AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NIBIRU — “ANAMORPHOSIS”

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May 242023
 

The last time we premiered music by the Italian band Nibiru we began by observing that their music “is nearly unclassifiable”, a conclusion bolstered by the fact that their albums had elicited genre descriptions along the lines of “Ritual Psychedelic Sludge” or “Blackened Sludge & Drone”. Their list of musical influences was even more difficult to imagine being integrated into anything that made sense, and their literary and other extra-musical influences were equally varied.

On that previous occasion we premiered only an excerpt from a very long song that was one of four on their sixth album, Panspermia, though we also attempted to preview what else happened in the song as a whole. Today we’re premiering a long song in its entirety, but this time the song is also the album — a single composition, nearly an hour long, named Anamorphosis. It will be released on May 26th by Argonauta Records. It’s no easier to sum up, especially in genre terms, than anything else Nibiru have done Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIGSGRAV — “AN EVERFLOWING VESSEL”

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May 242023
 

(In the article below Todd Manning introduces our premiere of a song from a new album by the band Krigsgrav, which will be released next month through Wise Blood Records.)

We may be entering the summer here in the States, but there’s a bitter chill in the air thanks to the latest from Texas-based black metal outfit Krigsgrav. Fires in the Fall, available June 23rd courtesy of the excellent Wise Blood Records, picks up where 2021’s The Sundering left off as Krigsgrav continue to perfect their particular brand of melodic black metal.

“An Everflowing Vessel” kicks off with a masterful melody, possessing an epic grandeur, but it is also unquestionably heavy when paired with the drums. The main vocal line, once introduced, is scathing, but soon clean vocals arrive in the background to reinforce the song’s scale. At first glance, the sound sits somewhere between Dissection and Wolfheart, but ultimately it is difficult to pigeonhole Krigsgrav. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORCHID’S CURSE — “DEAD IDOLS”

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May 232023
 

Everyone above a certain age is well aware of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent viciously stabs a spike loaded with adrenaline right into Mia’s heart to bring her back from a heroin overdose. Immediately, the adrenaline makes her explode back to life.

That scene popped to mind in listening to the Orchid’s Curse song “Dead Idols” that we’re about to premiere — specifically, the way the song begins. There’s no warning, no introductory pause, just a sudden furious injection of scorching screams, hammering drums, and maniacally pulsating riffage.

And then the song becomes even more explosively unhinged, thanks to a turbocharged percussive eruption and a blizzard of tremolo’d chords. If you’re not bolt-upright and pop-eyed awake after that, it’s probably too late to call emergency services. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: REAPING FLESH — “ELEMENTS OF LIFE”

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May 232023
 

Old School Death Metal continues to age, but enough time has passed for anyone who’s been paying attention to predict confidently that its appeal is ageless. It’s not merely that a lot of the old death metal records from the late ’80s and early ’90s still light a fire under listeners, it’s that the influence of the music continues to fuel vibrant new bands around the globe.

A prime case in point is the Milanese trio Reaping Flesh. They’re unabashed in proclaiming both their inspiration by bands like Autopsy, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Death, and Massacre, and the object of their mission: to play no-frills, straight-forward Death Metal in line with the heritage of those groups.

Reaping Flesh have already been delivering their music on stage, and now they’ll be able to share it everywhere because their debut EP Abyss of Existence is now set for release by Redefining Darkness Records on June 16th. One gruesome and grisly episode of sonic slaughtering from the EP (“Self Incarnation“) is already out in the world, and today we’re helping launch the second one — “Elements of Life” — presented through a music video Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRATNA — “FOMÓRAIGH”

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May 222023
 

In past years we’ve written extensively about the music of the Belfast-based solo black metal project Dratna, following their course across four EPs and a 2022 debut album (Fear Gorta & Tales of the Undead) since the first release in 2018. It has been a remarkable excursion, and one that has fueled increasingly high expectations for each new release.

We didn’t expect another Dratna album so soon, but that is what we have — a new full-length named Fom​óraigh that will be released on May 26th by the distinctive NY label Fiadh Productions. Maybe expectations were a bit tempered given the relative speed of this follow-up, but that trepidation only made the new record even more astonishing to hear.

In its inspirations and themes the new album draws on Irish mythology and the landscape of The Mourne Mountians. In its music, to use the rudest form of summing up, it interweaves atmospheric and raw black metal with folk music performed on a wide array of instruments, rich symphonic overlays, and hints of doom. It unfolds like a head-spinning, eye-popping musical pageant, one that seems to have one foot in an age lost to the millennia and another in the hear-and-now. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TERRA BUILDER — “INTERPLANETARY PORTAL”

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May 192023
 

As far as we know, the first hint of what the German band Terra Builder had concocted for their debut album Solar Temple was a song named “Abyss” that first surfaced on the Transcending Obscurity Records label sampler released in January of this year. What kind of musical message did it send us?

Well, in a nutshell, it communicated the band’s desire to beat the living hell out of people and gouge out their guts, while simultaneously pouring nightmare fuel into their ears and screaming bloody murder in their faces. Viscerally propulsive, insidiously infectious, and fear-inducing in its atmosphere, it proved to be a damned good teaser for this solar temple they had made out of death metal and grindcore, along with hints of sludge and black metal.

Patiently biding our time, we’ve been waiting for more, and now we (and you) have more. We haven’t been exposed to the whole album yet, nor do we know its release date, but we have been given another track to share with you, and this one is named “Interplanetary Portal.” Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GALLOWS RITES — “WITCHCRAFT AND NECRO DESECRATION”

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May 182023
 

Portugal’s Gallows Rites are as un-pretentious as they come. In their debut EP Witchcraft and Necro Desecration they announce their steadfast devotion to Lucifer, and never swerve from it. The music is a black thrashing glorification of the lord of Hell and all his minions, often primal and primitive but thoroughly saturated by the stench of sulphur and exulting in the kind of sonic sorcery that brings visions of witches’ covens to the mind’s eye.

Gallows Rites thrive in the fast lane, just as devoted to music that would stir up mosh pits into bloody froths as they are to the glory of the Lightbringer. But they also switch gears and moods in these five songs, in ways that make them even more attention-grabbing.

You will experience all this for yourselves today, because we have a premiere stream of the EP in advance of its release tomorrow — May 19th — by Helldprod Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL CURSE — “BLACK MASS SHEPHERD”

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May 172023
 

As you could quickly conclude if you searched our site for the words “Infernal Curse“, it’s always welcome news around here when this Argentinian black/death metal band surfaces with new music. The latest welcome news is that on June 23rd Infernal Curse will release their third album in a career that now spans 15 years. The name of the new one (a classic example of truth in advertising) is Revelations Beyond Insanity, and it will arrive via Iron Bonehead Productions.

If you haven’t yet explored this group’s evolving discography, it’s a hell of a trip. There are definite through-lines — bestial barbarity and barely controlled chaos among them — but the band have also moved in more mind-bending directions, using their undeniable savagery as a morphing vehicle for spawning blood-congealing hallucinations and visions of hideous grandeur. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: UKĆ — “UNCERTAINTY”

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May 172023
 

I first encountered the music of UKĆ in March of this year thanks to a prompt from Rennie Resmini in his most recent entry at starkweather’s SubStack. It concerned a single song named “Uchodząc” (“Fading Away”) from a then-forthcoming album and read as follows:

“I’ll be damned if the intro to the new track from Poland’s Ukć ‘Uchodz​ą​c‘ isn’t distinctly Bathory – Hammerheart meets Swans – “Will We Survive”. Great track that melds this melodic edge and fierce black metal. Looking forward to how this new album shapes up. This is monumental, epic stuff quickly following on the heels of last year’s Przemijanie.”

I probably didn’t need to say anything more about “Uchodząc“, but of course I did. I wrote then: “In its remarkably varied sounds, you’ll find bone-rattling drumwork and spine-jolting riffage, as well as sensations of harrowing and scintillating grandeur complemented by horn-like and chime-like tones, plus striking vocal intensity (along with gloomy spoken words and some singing) — and a lilting acoustic melody that’s sublime.”

Having listened, I wanted to know about the lyrics.  Because they were in Polish, I resorted to Google Translate, which told me that the song was about a child’s yearning to live, to learn, to love, within a twisted reality that’s “blind, deaf, stupid, indifferent”, and brutally kicks hope in the face. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PANDRADOR — “NITHSTANG OF SLEIPNIR”

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May 162023
 

The “post death metal” band Pandrador hail from Poland but for their forthcoming second album Seiðr (set for release by Pagan Records on May 26th) they have again drawn inspiration from the heritage of Scandinavian culture. But anyone who guesses they’re about to hear “Viking metal” needs to think again.

The narrative of the album is very much a contemporary heroic poem, not a pedantic leafing through the pages of ancient histories and poems or musical paeans to the glories of Valhalla but a challenging examination of tradition that uses it as a jumping-off point into disturbed reflections about human culture as it now exists (worldwide) and what the future might bring (if we have one).

It’s worth spending a few more minutes about Seiðr‘s conception, because this is one of those albums where the thematic content and the music aren’t really separable. As the advance press describes it: “They complement each other, set the pace and mood for each other. The album spirals through a spectrum of emotions, from unbridled rage, through denial, painful understanding and powerlessness in the face of one’s own tragedy, to the final statement – ‘too late.'” Continue reading »

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