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 »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ZEIT DER DUNKELHEIT

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 042025
 

(Comrade Aleks was intrigued by the unusual combination of features that have been presented in the music of the UK medieval black metal band Zeit der Dunkelheit, and so he reached out to its sole recording member Jim Kakes, and the following interview was the result.)

Zeit der Dunkelheit is a medieval black metal project from London, UK. Run by Jim Kakes alone, the project appeared suddenly in 2024: The EP Das Ende der Zeit was released first, then a series of digital singles followed, and as the culmination of this blitzkrieg the full-length debut Die letzten Tage was released.

Despite the album’s message (the Last days are upon us!) and its black metal core, the overall impression of the material is quite energetic due to its strong bias towards folk tunes. Although Die letzten Tage reflects the world plunging into darkness and ultimate death, the liberation of death is celebrated “in an optimistic tone”. And that’s kind of a controversial approach, so Jim himself may explain it better. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ATARAXIE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 312025
 


photo by Ben Redcatcity

(Last fall we had the privilege and pleasure of premiering and reviewing a full stream of Le Déclin, a new album by the veteran French band Ataraxie. Today it’s an equal pleasure to present an extremely interesting and topical interview by our Comrade Aleks with two founders and key members of the band.)

They’ve played extreme death-doom since 2000; they have three guitarists in the lineup; they are Ataraxie, and their fifth album Le Déclin was released in October 2024. The band demonstrate a high level of stability, as their new material consists of four tracks with a total duration around 80 minutes. It means that Ataraxie keep on holding to their old patterns and mix both slow and crushing funeral doom riffs with bloodthirsty death metal slaughter and merciless blast beasts. These elements help to make an emphasis on the band’s nihilistic manifest against the foulness of humanity corrupted to the core.

Honestly, it’s a familiar picture to Ataraxie’s fans, because its founders Jonathan Théry (bass, vocals), Pierre Sénécal (drums), and Frédéric Patte-Brasseur (guitars) are still here. And their companions Hugo Gaspar (guitars) and Julien Payan (guitars) aren’t rookies either; they’ve spread these bleak vibes of doom and damnation for the entire decade.

But these guys not only know how to perform such painful, agonizing music, but also how to represent it precisely in a verbal way. And in the end, this interview with Jonathan and Frédéric is something I’m proud of.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SACRIFICE

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jan 222025
 


photo by Kelly Clark Fotography

(On February 21st Cursed Blessings Records and High Roller Records will release Volume Six, a new album by the ’80s-era Canadian thrash metal band Sacrifice — their first one in 16 years and with their original lineup intact. Yesterday we published Wil Cifer’s review, and today we bring you Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Sacrifice vocalist/guitarist Rob Urbinati.)

It’s always cool to know that there are veterans of the metal scene who keeps its fire burning, who are able to give it hot and strong. Sacrifice is one such band.

They started in 1984 as one of the first Canadian thrash/speed bands and evolving at the same time as bands like Anvil, Exciter, and Razor did. Torment in Fire (1986), Forward to Termination (1987), Soldiers of Misfortune (1990), and Apocalypse Inside (1993) left their impact on the world’s scene, but Sacrifice disbanded in 1993 on the peak of their activity, as one may say.

The band returned in 2006 in its original lineup, and they keep on rocking until today. Scott Watts (bass), Joe Rico (guitars), Gus Pynn (drums), and Rob Urbinati (guitars, vocals) haven’t forgotten how to do aggressive, technical, and highly tense metal. Their new album Volume Six easily proves it, as well as this interview. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MACERATION

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jan 172025
 


Photos by Anna Vibeke Johansson – Nation North

(Following their It Never Ends… comeback album in 2022, which arrived 30 years after their debut, the Danish death metal band Maceration will soon return with a new one named Serpent Devourment that’s set for release by Emanzipation Productions on January 31st. What we have for you today is a very good interview by our contributor Zoltar of Maceration‘s Jakob Schultz.)

So yeah, fuckin’ sue me: I never really liked Maceration‘s 1992 debut A Serenade in Agony. Ok, let me correct this: I liked it but I never loved it you know? It felt exactly like what it was supposed to be, that is, an almost too-ambitious-for-its-own-good attempt by some locally popular thrashers (in that case, Invocator), after having sniffed in the air that the tide had turned to catch up with the times and thus what was THE thing back then, aka death metal.

But the production somehow didn’t fit and the songs were too long, the biggest draw for me being the presence of then nineteen-years-old Dan Swanö from Edge of Sanity and the fact that his trip to Denmark to meet up and record his vocal parts allowed him to quickly snap a picture of an eerie layer of clouds from the plane’s window which ended up as the cover artwork for Pan.Thy.Monium’s debut album Dawn Of Dreams (yes, I’m that kind of nerd, sorry not sorry).

So even with the surprising return, yet still as a session member only, of Swanö three decades later on their comeback album It Never Ends… I didn’t have high expectations to be fair. That is until I saw Ola Larsson‘s sublime Cthulhuesque artwork and listened to its opening track, “Lost In Depravity”. Full of, wait, freakin’ drenched in, HM-2 delight and far more in-your-face and damn brutal than its clumsy predecessor, it simply ripped. And on the top of it, Swanö gave one of his (and it seems last as a growler) vilest performance ever, as if wanting to show his former friends in Bloodbath how it’s done. Did I like it? Boy, I freakin’ worshipped that album from the get-go. Check mate. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CAPILLA ARDIENTE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 142025
 

(Last October the Chilean doom band Capilla Ardiente released their newest album, and it led our Comrade Aleks to conduct an interview with one of the founding members, Claudio Botarro Neira, last fall. Due to our own delays while focusing on year-end traditions, we are late in publishing their very good discussion, but now we do.)

Chilean epic doom band Capilla Ardiente was founded in 2006, and since then its crew gained a proper reputation releasing rare yet remarkable albums. Each of the band’s members is occupied with different tasks and different bands, so each album of Capilla Ardiente is something you need to wait for.

Claudio Botarro Neira (bass), Felipe Plaza Kutzbach (vocals), Francisco Aguirre (drums), Julio Bуrquez (guitar), and Igor Leiva (guitar) know how to play any kind of metal, but the new Capilla Ardiente album Where Gods Live and Men Die released by High Roller Records in October 2024 is a four-song-long epic journey, or rather pilgrimage, to the peaks of doom metal. We got in touch with Claudio, and here’s the interview we conducted. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MOONDARK

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 102025
 

(In December NCS contributor Zoltar introduced our full streaming premiere of the long-awaited debut album by Sweden’s Moondark, which was released in that same month by Pulverised Records. And now he follows that with an interview of Moondark‘s Johan Jansson.)

Remember what your mom always said back when you were a kid: good things always happen to those who said innit? She probably hadn’t Moondark in mind when she told you that but I’m sure you get the point as, indeed, those Swedes’ first proper album The Abysmal Womb is one titanic, heavy-as-fuck doom/death monster, with the emphasis on the DEATH part if you will.

And the fact it only took them almost thirty-two years (!) to complete it and that they somehow perdured over the years despite having recorded until then only one demo tape and played one single show is a testimony to how freakin’ good this is. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BLACKDEATH

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 092025
 

(We like to think that we’ve never published a “bad” interview, but of course some are better than others. The one below that Comrade Aleks brought us from his discussion with Para Bellum from the Russian band Blackdeath is one of the best ever. You’ll see.)

If we take into account the pre-Blackdeath projects Draugwath and Black Draugwath, then it’s easy to count that the band will reach its 30th anniversary in 2025.

For almost three decades, brothers Para Bellum (vocals, bass) and Abysslooker (guitars) keep on producing their own black metal with absolute dedication and some tendency to experiment, remaining one of the oldest Russian bands in this genre. With Maya on drums since 2007, this time Blackdeath enlisted the support of the second guitarist Der Nukleare Herjann (better known as Arjan Peeks), who spread the heathen malice through the Netherlands bands Cultus, Heimdalls Wacht, Uuntar, and more.

Naturally, an enhanced lineup produced the recording of a different kind, and the band’s eleventh album Mortui incedere possunt proves its firm position in the black metal underground. Even though Blackdeath never dealt with Lovecraftian beliefs directly, the interview with Para Bellum turned out great. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MONOLITHE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 062025
 

(Last November Hammerheart Records released the fantastic tenth album by the ever-intriguing French band Monolithe, and that led our Comrade Aleks into an interview with the band’s new vocalist/guitarist Quentin Verdier — a very good one that you’ll find below.)

The Parisian long-running doom band Monolithe continues its mission to explore the boundaries of the genre and this time they’ve turned to the theme of futuristic noir. They have already recorded a series of albums loosely based on the work of Stanley Kubrick, the Soviet cosmic program, and their own fantasies. Now they approach the cultural and philosophical legacy of Blade Runner and The Matrix.

Monolithe’s lineup went through some changes shortly before the album’s recording, but the founding members Sylvain Begot (guitars, keyboards, programming) and Benoit Blin (guitar) are still at the helm. Their tenth full-length Black Hole District ​​consists of ten tracks: five instrumentals exactly one minute each interspersed with five ten-minute long compositions. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE GREAT OLD ONES

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 122024
 


Photos by ©Daphnea Doto / Solweig Wood

(We proudly present Comrade Aleks‘ excellent interview with Benjamin Guerry from the French band The Great Old Ones, whose new album is set for release in January by Season of Mist.)

As you noticed, there were almost zero interviews with Lovecraft-influenced bands in the previous two months. Hard times for those who follow the Cult, indeed! But the patient ones will be rewarded, as Season of Mist proclaimed that the fifth release of French black metal heroes The Great Old Ones, Kadath, will be released on January 24th!

Fifteen years of boiling activity, four full-length albums behind, a damn lot of live rituals served – the band has solid luggage and this entire experience was reworked and channeled through a concept album based on Lovercaft’s most psychedelic and bizarre Dream Cycle.

Benjamin Guerry (guitars, vocals) is the only founding member who stood at the dawn of The Great Old Ones and who remains its mastermind; it was sheer luck that we’ve caught him and got the interview done in the most operative way. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries