AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DARK HALL — “CHANGING WEATHER”

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Aug 252023
 

Most visitors here know that we often delight in musical horrors of different kinds — roaring and shrieking voices; percussion that resembles the discharge of devastating weaponry; guitars that sound like whirring bone saws  or sledgehammers pounding concrete; and moods of menace, mayhem, and abysmal agony.

But today we share a delight of a very different kind — four very talented individuals embarked on a head-spinning musical adventure, reveling in their instrumental mastery but with no more apparent effort than what’s required to breathe in and breathe out. The chance to watch them all do what they do makes the smiles even broader. (There’s still no clean singing, nor singing of any kind.)

There’s also a tale behind this song and video. The tale itself is also a delight, and we’ll begin there. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEVIL’S HOUR — “BEERLETHICS”

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Aug 252023
 

Back in January we helped slap the ass of newborn 2023 and get the baby screaming through our premiere of the title song from Black n´Punk Marauders, a debut EP by the German band Devil’s Hour.

As the record’s name signaled, the EP’s music was a cauldron of sound mainly influenced by Punk, Rock, and First Wave Black Metal bands from the ’80s and ’90s, but Devil’s Hour also masterfully pulled from wellsprings of old-school speed metal and classic heavy metal. And as feral and ferocious as the music was, the EP quickly proved that Devil’s Hour know how to write songs that are also highly infectious.

Since the release of that EP the band’s vocalist Wild Rogan deoarted, but they decided to forge ahead as a four-piece, with guitarist Burt Cocaine stepping into the vocal role, as he had done before in the band’s live shows.

Before they were Devil’s Hour the band had a different name — Sexrex. Under that older name they put out a 2020 EP named Beerlethics. And now with the revised lineup mentioned above they decided to re-record that EP’s title song. It’s being digitally released today by the German label Crawling Chaos, and we’re bringing it to you now, to help viciously kick 2023 careening toward the end of the year. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AUGURIUM — “UNEARTHLY WILL”

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Aug 242023
 

One way to think of the Canadian band Augurium‘s new album Unearthly Will is as a tour through a potentially deadly wildlife refuge of arcane and even astral origins. It provides close encounters with a variety of musical beasts, some more extravagantly colorful than others (but still with teeth bared) and some more savagely hostile. By the end you might be relieved that you didn’t become a meal for the menagerie, yet electrified by all the close calls — and by the sweeping splendor.

Augurium‘s name is a Latin word for omen, and Omen was the name of the band’s 2017 debut EP, which was an omen of things to come but not entirely predictive. Adorned by an eye-catching cover of an intriguing young woman with hands ending in talons, and introduced by a sinister symphonic intro, it delivered a brand of death metal that was equal parts blistering, bludgeoning, and imperiously hellish, anchored by vicious tremolo-reliant riffing and berserk vocal monstrosity, and accented by melodies of cruel menace, pestilential terror, oppressive gloom, and demonic violence.

From there Augurium moved more in the direction of brutal death metal with their 2018 debut album Unhallowed Ascendance, but with more dynamism than is often found in that genre, even more fully embracing bombastic, thuggish grooves, the ugly distortion of eviscerating riffage, melodies of illness and agony, and bursts of obliterating mayhem. Yet still, the music had plenty of eerie, insidious, and sometimes surprising melodic elements that helped shroud it in an atmosphere that seemed genuinely infernal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FOSSILIZATION –“EON”

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Aug 232023
 

Fossilization refers to the very slow natural process in which organic material becomes mineralized, eventually transforming it into stone. It takes a dead thing and makes it deader.

In some ways it makes sense that the Brazilian band Fossilization (whose members are also a part of the stupendous sludge/death/doom metal band Jupiterian) chose that name. Their music is stone heavy and stone hard, and the specter of Death looms large over their lyrics and their music –which is a particularly grim and devastating form of death metal.

On the other hand, the music itself is very far from a cold dead thing. Both its pacing and its effects on a listener proceed much faster than the transformation for which the band are named.

Like the specter of Death, Fossilization have a debut album looming on the horizon. Entitled Leprous Daylight, it’s set for release on September 8th by Everlasting Spew Records. So far, two tracks from the album have been revealed, and today we present a third one — “Eon“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FARSCAPE — “PURGED AND FORGOTTEN”

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Aug 212023
 

The Brazilian thrash metal band Farscape have a long and storied career, one that can be traced back to 1998. Beginning in 2001 their recording discharges came hot and heavy, straight through numerous splits and three albums. But after the last of those albums, 2013’s Primitive Blitzkrieg, Farscape fell silent.

Now, however, a long decade later, Farscape return, and remarkably with the same lineup, whose members spent the intervening years in other endeavors that included the likes of Diabolic Force, Atomic Roar, Apokalyptic Raids, Sodomizer, and later Whipstriker.

Back together in the Farscape harness, they’re releasing a new album named Purged and Forgotten through Dying Victims Productions on September 22nd, and today we’re bringing you the album’s diabolically electrifying title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CONFLAGRACIÓN — “DILUCIDANDO EL AUGURIO DE LOS MALOS EXPÍRITUS”

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Aug 212023
 

We have a most fascinating piece of music with which to bless and curse your ears today, an experience that causes muscles to throb but minds to turn to smoke, and you may feel the cold fingers of apparitions caressing your neck as they bare their teeth behind you.

That’s just one way of trying to capture the music of “Dilucidando el Augurio de los Malos Espíritus“. Your own imaginations, awakened by the song, will probably supply others, especially if you listen in a dark cool place (catacombs would be ideal) only lit by candles.

The song is the title track from a debut album by the Salvadoran band Conflagración, which will soon be co-released by Morbid Skull Records and DeathRockerSorrow Records, and we’re presenting it with a video that provides a chilling companion to the spookiness and venom in the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GIVE ME THE GRAVE — “GODLESS”

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Aug 172023
 

Today we’re helping bring the first new music from a new band into the public consciousness. The band is Give Me the Grave, and they’re a trio from Ohio and Pennsylvania who came together to form the band just this year. The lineup features current members of Plaguewielder and Wide Eyes and a former member of Nova Prospect.

They’ve recorded an EP’s worth of songs, entitled Mind In Decay, and what we’ve got for you today is the first single off the EP, a track named “Godless“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LEPRA — “OLDE GROWTH”

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Aug 162023
 

Hailing from Portland, Maine, the trio who call themselves Lepra tell you right away to expect unconventional music: They call their creations “black velvet metal”, a potentially risky choice, in association with a genre whose usual trappings lean more toward spikes and iron gauntlets.

But the independence from convention goes deeper than that somewhat ambiguous characterization: Lepra don’t use guitars, though it’s pretty clear they could if they wanted to. Instead, they rely on such instruments as a Wurlitzer organ and flutes, along with a vivid bass, equally vivid drumming, and vocals that are both harsh and clean.

And on their debut album Devil’s Blood In Her Tongue, they also include a guest (Caleb Chase of Potion Seller) who performs harp, cello, and melodica on a song.

If you’re unfamiliar with Lepra you might now be jumping to the conclusion that they’re some kind of potentially dreamy folk-metal band, but that would be too conventional as well, as you’re about to learn for yourselves through our premiere of a song off the new album called “Olde Growth“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: 3RD WAR COLLAPSE — “FOMITES”

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Aug 152023
 

We live in a world where oceans no longer stand as vast barriers to human interaction, and that’s as true in music as in anything else. Witness the union of two Brazilians — guitarist/vocalist Cris Martinez and bassist/vocalist Juan Azevedo — and Finnish drummer Kalle Lindfors in the death metal unit known as 3rd War Collapse.

Martinez and Lindfors first joined forces in this formation (along with Azevedo‘s predecessor) to record the band’s debut album Damnatus, which was released in 2021 by Guttural Brutality Productions. With the new lineup, 3rd War Collapse now have a sophomore album named Catastrophic Epicenter that’s set for release on August 24th by Lethal Scissor Records.

Lethal Scissor‘s advance publicity heralds the new album as “a much-needed hammer to the face, a riff-driven assault which delivers ten tracks of brutal death metal mixed with elements of grindcore, thrash and old school heaviness.” The world has already witnessed the album’s title track, courtesy of a premiere at Toilet Ov Hell, along with a pair of other songs, and today we’re revealing yet another one — a track named “Fomites“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COMA CLUSTER VOID — “SELF AND SHADOW BECOME ONE”

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Aug 152023
 

Coma Cluster Void is a Berlin-based death metal band founded in 2013/2014. After igniting flurries of intense attention in 2016 and 2017, both here and elsewhere, they seemed to become reclusive, at least in their recording output.

Those previous flurries were whipped up by their 2016 debut album Mind Cemeteries and then their follow-up EP the next year, a single long song named Thoughts From A Stone.

But at last, the band (with a revised lineup) are preparing to release a new album, this one named Absurd Romanticism. The first titillating sign of that was a single called “Plague Devourer“, but that was two years ago. Now we have fresh new signs, not only the cover art, the track list, and a release date, but also the song we’re premiering today — “Self and Shadow Become One“. Continue reading »

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