Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOX NOSTRA — “VITA DANTIS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 292025
 

(written by Islander)

Vox Nostra (Latin for “Our Voice”) is a Texas band that began to take shape in 2022, founded by vocalist Nathan Buckhoff and former bassist Jay, and then fleshed out with drummer Steven Pedini, guitarist Juan Diaz, and later guitarist Andrew Dahdouh in 2024.

They released two singles in 2023 (“Façade” and “Synthetic Womb“), and today we’re premiering a lyric video created by Scott Rudd (SR Films) for a third one, “Vita Dantis“, which we predict will appeal strongly to fans of emotionally evocative technical death metal. The band have given us this description of the song’s subject matter:

“Vita Dantis, in Latin ‘The Life of the Giver’, reflects a world where the working class is subjugated to weaponized AI by the ruling class. It’s the moment right before awareness turns into unrest.” Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ONYX RECORD PRESS

 Interviews  1 Response »
Oct 292025
 

(We’re living in an era of resurgent demand for vinyl records, but one now marked by pressing-plant delays and challenging costs. Friend of the site Jon Rosenthal provides a vivid glimpse inside the business and technology of pressing vinyl through the following interview of two people involved in starting up and operating the LA-based vinyl plant ONYX.)

Opening a record pressing plant takes loads of effort. The record pressing process itself is an intense mix of humanpower, expertise, and correct, necessary machinery – now, make a facility dedicated to that craft, staff it, and get all that machinery. Losing your patience yet? Luckily, the newer LA-based pressing plant ONYX has taken on this process as part of an emerging wave of new US pressing plants. In a new interview, two of ONYX’s proprietors – musicians Moe Espinosa and Surachai – answer questions about the record pressing process, as well as what drove them to open a plant of their own. You can learn more about ONYX at their website. Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “DRACONIAN DARKNESS II”

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Oct 292025
 

(DGR continues his very long history of writing about the music of Finland’s Wolfheart at NCS with this review of their new EP Draconian Darkness II, out now via Reigning Phoenix Music.)

Wolfheart have developed many patterns for themselves over their career and we have dove headlong into them many a time with each successive album. One of the more common ones for the Wolfheart crew in recent years, since their Napalm Records and then current Reigning Phoenix signings, is to hammer together an EP or single in between albums and unleash it closer to the end of summer.

The name Wolfheart remains in constant discussion then, with releases like Skull Soldiers carving the path for the EP segment of the crowd and songs like “Iku-Turso” laying the groundwork for the occasional loose-laying single. It’s meant as a sort of comfort food for those of us who’ve taken to the band’s formulation of melodic death metal, forged in fire yet epic enough to soundtrack mountain climbing in a blizzard, something present that is consistent in quality with the album prior but still has a shiny newness to it to tide people over.

Wolfheart‘s latest gathering of material of this ilk arrived in late-September, entitled Draconian Darkness II, offering up a continuation of the group’s 2024 release Draconian Darkness and containing an oddball mixture of material to satiate the completionist in us all: Two new songs, one live track, an acoustic take on a Draconian Darkness song, and the orchestral segment of a different one of the same album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRYOXYD — “AMBIVALENT FEELINGS”

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Oct 282025
 

(written by Islander)

Imagery of sharp edges is a recurring feature in descriptions of the music and other aesthetics of the French death metal band CRYOXYD that have been circulated by Dolorem Records, which will release their debut album on December 12th.

The notes are described as “shards of bone” and the riffs as “blade-like”; their lyrics and visuals are described as “a shattered mirror held up to the abyss”; their stance is characterized as “neither provocative nor comforting, but surgical”; “Art as a Scalpel” sums it up.

The band’s intent is to create a conceptual artistic structure and identity devoted to the “autopsy of human collapse”, to confront “systemic dehumanization, collective madness, cognitive technodictatorship, and the moral failure of civilization” — “a sonic and visual manifesto against the illusion of progress, an X-ray of modern alienation’s mechanisms.”

How they seek to achieve these goals on their debut album This World We Live In… is through a formulation of music rooted in the technical death metal of the 1990s, drawing inspiration from the likes of Death (during the Human and Spiritual Healing eras), Pestilence, Brutality, and Morbid Angel, but as you’ll discover from the multi-dimensional album track we’re premiering today, they’ve put their own spin on those revered precedents. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD AND DRIPPING — “NEFARIOUSLY SCINTILLATING THROUGH VACANT GALACTIC RESERVOIRS”

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Oct 282025
 

(written by Islander)

New Jersey-based Dead and Dripping has created macabre musical intersections of sensations that are ghastly, putrid, bludgeoning, and malicious, but also machine-precise, head-spinning, and dazzling (in a very demented way).

Anyone who has dabbled in Dead and Dripping’s three previous albums already knows this, but you will know it in spades when you have the chance to hear the new one, or even just the songs from it that have been disgorged so far, or even just the one we’re premiering today.

But before we get to the music, we ought to remind folks about Dead and Dripping’s wordplay, as revealed in the band’s perpetually twisted and luxuriously multisyllabic song titles. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL DIATRIBE — “RAKTAKSHI SADHANA”

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Oct 272025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s easy to imagine that the Kolkata black metal band Infernal Diatribe subsist on a diet of rage and the tears of their enemies, washed down with the blood of a dissolving world. They manifest terrors and tribulations, infiltrated by tendrils of the exotic and overlaid by clouds of the occult.

Their forthcoming debut album, to be released by a trio of labels on November 29th, is inspired by and deeply rooted in an ancient Hindu concept known as Mahabhuta Pralaya (which is also the album’s name), a process of complete cosmic destruction that paves the way for a new cycle of creation and the rebirth of the universe. Their description of the concept is lengthy, but worth absorbing before listening to the music: Continue reading »

UMULAMAHRI AND SUFFERING HOUR: A TALE OF TWO EXTREMELY EXTREME EPs

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 272025
 

(Gonzo is busily thinking about what to cover in his next monthly review roundup for NCS, but in the meantime he’s pulled together some thoughts about a pair of EPs released in the early days of October by two U.S. bands.)

When you spend a significant amount of time bulldozing your way through new music discoveries, a lot can happen. For one, it eventually becomes a hell of a lot harder to be impressed at anything. Your brain starts to tune out anything formulaic or unimaginative. Quality will always triumph over quantity, you start to tell yourself, and surely you’ll find yourself immersed in the throes of a dopamine hit that can only be generated by the nastiest, vilest, and more extreme foray into sonic depravity the human mind can possibly conjure. Just keep searching.

Then, at long last, when your quest for heavy music fulfillment reaches a zenith, it leads you to the very edge of the abyss you were once so intent on finding… and you suddenly find yourself afraid to look down, fearing what lies below.

In the case of these two EPs, the abyss stares back. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BLUT AUS NORD, KRALLICE, THOKKIAN VORTEX, ETĚR, TEUFELNACHT, NATTRADIO

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 262025
 

(written by Islander)

This has been one of those rare weekends when, due to some other plans falling through, I had a ton of time to immerse myself in new metal and spew out a bunch of thoughts in print. Yesterday I compiled music from 8 bands, and today I’ve got 6 (I did have 8 but ran out of writing time). These bands, of course, exhibit their creativity through varying shades and phases of black metal — except the last one, a final curveball for you.

This collection includes three complete EPs as well as enticing excerpts from records not yet out. I hope you’ll give them all a chance. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HELLRIPPER, ABYSMAL DAWN, OMEGAVORTEX, OMNIVORTEX, SOULFLY, VALLETTA, ROTGUT, LOCUSTS AND HONEY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 252025
 

(written by Islander)

I spent more time than usual last night listening to heavy music and, unlike what often happens on Friday nights, I didn’t get destroyed (except by the music), so I felt pretty good upon awakening this Saturday. Which is why this roundup is as bulging as it is.

In my listening excursion I fell down a rabbit hole, not intending to, but that’s what falling down is about. Except this rabbit hole was like a steep and rapid descent (more jet-fueled than gravity usually powers), with a fuckload of fireworks and sharp edges on the way down, and who knew rabbits had such big teeth and vicious red eyes?

Or to put it more prosaically, there’s a ton of high-speed thrashing and vigorous battering ahead of you. At least until the end, when I indulged something very different, for people who don’t want to thrash their reproductive organs off today or otherwise get their craniums fractured and their grey matter whipped up in a centrifuge. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TESTAMENT, LYCHGATE, THE RUINS OF BEVERAST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 242025
 

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere on the calendar today and having completed it, I thought I ought to do something else before beginning to think about tomorrow’s usual roundup of new songs and videos. The something else I decided upon is this brief head-start on that roundup. Continue reading »

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