AN NCS PREMIERE: INVOCATION RITUAL — “THREAT BY EXAMPLE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 132026
 

(written by Islander)

Last summer the Seattle-based death metal band Invocation Ritual self-released a two-song debut demo, and now they’re following that with a debut album named Altered Reality which Iron Fortress Records will release on August 14th.

Even if you missed out on that demo, Invocation Ritual should command attention based on the fact that their lineup includes current and former members of Oxygen Destroyer, Kontusion, and Reburied (among others).

The name of their new album expresses an overarching theme. As summarized on behalf of Iron Fortress, its ten tracks “chart a harrowing descent through psychological collapse, where mounting paranoia, violence, and personal turmoil steadily erode the boundary between reality and delusion”.

We’re presenting one of those tracks today, a furious and stunningly vicious song called “Threat By Example“. We have this comment about it from Invocation Ritual guitarist Paul Richards: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARTILAGE — “THE OPERATING ALTAR”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 102026
 

(written by Islander)

Any chance we have to expose more people to the music of San Francisco’s Cartilage is a chance we will seize, even if it means having to spend hours washing the blood off our gore-drenched bodies after reveling in the band’s musical horrors.

Their newest death-grinding horrors are barely contained in a new album named Operating Altar that’s set for release on September 11th by Everlasting Spew Records. Unlike the previous abominations of Cartilage, this album narrates a single nightmarish tale, which they describe as follows: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASPEN SANCTUM — “PILLARS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 102026
 

(written by Islander)

We’re all about to roll into the weekend, and we hope it will be a good one for everybody. To help pave the way into it, and to make the weekend a better one for you, we’re premiering a song from Aspen Sanctum’s forthcoming debut album To Withhold the Need to Conquer.

Because this is a fairly new band, an introduction is in order. They are based in Kalamazoo, a town in southwestern Michigan that shares the Algonquian name for the river that runs by it. The band’s four members are Jared Koons, Jeremy Cronk, Tim Wicklund, and Bryan Neterer. Here’s their explanation for the band’s name, and for the title of their album:

Aspen forests are common to the upper Midwest. Known for their colorful autumn leaves and pale bark, the word “Aspen” serves as a reference to the region’s distinct seasons. “Sanctum” suggests a sacred, secluded space. Aspen Sanctum is meant to evoke a vision of the natural world prevailing in the face of time.

Embodying the beauty of the Northwoods, coastal Great Lakes, and rolling hills of the Midwest, while simultaneously resisting the innate human urge to dominate and conquer all that lies in view. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HORNS OF ABOMINATION — “HORNS OF ABOMINATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 092026
 

(written by Islander)

Horns of Abomination is the name of a new Southern California-based one-man audio terror. It is also the name of the band’s debut demo tape to be released by Sentient Ruin, and it’s the name of the demo’s opening song, which we’re now premiering.

As usual, Sentient Ruin has crafted its own vivid prose to describe what happens on the demo:

Treading a liminal outer realm of ear-splitting chaos where bestial war metal and pure noise converge into experimental derailment riding the confines of sanity, Horns of Abomination establishes an audial conquest of unprecedented cruelty and destruction. Obsessive, maniacal, barely coherent rhythmic pulsations plumbing a bloodbath of distortion; assaultive, chainsawing guitars creating berserk repetitions against a foul regurgitation of bestial, disemboweled vomits.

Of course, we have some descriptions of our own to offer. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEFIANT — “CAESARS MESSIAH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 092026
 

(written by Islander)

Not for the first time, an extreme metal band has used excerpts from The Passion of Joan of Arc to illustrate one of their songs. This time it is the Croatian black/death metal band Defiant, who commemorated their 20th year of existence in 2025 with the release of their fifth album, Mammon Mantra. But in the video we’re premiering for their song “Caesars Messiah” from that album, Defiant aren’t celebrating the famous martyr, but using the scenes for a different purpose.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a 1928 French silent film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti. It focuses on the time that Joan of Arc was a captive of England and depicts her trial and execution for heresy by French clergymen loyal to the English. It is rightly regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Even seeing only the excerpts used by Defiant, you can get a sense of why that is.

But, as suggested above, the lyrics of “Caesars Messiah“, which you will also see in the video, seem to have a different moral than the injustice visited upon Joan and the reasons for her ultimate elevation to sainthood by the church. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEHUMANIZING ITATRAIN WORSHIP — “2D COMPLEX”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 082026
 

(written by Islander)

The best anime death metal from China! That sounds like a narrow niche, doesn’t it? It’s also a description that leaves some big unanswered questions about what the music sounds like – questions we will help answer today.

But first, there’s a question about the meaning of this band’s name – Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship. They have answered that question: “The band name ‘Itatrain’ actually comes from a viral 2012 incident in Shanghai: a fan was caught kneeling and worshipping a train decorated with ‘LoveLive!’ characters. We thought that kind of fanaticism was both stupid and hilarious at the time, so we decided to name the band after it.”

The LoveLive! multimedia anime universe has also played a role in the music of Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship. Their vocalist Kiryu Zhang admits that “on our previous efforts, people probably saw us as just that ‘weird anime slam band’ sampling LoveLive! for shock value.” But what began as a “meme” bedroom project has survived for a decade, and the music has considerably evolved as well.

Perhaps one sign of that is the fact that it’s our site that was invited to premiere the band’s new album, 2D Complex (二次元コンプレックス), in advance of its July 10 release by Stillbirth Records and Gore House Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VILE FORM — “ORB”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 072026
 

(written by Islander)

The bare bones: The Philadelphia death metal band Vile Form features members of the grindcore trio Die Choking and the death/doom outfit Burden. Since forming up in 2024 they have released two EPs — Unending in 2024 and Death in early 2025 — and in the spring of last year they released a compilation of the two EPs titled Death Unending.

Now, to put some meat on the bones: The opener of the Death EP, which then became track 6 on Death Unending, is a song called “Orb“. Lyrically it pictures gleaming orbs in the sky, but they turn out to be the dreadful demon orbs of Vile Form’s eldritch entity Subulonagus, orbs that absorb life and disgorge what they consume to create a grotesque fortress.

What we have for you today is the premiere of Vile Form’s video for that song, a video that guitarist Jeffrey Daniels has described for us in detail: Continue reading »

AN NCE PREMIERE: SUFFERING QUOTA — “OVERPOWERING WEIGHT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 072026
 

(written by Islander)

Three years ago we introduced the premiere of a Suffering Quota song with these words:

“Adjectives like ‘terrorizing’ and ‘explosive’ have tended to surround the music of the Dutch grindcore band Suffering Quota like swarms of angry hornets. Of course, sensations of fury and violence are endemic to a lot of grindcore, but adjectives like those don’t always come to mind as frequently as they do with this band.

“Yet those aspects of their music, while integral and vital to what they do, really aren’t all that sets them apart from a lot of their peers. What really sets them apart is the feeling that they’d get bored just blowing off the doors in listeners’ heads and wrecking the hell out of whatever’s inside. It’s got to be more interesting than that.”

We’ve repeated those words because they still hold true for the band’s new album Sisyphean Life, which will be released on September 25th by Tartarus Records in collaboration with 7 Degrees Records. We’re again in the fortunate position of proving the point with a premiere, this time a song from the new record named “Overpowering Weight” (and we have some thoughts about the album as a whole too). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARCHARODON — “THE BALLS’ LAW”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 032026
 

(written by Islander)

Somehow, in our 16+ years of existence, today is the first time we’ve featured the music of the Italian band Carcharodon. It’s especially mystifying because the band’s discography includes four albums and a slew of shorter releases, and because the band’s genre-crossing music hits dead-center in some of our favored wheelhouses. In the case of the Carcharodon hellions, however, late is definitely better than never.

The occasion for us getting on board the Carcharodon road-hogs is the forthcoming September 26 release of their fifth album by Satanath Records. The name of the new album is Never On Your Side, and the song from that album which we’re bringing you today is “The Balls’ Law“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FIMBUL WINTER — “WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT AT NIGHT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 032026
 

(written by Islander)

Like many other ardent fans of melodic death metal, we were first drawn to Fimbul Winter last fall by the musical pedigrees of their lineup: The band was formed by Amon Amarth co-founders Anders Biazzi and Niko Kaukinen, along with longtime Amon Amarth drummer Fredrik Andersson, and they were joined by venomous vocalist Clint Williams (Munitions, Nemesium). And then Fimbul Winter’s music pulled us all the way in – first with a single called “Mounds of Stones” and then with a debut EP named What Once Was.

Our reviewer here called Fimbul Winter a “battle horde”, creating music on that EP that was “sharp and aggressive”, “pulling from a massive well of fiery and head-on aggressive guitar riffs”, making battle anthems but also loading them with earworms, and “injecting life into the sometimes staid waters of melodeath”. And we put that first single on our list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs — though really any of the EP’s songs could have warranted that award.

Fortunately, that EP wasn’t a one-and-done effort. This past May Fimbul Winter released another terrific single (“Crowned In Ash“), and today they’re releasing a compelling new one called “When The Sun Comes Out At Night” — with Johan Lindstrand from The Crown joining them as a guest vocalist. We are most happy to share it with you today through our premiere of a lyric video for the song. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries