AN NCS PREMIERE: SPEEDWHORE — “HOLOGRAM”

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Apr 242023
 

This is one of those times when it feels right to just dive headlong into the song we’re premiering, and then come back to fill in the details after you’ve had a chance to extricate yourself from those giant talons on the album cover and attempt to catch your breath.

It takes almost no time at all for “Hologram” to create a mood of feral, lusting exultation. The drumming is loose and raucous. The high-toned riffing writhes, jolts, and rises up in manifestations of diabolical glory. The bass tones feel like bubbling madness. When the vocals finally arrive, they sound like a big rabid beast that can’t be brought to heel.

The song rocks damned hard but it also takes off like a scampering devil-punk careening off the walls as the guitar screams, and the band also launch into a bracing gallop as the foundation for a delirious guitar solo that kicks the music’s diabolical energy further into the blood-spraying red zone. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DHISHTI — “MARUDEPAWILLA”

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Apr 242023
 

For most people reading these words the island nation of Sri Lanka is at least half a world away geographically, and many worlds away in its history, culture, and the roots of its internal divisions. Life Is Suffering, the forthcoming third album by the Sri Lankan black metal band Dhishti, is conceptually based upon ancient traditions and practices that still exist in the country, and current ills to which they are connected. Even the band’s name invokes ancient beliefs. Here is the explanation we have been provided:

“The name Dhishti is a Sinhalese term which holds the meaning of demonic possessions. In the ancient times the people of the small Indian oceanic island of Sri Lanka believed mental illnesses are in-fact demonic processions caused by evil spirits, or Dhishti, and conducted various occult rituals and ceremonies (Thovil) to treat the effected….

“The album speaks about these beliefs, rituals and prophecies which are still to this date followed by certain groups of people…. The album’s lyrics are written in an older form of the native language, which originated over 2000 years ago. The language was selected specifically due to these rituals being originally carried out in the language of Sinhala, and to translate it into any other language would take away its originality and authenticity.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ASBEST — “CYANIDE FOR BREAKFAST”

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Apr 212023
 

The Swiss noise rock band Asbest have been moving toward the May 19 release of their new album Cyanide in leaps and bounds. Beginning last fall they dropped a single, and then leaped… coming to earth a month later with another one… and then landing with another one a few months later… and another one a few months after that. Each one has been made available digitally, and each one has been an eye-opener.

The most recent of the singles is “Cyanide for Breakfast“. It landed last month. It might be the last single before the album release by A Tree In A Field Records / Czar Of Crickets Productions, but there’s still one more Asbest landing before then — a fascinating video for that same song that we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CORPUS NECROMANTHUM — “CORPUS TACTUS”

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Apr 212023
 

Today we want to focus your attention on two new songs from the forthcoming debut album by the Costa Rican black/death metal band Corpus Necromanthum, an album described as a conceptual work that leads us “through the harrowing story of a necromancer and his forced transformation into nothing”.

The first of those songs, “Tar Uritharhain“, has been out in the world for a couple of weeks. Its overture is made of simple ingredients — the reverberation of deep booming drum, with the space between them filled with gasping sounds that might be breaths or may be the wind, and by haunted wailing tones that might or might not be human — but it very effectively creates an unearthly chill.

Having thus set their stage in a supernatural dimension, the band begin to kick the adrenaline into high gear with vicious, head-hooking riffage and neck-snapping beats. From there, things get even more unhinged. The guitars come in attacking swarms, the drums spit bullets at high speed; and monstrously imperious roars rise up from abyssal depths and elevate further into terrorizing screams.

The changes continue. The layered guitars, while relentlessly frenzied, send flames toward the heavens and create an atmosphere of frightening splendor. The drums relentlessly switch gears, and so do the spine-tingling vocals (but they sound even more insane). Melodies of despair and agony flow through the tumult in piercing tones. There’s structure in the songwriting, but the feeling of destructive chaos never really diminishes. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAEDEOUS — “MALUM SUPPLICIUM”

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Apr 202023
 

Our first in-depth exposure to the music of the Portuguese symphonic black metal band Caedeous was last year, when we premiered their third album, Obscurus Perpetua. When we did that, we advised listeners “to take your seats and get a firm grip on something solid before embarking on this journey”, because we found the album to be “a dazzling, diabolical, and disorienting trip through the imperiums of Hell”:

“The music is elaborate and unpredictable, theatrical and bombastic, sometimes breathtaking in its splendor but always as scary as your worst nightmares. Fascinating music, to be sure, but also demented and intensely unnerving.”

And now we’re re-connecting with Caedeous just one year later because they’ve made a new album, and once again we’re hosting its full streaming premiere. The name of the new one is Malum Supplicium. Like its two predecessors, it’s a concept album, one that “thematically tells horror stories inspired by Lovecraft, Barker and Alighierie‘s works — the eternal struggle between good and evil, angels and demons, heaven and hell”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SATANATH — “IMORARTO”

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Apr 202023
 

The solo project Satanath, formerly based in Russia and now ensconced in the nation of Georgia, is returning with a new album set for release on April 25th. It’s named Posthumous Album, which most people would interpret as a sign that Satanath has succumbed to death and that these tracks were left behind.

But it turns out that the meaning isn’t literal. As explained by the project’s creator Aleksey Korolyov (the owner of Satanath Records, a member of Abigorum, and former keyboardist of Taiga): “The album is posthumous in a figurative sense, since recently we all experienced death in one form or another, saying farewell to the past life.”

The title has another meaning as well. It signifies that Satanath has also moved away from the sounds of previous albums. The music on the new album is still electronic/ambient, and still carries forward the space themes of previous releases (all the songs, for example, have titles that “are made up in a complex language from the world of the Universe from where Satanath came to us”), but the style of the music is indeed markedly different, even as compared to Satanath‘s often evil and always frighteningly head-spinning 2022 album Metallized Arena – and pretty far away from anything else you’ll hear at this site Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WHYTHRE — “SCORPIONS OF SINAI”

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Apr 192023
 

We’ve been eagerly following the progress of the Seattle-based melodic death metal band Whythre ever since discovering (and then writing about) their 2018 single “Savage“, which followed up their 2015 debut album Hel’s Hollows. The next year we reviewed and premiered their explosive new EP Stillborn World here, which we introduced with these words (among many others):

“If your ass has been dragging, beaten down and disgusted by the daily grind, strapped for sleep, short on cash, and your reservoirs of hope running low as well, we’ve got a sure-fire antidote for most of those ails…. On top of recharging the energy in your depleted batteries, the songs on this EP also turn out to be damned addictive. It’s very easy, at the end, to just go back to the beginning and ride this lightning again… and again.”

And now we happily continue to follow the progress of Whythre, because they’ve got a new album on the way named Impregnate My Hate, and today we get to do another premiere — a lyric video for a track from the new album named “Scorpions of Sinai“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH — “THE PENDULUM OF NECROPATH”

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Apr 192023
 

You could say that this is Sporae Autem Yuggoth week at NCS. Yesterday we presented a very good interview of this Chilean band, which presents lots of background about how they came to be, as well as intriguing insights about their debut album …However It Still Moves, which is set for release by Personal Records on May 19th. And now we’ll help introduce you to music from the album.

As our interviewer Comrade Aleks explained in his own introduction yesterday, “Their death-doom is balanced – it’s old school, but it isn’t obsolete, it’s grim and yet it has its bright moments.” Aleks also quoted some accurate words from a press release: “‘Dark as fuck’ is one way of describing However It Still Moves, but ‘bittersweetly beautiful’ is another, depending on what minute of the hour-long album you land on – many movements and many moods, but all dripping into (and reverberating back up from) a bottomless well of despair”.

As an even more tangible sign of what the album brings us, today we’re premiering the song that appears second in the album’s track list — “The Pendulum of Necropath“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENOID — “MES ÉTRANGES PENSÉES TISSENT LEUR SOLITUDE”

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Apr 182023
 

The prolific Swiss multi-instrumental musician and vocalist Bornyhake is an artist of many musical guises, with a resume that includes nearly three-dozen bands and personal projects, both within an expansive sphere of metal and outside the boundaries altogether. Among them, the solo project Enoid is one to which he has repeatedly returned, with eight albums being released since 2006 and a ninth one now on the way.

That ninth full-length, Ô Nuit, emporte-moi !, is now scheduled to see the light of day on April 23rd via Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile). In a nutshell, it confirms that Enoid is the vehicle to which Bornyhake returns when in the mood for crushing, hate-fueled black metal ferocity. and the dominance of death It is the burning ground where its creator locks arms with revolutionary forebears from the ’90s.

And lest there be any doubt about that, we have for you today the premiere of a song from the new album named “Mes étranges pensées tissent leur solitude“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WRACK — “RUINEN”

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Apr 182023
 

The creative processes of the German black metal band Wrack are atypical. They have not been in a rush. Thirteen years have passed since the release of their debut album Gram und gleißende Wutwork, and since then they have worked simultaneously on four albums, creating numerous songs and continually revisiting them, allowing them to connect or diverge and to experience a kind of intuitive evolution. In that evolution, during which Wrack say the subconscious plays a greater role than the rational, other genre influences have been brought in.

One of the albums that have taken shape over those 13 years, Altäre der Vergänglichkeit (German for “Altars of Transience”), was released earlier this month by the Crawling Chaos label. It features guest contributions from Stef of Minas Morgul, Rigor Mortis of Hallig, and Frida Nordlys of Miscreation.

In its conception, the album “describes the spiritual atmosphere that emanates from the aesthetics of external and internal decay” — “the decay of the man-made, as well as the refuge and violence of the natural realm, draw a deeply connected, but also rapt relationship to nature”. In its expression, it provides a mixture of atmospheric black metal and death/doom, accented by acoustic guitars, 7-string guitars, and ambient drones, as well as considerable vocal variety.

What we have for you today, to help draw attention to this captivating record, is the premiere of a video for a two-part song on the album, the name of which is “Ruinen“. Continue reading »

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