AN NCS INTERVIEW: MALSTEN

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Apr 222024
 


photo by Hedda Winroth

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ very entertaining interview with members of the Swedish band Malsten, whose latest album-length tale of horror was released last month by Svart Records.)

Formed back in 2018, Malsten chose to follow the path of doom, and I’d tell you that they moved pretty fast, having released their first album The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill already in 2020. Four songs, totaling 42 minutes, told a story of bloodshed, evil, horror, and madness in a pretty traditional doom metal manner. The thing about this album was that it’s a concept album with a kind of open ending.

Malsten continued the tale of the Grinder at Silvåkra Mill with two singles, Entr’acte (2022) and Path of the Nix (2024), and as all good things move towards their end, so this story does. Their second album, The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill – Rites of Passage, saw the light of day on March 15this year  with the help of Svart Records, and here we are talking with the band about this and that.

Be ready to learn more about grim ways of [folk] horror doom from this quite in-depth and entertaining interview. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PANTHEIST

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Apr 192024
 

(In March of this year Pantheist released a new album-length EP, and Comrade Aleks found it tremendously good, and he reached out to conduct the following excellent interview with Pantheist‘s Kostas Panagiotu.)

For the past 24 years Pantheist has provided us with the one of most thoughtful and intelligent examples of doom metal in almost every form. They started with funeral doom in the days of O Solitude (2003), they turned to sophisticated death-doom on Amartia (2005), and further on the band moved towards things even more melodic and progressive.

Pantheist’s previous full-length album Closer to God saw the light of day in 2021, and this year the band returns with the 50-minute-long EP Kings Must Die. What’s good there? Believe me, that’s an album that’s worth listening to. And I believe this interview with the Pantheist’s founding member Kostas Panagiotu (vocals, keyboards) will only prove this statement. Continue reading »

LOST IN A LIMINALITY OF IM-PURE WRATH AND REFLECTION (READ: REFRACTION) — AN INTERVIEW WITH DØDSSANGER (PART 2)

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Apr 192024
 

(This is the second interview that our Hanoi-based contributor Vizzah Harri conducted with Downfall from the Vietnamese black metal band Dødssanger. Find the first interview here.)

Taken from Audio recorded in conversation on February 27th, 2024.

I first met Kyle Newman aka Downfall from Dødssanger when he was still a university student; he’s grown more in all aspects in the last 6 years than I’ve experienced growth over the last 2 decades. The conversation that follows was way more of a general discourse on the Hanoi scene, headphones, live shows and the writing process than an interview, whereas Part 1 was more formal, happened later and attempted to focus more on his stage persona Downfall and the project as such. Continue reading »

LOST IN A LIMINALITY OF IM-PURE WRATH AND REFLECTION (READ: REFRACTION) — AN INTERVIEW WITH DØDSSANGER (PART 1)

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Apr 172024
 


Downfall, Dødssanger

(In an effort to help shine a light on metal from Vietnam, our Hanoi-based correspondent Vizzah Harri has brought us the following very erudite and very entertaining interview of Downfall, the person behind the Hanoi-based black metal band Dødssanger.)

Dødssanger is Downfall, writer, multi-instru-mentalist and creator of the depressive black metal project that released their debut last year.

I met with Downfall at the end of February this year but the day job, time-fvckery and taking on too many projects at one time meant that the finishing touches were pushed back. Islander posted my ‘6-word novel’ review of their song Penance in this reader’s most infectious lists of 2023 which can be found here. If you didn’t get the time to read those posts, here is what I said about Penance:

“Hebephrenic grimoire,
hellatious hymnals of ill-grace.”

Those words still stand.

The interview that follows lighted upon musings about live performances, the Vietnamese music scene, as well as their recording process. Dødssanger just released their album in physical format and it can be found/ordered here: and there are only 21 copies left of an original 40. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HAUNTOLOGIST

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Apr 162024
 


photo credit: Kuba Leszko

(No Solace released Hauntologist‘s long-gestating debut album in early January of this year, and it has made a memorable impression on a lot of listeners, including Comrade Aleks, who follows up the album with this interview of The Fall.)

How many times was Hauntologist mentioned here? And yet it’s not enough. The debut album of this Polish experimental black metal duo entitled Hollow saw the light of day in January, and you can’t ignore it. Not only because it’s a project of two of Mgła’s members – The Fall (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Darkside (drums). This nihilistic and dissonant yet experimental black metal projects precisely our urban misery; it lacks a traditional blackened aesthetic but it’s functional, striking, and highly atmospheric.

Hauntologist is the best example of modern days black metal with an artistic approach and an in-depth, personal message. It was good to learn a bit more about Hollow from The Fall himself first-hand. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CEMETERY OF SCREAM

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Apr 122024
 

(Following some delays on our part, today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with guitarist Marcin Piwowarczyk from the Polish band Cemetery of Scream, who trace their birth to the ancient year of 1992 and still go strong.)

I’m a long-time Cemetery of Scream fan. I remember those innocent days when me and my buddy shouted out the lyrics of “Anxiety”, their best-known song from the first album Melancholy, at a local graveyard. I remember how I watched and appreciated the metamorphosis the band went through from death-doom to… to some experiments within the genre that could be classified as “gothic”. And though I knew that those times, those vibes, won’t return and the band have changed too much, I awaited their new material.

There was a huge break since the release of their last album Frozen Images. It saw the light of day in 2009, and I knew that new songs were already prepared in around 2016. So what happened? It took too much time, yet here they are.

Sleaszy Rider Records released Cemetery of Scream’s sixth album Oceans in November 2023, and here we are with the band’s original guitarist Marcin Piwowarczyk. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

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Apr 102024
 

(Last week we forced Andy Synn to listen to and review The Monolith Deathcult‘s new album, and this week we forced Comrade Aleks to interview TMDC‘s Robin Kok, and although we can’t affirm that Aleks got away unscathed, he did provide us the interview… below….)

The Dutch band The Monolith Deathcult began its underground career more than twenty years ago with quite brutal and moderately unbridled death metal, which over time was symphonized, electrified, industrialized, and decorated with various, often unexpected, samples. It sounds scary, but, for example, one of The Monolith’s past hits “Fist of Stalin” gained an exorbitant number of plays on streaming services, and on YouTube the views of this video amount to almost a hundred thousand, which is not bad.

As the years go by, The Monolith has changed within the framework of the formula discovered by its members, but the composition of the group has remained unchanged for many years: Michiel Dekker (guitar, vocals), Carsten Altena (keyboards, orchestrations, guitar, vocals) and Robin Kok (growls, bass). If we take into account the band’s tendencies towards electronic sound, then we can assume that their drums are programmed, but for several years now the invariably professional guest drummer Frank Schilperoort has been working in this position. He also worked with The Monolith Deathcult on the new album, released in April by Human Detonator Records, The Demon Who Makes Trophies of Men, which we spoke with Robin Kok personally about. Continue reading »

CICATRICES: GRIS CELEBRATE A DECADE OF SILENCE (Interview)

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Apr 082024
 


L-R Neptune, Icare

(We welcome to our pages Jon Rosenthal, who brings us a very special and extensive interview with the duo behind the Québec band Gris on the 10th anniversary of Gris‘ latest album À L’âme Enflammée, L’Äme Constellée….)

Gris‘ music has been with me for a long time. Seventeen years ago, I first heard their debut (under the Gris banner, having been previously named Niflheim) Il était une forêt…, and nothing had quite struck my sad teenage self like the work of these two Quebecois musicians. Morose, complex songwriting, mammoth ambience, and absolutely throat-rending vocals all find a home in this album. It’s glorious, even now, and unraveling the mystery behind these two low-profile artists, multi-instrumentalists Neptune and Icare, has been both delightful and inspiring.

Initially lumped in with “depressive/suicidal black metal” (heretofore referred to as DSBM), Gris‘ music dealt more with the balance of joy and despair, to the point where a logo of theirs even featured plus and minus symbols to really drive the point home, rather than wallowing in the latter. You’d never guess it, though, especially due to Icare‘s vocals, especially on Il était une forêt… (I later found out that, yes, he did, in fact, harmonize his screams in a melodic sense, too, but I digress). Unlike DSBM, though, Gris‘ music is compelling, featuring dense harmonies, practiced and thoughtful chord progressions, and a very deliberate songwriting approach that, while other DSBM bands revel in minimalism, maximizes on the space it occupies, revealing an inner depth to their music that many might not catch upon first listen. To think this was the work of two Canadian teenagers still baffles me, honestly. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: WHO DIES IN SIBERIAN SLUSH

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Apr 052024
 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of E.S. from the Russian band Who Dies In Siberian Slush, whose latest album was released on the last day of 2023 by Solitude Productions.)

Who Dies In Siberian Slush is probably the longest-running active death-doom band in Russia. It was formed in 2003, but the first album Bitterness of the Years That Are Lost was released only in 2010. They developed a kind of their own aesthetic as they also used lyrics with Russian cultural references, like a poem by Nicolay Gumilev in one song or a dedication to the painter of tragic fate Boris Kustodiev in another, but at the end of the day, it’s “death-doom with trombone and Russian lyrics”.

The most up-to-date album Uroki Smireniya / Lessons of Humility is the personal and grim monolog of the band’s founder and the only original member, E.S. Here’s his interview. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CORAX B.M.

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Mar 272024
 

(The debut album of the Greek black metal band Corax B.M., released this past January, drew the attention of Comrade Aleks, and that led to the following friendly discussion he had with the band’s two founders.)

Corax B.M. isn’t the most original band name in the metal world, but sometimes it’s better to keep things simple and straight. As the band’s story is, for example.

Corax (guitars, vocals), Énnea (vocals), Morker (drums), and Peisithanatos (bass) started the band in Athens, 2021. Some of them had an experience of performing heavy or extreme music before, some didn’t, that wasn’t an obstacle, and the EP Spread the Occult appeared in 2022. Those four tracks already pointed the direction the band had chosen to follow, and it was performed more accurately and sharper in the Pagana full-length (2024, The Circle Music).

Corax B. M. switched from occultism to heathenism very naturally, and the band’s approach to black metal with a well-known Hellenic touch helped them to create a remarkable piece of dark art. It’s mysterious, ominous, and evil to some degree, just as Hellenic black metal should be. We discussed Pagana and the band’s current plans with Corax and Morker. Continue reading »

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