AN NCS INTERVIEW: BRETWALDAS OF HEATHEN DOOM

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Jul 032023
 

(Metal-Archives’ stitching together of “heavy metal, doom, black metal, and crust” is a pretty good signifier that the music of the British band Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom isn’t easy to pigeon-hole (and those multiple labels still don’t go far enough), but it’s a hell of a lot of heavy, sinister, head-bobbing fun. With their new album fairly fresh out, Comrade Aleks decided to reach out, and landed a very engaging discussion with band bassist/vocalist Wartooth.)

The duet of Dagfari Wartooth (bass, vocals) and Sceot Acwealde (aka Arcwielder) (drums, guitars, vocals) keep on playing their pagan hymns for 22 years now. Started in 2001, Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom performs an angry and vivid mix of doom, heavy and crusty pagan metal, and their fourth album Summoning the Gatekeepers was released on the 1st of May (Beltane, you know?).

You may still buy  the rest of the CDs small run, ordering it right from the band’s own label Old Man’s Mettle. And here, in this interview with Wartooth, you’ll learn why this album is worthy of your money. And I truly hope you’ll enjoy this authentic album as I did, for the will of the gods is a great power. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEATH OF GIANTS

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Jun 292023
 


Photo by Viviane Eriksen

(Over more than 10 years (yes, it’s been that long!) Comrade Aleks has brought us a great many excellent interviews, but the one that follows is among the very best. It’s a discussion with Morten Søbyskogen, the man behind Death of Giants, whose remarkable debut album was released this past May.)

There’s a tragedy behind the epic and gorgeous Death of Giants debut album Ventesorg. This project of multi-instrumentalist Morten Søbyskogen, who managed to perform one of most remarkable gothic death-doom albums of 2023, is a tribute to his wife Sandra, who passed away from brain cancer in 2018. Morten‘s grief took the form of six grandiose tracks filled with real pain and sincere regret. Ventesorg absorbed all of this sadness and frustration and transformed it into something new and touching.

The album was recorded with participant guest musicians, and moreover Morten performed a few gigs with the session lineup, so there are signs pointing toward Death of Giants becomes something bigger and more global. We talked with Morten, and this honest and long conversation is here before you now, along with a recently premiered video near the end of the band’s live cover performance of  “Horror” by W.A.S.P. at the Oslo release show for Ventersorg. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CRYPTIC BROOD

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Jun 282023
 

(In the following interview Comrade Aleks caught up with drummer/vocalist Steffen Brandes from the German metal band Cryptic Brood, and covered a lot of the ground that has passed by since their last discussion 3+ years ago, plus taking a look into the Brood‘s future.)

Steffen Brandes performs drums and vocals in the German death metal (with a bit of doom edge) band Cryptic Brood. We did an interview with him in January 2020, and that was fun. And three years later, during January 2023, I found that I somehow skipped Cryptic Brood’s newest release, the Caustic Fetid Vomit EP produced by Lycanthropic Chants in September 2022. That’s just a two-song-long recording, but there’s always something to talk about with the deep underground dwellers.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FORMLESS OEDON

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Jun 262023
 

(Not long ago we had the good fortune of premiering a tremendous song from a great debut album by Formless Oedon from the Philippines, coming out July 24th via their label Memento Mori, and now we have more good fortune — an interview by Comrade Aleks of all the band’s members.)

It’s a really curious case as all of our respondents today — Andrei Alemania (drums), Jonathan Miranda (guitars, bass), Rozel Nikko (vocals, guitars, bass), and Jayson Gonzales (guitars) — play in three different bands at the same time all together. They perform death metal in Nullification, they practice a sort of death/thrash metal in Desolator, and Formless Oedon became a vessel of their death metal ideas with slightly progressive and doomy edges.

Being formed in Laguna, Philippines, Formless Oedon seemed to have caught some luck and signed with the Spanish extreme metal label Memento Mori, which is preparing to release their Streams of Rot full-length album in late July. However, right now you can not only listen to their first tracks “Heavenly Abomination” and “Calcine Purification“, but also read this interview with Formless Oedon members. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MEGALITH LEVITATION

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Jun 232023
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of SAA, vocalist/guitarist of the Russian band Megalith Levitation, whose newest album has now been out in the world for less than three months.)

Megalith Levitation stands firmly on Chelyabinsk’s soil, remaining one of the few most active Russian doom/stoner bands. The three musicians keep hiding their identities and are known as SAA (vocals, guitars), PAN (drums), and KKV (bass, contrabass). Their third album Obscure Fire was released by Aesthetic Death on the 31st of March, and you see the master plan behind it when you witness the album’s sick psychedelic artwork and its inner layers. They truly know what they want to so, so Obscure Fire will burn you with the vibes inspired from beyond this world.

Let the grim psychedelic pilgrimage start with the guidance of the band’s singing guitarist SAA. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NERVOCHAOS

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Jun 222023
 

(In March of this year Emanzipation Productions released a new album by the long-running Brazilian death metal band Nervochaos, and more recently our Norway-based interviewer Karina Noctum was able to catch up with the band’s drummer Eduardo Lane to discuss the album and many other topics in the interview we now present.)

Nervochaos released their latest album Chthonic Wrath back in late March and then embarked on a European tour with their fierce discharge of Death and Thrash metal.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE PIT

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Jun 142023
 

(Just two days ago we had the good fortune to premiere a song off the ferocious, dark, and demented new album by the Mexican death metal band The Pit, which will be released next month by Personal Records, and now we present a timely interview by Comrade Aleks of the band’s co-founder and guitarist Antonio Nolasco.)

Well, The Pit… There’s a deep meaning in this title, and as this band from Querétaro performs pretty violent death metal you can only imagine what goes on in The Pit‘s horrible depths.

The title of their debut, Disrupted Human Symmetry (2008) could give a hint about their ideology, but the fresh second album Of Madness and Evil Whispers seems to be something different.

A fifteen-year-long break between the albums may really promise radical changes in the band’s sound, but The Pit‘s core is the same since its foundation in 2004: Antonio Nolasco (guitars), Octavio Olachea (bass), and Guillermo Galvan (vocals), who play in a few more extreme metal bands, now also Angel Villegas (guitars) and Maw VillAlt (drums) who both joined the band in 2019.

Of Madness and Evil Whispers will be out on July 15th, and I’d like to introduce you to the band in case you missed track premieres, including the one from our own site. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THULCANDRA

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Jun 092023
 

 

(We present here an interview by our Norway-based contributor Karina Noctum of Steffen Kummerer, a member of Obscura and leader of the German band Thulcandra, whose newest album was released last month by Napalm Records.)

Thulcandra have released one of the best and most beautiful melodic black metal albums this year so far. Hail the Abyss is a display of excellent musicianship and top-notch composition that pays attention to the details. The sound is a tribute to Scandinavian melodic and symphonic black metal while at the same exploring other tempos and structures that make it even more interesting.

In this interview Steffen Kummerer not only talks about his new release, but also gives us some Obscura updates. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLARET ASH — “CASCADENCE OF THE TWILIGHT” (AND AN INTERVIEW)

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Jun 072023
 

In 2019 very few (if any) people foresaw all the global upheavals that the immediately following years would produce — a global pandemic, the damage caused by rapidly accelerating climate change, and a ravaging war in Europe, among other catastrophes. The Australian band Claret Ash didn’t foresee them either, at least not in all of those specifics, but what happened did depressingly dovetail with an imaginative narrative they had already begun, and informed where it would then unfold in a tale of societal collapse.

In December of last year, almost five years after the release of their last album The Great Adjudication: Fragment Two, the band began a new musical sequence called WORLDTORN. As explained by the band in an exclusive interview you’ll find at the end of this feature, it “picks up from where the last album, The Great Adjudication, finished by focusing on events after the collapse of society and the eradication of humanity”.

Clarest Ash launched WORLDTORN in December with the single “GATEWAYS” (reviewed by us here). Thematically, it described a world in turmoil, reeling from an “anthropocentric holocaust” during which nature had mutated and become the supreme force and humans were forced into hiding.

And now Claret Ash will be following that initial chapter of their continuing narrative with a second installment, a new EP named WORLDTORN: Anemoia that’s set for release on CD and digital formats by Hypnotic Dirge Records on August 11, 2023. In addition to the afore-mentioned interview, it’s our pleasure today to premiere the EP’s electrifying opening song, “Cascadence of the Twilight“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: VOIDCEREMONY

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Jun 022023
 

(In the following new interview Comrade Aleks spoke with Garrett Johnson (a/k/a Wandering Mind), guitarist/vocalist of the international band VoidCeremony, whose newest album Threads of Unknowing was released in April of this year by 20 Buck Spin.)

Californian prog-death/black-metal outfit VoidCeremony was formed by Garrett Johnson and Jon Reider in the summer of 2013, and now after a few line-up changes the band consists of Wandering Mind (guitars, vocals), C. Koryn (drums), The Great Righteous Destroyer (bass), and Hyperborean Apparition (guitars, vocals).

There’s nothing impossible now, and thanks to Metal-Archives we can figure out that Wandering Mind is Garrett himself. C. Koryn is Charles Koryn who’s known for his drumming in bands like Ascended Dead, Ghoulgotha, Vrent, and more. The Great Righteous Destroyer is Damon Good himself, the founder of one of the oldest Australian funeral doom bands – Mournful Congregation (as well as Cauldron Black Ram and Stargazer) — and that fact makes VoidCeremony an international project, as well as the residence of Hyperborean Apparition, who’s Philippe Allaire-Tougas, “multi-instrumentalist, producer, recording engineer, and guitar teacher” from Canada. He performs with Chthe’ilist, First Fragment, and more.

As you see, here we have a bunch of prolific and talented musicians performing a different kind of extreme metal, and if you heard VoidCeremony’s debut Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel (2020), then you know where they can lead. The band’s sophomore album Threads of Unknowing was released on the 14th of April and it won’t disappoint fans of intelligent progressive extreme music.

These deconstructive tunes of primordial (crawling) chaos aren’t something you need to talk about but rather to experience, and yet we tried to discuss the  contrasting sonic canvases of Threads of Unknowing with Garrett. Continue reading »

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