Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BA’AL — “THE FINE LINE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HERE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The British metal band Ba’al picked a name for their new album that will make most people’s scanning eyes stop in their tracks when they see it: The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here. Your hurrying brain might quickly interpret it one way (the wrong way) and then pause (if it’s not rushing too fast) to realize it says “Here“, not “Hell“.

The title is clever, but it’s also meaningful. The band explain:

“The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here reflects on growing up in a city like our home of Sheffield; the contrast between bleak, grey industrial sprawl and the beauty of nature that surrounds and often overlaps with it. It touches on mental health, substance abuse, suicide, grief and existential dread.”

“Here“, where we are, can be hellish. Human beings have always imagined the torments of Hell based on what they know and have seen of ourselves and our fellow travelers on our spinning orb. It may be that we have also imagined the glories of Heaven based on the glories of Here too.

How Ba’al have used their music to render the grey and the green, the scars and the sublime, will be revealed in full today through our premiere of their new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEPHOSPHORUS — “PLANETOKTONOS”

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Jul 162025
 

(written by Islander)

The title of the new fifth album by the Greek “cosmic grind” band Dephosphorus is Planetoktonos. That is a Greek word coined by the band, which roughly translates to “Planetkiller.” The album will be released on set on July 18th by a trio of labels in a variety of formats.

The new album’s name is an inspired choice, in part because it is reflective of the science-fiction and cosmology themes that lyrically run through the songs, and in part because the album often sounds like a planetkiller — as you’ll discover today through our premiere stream of the record in its entirety. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A TUESDAY: KUNTARI, MOUTH OF MADNESS, VERMINGOD, PLUTONIAN SHORE, SETH, HYENISM

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 152025
 


Kuntari

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere responsibility today and nothing else in the queue from our other writers, I had just enough time to compile a rare weekday roundup of new songs and videos. I think many of the songs that follow include aspects of the exotic, or at least that’s the best word I can come up with. The collection is book-ended by a couple of things I found thanks to someone else’s recent collection.

KUNTARI (Indonesia)

Last October I came across the Indonesian musical project Kuntari (the duo of Tesla Manaf and Rio Abror) based on a fascinating collaboration Kuntari did with an Indonesian “Post-Black Metal/Crust/Shoegaze” band named Avhath. I included a bit of background info about Kuntari and a lot of enthusiastic words about just one head-spinning song from the collaboration here. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HARVESTED — “SYNAPTIC CONFUSION”

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Jul 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Your muscles are about to reflexively twitch, your head is about to hammer, your pulse is about to accelerate. Audio worms will slither into your ear canals and take up residence there. Some of your cranial neurons may start spinning, creating visions of fast devils and hulking monsters.

Those are our predictions of what will happen when you see and hear the playthrough video we’re premiering for the song “Synaptic Confusion” by the Ottawa-based death metal band Harvested. It’s an excellent way to rev up your own motor as Harvested rev up theirs. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TSARETVORETZ

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 152025
 

(In this new interview our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks talks with one of the members of the Russian black metal band Tsaretvoretz (Царетворец), whose second album was released in May by Svanrenne Music.)

The official press-release of this melancholic black metal from Russia states: “Tsars are created with blood, committing palace coups. Or with impulses of the soul, perversely evolving into the creation of idols for themselves. But after the fire, only ashes remain. Tsaretvoretz is a straightforward black metal with fiery melodies and atmospheric melancholic passages of post-black, absorbing all the best from Russian and Scandinavian examples of the coal genre. For connoisseurs of Morokh, Second to Sun, Downfall of Gaia”.

Laconic yet informative – as well as this interview with one of Tsaretvoretz’ founders we did due to the release of their second album Kostmi Usypana Zemlya / The Ground Is Strewn with Bones.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STOMACH — “LOW DEMON”

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Jul 142025
 

(written by Islander)

Miserable and merciless, doomed and depraved, an exorcism of inner demons. Those are among the descriptions you may have seen if you’ve come across the news about a new album from Chicago-based Stomach. You may have also seen the album’s name: Low Demon. And man, is it ever that.

The album will be released this coming Friday by Hibernation Release. It will likely turn the end of the week into a smoking crater, from which horrid smoking things will crawl. But hell, why wait to see what happens? Let’s see what happens today. There’s no good reason to let this week pretend to have a positive start (we know better than to be fooled that way), and so we’ll drop Low Demon on your heads right now. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XVIII: THE HALFWAY POINT

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 142025
 

(Below you will find Daniel Barkasi’s monthly collection of NCS album reviews, this time recommending six records released in June 2025.)

It’s the middle of the year, and boy are my… everything tired. Time always seems to move fast, because it does. We don’t need reminders of the all too limited amount of it, but sadly they happen regularly. Since our last installment, a major news story that affected me as a Liverpool FC supporter – but more so as a human – was the death of brothers Diogo Jota and André Silva in a driving accident, traveling from Porto to Liverpool for the start of training for Diogo.

The most heartbreaking part, other than him only being 28, was that he had gotten married a week prior, with three very young children. Furthermore, he came across as a lovely fellow that didn’t fall into the egotism that many professional athletes fall into. A humble guy who loved his life, and showed it all the time. LFC classily will pay out the remainder of his contract to his now widow, and will fully fund his children’s education. They also retired his #20 kit number – all-around class from a classy club. RIP Diogo and André – YNWA. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LUCTUS, NATÜRGEIST, MANIA, ARKHAAIK, TRYPANON, DOWNWARD

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Although this Sunday’s collection includes varying shades and phases of black metal I would say they have unsettling sensations of madness and murder in common, and most of them feature a muscular heart-hammering punch as well as abundant doses of crazed ferocity and mind-bending psychosis.

In many instances you’ll also encounter some of the most unhinged vocals you’re likely to find outside the hideous real-world history of self-immolation.

Only in extreme metal could an introduction like that qualify as “enticing,” but I know our audience well enough that I’m sure it will be. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PARADISE LOST, AMORPHIS, CAR BOMB, NOVEMBRE, HIGH PARASITE, TIGGUO COBAUC, CIRCLING OVER, OROMET, CORRIDORÉ

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 122025
 


Paradise Lost

(written by Islander)

When I finished yesterday’s head start on today’s column I thought I’d focus today on lesser-known bands. As you can see, I didn’t completely follow through on that notion. What grabbed me as I listened turned out to be a mix of names everyone knows and names more likely to be new discoveries.

I’ve led with the luminaries. Maybe they will function like old friends greeting you at the door to their home and pulling you inside, where a group of strangers are waiting to do unexpected things to you, some of which, as it turns out, are going to hurt. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VISITANT — “STARLESS”

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Jul 112025
 

(written by Islander)

Visitant is an excellent name. Unlike the more mundane “visitor”, it suggests the appearance of something uncommon, something supernatural and possibly dangerous, like an apparitional visitation from the spirit world. That idea is reinforced by the striking red-hued cover image on this U.S. band’s debut album Rubidium.

True to the name they chose, Visitant‘s music turns out to be uncommon as well, a changing braid of varying genre ingredients that creates altered and interwoven sensations — sensations haunting and harrowing, disconsolate and vengeful, diaphanous and pulverizing, and altogether head-spinning.

You’ll get an idea of just how variable those ingredients are when you see the “for fans of” references provided by Visitant‘s label Exitus Stratagem Records: Gojira, Opeth, Naglfar, Between the Buried And Me, Enslaved, Dimmu Borgir, Mgła, Leaves Eyes, and Chelsea Wolfe.

Of course, not all those allusions become relevant within each song on Rubidium. The weave tends to change from song to song. The one from the album we’re focused on today is “Starless“, presented through a gripping lyric video made by Motus Insaniam. Continue reading »

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