Islander

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAVERNOUS MAW — “PRIMITIVE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 102025
 

(written by Islander)

The well-known descriptor “caveman death metal” connotes big dumb knuckle-dragging riffs, big dumb indecipherable grunts, and club-wielding drumwork that also seems primarily designed to break rocks. No pretense, no sophistication, no appeals to our higher faculties, just red meat for the reptile brain.

Sometimes, however, music that attracts that descriptor reminds of the long-running Geico commercials in which cavemen in modern settings become offended by the phrase “It’s so easy a caveman could do it,” because they are actually more sophisticated than their appearances suggest.

Which brings us to Cavernous Maw, a new Minnesota-based project created by guitarist/vocalist Niilo Smith (Sky Island) and drummer Ben Fagerness (Sky Island, Graveslave, Gloryhole Guillotine). Outwardly, they have no pretense — just look at the name of their debut EP (Primitive), the bloody cover art by Misanthropic-Art, their own proud brandishing of the “caveman death metal” label (though they do add “blackened” to that descriptor), and of course the band’s own name.

But their music turns out to be a whole lot more than a good soundtrack for breaking rocks and clubbing people senseless. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: REGICIDE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 102025
 

(This is Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with the very thoughtful and articulate Vitaly “Gravementor” Galkin, one of the two members of the band Regicide from Siberian Russia, whose debut album Eternal Siege was released last October.)

Formed as a quartet in June 2016 by guitarist/vocalist Vitaly “Gravementor” Galkin, bassist Pavel Mor, drummer Alexander Sunz, and guitarist Michael, Regicide was one of the very few (or maybe only) sludge’n’stoner bands in the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. Their live album Live at Doomsday Haze Vol. 4 passed almost unnoticed back in 2021, and somehow the quartet turned into a duo, but Vitaly together with Stanislav Zhdanovsky (drums, cymbals, percussion) managed to focus and record the full-length album Eternal Siege.

And in spite of all my stereotypes regarding the genre’s primitivism, we had a very constructive conversation with Vitaly. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VERHEERER, OSGRAEF, ANCINE, THE BLOOD MOUNTAIN BLACK METAL CHOIR, OFNUS, Обрій (OBRIJ)

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 092025
 

(written by Islander)

Another Sunday arrives, and with it another brain-wrecking task of making choices for this column, a task made even harder than I was expecting when I woke up to find that Rennie Resmini had climbed back into the starkweather Substack with a bunch of new recommendations I hadn’t already discovered (more on that later).

It’s obvious (maybe painfully obvious to some of you) that I am prone to great enthusiasm about music. I know I’m less critical than lots of other listeners, and even other writers at our putrid site. I still use my own kind of filter, but it seems more porous than those of others. Or maybe I see more clearly just how much fucking creativity and talent continue flowering in the metal underground, week after week!

(Somehow my enthusiasm for music is unabated even though the country where I live is rapidly going down the shitter.)

Here’s a severely cropped snapshot of what’s enthused me in recent days from the blacker realms. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: REVOCATION, RIVERS OF NIHIL, ILLUSIONS DEAD, SERPENTS OF PAKHANGBA, SEASON TO RISK, JUNON, BENEDICTION, ROTTING CHRIST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 082025
 


Revocation – photo by David Brodsky

(written by Islander)

Bookends: solid objects firmly in place, resistant to the pressure of adjacent warped spines, bulging contents, and the changes in atmosphere and time that cause such pressures. I have a pair of musical bookends on each end of today’s musical shelf. In between are a few exceedingly interesting small volumes that caught my eyes and ears this week. I hope you’ll give them all a chance so they can catch yours too.

REVOCATION (U.S.)

Surely, Revocation need no introduction, so I won’t provide one. Let’s see and hear what they’re up to now, the focus being on the video released for a new single named “Confines of Infinity“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: METAPHOBIC — “EXECRATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 072025
 

Anyone who’s been paying attention to extreme metal for more than a few months knows that Everlasting Spew Records is one of the most dependable curators of dreadful, demented, disturbing, and devastating music out there. To their burgeoning roster, they have now added the thoroughly demented and impressively ingenious death metal quintet Metaphobic from Atlanta, Georgia.

What now lies ahead of us is the band’s debut album, the perfectly named Deranged Excruciations, which Everlasting Spew has set for release on February 28th. What lies ahead of you even more closely is today’s premiere of a song from the album named “Execration” — also very well named. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORTUAIRE — “MONDE VIDE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 072025
 

(written by Islander)

When you hear the name Bordeaux the first thing that will probably pop into your mind is world-class wine, and perhaps physical beauty both natural and man-made if you’ve ever been there. If anything else jumps to mind, it’s probably not death metal — though that will change after you listen to Monde Vide, the debut album from Bordeaux-based Mortuaire.

This group is fairly new, with only a 2022 EP in their discography so far, but its lineup includes musicians from well-known bands, among them Year of No Light, Bombardement, The Great Old Ones, Monarch!, and Faucheuse. Their debut album is now set for release on March 7th by World Eater Records, and what we have for you today is the premiere of the album’s title song. Continue reading »

ROTPIT AND DRUID LORD JOIN FORCES IN ROT-FILLED SPLIT EP

 Album Reviews, Metal News, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 072025
 

(Here, our contributor Zoltar shines a light on the recently released split Doomed To Rot by two death metal devastators — Druid Lord from the U.S. and the German/Swedish group Rotpit.)

Split releases may appear like a thing of the past but, Satan be thanked, some cool bands and underground labels out there carry on that long tradition, let it be by pure opportunity or, in today’s case, simply to show each other some good old respect. And why the hell not? Especially when the two bands in question aren’t exactly playing what you would call, well, half-ass death metal.

Here in the US, you’re probably more familiar with DRUID LORD: Formed over fifteen years ago by former EQUINOX and ACHERON veterans Peter Slate (guitar) and Tony Blakk (bass & vocals), completed since 20016 by KILLING ADDICTION’s Chris Wicklein (guitar) and MASSACRE’s Elden Santos (drums), they’ve been growing in strength over the course of three albums and a whole bunch of splits, showcasing their heavy-as-fuck doom/death take on the classic Floridian style.

On the flipside, you’ll find the Swedish/German supergroup ROTPIT, spearheaded by Ralf Hauber from REVEL IN FLESH, assisted by his partner-in-crime in HEADS FOR THE DEAD Jonny Pettersson (the man of a thousand bands/projects like WOMBBATH, HUMAN HARVEST and so on) and, on drums since last year, Erik Barthold from LEFT HAND SOLUTION. Last November, the lads released Long Live The Rot, a downtuned delicacy of epic proportions that would make BLOODBATH barf and run for cover. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HARVEST OF ASH — “EMBRACING”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 062025
 

(written by Islander)

Not all bands make music with a sense of place, with a connection to the environment that surrounds them and their experiences in that particular setting. Instead, the music might sound like it could have been conceived and created anywhere. But Salt Lake City’s Harvest of Ash definitely do have that connection. Here’s an introduction from their Bandcamp page:

Salt Lake City’s geography is a study of contrasts. Towering mountains, expressing power and grandeur, meet with desert emptiness – a completely flat limitlessness where barely a shrub is able to grow. Enormous and overwhelming, three-piece doom band Harvest of Ash conjures both the magnificence of mountain ranges and the desolation of barren deserts.

The band’s music is also equally rooted in their own experiences within that environment, including various chaotic calamities that hindered the completion of their new album Castaway, which is now set for release on March 6th. Here’s how they describe the new songs’ lyrical journey: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DRUGS OF FAITH — “MICROCHIP”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 062025
 

(written by Islander)

Allow me to repeat what I wrote about “Gas Mask,” the first single off Drugs of Faith‘s new album Asymmetrical (not that you have a choice): “It skitters and slashes, bounces and brawls, vents the words in a red-eyed fury, and eventually takes off from its punk launching pad into an eruption of grindcore mayhem.”

In other words, after a nearly 6-year hiatus following their last EP and nearly 14 years beyond their last studio album, Drugs of Faith have gotten up off the mat and come out swinging — hard. They have the same lineup that produced that EP (Decay) — guitarist/vocalist Richard Johnson (Enemy Soil, Agoraphobic Nosebleed), bassist Ivan Khilko (Immanent Voiceless), and drummer Ethan Griffiths (Embra) — and their chemistry still produces a volatile concoction of sounds.

Here’s a preview of the album offered on behalf of the labels that will release it on February 21st (Selfmadegod Records and Malokul): Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PUTRED

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 062025
 

(On January 20th a quartet of international labels released Megalit al Putrefacției, the highly anticipated second album by the Romanian death metal band Putred, and to follow up on that we now present Zoltar‘s interview of the band’s main man Uriel Aguillon, who as you’ll see has quite a history.)

Even from a European point of view, Romania remains one vast uncharted territory in terms of extreme metal, despite the fact that Metal Archives lists no fewer than 500 bands, with only the late Negurā Bunget having left a deep and still brooding mark (although the band ceased to exist over eight years ago). Yet somehow for those who know where to look in the deepest pits of the underground for the latest death metal sensation, a few low-key acts like Vorus, Reveler or Demoted kept coming back lately. Turns out all those bands/projects share more or less the same members, with guitar player, sometimes vocalist, engineer, and producer Uriel Aguillon at the very center of it.

Interestingly enough, Aguillon was born and raised in the US and was living in the country until a decade ago. Yet what is now, according to him, his main focus Putred might be one of the very first death metal bands to use Romanian for their lyrics. Not that it should stop you on your track, as song-titles like “Aura Macabra” or “Parasit In Purgatoriu” easily let you know what kind of murky swamps you’re about to enter.

Speaking of which, most of the music featured on the band’s just-released second album Megalit Al Putrefacției, after a whole bunch of demos and splits, is as fetid, lumping instead of running, while its decayed flesh reeks the kind of foul odor only downtuned and primitive old-school death metal manages to summon.

The fifty-year-old musician agreed to shed a light on his background, Putred‘s newest offering, how he ended up in Romania, and why playing death metal with your wife is far more entertaining than attending a couple’s night out at your local bingo club. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries