AN NCS PREMIERE: LURK — “THE BLOOMING”

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Jan 202023
 

Paolo Girardi somehow managed to reach new heights of horror when he painted the cover art for Lurk‘s new album Aegis. With astonishing detail he created a nightmare vision of a dragon made of macabre creatures emerging from the maw of an equally hideous monster (from which a waterfall of wraiths and demons descends), swooping down toward a graveyard of risen dead.

It’s a fitting presentation for an album that is itself an experience in dread and revulsion, panic and despondency, one that creates harrowing otherworldly visions and inflicts immense traumatizing brutality. Paradoxically, Lurk also succeed in making their blood-freezing and bone-smashing musical excursions spellbinding. They describe their own conceptions this way:

“Aegis embodies the power of discord feeding the individual. The songs roll out in sporadic forms of different persons, under the guidance of furor and perseverance. Those stem from all things which are against divinity. No void too deep or mind too obscure, no action too human.”

The album is still fairly far away, with a release date of April 7th set by Transcending Obscurity Records, but there are already tangible reasons to get greedy for it, with a couple of songs already sprung from the crypt and one more we’re presenting today. This new one is named “The Blooming“. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: BLUE HOLOCAUST / MORGUE BREATH

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Jan 192023
 

 

(Today we’re bringing you a whip-fast blast of grind released by a trio of labels, with an introduction written by Christopher Luedtke.)

Today we have a double threat of menacing grindcore. Blue Holocaust and Morgue Breath have teamed up to release After The Fall of Man / Hongo Atroz, both bands each knocking out five tracks of blasting fury.

First up is goregrinder Blue Holocaust. Hailing out of Albi, Occitanie in France, the one man band has been grinding since 2001, but has also released other projects such as Vomi Noir and Pulmonary Fibrosis. Blue Holocaust has also released three full-lengths, and a number of splits with bands such as Expurgo, Lysergic Rites of Sadopriest, Houkago Grind Time, and others.

The Blue Holocaust side is raw, punchy goregrind. It has the gurgle, raw goregrind sound but without the vocals sounding like they’re drowning in fluids. The songs also let in some death metal ala Mortician such as “Body-melting Thermomuclear Endgame” and “Wastelands of the Year Omega.” The solos are quick but wailing. And much in the spirit of grind/goregrind it’s over before you know it. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SÍR – “MACHINE PLEASURE”

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Jan 192023
 

What we’re about to lead you into is a kind of music that’s somewhat rare for our site. It includes occasional elements of black metal, but is even more slanted toward doom and depressive rock. It includes gritty and high-flown singing as well as lycanthropic snarls. It rarely races and is often simple, but is also capable of becoming elaborate. It has the capacity to mesmerize in different and often unsettling ways, and joy and hope are dim at best and only fleeting.

The subject is Your Star Will Collapse, the debut album of a Hungarian solo project named Sír, which follows a first EP named Cosmic Grave released in 2020. We’re told this about the band’s name and conception: “Sír has equivocal meaning. The most obvious one is grave, but also means crying. Together they represent grief, loss of a loved one, it is a deep emotional state. It has nothing to do with the undead or other fantasy themes, it’s all about living people and their struggles.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD SOUL ALLIANCE — “NEW NORMAL NIHILIST”

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Jan 182023
 

We’ve enjoyed watching the relentless forward progress of the Canadian death metal band Dead Soul Alliance, from the first self-titled demo in 2011 to the 2013 EP Proud To Die (reviewed here), the 2017 EP Slaves to the Apocalypse (reviewed here), and the band’s debut album, Behind the Scenes (for which we hosted a song premiere here). And now we have a new reason to howl the band’s praises because they’ve got a second album storming toward a February 17 release by the Cryptorium9 label.

Once again, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Wolven Deadsoul is in charge, again joined by drummer E.H., and together they’ve created a swift nine-song, 32-minute experience that bears a fitting name: Spiralling to Lunacy. How fitting is it? You’re about to find out, through our premiere of the album track “New Normal Nihilist“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEPULCRUM — “SCHIZOPHRENIC AMPUTATION”

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Jan 182023
 

The Chilean death metal band Sepulcrum (from Puerto Montt) made their public recording debut in 2020 with an explosive five-song EP named Corpse Dividing Holes, drawing influence from such classic ’90s death metal bands as Morbid Angel, Deicide, Mortem (Rus), Morta Skuld, Pestilence, and Death. They followed that up with numerous shows in the south of the country, and also turned their fiendish talents to the preparation of a full-length.

That album is now complete and bears the name Lamentation of Immolated Souls. Emblazoned with eye-catching cover art by Francisco Ramírez (Morkt Artist), it’s set for release on March 17th by the cult Mexican label Chaos Records on vinyl, CD, and cassette tape, joined in the release by the Chilean label Burning Coffin Records (CD and tape), licensed by Burning Coffin and Canometal Records.

To help spread the word, today we’re premiering a berserk bonfire of a song named “Schizophrenic Amputation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PANDER — “BREAK THE OATH”

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Jan 172023
 

Even in the most hostile, harrowing, and abrasive off-shoots of metal, the power of the riff stands tall. Distinctive riffs create detectable patterns in a song, even when they’re not also carrying melodies or rhythmic hooks. And even a site such as ours can’t deny the power of a strong vocal melody. Harsh vocals can vitally contribute to the creation of an emotional response or become percussive instruments themselves, but singing is often a more potent ingredient in channeling a mood or making a song memorable.

These ingredients of music, even in its more extreme variants, create instinctual connections to the human mind. Vast amounts of academic research and philosophical speculation have been devoted to trying to explain why this is, but whatever the answer, the connection seems to be primordial, likely pre-dating language or even the full evolutionary development of the human brain as it now exists. It is a universal language that everyone understands, innately.

Of course, complex and discordant music (and noise) has its own appeal, for reasons that are maybe even less well-understood, but it’s those primordial connections that often prove most formidable.

Which brings us to Breath the Oath, the forthcoming second album by the Dutch stoner doom trio Pander that we’re premiering today in advance of its January 20 release by Argonauta Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOMAD — “REVOLUTION”

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Jan 162023
 

Straight outta British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley comes the death metal band Nomad and their debut album The Mountain, which is home to songs that are both heavy-grooved and technically adventurous, both fiendishly melodic and strikingly savage, and with a wide-ranging vocal interplay that features three different performers.

As a vivid sign of what Nomad have done with The Mountain, we’re going right to an electrifying and politically charged new song named “Revolution”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRANDIOSA MUERTE — “DESTINO”

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Jan 162023
 

In the video you’re about to witness, esoteric undertakings unfold. By candlelight Tarot cards are turned, texts are examined, a potion is made. Under overcast skies a hooded figure with a gnarled staff and inhuman talons staggers through befogged forests. A spade parts the ground, to unearth a buried medallion bearing the pentagram sign.

The words of the song also delve into ancient occult mysteries. As described by the music’s creator, the Costa Rican musician and producer Max Gutierrez Sanchez, here in his guise as Hermès, the sole creator behind Grandiosa Muerte: “”Destino” is an evocation of the ancient knowledge of the Mayan world, intimately linked with the Sacred Fire and where the figure of the Nahuales, spiritual forces that contain and transmit the perfect human being archetype, emerge in an imposing manner.”

More specifically, the lyrics “invoke Nahual Ajpu, the Solar Warrior and Sorcerer, and intermingle it with other incarnations extracted from the Popol Vuh to materialize in a mental preparation ritual before accessing the domains of man, where the music emerges as a continuous flow of melodies and hypnotic rhythms that keeps in the fast lane of rampant ferocity.”

That preview of the music is no exaggeration. In its rampant ferocity, “Destino” is breathtaking in its electrifying power and intensity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TERRESTRIAL HOSPICE — “MEMOIR”

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Jan 132023
 

The forthcoming second album by the Polish duo Terrestrial Hospice is named Caviary to the General. Don’t let your eyes pass over that name too quickly, or you might think it reads “Cavalry” or maybe “Calvary”, or maybe that was just us. The actual name sent us scurrying to a dictionary, which revealed that “caviary” is a place for keeping or raising cavies — which turns out to be a family of rodents native to South America and includes the domestic guinea pig, wild cavies, and the largest living rodent, the capybara.

Well, it’s an intriguing title, the meaning of which we can only guess at. The title of the band’s first album, Indian Summer Brought Mushroom Clouds, was also one you don’t soon forget, and the sonic holocaust that album presented (which we commented about here) wasn’t the kind of thing that passed quickly from memory either. It was such a wild and extravagantly savage black metal riot that it was a bit scary to read that the new album is “arguably even more extreme“.

Is it? Well, you’ll have a chance to think about that yourself (once you reassemble your mind) because today we’re premiering a song from it named “Memoir“, and reprising a previously released song named “In the Streams of Phlegethon“, in advance of the record’s February 10 uncaging by Ancient Dead Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BODYFARM — “THE SWAMP”

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Jan 132023
 

The harrowing video we’re presenting today for Bodyfarm‘s “The Swamp” is open to interpretation. It may be that the modern-day protagonist is suffering from a psychotic or schizophrenic episode, and that what he sees and experiences is a figment of his own mind. Or it may be that he is caught in some kind of time loop or state of possession, in which he really does frantically trade places with a soldier fighting for his life on an old battlefield. Or it may be a metaphor for the violent battlefield of human life today and in all ages.

However you choose to interpret it, it’s an unsettling thing to see, but the power of the song itself is if anything even more massive and emotionally devastating. It’s also the kind of song that has the hallmarks of an instant classic, a melding of crushing death metal heaviness, ravaging vocals, and intensely affecting melody, and a reminder of just how daunting a force Bodyfarm still are, after more than a dozen years following their inception. Continue reading »

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