Islander

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XVII: SORE FEET AND MORE METAL

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jul 032025
 

(Still recovering from recent festival experiences but still carrying on, Daniel Barkasi brings us reviews of six strongly recommended albums released in May 2025.)

Yeah, I know, this column is late – very late. My review(s) and photos (Day 1 and Day 2) of Fortress Festival took my full attention since returning, and coupled with a lot of day job and farm stuff, because we basically have a farm at this point, have gone hand-in-hand with catching up on May releases. I need to actually absorb an album and fully grasp the nitty gritty details to come to a fair conclusion, so this also wasn’t going to be rushed. I go full bore into everything, or else I’m not going to do it. Most who routinely immerse themselves into this sort of music aren’t the casual types, and I don’t think I’ve been casual about a whole lot in my existence.

Therefore, here we are, and my feet are screaming; thanks, plantar fasciitis and metal festivals. We’d do it all again, of course. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KEN SORCERON (ABIGAIL WILLIAMS)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Jul 022025
 

(On July 18th Agonia Records will release a new album by Abigail Williams, and today we have Wil Cifer‘s interview of the band’s mainman Ken Sorceron.)

Q: “A Void Within Existence” marks the 6th album for Abigail Williams. What lessons have you learned since the first album that helped shape this one?

A: The biggest lesson is to stop trying to please anyone but yourself. Early on, I was always half aware of how a record would be received, but now I don’t care. That kind of freedom opened the door to something more honest and more extreme. Over time, I’ve learned to fully trust my instinct. I don’t second-guess the darkness, the stillness, or the chaos. If something feels real, I follow it—even if it leads somewhere uncomfortable. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANCIENT TORMENT — “UNDER THE GUISE OF VIRTUE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 022025
 

(written by Islander)

Nearly a decade after their inception, the Rhode Island based black metal band Ancient Torment will at last release their debut album after a handful of shorter records that have emerged beginning in 2019. Entitled Follow the Echo of Curses, it will be discharged by the Eternal Death label on August 1st.

Although this is a first album, it’s not the work of novices: The band’s lineup includes members of such bands as Witch King, I, Destroyer, and Cruciamentum, and former members of Black Sorcery (among other bands). And it doesn’t sound like a novice work either.

The music is often vast and emotionally devastating in its dynamic renditions of fury, torment, and desolation, the kind of experiences that swallow up listeners and hold them captive to the band’s intentions. Not for naught does Eternal Death describe the album as “an immersive, introspective journey through the shadows of abysmal suffering and mysteries of death’s embrace.”

To help blaze the path toward the record’s release, today we’re premiering one of its six expansive songs, “Under the Guise of Virtue“. Continue reading »

CHESTCRUSH: “ΨΥΧΟΒΓΑΛΤΗΣ”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 022025
 

(DGR has conceived lots of ways of expressing just how crushing and destructive the new album from the multi-national group CHESTCRUSH really is, and they’re all laid out before you below.)

It is not uncommon for a metal band to ruminate on the concept of hate when the spectre of subject matter for an album arises. Hate is metal’s territory; it is logical for the musical drive of the extreme to tilt in such an extreme emotion’s direction. The force of hate as a concept is that it grabs hold of a human being like nothing else, refusing to let go. Whole personalities can be mutated by it, and if you’ve ever worried that our species hadn’t basically signed its own death warrant from the beginning, bear in mind just how well hate can grab hold of people.

The joyous moments of life are ephemeral and drift through memory; they are life as it should be, but the darker moments hover above us for eternities. Grudges can be held for lifetimes and generations. Hate can fester and turn into a cancerous ball that kills its host, snuffing out any potential for good being done in the world in favor of endless bleakness.

While many bands use hate and misanthropy as inspiration, few among the thousands that grace us with their presence each day have truly captured the oppressive weight that such an emotion can place upon a person. The utter disdain for anything in existence can often lead a group astray into carnival sideshow territory just as easily as it can serve as the spark for an auditory conflagration. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STYGIAN — “DREADLANDS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 012025
 

(written by Islander)

Dreadlands is the debut album of the Italian band Stygian, which will be released on July 4th by Time To Kill Records. In its thematic conception and its lyrical expression, it reflects serious thought, scorching insight, and honest rage. Here is part of Stygian‘s preview of what the album is about:

Dreadlands explores the contrast between two spiritual worlds: the harmony-centered pagan traditions and the legacy of Abrahamic religions, which often channel humanity’s most violent instincts. While pagan rites served to express and contain primal forces, maintaining balance between humankind and nature, monotheistic dogmas have frequently justified war and destruction in the name of faith. This work stands as a tribute to life, to the sacred bond between people and the natural world — a bond shattered by centuries of religious conflict.

At the end of this article we’ll share more comments from Stygian about the album, including their statements about the meaning of each of the record’s 10 songs. In between here and there we’re also sharing a full stream of Dreadlands, which musically is itself an intersection or fusion of two worlds, a hybrid of crust punk and black metal. The music proves to be as fierce, as wounded, and as defiantly resilient as the album’s thematic insights. Continue reading »

ANTIHÆLIX: A SONG PREMIERE AND AN INTERVIEW

 Interviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 012025
 

(Our friend Neill Jameson (Krieg) introduces our premiere of music from the debut album by the Philadelphia black metal band Antihælix, and also shares his fascinating interview with the band’s two members.)

Black metal in the United States has become, much like the global scene I suppose, infinitely shapeless, changing form, moving forwards and backwards. Genre blurring has become less of a unicorn and more of a regular horse you see by the road when you’ve driving through farm country. Those who consciously try to be unique are just as obtuse as the folks trying to live like the 1980s never ended.

I’m trying to say that there’s a lot of boring shit made by boring people, but in the nicest way possible. Continue reading »

ONIRIK: “CURLING SERPENTS UNDER STONE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 012025
 

(Today we present a review by our Norway-based contributor Chile of a new album by the Portuguese black metal band Onirik, out now on I, Voidhanger Records.)

Imagination is a wonderful thing. As far as mind goes, it’s faster than the speed of light, stronger than a gravitational pull of a black hole, and can jump over mountains and oceans with a single leap. Without it, the world would be a completely different place and our lives much poorer, or as the great American author Henry David Thoreau put it: “This world is but a canvas to our imagination”.

With that said, we can all agree (well, we would) that out of all the music genres in existence today, metal is the one relying the most on imagination and the endless possibilities it brings. Merging influences, crossing the boundaries of genres, or just applying new formulas to old experiments are just but a taste of the wonders that metal can unleash on to the world.

So, finally coming to the point, let our imagination take us to that faraway land known as Portugal and to one of its premier black metal bands, Onirik. Forging the dark matter with vision and dedication, the band (or more precisely, Gonius Rex, the mastermind behind it) has been a purveyor of ritualistic celebrations for over twenty years now, with no sign of stopping soon. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IMPERISHABLE — “OATH OF DISGUST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 302025
 

(written by Islander)

The covid pandemic cast a dark and deadly cloud across the world, but it did have some silver linings in the musical world. With shows canceled and in-person rehearsal and recording sessions suspended, restless creative types began thinking in different directions, and that led to some collaborations that otherwise probably wouldn’t have happened.

One of those silver linings was the formation of the U.S. death metal band Imperishable (to be distinguished from the Swedish band of the same name, who released an album of their own last April). The U.S. band started in 2020 as the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Brian Kingsland (from Nile and Enthean) and bassist Alex Rush (Olkoth, Enthean). They wrote material during covid, but then put that on the back burner as they got busy again with more normal life and activities with their main bands.

But they brought their ideas to the front burner again after completing their lineup with the addition of famed drummer Derek Roddy (of Hate Eternal, Malevolent Creation, and too many other bands to name), and now Imperishable‘s debut album Revelation In Purity is set for an August 29 release by none other than Everlasting Spew Records — and we’ve got a lyric video for the album’s astounding first single today. Its name is “Oath of Disgust“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEXROT — “CONSECRATING LUMINOUS CONFLAGRATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 302025
 

(written by Islander)

Haxes and hexes…

Transcending Obscurity Records has established a global reputation for good taste, and quite varied taste. Their roster of bands run a broad gamut of metal sub-genres, and their releases over many years now have been consistently excellent. At this very site, we’ve had a vivid demonstration of this over just the past week.

Five days ago we premiered an astonishing epic-length song by the Floridian progressive death metal band Haxprocess, and today we’re following that with a song from the Massachusetts duo Hexrot, a much shorter song by comparison but thoroughly head-spinning nonetheless. Its evocative name is “Consecrating Luminous Conflagration.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CAGED BASTARD, OBŠAR, SANGUISUGABOGG, IGORRR

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jun 292025
 

(written by Islander)

Between signing off on yesterday’s roundup and starting this one, various events conspired to prevent me from making this one as substantial as yesterday’s. One of them involved a surfeit of gin, another a forgetfulness about something I agreed to do today with my spouse; possibly the two are connected.

A rash of new musical discoveries over the last 24 hours was also a contributing factor. They complicated the making of choices at a time when time has become short.

Well, enough about all that, I’d better get started or this collection will turn out to be even briefer than brief. Be forewarned: Nothing in here today resembles conventional black metal, or even black metal at all in some cases. Continue reading »

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