AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHGRAVE — “HELL IS EVIL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 132026
 

(written by Islander)

By this point the Bay Area grindcore miscreants Deathgrave probably need no introduction to the kind of miscreant listeners who visit our site, but there’s also a chance someone just awoke from a long coma or just recovered from a debilitating mental disease, so we’ll make a quick one.

Originally formed in 2013, Deathgrave brings together the talents of guitarist Greg Wilkinson (Autopsy, Brainoil), bassist Fern Alberts (Amber Asylum), vocalist Andre Cornejo, and drummer Clint Zane (Owl). Even from their earliest releases, they were prone to stewing together differing genre ingredients from punk and metal, but the stew has become more rich over time. Their new album Hell Is Evil is the richest yet.

We’ve already published a review of the album (here), which concludes with this paragraph:

This is the sound of what happens when grindcore grows up. Fans of the more feral punk-tinged offshoots of death metal would be advised to give this album a listen. Overall, it proves it does not matter how heavy or intense your sound is; there is always time to slow down and create memorable songs, without having to sacrifice the confrontational elements of your sound. This is the primary reason why this is one of the best albums on the more extreme side of things so far this year.

And today we have the pleasure of premiering the new album’s title song in advance of the record’s release by Tankcrimes on August 21st. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE BLACK THUNDER — “VERIFICATION OF WOUNDS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 122026
 

(written by Islander)

Today we have the pleasure of helping announce that in October Pagan Records will release a new album named Time Obliteration by The Black Thunder from Poland, and to help build anticipation for that event we’re also premiering a video for the album’s first single, the genre-bending “Verification of Wounds“.

If you are already familiar with The Black Thunder via their previous releases, including their two previous albums, you may be in for a surprise, because the band have shifted their sound, moving on from the stoner and groove-based sounds of those records into darker tones that feature a mixture of black metal elements, sludge elements, technical elements, and crust-punk elements.

Moreover, The Black Thunder recorded Time Obliteration in a live studio recording. Pagan Records further explains that, lyrically, the album “focuses on themes of existential anxiety, internal conflict, and distorted perception”.

Here is how bassist, vocalist, and founder Marcin Szczepański explains some of the changes in the context of the new song you’re about to hear: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CELOPHYS — “MAMMOTH MARCH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 112026
 

(written by Islander)

At this site we try to range widely in our listening and in the music we choose to share, to range widely in both geography and in the stylistic character of what we recommend. We also intentionally spend more time delving into obscure quarters than names most metalheads already know.

But of course, we are only a small and huddled group of hobbyists (fanatical hobbyists)), and even after many years of foraging we still miss a great deal, though sometimes we eventually find what we missed.

And so today we have at last found the massively heavy Ukrainian sludge band Celophys, whose sixth album Neanderthal will be released by the Ukrainian label Robustfellow Prods. on August 21st. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VEILBURNER — “OF GODSLAVE AND BLOOD MORTAR”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 102026
 

(written by Islander)

We’ll keep our count going: This now marks the 15th time we’ve written about the music of the macabre Pennsylvania duo Veilburner over the last decade-plus, and the eighth time we’ve premiered some of that music. The explanation should be obvious by now:

Despite how prolific Veilburner have been, their mind-boggling adventures never get old, and it’s really not an exaggeration to say that no one else sounds like them. In the case of some performers, familiarity may indeed breed contempt; in the case of Veilburner, it breeds endless fascination (albeit sanity-threatening fascination).

They remain prolific — less than a year after Transcending Obscurity Records released their eighth album Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy, the same label is primed to release their ninth one, All that Glimmers is Gloam, on October 16th. As songwriters and performers, Veilburner also remain diabolically ingenious, as you shall discover through our premiere today of a song from the new album called “Of Godslave and Blood Mortar“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SOLNEGRE — “IN THE STILLNESS OF THE WOMB (THE SOLIS EXTINCTIO SESSIONS / LIVE FROM DIORAMA SOUND)”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 102026
 

(written by Islander)

The Spanish band SolNegre first seized our attention here through their release in 2024 of a single song named Annihilation of the Self, which extended for more than 21 minutes. Our reviewer called it “a veritable odyssey of expressive, expansive, atmosphere-heavy Death Doom rich in both metallic weight and melodic depth”, “at times mournfully minimalist and melancholy, at others morbidly heavy (and not afraid to crank up the Death Metal influences)”.

SolNegre followed that last April with their second album, Anthems of the Grand Collapse, and that seized our attention too. Our review praised it as “[e]asily one of the best Doom (or Doom-related) albums of the year, possessing a scintillating sense of grandeur and a vivid artistic vision thoroughly befitting the similarly epic and evocative artwork that adorns its cover” — “a heavy album – both musically and emotionally – [but] also an album of surprising variety”.

However, along with bringing the triumph of that album, 2026 has proven to be a year of heartbreaking tragedy for SolNegre, an unexpected tragedy that occurred just before the live recording of the song and video we’re bringing you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FLOWERS OF RUST — “CRUDE EXHIBITIONS OF THE SOUL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 062026
 

(written by Islander)

In November of last year Cleveland-based Flowers of Rust – a vehicle for musical outpourings of multi-instrumentalist Jake O’Brien – released their second album, Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul, via the UK’s Centipede Abyss on a very limited run of hand-numbered CDs. But that album also snagged the ardent attention of the Apocalyptic Witchcraft label, which is now set to release the album digitally and on cassette tape tomorrow (August 7th).

We offered some thoughts about some of the music on the album last year, summing it up as “richly filigreed” but sounding “possessed”, “all tethers to sanity having been severed”. Others have summed it up as a hybrid of post-black metal and doom, but it includes other genre ingredients as well. Now we turn back to the album again to help spread the word about tomorrow’s re-release through our premiere of a strange and unsettling video for the album’s title song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: STYGIAN — “HUNT THE DIVINE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 062026
 

(written by Islander)

Last summer we had the pleasure of premiering and reviewing Dreadlands, the debut album from Ravenna-based Stygian. As we wrote then, the music was “an intersection or fusion of two worlds, a hybrid of crust punk and black metal” that proved to be “as fierce, as wounded, and as defiantly resilient as the album’s thematic insights”.

As for those thematic insights, they reflected “serious thought, scorching insight, and honest rage”. To quote the band:

Dreadlands explores the contrast between two spiritual worlds: the harmony-centered pagan traditions and the legacy of Abrahamic religions, which often channel humanity’s most violent instincts. While pagan rites served to express and contain primal forces, maintaining balance between humankind and nature, monotheistic dogmas have frequently justified war and destruction in the name of faith. This work stands as a tribute to life, to the sacred bond between people and the natural world — a bond shattered by centuries of religious conflict.

Now we return to Stygian with our premiere of the title song from a new two-track EP named Hunt the Divine, which the band will release on September 4th. We have received this description of the new EP: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VULGAR MEPHITIS — “TO DUST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 052026
 

(written by Islander)

Willowtip Records has announced yet another addition to their stellar roster of bands — the brutal death metal quartet Vulgar Mephitis from Pittsburgh, PA, whose debut album Willowtip will release on September 11th. The name of that album is From Dust, and it follows the group’s 2022 self-titled debut EP.

As you can see, we’re premiering a song from the album named “To Dust“, which in its name seems to logically follow the title of the album. We’ll begin by sharing guitarist Dan Martin’s thoughts about the album, which point the way to what you’re about to hear:

“The main difference in songwriting from the 2022 EP to now would be the addition of myself and Nick Bentzel (drums) stepping into the band, which expanded upon the way songs are structured in general. Previously, the writing process was solely done by Jay Schweinberg (bass) and Jacob Toy (vocals). At the time, the idea was to be a straight up brutal band with linear song structures.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SWORN — “THE ENTROPIC VOID”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 052026
 

(written by Islander)

On September 4th the Bergen-based melodic black metal band Sworn will release their fifth album, Null Crowned the Infinite, which follows their well-received fourth album, A Journey Told Through Fire (2023). The new album is a conceptually ambitious and coherent work, one which traces the cyclical nature of the cosmos from its initial spark in the void to its inevitable dissolution.:

“Lyrically, the album explores the terrifying scale of cosmic darkness and the fragility of existence within a primordial emptiness. Sworn investigates the philosophy of becoming and unmaking, where reality and time emerge from nothingness only to eventually collapse back into the same unfathomable origin.”

To help introduce the new album we’re premiering a song called “The Entropic Void“. Sworn describe how it fits within their cosmic narrative: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LEADBELCHER — “OFFALATED YESHUA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 042026
 

(written by Islander)

Using Juliet as his voice, Shakespeare asked us to ponder “What’s in a name?” But while roses would indeed smell as sweet (or as foul, depending on your tastes) if given some other name, names do matter, especially when a band chooses one that tells you what they’re up to like a hammer landing on your forehead.

The Irish members and former members of Sermon Of Flames, Mortichnia, and Coscradh chose Leadbelcher as the name of the new band they formed in 2024. Now that’s a name! A no-bullshit name that seems to promise unpretentious ugliness and might also make you smile at its cleverness. But Leadbelcher aren’t pandering for smiles with the music on their debut album Heaven’s Bloated Corpse. They’re using it as an outlet for their fury and disgust.

Here’s how Leadbelcher vocalist Matthew Simpson describes what fueled the record’s music and words: Continue reading »

 Older Entries