquid.”

In reading those words, and in listening to the album, it’s not surprising to learn that Tyler is a fan of the great Polish science fiction author Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) and that the name Agonanist is derived from an episode in one of Lem’s stories. But more about that later (much later). For now we should turn to some of the music on The Spirit of Gravity, including a song named “The Gateway” that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PSICORRAGIA

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 242026
 

(In June of this year the Peruvian band Psicorragia released their third album. We had the pleasure of premiering a video for one of its great songs, and today we take pleasure in presenting Comrade Aleks’ excellent discussion with Psicorragia’s Mario Romanet.)

Peruvian death-doom band Psicorragia, led by bassist and vocalist Mario Romanet, has been together since 1994. Their first full-length album, La pasion de lo mortal, was released in 2001, and this year saw the release of their third major effort, Nekromanthra. Although nine years ago, the band had eight tracks in the works for their third full-length, the final release included only six songs, totaling 45 minutes. Yet there’s no need to worry; it’s absolutely a full-length recording and Psicorragia delivered professional and powerful material, effectively serving as the best work of their career.

The very first track, “Y sus plagas invocaron,” showcases their wide range of influences, from death metal to eldritch death-doom. The composition repeatedly shifts its mood from hostilely aggressive to detached melancholy and back again, the ascetic guitar sound offset by keyboard arrangements that take on the form of sublime orchestrations and mournful violin dirges.

Psicorragia tend to blend these two styles and, relying on their instincts, combine both approaches, but, for example, “Lo inexorable” embodies that very classic “death-doom with violin” from the ’90s that has become a brand in itself. The final track, “Nekromanthra,” concludes the album with grueling, drawn-out funereal doom, presented in an ominous, tormented, and almost ceremonial manner.

Mario Romanet answered a few questions recently, so I invite you to read this interview and join the macabre world of Psicorragia. Continue reading »

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