Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: THOSE WHO BRING THE TORTURE — “DARK CHAPTERS”

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Sep 092020
 

 

One person’s torture is another person’s joy. And no, we’re not talking about a sadomasochistic relationship, but instead about the kind of death metal that might sear the brains of your neighbors but will bring a big smile to connoisseurs of preternatural menace and mayhem. And who better to do that than a band who proudly name themselves Those Who Bring the Torture?

That name will be familiar to many death metal connoisseurs out there. Founded by the ever-busy Rogga Johansson more than a dozen years ago, the band has produced six albums and a pair of EPs, and a seventh full-length named Dark Chapters is now on the horizon.

The line-up has changed from time to time, as has the direction of the music. On this new record, which will be released on September 30th by Iron Blood and Death Corporation, Rogga handles guitars, bass, and vocals and is joined by lead guitarist Kjetil Lynghaug (Paganizer, Ribspreader, Johansson & Speckmann) and drummer Jon Rudin (Wombbath, Just Before Dawn). As for the music, we have a strong taste of that for you through our premiere of the album’s title track. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DECOHERENCE / THE INFERNAL SEA / ODOACER

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 092020
 


The Infernal Sea

 

(Andy Synn again focuses on the music of bands from his homeland, this time leaning into black metal with reviews of three new albums.)

As the sole British member of the NCS crew (and therefore the only one who can actually write worth a damn… kidding!) it’s my responsibility, and my privilege, to use the platform afforded me here to highlight some of the best and brightest bands who hail from these green and pleasant lands.

Of course, that responsibility is kind of a double-edged sword.

If I’m too critical of a band or album there’s always someone more than happy to attack me for “not supporting the scene”.

But if I’m too positive about someone/something then I’ll inevitably get accused of being biased because I’m a part of the scene.

Hell, it’s actually a blade that cuts three ways when you think about it, because even when I don’t write anything at all about a band’s new record it inevitably leads to people to assume I have something against it/them… it’s a classic lose/lose/lose situation!

Still, as masochistic as it may seem, none of that’s going to stop me from continuing to separate the wheat from the chaff, and today’s column features a bountiful harvest of British Black Metal for your ears only. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CRUST

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Sep 092020
 

 

(In this new interview — and a very good read it is — Comrade Aleks talked with Artur Filenko, vocalist and bassist of the Russian genre-bending band Crust, whose new album was released in August of this year.)

Crust from Veliky Novgorod, Russia, searched for their own working formula beginning in 2015 when their first, self-titled EP was recorded. Three more EPs and a full-length, The Promised Land (2019), led them to the sound they embody with their crushing new album …And a Dirge Becomes An Anthem released by [addicted label] / no name label, on which Vlad Tatarsky (guitars), Roman Romanov (drums), and Artur Filenko (vocals, bass) perform a nihilistic and driving combination of death-doom with some shades of black.

Recorded live at the studio, this material offers tasty old school vibes and severe delivery. I dig this album, so the interview with Artur was just a question of time. Continue reading »

THE RETURN OF INDUSTRIAL METAL: REALIZE AND BLACK MAGNET

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 082020
 

 

(In this post Todd Manning combines reviews of new albums by Arizona’s Realize (coming on September 25th via Relapse Records) and Oklahoma’s Black Magnet, released on September 4th by 20 Buck Spin.)

It’s easy to look to the past with rose-colored glasses, but the late eighties and early nineties sure do seem like a distant utopia at times. Yet, that time period spawned the unholy marriage of Industrial music and Extreme Metal, which can often produce some of the most nightmare-ish tunes this side of the river Styx.

It’s only fitting that this kind of stuff is making a comeback nowadays as the material seems well-suited to describe the not-so-slow-motion apocalypse we are being forced to live through. Bleakness and relentless tragedy are the order of the day, and Realize and Black Magnet are two bands diving headfirst into this chasm. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TERATOLITH — “ONE. DEATH”

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Sep 082020
 

 

Much is unknown about Teratolith. Its members are anonymous, their location a mystery. But what has already become apparent is that they are powerful necromancers, adepts at the creation of musical horror-scapes that engulf and submerge listeners within their frightening, avant-garde hybrid of black metal, death metal, and ambient mysteries. Last year and this year the band digitally released their first two EPs, Eclipse I and Eclipse II. And on September 25th Brucia Records will be releasing them together on an album-length CD and tape edition, also entitled Eclipse.

While much remains mysterious about the band — and intentionally so, because (as the label explains) their objective is to disconnect their creations “from virtually any other aspect of the mundane world” — Brucia has disclosed that the overarching purpose of the project is to “explore the obscure realities behind and beyond the physical dimension”, to create “unique and excruciating meditations on the occult as seen through the eyes of Death and Chaos itself.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INVERNOIR — “SUSPENDED ALIVE”

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Sep 082020
 

 

As we all continue to struggle through the disturbing tremors and ruinous upheavals of this plague year, it becomes almost second-nature to view art of all kinds through the lens of this experience. That urge is irresistible in the case of “Suspended Alive“, the song we’re premiering today, through an evocative video, from the Roman doom/death band Invernoir’s debut album The Void and the Unbearable Loss. It does seem like this strange time has suspended life, as well as taken it, leaving us to wonder when a decent life will resume and what it will look like when (if?) that happens.

Even more than the title of the song, the music itself creates moods of uneasiness and longing, of turbulence and loss — a sense of grasping at memories while waiting for life to resume, but with an ominous sense that those are all gone forever and that the idea of moving forward is a fool’s dream. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HEX

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Sep 082020
 

 

(We present Comrade Aleks interview of Adolfo Cantoya, guitarist of the Basque Country band Hex, accompanied by the live performance photos of Panda Queen.)

Hex is a relatively new band from Bilbao, Basque Country, as it was started about eight years ago, but the band’s core is built by gents who have years of experience playing heavy music behind them. For example Hex’ vocalist Jonathan Pernía García started in the brutal death act Forensick back in 2001 and guitarist Adolfo Cantoya aka Drake did some thrash with Beer Mosh and From The Cross in the early ’90s. Together they’ve strode the path of death-doom since 2012, but it took five more years to record a new album after their debut full-length Deadly Sin (2014).

And so God Has No Name was released almost a year ago by Transcending Obscurity Records, but why not revisit this album together with Adolfo today? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ISOLERT — “WORLD IN RUINS”

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Sep 072020
 

 

While I could go on and on about the devastating magnificence of Isolert’s new album, World In Ruins, at this point I only want to consider the three songs that close this astonishing record — a trio that includes the title track, which we’re premiering today.

That concluding trio begins with “Staring At A Path Towards Nowhere“, a song I’ve written about before when it first appeared (you can find it here), whose title neatly sums up the current age. Immediately electrifying, the song’s soaring, sweeping intensity is near-celestial in its blazing magnificence. To be sure, the vocals sound like rampaging demons in the depths of hell, but even those voices sound like glorifications (of great terrors).

The other dimension of the song, which emerges when the pace slows, is a feeling of crushing grief, delivered with stately solemnity and a sense of magnificence, but conjoined with screams of harrowing vocal intensity. The segue from that passage back into the heavenly firestorm is beautifully done, as is the reprise of sorrow that comes through a beautiful but soul-stricken guitar solo that extends through a glorious maelstrom of sound and brings the song to a heart-breaking close. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AKRAL NECROSIS — “SILENT ALTAR”

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Sep 072020
 

 

The new album by the Romanian black metal band Akral Necrosis, their third overall and their first full-length in four years, is a narrative of more than an hour in length. Entitled The Greater Absence, it follows an ambitious, ignorant protagonist in his pathetic yet hazardous quest “to reveal the mysteries of the unseen and the afterlife”. Certain parts of the exposition were inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 legendary film Vargtimmen (“Hour of the Wolf”), and it further includes a guest appearance by the young Romanian poet David Topala, with an unpublished poem that is reproduced in fragments on three of the album’s tracks.

The album’s epilogue presents a terrible vision of the final destination of the human soul, and in this the band’s perspective “breaks with the concepts of heaven and hell, as well as with the belief that any form of consciousness is suppressed by death”. We’re further told that the narrative is also “an allegory of contemporary practices adopted more and more often in the mainstream music circuit that transforms black metal into a consumer product….” Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: TOMBS, OCEANS OF SLUMBER, ZEAL & ARDOR, FORETOKEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 072020
 


TOMBS (photo by Dan Higgins)

 

EDITOR’S CONFESSION: Is it possible? Could I have actually failed to post the second installment of this series by our contributor Gonzo on Friday, just like I was late in posting the first one? Even though it’s called NEW MUSIC FRIDAY? Hell yes! It’s true! I fucked up two weeks in a row! But I’m risking covid to visit a tattoo parlor today to have NEW MUSIC FRIDAY tattooed on my forehead so I’ll never forget again. Of course, when looking in the mirror it will read YADIRF CISUM WEN.

 

The show must go on.

Given the quality output so far in a year otherwise mired with seemingly every kind of imaginable strife dominating the headlines, you’d think those words were the mantra of every working band out there.

Some of those themes of the year, as it turns out, make for excellent and timely material to write songs out of. I have no doubt that we’ll start seeing more and more of it start to emerge as we trudge on through this supremely uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing timeline we’re living through. This week [Editor’s Correction: last week!] has dropped a few hints of what’s to come, with spectacular results. Continue reading »

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