AN NCS PREMIERE: LAVA INVOCATOR — “PSYCHO-TERROR WORLDWIDE”

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Apr 172023
 

When the Ukrainian black metal band Lava Invocator released their debut album Mörk in March 2017 Russia had already illegally “annexed” Crimea, and pro-Russian “separatists” had declared “independence” in the eastern region of Donbas, leading to persistent fighting that had killed thousands. But at that time Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was still five years away. Now, of course it is a brutal reality.

And it was in the midst of that brutal reality that Lava Invocator wrote and recorded their second album, and gave it a name inspired by what was happening around them and in the world at large: Signs Of Apocalypse.

You can imagine the harrowing destruction of modern warfare when listening to the album’s music, and you’d expect nothing less from a band named Lava Invocator. But their music is far more multi-faceted than that. There’s a fascinating dynamism in the songwriting, a compelling use of melody, and the generation of mood-changing atmosphere, not to mention a lot of attention-seizing instrumental inventiveness.

We have an excellent demonstration of all this in “Psycho-Terror Worldwide“, the song we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s April 20 co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and The Ritual Productions (Netherlands). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FIAT NOX — “OPIUM TO INSIDIOUS SLUMBER II”

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Apr 172023
 

In 2021 we had the honor of premiering In Contemptuous Defiance, a new EP by the German black metal band Fiat Nox, which followed their 2021 debut album The Archive of Nightmares. In an accompanying review we wrote that the EP “further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies”. In Contemptuous Defiance was also home to a song (“Amok Hymn“) that we named to our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Allowing no grass to grow beneath their iron-shod hooves, Fiat Nox followed that EP with another one in 2022 — Demanifestation (Hymns of Destruction and Nothingness). Unfolding across three tracks and 30 minutes, it provided a bracing amalgam of blistering and blasting blackened fury, engrossing melodies, and frightening, esoteric atmosphere worthy of the record’s magnificently hellish cover art.

With their creative fires still burning hot, Fiat Nox have readied yet another EP for release later this month. Entitled Opium To Insidious Slumber, it consists of two songs, and today we’re premiering a lyric video for the second of those — “Opium To Insidious Slumber II“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TEITAN — “INSECTOID”

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Apr 142023
 

The Dutch black metal band Teitan got its start in 2008 as a collaboration of two Dutch teenagers, Devi and Damon. Inspired by chaos, and the antecedents of Marduk, Dark Funeral, and Mayhem, they put out a demo the next year, which Devi calls “crappy”, and then Teitan seemed to die a sudden death.

Devi Hisgen joined other bands, later started Cthuluminati, and got increasingly into aspects of psychedelic music, but it turned out that the love for black metal never vanished. And thus 10 years after the demise of Teitan it was reborn, this time as Devi‘s solo project. 2019 brought the debut album Weight of the Void, and two singles and an EP named Vákuum surfaced in 2021 and 2022. And now a second album is on the way.

The new album reinforces the impression of the other more recent releases that Teitan has become much more interested in experimentation than simply following in the footsteps of BM forebears. And we should note that Void Wanderer and Onism, the two labels that will release the new album In Oculus Abyss, apply the genre label “Psychotic Black Metal”. Perhaps you’ll understand why when you listen to “Insectoid“, the song we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MESMUR — “CHTHONIC”

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Apr 122023
 

The debate over whether human beings have souls has endured for millennia and will endure for millennia more (assuming humanity survives that long). It has been a mainstay of philosophical and theological discourse, and scientists have intruded as well, with explanations rooted in the chemistry and electricity of the brain.

The debate won’t end, and not just because the hypothesis and its rejection are both un-provable at some level, but also because of the unyielding hope that some essence of us will survive the death of the body. In the midst of all the agonies that life brings our way, many people have always wondered, “Really, is this all there is?“, and with varying degrees of conviction insist, “It can’t be!”

Mesmur‘s new album Chthonic doesn’t directly address this age-old question. Thematically, it’s “a collection of paranormal horror tales” that speak “of fabled entities making contact through the veil of sleep, summoning prey to subterranean depths, or haunting a post-apocalyptic landscape” (to borrow from the PR materials).

And yet the music is so deeply stirring in its effects that it might make some people think it’s connecting with something within that has no physical existence or explanation, but so daunting that it could be understood as delivering the terrible message that nothing survives the end of breath, or that if something does survive it will find that only horror awaits. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAVE MOTH — “PARALYTIC LOVE”

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Apr 112023
 

These days the phrase “catch and kill” has connotations of schemes to buy up embarrassing news about bloated political figures and then bury it. But it’s also a phrase that leaped into our heads when listening to Cave Moth‘s new EP Paralytic Love. This time it’s us that are being caught and killed. The catching employs lures of different kinds that are damned difficult to resist. The killing occurs in equally ingenious (one might also say aberrant) ways.

The whole experience, though separated into 8 tracks, comes to an abrupt end less than 8 minutes after it begins. It seems longer, like there’s some time-dilation effect happening, maybe because it’s so packed to the gills with mad, head-spinning permutations — which become the lures. The songs rush and rampage with centrifugal force, but simultaneously bamboozle the listener’s higher faculties with the whipping whirligig of genres and sounds that feed into the chaos. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THANATOMASS — “SORCERY OF HADES”

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Apr 112023
 

Thanatomass are returning with a new record, and anyone who’s heard their previous material will know what that means: The gates of Hell are about to be blasted open again, and we’re about to be thrown inside.

Imagining what Hell must be like has been a constant theme of heavy metal bands since early days, but the new music of Thanatomass is so deliriously violent and berserk, and so steeped in an atmosphere of the hideously supernatural, that you might begin to get the chilling suspicion that these Russian black metal deviants have really been there.

And thus it’s no surprise that Thanatomass named their debut album Hades, and who could ask for a more gob-smacking visual to accompany it than what Dávid Glomba has rendered for the album cover and the interior artwork. Maybe he’s been there too? Continue reading »

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 »

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