AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZEIT — “OHNMACHT”

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Apr 102023
 

Today marks the third time we’ve premiered a complete album by the German band Zeit — all three of the band’s full-lengths so far — in addition to lots of other features we’ve done for singles and videos leading up to those premieres. Obviously, we haven’t grown weary of their music. To the contrary, Zeit just keep getting better and better.

Their new album, which will be released on April 14th, is named Ohnmacht. For those of us who don’t speak their native tongue, Zeit explains that this title is a German word that “describes a state of lethargie”, “a powerlessness that results in an accepting behaviour despite the fact of being oppositional to tragic events”. In more detail, they have elaborated on the album’s concept:

A life between the chains of civilization: Stumbling from crisis to crisis, we numbly stare into the nothingness. “What now?” the mind wonders as it dances into the shadows. Frustration, anger and disgust are pushing us to the beat of forced productivity – driven by pandemic, war and climate change. The world struggles with itself and yet does not give up. Because where all is lost, there is hope and freedom. Expect nothing, fear everything. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUTON — “BEYOND ME. FOREVER ME.”

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Apr 102023
 

As you can see, today we have a song premiere today. It’s from the debut album Sacrilegious by the band Suton from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will be co-released by Satanath Records and InsArt Records on April 18th. But today’s song is the second one revealed so far from the album. We should start with the first one.

That one, “Celestial Consciousness. Starlight Divine.“, makes a striking impact, not soon forgotten, in part because it’s such an elaborate interweaving of stylistic strands. It creates tumult through electrifying drum revolutions, earth-heaving bass lines, savagely roiling riffs, and monstrous vocals. It also drapes the mind with a cold, swirling fog of supernatural creepiness in which a tormented voice wails its song.

The guitars reverberate in torment too, but also join with the bass to slug like a two-fisted bare-knuckled fighter. Gloom descends at the same time as the singing elevates and the guitars ring like brittle chimes. World-weary chants ensue amidst vividly undulating bass tones and skull-rattling drumwork. Scalding howls take over, and the riffing seems like the sound of a giant serpent moving beneath the earth. The music becomes a kind of moaning menace and staggers and crashes, though the permutations of that bass continue to rivet attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANARETA — “FEAR NOT”

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Apr 072023
 


photo by Bobby Bonesy

In writing about the music of the New Orleans ensemble Anareta we feel a gnawing sense of inadequacy (more than the usual). There’s an anxious conviction that to do it true justice would require more knowledge and learned appreciation for classical music, including the beautiful interplay of instrumental voices in chamber music, than we possess. On the other hand, we do know a thing or two about extreme metal music, and that turns out to be equally relevant.

Of course, Anareta aren’t the only band who have sought to integrate compositional and instrumental traditions of Western classical music with the harshness and aggression of heavy metal in some of its more extreme forms. But many other bands in that space use orchestral synths to weave in the classical elements. Even the more subdued sounds of string sections are usually the result of programmed samples.

Anareta, on the other hand, have a more authentic approach, with a line-up that includes performers on viola (Mackenzie Hamilton), cello (Sam Hollier), and violin (Louise Neal), along with the more familiar metal instrumentation of guitar (Carey Goforth), bass guitar (Sarah Jacques), and drums (Boyanna Trayanova). And it’s not just the instrumentation that’s so multi-faceted, because three of those performers (Jacques, Neal, and Hamilton) contribute to the vocals, and they’re varied too. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KUOLEVAN RUKOUS — “DEMO 2023”

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Apr 062023
 

We don’t know much about the background of Kuolevan Rukous. The names used by the band’s three members — Unholy Necrosis, Tuliips, and Buer Enkoimesis — are not the ones they were born with. Although a German band, they chose a Finnish name for themselves, one that translates as “The Prayer of the Dead“. And apart from the track names, we don’t have any special insights into the inspirations or conceptions behind their first demo release, which will be out on April 14th.

And so, Kuolevan Rukous are a paradigm example of an obscure group whose music must speak for itself. It turns out to be a very interesting form of speech. A trio of underground labels — Vita Detestabilis, Reaping Death Records, and Grieve Records — will release this debut demo on tape, and Vita Detestabilis previews it by telling us that Kuolevan Rukous have expressed themselves “through asphyxiating dissonances, noisy atmospheres, and using death doom as a conductor for funeral black”.

Those words created intrigue around here, and the music itself proved to be intriguing, and far, far more than that. It was not a difficult decision for us to be the bearer of the demo’s premiere today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERILUOLA — “REGAL BARBARISM”

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Apr 052023
 

Having taken their first steps with a four-song, 21-minute demo nearly three years ago, the part-Finnish, part-U.S. band Veriluola are taking a very big next step with the May release of their debut album Cascades Of Crimson Cruor via Nameless Grave Records.

This duo — guitarist/bassist Santeri and guitarist/vocalist Malus — obviously used the intervening time very productively. It was already evident from their debut demo that the band desired to root their creative expressions in a by-gone time when stout fences hadn’t yet been erected between now-well-defined extreme metal genres. But the new album makes this even more obvious.

The new Veriluola songs effortlessly intertwine strains of black metal, death metal, thrash, and what we now label “classic heavy metal” as if they were all born together as brood from the same monstrously regal mother and feel their kinship instead of warring against each other for attention.

In addition to the kind of songwriting that makes that possible, the album also shows significant attention to detail. None of the songs feel hastily thrown together, but instead sound carefully plotted and fully realized, even though at the time you hear them they’re reflexively captivating… and feral… and sometimes forlorn… and sometimes downright heroic. You’ll get a strong sense of what we’re trying to describe in the song we’re premiering today — the aptly named “Regal Barbarism“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUCIFUGE — “PHYSIOGNOMY OF FAILURE”

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Apr 052023
 

We were a bit late in leaping aboard the Lucifuge hell-train, but quickly realized what a high-adrenaline rush that is. In 2021 we premiered their fourth full-length Infernal Power and spilled a lot of words on it, ending with these: “This really is a hell of a good album, with a lot more going on in the songs than discharges of blast-furnace heat and berserker mayhem. It definitely WILL get your motor running fast and hot, but the songs’ addictive appeal goes beyond that.”

The band followed up that album by releasing a split with Italy’s Bunker 666 last fall (Of Night and Lust), and we had the fiendish pleasure of premiering that one too, accompanied by another torrent of words, which included the erudite exclamation that the music of Lucifuge was “fucking glorious”.

And now we’re once again in the fortunate position of sharing new Lucifuge music with the world, this time through the premiere of a song off their forthcoming fifth album, Monoliths of Wrath. This one, like the two records identified above, will be discharged by Dying Victims Productions.

In hindsight, the new record proves that we picked a good time to get on board with this German band two years ago, because especially starting then and continuing through the new album, they’ve been increasingly spreading their creative wings (bat-shaped to be sure), resulting now in their most accomplished and varied work to date. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LARVAE — “ENTITLED TO DEATH”

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Apr 042023
 

“Oakland, California has summoned the rituals of many metal legions over the decades. Its stench is filled with dark art, morbid riffs, death and doom. There’s a scorched place in the corner of the crumbling landscape evoking evil and witchy magic where Larvae feast on the remains of those who perished.”

In the press materials, those evocative words precede the release of Larvae‘s long-awaited second album Entitled to Death, which (to quote again from the same materials) “pursues a human experience, traversing the middle realm seen thru the eyes of a defected warrior,” who is bound to a grim and hostile reality “until the final collapse in a land filled with ruin and loss… crossing over into a cosmic abyss.”

In the musical telling of this uncomfortable tale Larvae draw inspiration from such divergent  ’90s legends as Runemagick, Paradise Lost, Immolation, Bolt Thrower, Neurosis, and Dismember. How they interweave those influences might be difficult to guess, but today no guessing game is needed because we have the complete album stream for you. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BONJOUR TRISTESSE — “ODE TO EMPTINESS”

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Apr 032023
 

On April 7th Supreme Chaos Records will release Against Leviathan, the third album by the Bavarian black metal band Bonjour Tristesse. It’s the first part of a two- part cycle, which has a conceptual thread running through it. As the band and label describe: It “paints an extremely bleak picture of the dystopian reality of our time from an unusual perspective. It can be seen as an angry and passionate critique of the industrialized world we are living in. At the centre is the conflict between modern humanity and nature”.

The album consists of four long songs, and today we present the one that closes the record — “Ode to Emptiness“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CREPITATION — “METHANATED PROPULSION OF GASEOUS LEVITATION”

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Apr 012023
 

April Fool’s Day! Yes it is, and the joke’s on you!

Well, we’re not suggesting that we don’t really have a Crepitation premiere for you today, because we really really do. But look, the song was inspired by the kind of wet farts that provide a queasy recurring lift to your stride.

Hold that thought… along with whatever gaseous emissions may be trying to escape your bunghole at the moment … and let’s consider “Methanated Propulsion of Gaseous Levitation” (the nasty song from a new Crepitation album we’re premiering along with an insane “lyric video”), not the nasty bodily phenomenon for which it was named). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VALGRIND — “MILLENNIUM OF NIGHT BLISS”

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Mar 312023
 

We’ve been following the music of the Italian death metal band Valgrind for many years, and for good reason. But if you happen to be discovering them for the first time, despite how often we’ve written about them, they released four demos and an EP between 1995 and 2002 — and then seemed to go into hibernation until the appearance ten years later of their debut album, Morning Will Come No More. Another four years passed, and then Valgrind’s second album, Speech of the Flame, was released by Lord of the Flies Records. The wonderful 2017 EP Seal of Phobos tided over Valgrind fans until the 2018 appearance of the next album, Blackest Horizon, via Everlasting Spew Records.

And then came their Condemnation album released in 2020 through the Spanish label Memento Mori, followed by their From the Viscera of Darkness EP in 2021. Now, the same Memento Mori is poised to release Valgrind‘s mind-blowing fifth album, Millennium of Night Bliss, on April 24th, and we’re able to share the title track with you today. BUT… before we get to that song, we want you to lend your ears to the new album’s previously released opening track “Teshub“. Continue reading »

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