AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INGURGITATING OBLIVION — “THE BARREN EARTH OOZES BLOOD, AND SHAKES AND MOANS, TO DRINK HER CHILDREN’S GORE” (PART 1)

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Jul 252024
 

Today we embark on an unusual collaboration with the German band Ingurgitating Oblivion and Willowtip Records, the label that will release their new album Ontology of Nought on September 27th. What we’re doing is hosting the first of three music premieres for the album — and all three are for the same song.

That song can stand the attention. On its own it’s the length of a typical EP — roughly 18 minutes in duration. And it’s not just the song that’s long, so is its title: “The barren earth oozes blood, and shakes and moans, to drink her children’s gore“.

Each of the three premieres features a part of this song, unfolding in the same sequence as the music unfolds. As it happens, “The barren earth…” is the final track on Ontology of Nought. The preceding four are also long, and so are their solemn titles: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EARTH SHIP — “BEREFT”

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Jul 252024
 

Once upon a time, long, long ago, one of our writers summed up the music of Earth Ship as “raw, no-nonsense sludge metal that would rather kick your teeth in than wow you with any fancy tricks, and because of that, it’s excellent.“

Back then, the subject was this German band’s second album, Iron Chest. Since then they’ve released three more albums and a pair of EPs, and now their sixth full-length overall is on the horizon. Entitled Soar, it’s set for release on August 9th by The Lasting Dose Records.

What we have for you today is a video for a recently released single from the new album, and its name is “Bereft“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INCESSANT — “ENTROPIC AEONS”

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Jul 242024
 

I’ve already stomped my feet and banged on the table in a loud display of enthusiasm about “Of Disillusion and Doctrine,” the first single off Incessant‘s new EP Entropic Aeons:

Prepare for a roiling and ravishing typhoon of danger and destruction, replete with harrowing howls and unchained sky-high wails, but the mix also includes rocking grooves, feral chords, and glittering melodies with an exotic Eastern air. It’s a hell of a thrill-ride….

Less loudly, I hoped the rest of the EP by this Dublin blackened-death trio would be as good as that song. I’m here to tell you that it is, and to give you an immediate chance to appreciate it for yourselves as we premiere a full stream in advance of the EP’s imminent release by Repose Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEMON SACRIFICE — “UNDER THE BLACKLIGHT OF DIVINE”

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Jul 232024
 

Today we’re fiendishly pleased to premiere Under the Blacklight of Divine, the debut EP from the Indonesian band Demon Sacrifice, which will officially be released tomorrow by the Indonesian label Ironbound Records.

We are “fiendishly pleased” because Demon Sacrifice‘s music is indeed fiendish, and fiendishly clever. They bring to the table a mixture of visceral punk beats, howling vocal terrors, and the kind of black metal that gets its hooks in the head but also sounds thoroughly supernatural.

They claim “indirect” influence from the likes of Bathory, Darkthrone, Devil Master, Spectral Wound, and Tribulation, and you’ll understand the use of the word “indirect” when you hear the music, because it’s not a blatant copy any of those bands. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE OTHER SUN — “DAIMON, DEVIL, DAWN”

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Jul 222024
 

Here at NCS we like to think that in deciding what music to write about we avoid getting stuck in any ruts. Variety, after all, is a powerful antidote to the poison of boredom. And besides, we don’t want people to get too confident in thinking they know in advance what they’re going to experience whenever they land here. If our choices don’t at least occasionally pull people out of their “comfort zones”, then we’re failing by our own lights.

Having said that, the album we’re premiering below is in almost all ways vastly different from the music that populates our own ever-expanding spectrum of musical coverage. Because it is so different, there may be a risk that some of our visitors will shy away from it. However, I fervently hope that won’t happen, because Daimon, Devil, Dawn is a most skilled form of sonic sorcery that should not be missed. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOE BEARER — “ROTTEN TONGUE”

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Jul 192024
 

We find ourselves in an unusual but not unheard-of situation at our site: featuring the music of a band we know almost nothing about other than the music we can hear.

In this instance the band’s name is Woe Bearer. It is a duo consisting of H., who performed guitars and bass, programmed the drums, wrote the lyrics, and mixed and mastered the recording, and T., the vocalist. We don’t know where they’re from or anything about their backgrounds.

They’ve recorded a debut album named Thriving Within the Absurdity of the Human Plight, which will be released on digital and tape formats by Onism Productions on August 23rd.

And that’s what we know… apart from the startling music you’re also about to hear now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ALIOTH BOREALIS — “THE MAUSOLEUM OF ALL HOPE AND DESIRE”

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Jul 182024
 

One of my tasks at NCS is to monitor the e-mails sent to our site. This is a tedious and terrible job. We get about 200 of them every day, at least half of which arrive because (perplexingly) we’re on mass lists used by some PR agents to promote non-metal music we have less than zero interest in. For other reasons many of the others don’t fit what we do around here (e.g., they’re “newsy” items or concern metal bands whose music isn’t in our wheelhouse).

Some days I don’t even have time to skim the subject lines. When I do, I try to pay particular attention to e-mails coming in from bands themselves, i.e., people who don’t have PR agents or labels backing them. I figure they need more help from sites like ours than groups who have some professional machinery behind them.

Of course, most musicians aren’t naturally talented self-promoters, and so (no criticism intended), a lot of band e-mails don’t set the hook quickly or effectively. However, the one I saw from Alioth Borealis definitely did do that. Check this out: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE DEPRESSICK — “FADED.EXE”

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Jul 172024
 

The Depressick don’t disguise the emotional states that fuel their music. It’s right there in the name they chose, a representation of gloom so deep that the hopelessness becomes illness. It connects with the place they call home, a densely populated and historically impoverished suburb of Mexico City named Nezahualcoyotl. We’re told that the “negativity, misery, poverty, sickness and filth” of their environment contributes to their music’s bleakness.

The band’s gut-wrenching musical journey so far has produced the 2017 debut album Carcinoma and eight shorter releases and splits. And it truly has been a journey. They haven’t forsaken their dark roots in DSBM, but have allowed them to extend into other soils, and the results have become manifest in their forthcoming second album faded.exe, which we’re premiering below in advance of its July 19th release by Tragedy Productions/End My Life Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TAUR-IM-DUINATH — “MADRE NOTTE”

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Jul 162024
 

“Taur-Im-Duinath (Forest Between Rivers) was founded in 2015 by F., as a means to seek the rhythm, the pattern, the essence that lies within the turning of the seasons, the dance of the leaves in the wind, the growing of roots in the depths, to learn from the transitory yet ever changing nature permeating the Universe. And to transform this Vision into aural landscapes.”

That is the introduction to Taur-Im-Duinath provided by the Dusktone label, which will release this Italian black metal project’s third album Verso Casa (Homewards) on September 13th. It is the follow-up to a first demo named Randir (2016), a debut album on Dusktone named Del Flusso Eterno (2018), and the double-album The Burning Bridges in 2020, which was released by Cult of Parthenope and included both black metal and neofolk material.

On the new album F. has once again composed and performed all the music and the vocals. As a sign of the new accomplishments we’re today premiering a song from Verso Casa named “Madre Notte“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBŠAR — “VOROŽKY”

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Jul 152024
 

In the autumn of this year Void Wanderer Productions and War Productions will jointly release the third album by the melodic black metal band Obšar from Slovakia. The album’s name is Propastnyk, and it continues exploring the band’s inspirations from Ruthenian nature, culture, mythology, and demonology.

To help introduce the new album, what we have for you today is a stirring and beautifully multi-faceted song from Propastnyk named “Vorožky“. Continue reading »

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