AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK MOLD — “ANTINOMY”

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Dec 242025
 

(written by Islander)

On this Christmas Eve don’t worry that your stocking (mental or physical) will be filled with lumps of coal come the dawn. Worry instead that it will be filled with Black Mold. Although, depending on your tastes, that might be one of the best gifts you could hope for.

To be clear, we’re not talking about Stachybotrys chartarum, the fungus whose musty spores can cause mycosis or trigger illness or even death among those allergic to its spores. Instead, our subject today is a new outgrowth of punk-infused black metal by the Portuguese band Black Mold — seven poisonous new songs collected on an EP named Antinomy that’s set for tape release by Helldprod Records on Christmas Day, December 25th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LIGATION — “ERUPTION”

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Dec 222025
 

(written by Islander)

“Recommended for maniacs of wildest Pungent Stench, Pan.Thy.Monium, Disharmonic Orchestra, Phlebotomized, and domestic iconoclasts Xysma as well as the heyday of Amphetamine Reptile – this is what it sounds like After Gods!”

And that’s the head-scrambling “FFO” recommendation offered on behalf of Personal Records for the debut album from Finland’s Ligation that they will release on January 23rd. If you know anything about those other bands, it’s a wild combination to consider, but the music’s wild too — which probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given that Ligation’s lineup includes members drawn from the ranks of Profetus, Convocation, Sum of R, and La Murga, among others.

How wild is it? You’re about to find out, through our premiere of a bamboozling track off the new album named “Eruption“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ECTOVOID — “IN UNREALITY’S COFFIN”

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Dec 222025
 

(written by Islander)

In this year-end holiday season many of you are attempting to calm your nerves, to arrange your jumbled thoughts in some orderly fashion conducive to rationality, to find a smidgeon of peaceful reflection in a chaotic world. If so, you’ve come to the wrong place.

You might think instead about being entombed wide awake within a formless coffin, devoid of purpose, transfixed by chaos, bled for eons, your memory fading in clouds of ash, your inner voice becoming a scream, in unreality confined for eternity.

Those words in that last paragraph are drawn from the lyrics of the title song to Ectovoid’s new album In Unreality’s Coffin which we’re premiering today. The remainder of the lyrics are equally nightmarish. So is the music. Find your year-end peace somewhere else. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FAYENNE — “PRIMORDIAL SURFACE”

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Dec 192025
 

(written by Islander)

This marks our second encounter with the Swedish black metal band Fayenne. The first occasion (and one not soon forgotten) was their 2019 demo Ancient Womb of Mercury, about which I frothed at the mouth thusly:

“In these three tracks, Fayenne come for your throat, teeth bared and blood boiling. But while the light-speed drum blasting, beautifully vibrant bass, wild, spinning riffs, and howling, hate-filled vocals burn like a wildfire out of control, there’s a lot more going on in the songs than a soundtrack to the Wild Hunt.

“The reverberating leads (both darting and sinuous) are exhilarating, and have the sorcerous feel of black magic incantations, and there’s both classic heavy metal bombast and blood-pumping thrash in the riffing. The songs also manifest rhythmic dynamism as the momentum turns from racing to d-beat-like gallops or the stateliness of a grim but solemn procession.

“Ancient Womb of Mercury is a great blend of styles, black metal being only one of them, and even at only three tracks it will kick your adrenaline into overdrive.”

I and many others hoped for more Fayenne tirades, but we’ve had to bide our time. At last, however, Fayenne are returning, and with a debut full-length that’s now set for an MC release on February 26, 2026, by Void Wanderer Productions. The album’s name is The Calling From The Depth. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EARD — “QUIESCENCE (YULE)”

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Dec 192025
 

(written by Islander)

This coming Sunday, December 21st, is the Winter Solstice, a day of both practical and mystical significance. In scientific terms, it marks the beginning of astronomical winter in the northern hemisphere. When the sun is out, the shadows will be the longest of the year because of the sun’s low angle above the horizon, and the night will also be the longest. Above the Arctic Circle there will be no daylight at all. After this solstice the days will slowly begin to grow longer until the Summer Solstice arrives.

In less verifiably measurable terms the day is a symbol of rebirth and the beginning of light’s return. It has been identified and commemorated by ancient civilizations (witness the alignment of such monuments as Stonehenge in England, Newgrange in Ireland, the Goseck Circle in Germany, and the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak) and celebrated for many millennia with festivals, including Yule (a word whose origins and forms are likewise ancient).

To honor the day and celebrate Yule in their own way, the Italian atmospheric black metal duo Eard will release a new song on the Winter Solstice this year. Its name is “Quiescence (Yule)“. As they explain, “Yule marks the return of the light at the heart of the year’s longest night, and the song embodies the hush before rebirth.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVICTUS — “WANDERING ASHDREAM”

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Dec 182025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to spill a considerable volume of words about a single song of death metal that ends just shy of the four-minute mark, because it is such an explosive reminder that even the last month of the year is a bad time to sleep on new music.

The song is “Wandering Ashdream” and it’s from the forthcoming second album by the Japanese band Invictus which will be released next month by Memento Mori and Me Saco Un Ojo. As mentioned, it’s the kind of track that inspires a great flooding of words, but the album as a whole does the same thing, witness these portions of the labels’ press statement about the record: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOID MONUMENTS — “THE SIGN OF BLASPHEMY”

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Dec 172025
 

(written by Islander)

Occasionally in these premiere features we dive right into the music we’re showcasing, just for the pure hell of it, and then afterward come back and give you some details about who’s doing it and where the music comes from. This is one of those times.

The name of the death metal song you’re about to hear is “The Sign of Blasphemy“, and it’s as brazenly wicked at its core as that title signifies. It’s also vicious, poisonous, revelrous, frighteningly sinister, grimly oppressive, supernaturally chilling, furiously bone-smashing, and so well-written that it quickly drives its many fiendish hooks deep into a listener’s head. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BIZARREKULT — “BLIKKET HENNES”

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Dec 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The creation of music and its exposure to listeners is, as we all know, an inherently synergistic phenomenon. At least when the music is honest and authentic, the artist thinks something, feels something, is driven by the need to express those thoughts and emotions, maybe even as compulsively as the need to eat and drink. But the listener exposed to musical creations reacts based on their own thoughts, feelings, and histories. What they interpret, whether reflexively or through a thoughtful contemplation, is as much a function of themselves as it is the intention and spirit of the artist.

Bizarrekult is the black metal musical vehicle of Roman V., a native of Siberian Russia who moved to Norway roughly 20 years ago and then began recording music as a lone wolf, accompanying poetic verses he’d been writing since childhood. A demo emerged in 2006, followed by an early split with Theosophy, but then nothing surfaced until an EP in 2019 and then a first album in 2021, Vi overlevde (“We Survived”), followed by a second one, Den tapte krigen (“The Lost War”), in 2023.

Now a third one is on the way. Its title is Alt Som Finnes (“All There Is”), and it includes guest vocalists from Predatory Void, MØL, and Dødheimsgard. What inspired this one? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DAIDALOS — “DIS”

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Dec 162025
 

(written by Islander)

The German symphonic black metal band Daidalos was founded in 2020 by Tobias Püschner, originally as a one-man project. For the band’s debut album, The Expedition (2022), Daidalos drew inspiration from a truly harrowing tale from history, the Arctic journey led by the British explorer Sir John Franklin in 1845, an expedition that ended in disaster as Franklin’s two ships (Erebus and Terror) became trapped in the ice, suffering for more than a year; both Franklin and the entire crew perished.

Daidalus now has a second album coming our way in February 2026. For this one the band took its inspiration not from history but from the realm of imagination, and specifically from one one of the greatest works of global literature, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

But rather than simply retelling the epic through music, Püschner has crafted the new album (titled Dante) as a “reinterpretation” of the descent into Hell, one that “explores doubt, despair, and the hidden truths between faith and fear – a symphonic black metal audio drama, melancholic rather than evil.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALIGNANT AURA — “BENEATH A CROWN OF ANGUISH”

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Dec 162025
 

(written by Islander)

About 3 1/2 years ago we premiered a jaw-dropping debut album named Abysmal Misfortune Is Draped Upon Me by the Australian death/doom band Malignant Aura. We called it “a towering and soul-shuddering success, one that’s just as capable of kicking your heart into over-drive as it is of dragging you into abyssal netherworlds where dread and grief endlessly reign.” And now Malignant Aura return, building upon the success of that debut with their second full-length, Where All of Worth Comes to Wither.

The new album is more concise than the debut — five songs and 46 minutes versus six songs and 53 minutes — but it surpasses expectations that the band’s compelling debut generated, which is no mean feat. We have a sign of that achievement through our premiere today of the album’s second single, “Beneath A Crown of Anguish“, in advance of the album’s collaborative release by Memento Mori, Grindhead Records, and Primitive Moth. Continue reading »

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