AN NCS PREMIERE: BIRKENTAL — “SUPERBIA”

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Oct 082024
 

(written by Islander)

The German black metal band Birkental started as a one-man project by bass player Raug after a band break-up during the covid pandemic around the end of 2021. He wanted to create a project to experiment with bass-only black metal.

The drummer Zlam joined the project after about a year of its existence, and from then on Birkental has been a two-man project with Raug writing the songs, playing bass, and performing vocals and Zlam playing drums and keyboard. After about another year, they finished a debut album named Peccatum Mortiferum, which will be released on December 13th by Void Wanderer Productions.

Today we’re premiering the first advance track from the album, an intriguing song named “Superbia” that furiously assaults with visceral power but also proves to be both gloom-ridden and eerily otherworldly. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORISKA — “BISMUTH”

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Oct 042024
 

(Written by Islander)

The world as we know it is a bleak place, our inner worlds too often beset by turmoil and disappointment, and the outer world too savaged by humanity’s abundant, never-ending flaws. To be sure, we have glimpses of beauty and hope, but much of the time it’s a struggle to see them through the new and continuing ruins each day brings, inside and out.

Some metal bands succeed in creating diversions from the darkness, others seem to embrace it with a kind of nihilistic joy, and still others ruefully capture the grimness of what they see and feel in the most honest and powerful way they can, creating a staggering and shattering catharsis for others and for themselves as well. Oriska is that last kind of band.

This collective is headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota, but with members dispersed across California, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Their lineup features former members of Battlefields (Init Records, Translation Loss), Dispensing of False Halos, and Sleeping in Gethsemane (Init Records).

Oriska‘s self-titled debut album is now set for release on November 15th by Mind Over Matter Records and Init Records. “Blackened post-metal” is a shorthand description of the album’s music, but like many succinct genre terms it leaves a lot to the imagination. Better to see what that really means in the context of a song, and today we have one for you. Entitled “Bismuth“, it’s the album’s centerpiece and a formidable basis for the thoughts we tried to express above. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DYING HYDRA — “GRASPING STONE”

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Oct 032024
 

The Danish trio Dying Hydra named their forthcoming second album Strange and Beautiful Things — tangible proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because the band’s rendering of atmospheric sludge metal on the record is capable of reaching harrowing depths of ugliness and devastating heaviness. You’ll discover what we mean when you see and hear the video we’re premiering today for an album track named “Grasping Stone“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EVERTO SIGNUM — “COLOSSUS”

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Oct 032024
 

(written by Islander)

On November 1st the Monumental Rex label will release the second album by the Portuguese black metal band Everto Signum. Entitled Beastiary, it has an unusually interesting concept behind it, described as follows:

“The band stays true to their elemental background by writing an immersive story that guides the listener through a chain reaction of natural disasters. These calamities are beastialized – manifested as wild uncontrollable beasts exhibiting intrinsic animalistic shapes, traits and behaviours.

“The plot is comprised of seven chapters, each consisting of a contextual introduction that describes the scenery and sets the mood for the destruction to come, and an interpretation of the actual cataclysm. Written in English, the expressively poetic lyrical narrative portrays a journey from an ice-covered mountain top through a valley, down to the depths of a meromictic lake and finally into a perennial forest to witness the dreadful wrath of ancient forces.” Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BILE CASTER — “WRITHING BETWEEN BIRTH AND DEATH”

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Oct 022024
 

(written by Islander)

“Nasty, miserable, no-nonsense sludge played at maximum volume with a focus on what is shit in life.” That’s the elevator pitch that Cursed Monk Records throws for Writhing Between Birth And Death, the debut EP from the UK band Bile Caster, and it hits the mark.

This Leicester-based trio, who might draw comparisons to the likes of Primitive Man and Meth Drinker, specialize in ugly, angry, primitive music that slugs hard enough to rupture spleens and is bleak enough that it might leave damaged souls looking for a permanent way out.

The new EP also has the capacity to leave anyone who survives it feeling dazed. It’s too ruthless to be truly entrancing, but the shock-and-awe effect may be enough to leave people feeling incapacitated, wondering what the hell they’re going to do while waiting for their reptile brains to yield back control of the higher faculties. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ONE WITH THE RIVERBED — “INFESTED”

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Oct 022024
 

(written by Islander)

To be honest, “post metal” is an amorphous term (though maybe not as amorphous as metal genre labels such as “avant-garde” or “dark metal”). As such, it probably brings to mind different things to different listeners, in part because bands who helped spawn the term and others since then have often engaged in experimentation.

In my case, I tend to think of :post metal” as music that’s expansive, heavy, and atmospherically dark, with a tendency to build upon repeating cycles of sound, though I recognize that bands grouped under the post-metal label often sound very, very different from each other, in part because they draw upon differing ingredients from other recognized metallic genres, including sludge, doom, and black metal.

And that brings me to One With the Riverbed, a quintet from Kalamazoo, Michigan that first came together in 2017. Their discography to date, including their 2021 debut album Absence, has attracted the “post metal” label, and that will probably be true of their forthcoming second album Succumb, which is set for release on October 25th by the Dusktone label. Yet, for reasons explained above, that leaves questions about the nature of their new music unanswered.

But we have some answers today through our premiere of a visualizer for the new album’s opening track, “Infested“, for which the term “post-black metal” seems more specific. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ASCIIMOV — “ASCENSION OF THE FALLEN”

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Oct 012024
 

And now, for something completely different.

What we’re about to present is a video for a song from a forthcoming album that’s the soundtrack to a dark fantasy first-person retro-shooter game developed for PCs. The name of the game, and of the album, is Hands of Necromancy II.

The project responsible for the music is Asciimov, and though you may not be familiar with that name, many of you will be familiar with the person behind it, the Spanish musical shapeshifter NHT (Oscar Martin), whose other creative endeavors (in the realms of metal) include As Light Dies, Garth Arum, and Deemtee (among others).

But what’s really different, especially in the context of our site, is the music. As a hint, here’s how the label that’s releasing the album (Darkwoods) describes it: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FERAL FORMS — “SADISTIC INNER HATE”

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Sep 302024
 

When Everlasting Spew Records refers to the Italian death metal band Feral Forms as “one of the most vicious and ferocious bands we have ever released”, that gets our attention very fast, because this label has an extensive roster of vicious and ferocious bands. And it turns out not to be an exaggeration.

This quartet from Trieste, which features current and former members of Grime, The Secret, Claustrum, and Fierce, already made their ruthlessness plain for all to hear, through their 2023 debut EP Premalignant, but they were only warming up. If the EP was “premalignant”, their new album Through Demonic Spell is fully malignant — as you’ll discover today through our premiere of a song from the new record: “Sadistic Inner Hate“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CONJONCTIVE — “DYING MELODY”

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Sep 302024
 

More than seven years and seven months ago we hosted the premiere of a video for a song off In the Mouth of the Devil, the then-forthcoming second album by the punishing Swiss band Conjonctive. At that time the band were building upon both their debut album Until The Whole World Dies and their experiences in touring Switzerland and opening for the likes of Crowbar, Biohazard, and Aborted, among others. And now we’re hosting another Conjonctive video premiere in support of another album, a new one named Misère de Poussièr.

Seven years and seven months is obviously a long break. In Conjonctive‘s case, the interval was the result of a hiatus in 2019-2020 and significant lineup changes, including the addition of drummer Guido Wyss (formerly of Near Death Condition). But the band are ferociously making up for lost time, as you’ll find out when you listen to “Dying Melody“, because it’s nothing if not ferocious.

And the video you’re about to see? It’s a ferocious and brutal horror, so explicit in its blood-letting that it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASHEN TOMB — “CAVE OF STARING EYES”

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Sep 272024
 

(written by Islander)

One good turn deserves another.

Near the end of last month we hosted the video premiere of a song suitably named “Catharsis Through Torture” from a new album by the Finnish death metal band Ashen Tomb that’s headed our way via Everlasting Spew Records. And now, near the end of this month, we’re bringing you another Ashen Tomb song premiere, this one named “Cave of Staring Eyes“.

Maybe we should say “one utterly ruinous turn deserves another”. Continue reading »

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