Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MOURNING MIST

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Jan 112021
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks put questions to the two main members of the Italian band Mourning Mist, whose second album Amen was released last November by BloodRock Records.)

Mourning Mist hail from Perugia, Umbria. This Italian band was started back in 2013 by Mid. (drums, vocals) and Echerual (violin). A year later Kvasir (bass, vocals, guitars) joined and the crew started to explore the skills they had, playing different sorts of black metal in new territories.

Their self-titled debut appeared in 2015 and I’m still bewildered with this blackened eclectic mix of genres, but their sophomore album Amen (October, 2020) is clearer and closer to my doom-bound heart. The new material wears the mark of alchemical trials, yet general tone is recognizable for followers of traditional mournful doom metal.

We’ve made this interview with Echerual and Kvasir to learn more details about Mourning and Mist. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MALIST, KJELD, OGASAWARA, SUR AUSTRU, FIRE MAGIC, HUSH

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jan 102021
 

 

I had more time this Sunday morning than I did yesterday to check out new music, focusing as I usually do on the blackened arts. Unfortunately for me, if not for you, I still didn’t have time to write as much as I would like about what I’ve selected for this column. For much of it I resorted to fragmentary impressions rather than more complete reviews, or even complete sentences. But I bet you’ll enjoy the music anyway.

MALIST (Russia)

…blazing and boisterous… thrusting and thunderous… moody, melancholy, and mysterious at times, but mainly explosive and exhilarating (and highly addictive)… Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE RUINS OF BEVERAST, TURRIS EBURNEA, SWAMPBEAST, CAMBION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 092021
 

 

I’m wimping out today. I hate to let even a weekend day go by without spreading around some attractive new metal, but I’ve had to pay attention to my day job all morning (it doesn’t observe weekends any more than I do at NCS), and I’ve got to go back to paying attention to it again soon, so I can’t pump out the usual stream of words about the following selections.

Also, with so little time to myself this morning I was only able to just scratch the surface of all the new songs and videos that surfaced over the last week. Fortunately, these few scratchings turned out to be very good, and they all clawed right back at me.

THE RUINS OF BEVERAST (Germany)

Song: “Anchoress In Furs”
Album: The Thule Grimoires
Label: Ván Records
Release Date: February 5th
Pre-order: https://van-records.com/Preorder_1 Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2020’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 5): HELLRIPPER, SPEEDKILLER, BULLETBELT, TØRONTO

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2020  2 Responses »
Jan 082021
 

 

For this fifth installment of the list I’ve decided to include four songs instead of two or three. The impulse to include all of these together was irresistible, for reasons I think you’ll understand after you’ve heard all of them.

HELLRIPPER

From humble beginnings this solo project of James McBain has moved from self-releasing its 2015 debut EP (The Manifestation of Evil) and its 2017 debut album (Coagulating Darkness) to landing on the roster of Peaceville Records, which released Hellripper’s second album The Affair of the Poisons last October. For those of us who’ve been adherents of the music since early days, this was a happy development but not a shocking one. Continue reading »

AN NCS DOUBLE PREMIERE: THORN (“IRON SHARPENS IRON”) AND FUMES (“THE EREMITIC”)

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Jan 082021
 

 

On January 22nd a consortium of labels — Gurgling Gore Records, Life After Death Records, and Cavernous Records — will release a tremendous split by two fearsome and frightening North American death metal bands: Thorn from Phoenix, Arizona, and Fumes from Toronto, Ontario. Each band contributes two tracks to this experience in crushing audio horror, and today we’re premiering one of them by each band.

THORN

Thorn is the solo project of Brennen Westermeyer, a musical vehicle dedicated to the creation of cavernous, ominous, and dreadful death metal. Thorn made its advent last year with an EP entitled The Encompassing Nothing, and for this new split Thorn recorded two songs — “Eclipsing a Dying Sun” and “Iron Sharpens Iron“. It’s the second of those which we present today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUNG KNOTS — “DEVOUR THEIR BODIES SATURATED WITH BRINE”

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Jan 082021
 

 

Consider this description of the new project that’s the source of the track we’re premiering today:

“Lung Knots is a vessel of auditory violence whose sole purpose is to exist in this place and moment in time. It is an overwhelming form of aural terror conveyed through primal and mechanical means, conjoining visceral matter of an organic origin with that of an abiotic one. These together fabricate an entity focused on the seething aspects of interminable dread and the humiliation of flesh.

“Lung Knots‘ essence can be summed up as the channeling of hate and disgust towards man and its progeny, and the very construct of humanity in its current, turbulent state, by weaving together textures that vary from harsh noise to black metal and carefully crafted sound design-like sonical scapes, and everything falling in between. The territory from where these scraps are gathered is a profound, hopeless, and lightless hole, familiar to every single being in one sense or another.”

Now consider the lyrics of the macabre audio assault you’re about to experience: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DIE LIKE GENTLEMEN

 Interviews  4 Responses »
Jan 082021
 

 

(In considering interviews, the truism applies that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, or perhaps the other mantra applies, that it takes two to tango. In this new interview, Comrade Aleks struck a very good chord in his discussion with Adam Alexander of the fascinating Portland band Die Like Gentlemen. The horses drink deeply, tangoing occurs, it’s a very good read.)

Die Like Gentlemen is a striking name and it fits the music of this eclectic band from Portland, which combines influences drawn from sludge and progressive metal in one quite intellectual impulse. Adam Alexander (vocals, guitars, piano), Shawn Boles (drums, percussion), Matt Wieber (lead vocals, EBow) and Sean Rodgers (bass, guitars) have worked together since 2012. They started with the promising debut Romantic Delusions of Hell in 2013, and their fourth album Stories, released a year ago in the calm of January 2020, turned out to be an acoustic one.

What may we now expect from these four gentlemen of Portland? Has quarantine silenced their sonic indignation? Let’s ask Adam. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2020’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 4): ULCERATE AND ARS MAGNA UMBRAE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2020  No Responses »
Jan 072021
 

 

Welcome to Part 4 of this expanding list, in which I’ve paired two powerful (and, by definition, quite memorable) songs that I thought would make a good partnership in your listening today. (To check out the songs that preceded these two in the list, follow this link.)

ULCERATE

It’s my habit to introduce each song on this list with some words about the albums that included them, for the benefit of visitors who might be encountering them for the first time, or who might decide to delve into them more deeply, as a result of the selected songs. In the case of Ulcerate‘s 2020 album Stare Into Death And Be Still, that seems unnecessary. Given the widespread acclaim this album has received across a multitude of year-end lists (including many we published), who among you is still unaware of this album? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALTERED DEAD — “THRAWING IN AGONY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 072021
 

 

Five years after the release of their self-titled debut album, the barbarous death metal duo from southern Vancouver Island who call themselves Altered Dead are at last ready for the release of their sophomore album, fittingly named Returned To Life. It will be released by two celebrants of slaughtering sound, with Memento Mori handling the CD release on January 25th and Fucking Kill Records discharging vinyl editions on February 28th. And today it’s our sadistic pleasure to share with you the perverse pleasures of a track from the new record named “Thrawing In Agony“.

Altered Dead‘s approach to death metal draws upon the influences of such progenitors as Autopsy, Death Breath, Grave, Asphyx, Darkthrone, Unleashed, Exhumed, and Carnage. Hallowed names indeed, and suggestive of the fact that Altered Dead interweave within their spine-shivering art varying takes on the most grim and ghastly death metal formulations, and therefore don’t sound like clones of anyone. Even more impressive is that only two people are responsible for such mutilating ravages of sound. Continue reading »

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