Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KVSKET — “HOT GRIP”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 302025
 

(written by Islander)

Maybe it’s because the second season of Last of Us is on my mind, but today I’m thinking of our site like a fungal node, a dense mass of nasty and nightmarish extreme metal from which creeping tendrils reach out into more remote underground territories. This imagery is on my mind because we’re about to premiere a video for a band and a song that are outside the core of our usual churning and blood-congealing musical infections, though they do have tendril-like connections to the infections we usually spotlight.

The band is kvsket (pronounced “casket”). They’re from Minnesota, they include a member of the death metal band Graveslave (that’s one tendril), and they describe themselves as “four friends who, all looking for something more outside of their former bands and projects,” concocted music they describe as sounding like, or for fans of, Deftones, Gojira, My Chemical Romance, Turnstile, and The Cure.

Those results are currently collected in an album named Patiently Awaiting Your Arrival that was released this past February. The video you’re about to see is for a song off that album named “Hot Grip“. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2025: THE FULL REPORT

 Concert Reviews  15 Responses »
May 302025
 

(We are most grateful to Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo for this amazingly comprehensive and vivid report on the 2025 edition of Northwest Terror Fest. Except where noted, the photos are credited to PNW photographer extraordinaire J. Donovan Malley and NWTF staff.)

This won’t be true for everyone, but for me, there are perhaps no other words in the English language that have sparked more friendships than “hey man, nice shirt.”

I remembered this as I was standing on the corner of 10th Ave & Pike St. at just before 4 p.m. on a clear Thursday afternoon in Seattle. The 2025 Northwest Terror Fest was less than an hour from officially kicking off. I was in front of Neumos and Barboza clad in my long-sleeved Blood Incantation shirt amid a small crowd of similarly clad festival diehards. As usual, I was looking for Islander – both to say hi and to grab my festival pass for the weekend – and before I could even find the man himself, I got sucked into my first conversation with a stranger about our mutual love for Blood Incantation.

This interaction set the stage perfectly for the next three days of music, friends, community, and probably more beer than one man’s liver should ever be tasked with handling. It was once again time for me to dive headfirst into Northwest Terror Fest. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DIG ME NO GRAVE — “DREADFUL MEMOIRS”

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May 302025
 

(written by Islander)

We have avidly followed and written about the occult musical proceedings of the Russian death metal band Dig Me No Grave ever since discovering their Immemorial Curse album in 2017, which then led us back to their preceding full-length debut, 2014’s Cosmic Cult. They followed Immemorial Curse with a pair of EPs and their third album, Under the Pyramids, and now a new album entitled Necrocosmic Ceremony is set for co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Metal Race Records (Russia) on June 15th.

Like many of their previous abominable works, Necrocosmic Ceremony draws inspiration from the abominable works of H.P. Lovecraft. The album’s central figure is “the Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, a worshipper of Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu and the reputed author of The Necronomicon. As Lovecraft explained in his posthumously published History of the Necronomicon, that evil grimoire was originally called Al Azif, an Arabic word that Lovecraft defined as “that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons.”

We mention this because today we’re premiering a riveting video for a mad, heart-pounding song off Necrocosmic Ceremony that puts these inspirations front and center: “Dreadful Memoirs“. Continue reading »

LUCIFER’S CHILD: “THE ILLUMINANT”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
May 302025
 

(Here is DGR‘s evocative review of a new album released through Agonia Records in late March by the Greek black metal band Lucifer’s Child.)

The myths of black metal cast their subjects in many forms – conjurers, infernal priests, sorcerers, wizards, a whole barrel full of nihilistic entities. The evolution of the black metal show into ritualistic form has been an interesting – if obvious – evolution for a genre in which theatricality can be an important aspect. Over the years we’ve even archived many regional splits in the overall style, which has also made for fascinating subject matter to delve into on its own.

Exploring the anthopological and cultural aspects of the music is sometimes more interesting than the abyssal ablutions being dispensed for those who are seeking it. The genre has become almost synonymous with the cold and dense forests of a Scandinavian north, its ritualistic aspects becoming syncretic with Luciferian worship, magickal exploration, and melodramatic movement, to an effect that obviously speaks to so many people around the world – sometimes in reaction to an overbearing religious aspect of their daily cultural lives.

Where the regional splits have arisen is the equally interesting subject matter to speak of, because one of the more well-known yet still underrated ones is the black metal scene born out of Greece and its hellenic purveyors. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AZAMOTH — “ANCIENT SIGNS OF WAR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 292025
 

(written by Islander)

The Israeli black metal band Azamoth first formed in 2004 and released their debut album Eternity in 2006. In just a few days — roughly 18 1/2 years later — they will release their second album, Bellum Nostrum (“Our War”), via the Symbol Of Domination label.

Obviously, that’s a very long recording hiatus, and the lineup that created Bellum Nostrum isn’t identical to the one that made Eternity (though founding vocalist Scorch and founding guitarist Lord Grief remain in place). So the impulse is to take the new album as a re-launch of the band, as a new statement of intent, as a flaring of ideas and experiences that have accumulated over that long stretch of years.

Today we have a sign of what Bellum Nostrum holds for listeners as we premiere the album track “Ancient Signs of War“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVE WITH A VIEW — “THE LASH”

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May 292025
 

In the long hours of night when the daylight will not come, when the ghosts of the past and the devils of the present toy with your sanity and dissect your sense of self and self respect… when the first razor cut, made with trembling hand, sends a shocking stream of crimson crawling sluggishly across the sickly pale white of your sun-starved skin… when there is no comfort to be found and you are lost in a shadowed labyrinth of torment and grief, sinking in a morass of blood and tears… on a night like this there is no salvation in the bottle or the needle. There is no god in heaven and no fallen angel in hell. There is only the emptiness that cannot be filled and the unbearable loneliness that gnaws at your soul. And the unshakeable certainty that there is no way out.

As album preambles go, that one is a particularly soul-shuddering thing to read. It is also an entirely fitting encapsulation of Raw Illumination, an album released last fall by Finland’s Grave With A View — not only the album’s bleak emotional inspiration but also the wretchedness, ruin, and rage of the musical experience itself.

The Dusktone label, which released the album, offered their own preview: Continue reading »

NEKRODEUS: “RUAß”

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May 292025
 

(Here we present Didrik Mešiček‘s review of a new album by the Austrian band Nekrodeus, recently released by FDA Records.)

“Gott ist tot,” said Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest people in German history. And now over a hundred years later we have Austrians bringing us the same idea through a more modern medium. A contemporary form of philosophy, if you will. Nekrodeus is another one of those black metal (ish) bands from the Graz scene and they’ve released their third album, Ruaß, on May 16th, 2025, through F.D.A. Records.

Despite Nekrodeus being labeled as simply death metal on Metal Archives, this is a band that keeps changing their sound and have definitely leaned a bit into black metal at some points. Having seen them last summer, I remember them as being a bit blackened and also a bit punkish and that’s the side that hits us from the start with this release. There’s a very aggressive note coming from the vocals combined with a rather dissonant sound that acts almost like an alarm and furious drumming. “Abgrudmensch” is certainly a song that gets your attention and wakes you up. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PUTERAEON — “MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
May 282025
 

(written by Islander)

We should begin this album-premiere feature with what the great Dan Swanö has said about Puteraeon‘s forthcoming fifth album, Mountains of Madness:

“I have had the pleasure to work with Puteraeon since 2017 and their releases have always been solid, but the quality of this new album completely took me by surprise. It is just so damn good it’s hard to fathom! It’s like they thought about every little detail on how to make the album brutal as hell, yet memorable and extremely epic. I dare to say this one will go down in the history books as one of the best Swe-Death releases ever.”

If that doesn’t make you sit up straight and pay attention, probably nothing will — though the name of the album and Ola Larsson‘s cover art should also seize your attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JONAS LINDBLOOD (PUTERAEON)

 Interviews  No Responses »
May 282025
 

(Our French contributor Zoltar conducted the following excellent interview with Puteraeon founder and vocalist/guitarist Jonas Lindblood in advance of Emanzipation Production‘s release of this Swedish band’s newest album on May 30th — an album we will premiere-stream one hour from now.)

“Dead but dreaming.” Howard Philipps Lovecraft probably never thought while writing for the first time about what would become his most famous creation in the aptly titled The Call Of Cthulhu nearly a century ago back in 1926 that, somehow, this conception would also ring true about his never-ending influence on extreme metal.

A lot has been said about how pioneers like Black Sabbath (‘Beyond The Wall Of Sleep’) or Metallica (‘The Call Of Ktulu’) early on associated the name of the master of Providence to distorted riffing on selected tracks, but lately more than a few bands like French weirdos The Great Old Ones or German epic travelers Sulphur Aeon have gone the extra mile by entirely dedicating their lore to his writings and monstrous cosmology.

The cool thing about Puteraeon is that they never jumped on the bandwagon to start with yet made it clear from their third demo what the deal was, going as far as doing a whole set of songs (The Extraordinary Work Of Herbert West) solely dedicated to one of Lovecraft’s most-beloved novels – and the source of inspiration for what remains his best movie-adaptation, Stuart Gordon-directed 1985 cult horror flick Re-Animator. Continue reading »

MARTWA AURA: “LAMENT”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 282025
 

(Barely one week ago the Malignant Voices label released a new album from the Polish black metal band Martwa Aura, and our Norway-based writer Chile was tremendously impressed by it, as you’ll see from his review below.)

Once in a while, instead of devising some cute, little introductory story about how my childhood formed my adulthood listening habits, or how my lifestyle determines my deathstyle, or something, we could just go straight to the point, the good old in medias res. So this time, we dive head first into the deep, black end of the pool.

Not surprisingly, some metal bands just don’t care about matters of publicity or marketing and they’re just in it for the sake of their art, or so they say. Those in the black metal genre seem especially culpable of this by doing the bare minimum, dropping albums without any kind of big announcements or follow-ups, seemingly having no interest whatsoever to deviate from that path.

Anyway, Martwa Aura. Just by saying that they are a Polish black metal outfit should pique the interest of anybody even tangentially interested in the genre itself, as Poland has been a hot spot of black metal for a number of decades already and has produced some of the most magnificent music in existence during that period, as mentioned recently in the Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi interview published on this very site.

You guessed it right by now, Martwa Aura dropped to minimal fanfare a new album called Lament on May 19th through the Polish label Malignant Voices, five years after their previous one Morbus Animus. This being their third full-length should make them an established name on the Polish scene, but the feeling is they’re still being a well-kept secret just waiting to explode like an atom bomb onto an unsuspecting population.

Continue reading »

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