AN NCS INTERVIEW: SILENT TOMBS

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Sep 192025
 

(Today we happily present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Victor Mercado, vocalist of the Mexican doom/death metal band Silent Tombs, whose excellent debut album will be released by Personal Records on October 17th.)

Islander already wrote about the forthcoming release of Silent Tombs’ album Mourning Hymns from Beyond, and it’s hard to add something new to his words. This bunch of experienced extreme metal musicians from Colima, Mexico managed to create a stunning melodic death-doom masterpiece combining all the key influences of the genre yet obtaining a clear individual touch.

These mid-tempo songs built of riffs heavy as a coffin lid, soaring breathtaking melodies, and a firm, vivid rhythm-section accompanied by killer growling parts make a modern classic. I’m still surprised with the top level of this release and its mature, natural vibe, and I bet that this interview with Victor Mercado will give you an answer to some questions you may have after listening to the first singles from Silent Tombs. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: COLOSALIST

 Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 122025
 

(On September 9th Hoggorm Music released the debut album of Colosalist, a Czech band of veteran members split between Norway and Czechia. Comrade Aleks fell for the album and arranged the following excellent interview with Colosalist‘s well-spoken founder Petter (formerly Petr) Staněk.)

In the mid-’90s Petr Staněk was a guitarist and vocalist in two Czech bands – the death metal crew Scapegoat and the doom band Silent Stream of Godless Elegy, but the first one only managed to record a few demos, and creative differences forced him to leave the second one somewhere around 2001. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Petr moved to Norway, managed to play gothic with LiveEvil and industrial with Robotized, and then remembered the past and started Colosalist.

He recorded his first Colosalist EP Pass into Oblivion with the bass guitarist of the Czech band Endless, Petr Hutin, back in 2014, but it was only seven years later that he assembled a full line-up and recorded his first large-scale work Two Suns. Petter Staněk is now joined by two more former members of SSOGE: Zuzana Zamazalova Klementova (vocals, violin) and Filip Chudý (bass), as well as Jan Jaglarz (drums), who played in the gothic doom band Euthanasia since 1994, and Tomáš Paulus (guitar) from Second Chance.

Well, this is some kind of miracle, but as a result, Two Suns sounds like a decent doom album from the second half of the ’90s with significant gothic metal influences and the characteristic sound of SSOGE of that period! “Creeping Frost” with its rhythm, rough vocals, and violins laid on driving metal reminds one of the album Themes. It’s even interesting that Petter’s voice hasn’t changed much in a quarter of a century! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: RAUHNÅCHT

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Sep 102025
 

(Not long ago the Antiq label released a new album from Rauhnåcht named Zwischenwelten. It is a very impressive and moving assembly of music, and so are the eloquent answers given by the band’s mastermind Stefan Traunmüller in response to the questions of our Comrade Aleks in the interview we present below.)

Stefan Traunmüller is a veteran of the Austrian underground. His first project was the melodic black gothic band Golden Dawn, founded in 1992, and it’s still somehow alive. But Stefan also took part in about a dozen projects, the most fruitful of which is Rauhnåcht. Zwischenwelten (“In-between Worlds”) is the fifth album in the fifteen-year history of the project, not counting five smaller releases.

The new forty-minute full-length consists of six compositions, performed in the spirit of nostalgic, charged, and aggressive (by measure of anger-management courses) yet atmospheric black metal. Conceptually, as one can already assume from the cover of Zwischenwelten, Stefan adheres to pagan positions with an emphasis on the spirit of old Bavarian legends.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t call this work totally “pagan” or “folk”, and the author himself entitles his creation precisely – “Alpine black metal”. Hence the prickly cold of high-speed black metal and the sublimity of contemplative ambient, providing short-term respites along with infrequent acoustic interludes – it’s a breathtaking journey through the blizzard and piercing cold of the mountainside in the company of old spirits of that land. The vocal parts are represented not only by screaming, but also by clean, harmonious singing, which is characteristic of pagan metal in general.

All the elements of Zwischenwelten are composed in such a way that you easily agree that Stefan‘s black is precisely Alpine, and Stefan is the best choice if we want an excursion in the world of Rauhnåcht. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEFACEMENT

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Sep 052025
 

(One year after their acclaimed Duality album, last month the international quartet Defacement released their fourth studio record, Doomed, through the Unorthodox Emanations division of Avantgarde Music. What we have for you today is Zoltar‘s interview of Defacement protagonist Khalil Azagoth.)

The jury may still be out on if they truly belong to the post-black metal genre or not (read Andy Synn‘s extended review to find out – or not) but the international act that is Defacement aren’t your so-called ‘typical’ dissonant death metal band, whatever this elusive tag may refer to.

Yet as undecipherable as they may come across at first, despite their overall concision, each of their four so far released albums, including Doomed unleashed by Avantgarde Music last month, has this rare ability to suck the listeners into the vacuum where one can experience subsequently dizziness, fear, and inner peace, sometimes simultaneously.

Mainman and guitarist Khalil Azagoth agreed to give us some keys to their abstruse but fascinating inner world. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PROFESSOR EMERITUS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 042025
 


photo by Liz Gollner

(In June of this year Chicago-based Professor Emeritus released a long-awaited second album, and our Comrade Aleks was so taken with its melding of epic doom metal and traditional heavy metal that he reached out to the band’s founder, guitarist, and keyboardist Lee Smith for an interview that we now present below. As you might have already guessed, the music is an earned exception to the “rule” in our site’s title.)

Born in Chicago, 2010, Professor Emeritus didn’t hurry: their debut album Take Me to the Gallows (2017) gave the world a formula for not the newest, but a refractory alloy of epic doom metal and traditional heavy metal. The resulting blend was further alloyed with a fantasy concept, and in the end this material, enlivened by a passionate presentation, was good despite all the rough edges.

It took eight more years to make the second album, and the reason is simple: only guitarist Lee Smith remained from the first lineup. I don’t know what happened there, but the former bassist and the vocalist of Professor Emeritus started their own doom band, Fer de Lance, so in the end everyone wins, yet it obviously took time to find replacements.

Having retained a significant influence of Candlemass in their doom, Professor Emeritus strikes with the power of bands like Argus and Memento Mori, and even the rudeness of archaic Manowar. The mood of the new vocalist Esteban Julian Peña’s lines in A Land Long Gone changes from ominous battle cries to melancholic philosophizing. Esteban became a real find for Lee, and I suppose here he has more opportunity to open up than in his original band Acerus. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ORDO KARNIVORUM

 Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 022025
 

(Here is Comrade Aleks‘ interview of guitarist/vocalist Sergey from the Russian black metal band Ordo Karnivorum, who released their second album last spring.)

Ordo Karnivorum was founded in Ivanovo, Russia two or three years ago. It is now a trio: Sergey (guitars, vocals), Alexander (guitars), and Eugenia (bass). Their unholy debut as a duo, Noir (2023), drew some attention to the band, but due to the low live activity it was easy to get lost among other black metal bands. However, their new crushing full-length work The Restless should change the rules of the game.

Live, unpolished sound, high-quality stuff, and a fanatical approach to deathly black metal with harsh vocals and macabre philosophy make me feel some sympathy to the wicked Ordo Karnivorum. Let’s take a look at the band’s inner machinery, maybe we’ll find something interesting there! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: IRGA

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Aug 252025
 

(In this new interview, a very interesting one, Comrade Aleks conversed with Piotr Podkolzin, the person behind the Moscow-based progressive/melodic black metal band Irga, whose newest album Black Pine Needles was released this past June in cooperation with Svanrenne Music.)

Irga from Moscow was started as an instrumental black metal project with a concept based on the story of a fictional haunted village where wrong things happen on a daily basis. Piotr Podkolzin was the sole member of Irga, but the release of the first album Welcome to Magovei inspired him to continue with guest musicians.

Logically, the project’s sophomore album – recorded now with live drums and vocals – turned out to be a product of another level. Black Pine Needles is an excellent example of modern (in a good sense of the word) and quite progressive black metal with an individual approach. Here we go deep into the dense grimness of Irga’s chthonic spirit alongside Piotr himself. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CHURCH OF THE SEA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  2 Responses »
Aug 182025
 

(Comrade Aleks brings us the interview a member of the Greek clean-singing band Church of the Sea, whose second album Eva was released this past April by These Hands Melt.)

The second album of the Athenian band Church of the Sea, Eva, follows the same direction as their debut, Odalisque (2022). The trio consists of Irene (vocals), Vangelis (guitars), and Alex (synths and samples), and together they continue their dive into the hypnotic depths of doom metal with a hypnotic female voice and atmospheric samples.

In Eva, this doom-gaze serves as a frame for the story of the biblical Eve, reconsidering her role in the original canon, where she is shown as the first sinner, guilty of corrupting man. Eve is a rebel through Church of the Sea‘s perspective: a seeker of knowledge, accepting what religion or society considered “forbidden”; this is not a story about the fall of man, but about the rise of woman. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PSILOCYBE LARVAE

 Album Reviews, Interviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 132025
 

(The long-running Russian band Psilocybe Larvae will release a surprising new EP on August 15th, and on the eve of that release we now present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with founding member Vitaly Belobritsky.)

Psilocybe Larvae, once one of the key teams of the Russian underground extreme scene, are confidently approaching their thirtieth anniversary. But there is still a year left before that date, so I did not expect any news from the band, and therefore I was surprised with the news about their new EP Novyi Divnyi Mir (Новый Дивный Мир/“Brave New World”).

Throughout their entire discography Psilocybe Larvae have tried different things, and in order to make life easier for themselves and the public, they defined their style as “manic-depressive metal”. This concept included a combination of melodic doom, death, and black-metal, with straightforward extreme vocals. Therefore, the material of this EP shocked me at first. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NORILSK

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Aug 042025
 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Nicolas Miquelon from the Canadian band Norilsk, whose new album Antipole is out now on Hypnotic Dirge Records, accompanied by photos credited to Nick Richer.)

Canadian Norilsk was deliberately named by the band’s ideologist Nicolas Miquelon in honor of the most densely populated city beyond the Arctic Circle. Nicolas, who is familiar with Russian culture firsthand, wanted the name to reflect the harshness of the North. Norilsk initially embodied this idea in death-doom, but over time they enriched the musical landscape with elements of sludge and post-metal.

Let’s take the title track of their new album Antipole: it seems to obtain the spirit of ’90s death-doom, but Norilsk go beyond it, avoiding to step too far into well-known post-metal territory at the same time. “Antipole” is atmospheric doom metal, but there is something strange, atypical, and at the same time naturally revealing the essence of the genre. In “D’ombre et de glace (l’asphyxie)” Norilsk progress further: there is a lot of growling, a lot of thematic transitions.

But “Locus Sanctus” shows that this is not the limit: the rolling riffs are preceded by a dark acoustic intro with clean declamation, and Nicolas continues the story further, replacing the whisper with a growl. Solemn, upset riff cycles alternate with solo guitar interludes and acoustic themes, until a melody of a cosmic scale bursts into the narrative. The aggressive contrast of “Nunataks” seems unusual for Norilsk, but the name comes to the rescue here. “Nunatak” is a rocky peak surrounded by ice in the language of the Inuit, and the stubborn, rebellious melody justifies the name. It helps to get through the death-doom hummocks and the pumping mid-tempo post-doom hit “La fonte”; Norilsk know how to surprise.

Everything ends, however, with the dirge “Un chant pour les morts”, nothing can be done about it – “a song for the dead”. Not everything is clear about the album, and as a good tradition – I offer you this interview with Nicolas Miquelon, another good chat about good music. Continue reading »

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