AN NCS PREMIERE: TOMBSTONE — “GUARDIANS OF LAND AND SEA”

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Feb 202023
 

“Seven songs of scathing black metal mysticism from one of Indonesia’s most enigmatic bands”. That’s the concise introduction to Tombstone‘s new album To the Existence of Light proffered by Gutter Prince Cabal, the label that will release the record on March 1st of this year.

It turns out to be an accurate evocation of this Jakarta duo’s music in the follow-up to their 2020 debut full-length The Awakening of Darkness, as you shall learn for yourselves through our premiere of the song “Guardians of Land and Sea“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERMINOUS SERPENT — “SERAPHIM FALLS”

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Feb 172023
 

Many of us, when reading about Verminous Serpent‘s lineup, didn’t need to know anything more in order to be drawn to the music, like iron filings to a big magnet. Knowing only that the band includes Slidhr‘s Joseph Deegan on guitar, Malthusian‘s Matt Bree on drums, and Primordial‘s A.A. Nemtheanga on vocals and bass, was more than enough to ignite interest and intrigue.

What their collaboration has spawned is a 41-minute album named The Malign Covenant, a title that proves to be entirely fitting for this trio’s own collaborative covenant. Not for naught does the advance publicity from Amor Fati Productions (who will release the album on March 17th) describe the music as “a rippling soundworld of lurking dread and sulfurous tension, where intensity is measured not by speed or density but by the hideous sensations that shapeshift within the listener’s subconscious”.

The music proves to be an alchemical cauldron of black metal that’s in some measure primitive and preternatural, muscle-moving and spine-tingling, but also well-calculated to create horrifying visions of mesmeric power, capable of both ascending into vistas of world-threatening calamity and descending into lightless pits of misery and death unending. No pun intended, it makes reflexive and riveting connections to dark, primordial energies that still lurk within us.

As a vivid example of what we’re trying to describe, today we present the album’s second advance track, “Seraphim Falls“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARV — “FURY”

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Feb 172023
 

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was “heavy metal”. Then thrash, doom, death metal, black metal, and all the ways in which hardcore began to hybridize with metal. Over time, the genres continued to divide, subdivide, intertwine, and absorb DNA from a universe of non-metal music. Metal has been segmented and categorized with a multitude of ever-expanding genre- and sub-genre labels, so many that we may soon deplete the storehouse of hyphens and slashes. But hey, there’s always room for one more, isn’t there?

How about “WAKE THE FUCK UP!” metal? You probably get the idea. Not so much a stylistic descriptor as a description of impact — the kind of explosive, blood-rushing musical cyclone that will kick your adrenaline into overdrive even when you think your brain couldn’t be more foggy or your ass dragging any more miserably.

What’s making us think about this is the electrifying video we’re now presenting for a heart-pounding song by the Oslo-based band ARV. Its name is “Fury“, and that is absolutely truth in advertising. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASTRIFEROUS — “OMINOUS AND MALEVOLENT”

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Feb 162023
 

It is a regrettable but inarguable fact that metal bands in many countries outside the commercial behemoths of North America and Western Europe face serious challenges in reaching waiting ears, notwithstanding the explosive spread of streaming services and other digital platforms. If anything, the ease with which underground bands and labels can digitally launch music has just made it harder for truly talented bands to get noticed, like nuggets of gold in a flooding river.

Which brings us to the Costa Rican death metal band Astriferous. It would go too far to say that they are unknown, because their pair of demos in 2019 and 2020, their 2020 EP The Lower Levels of Sentience, and their 2021 split with countrymen Bloodsoaked Necrovoid did earn them devoted fans well beyond their home shores. Yet it’s fair to say that they are still further below the radar than their music deserves.

Hopefully that is all about to change, thanks to a stunningly impressive debut album named Pulsations from the Black Orb that’s now set for international co-release in March by the well-known labels Me Saco Un Ojo and Pulverised Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE GRAFHOND — “GEFLUISTER”

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Feb 162023
 

We could have a long (and probably inconclusive) conversation about why so much of second-wave black metal spawned descriptions that characterized the music as “cold” or “icy”, and why those descriptions persisted into the present day as thousands of bands carried the traditions forward.

The answer doesn’t seem obvious. A lot of the music might strike first-time observers as fiery and frenzied, more violently confrontational, savage, and nihilistic than the stuff of freezing moons. Riotous blast-beats, boiling tremolo riffs, and scalding screams don’t seem calculated to lower the temperature.

One explanation might lie in the grim and grievous emotions sometimes channeled by such sonic onslaughts. Where those sounds create moods of unyielding cruelty, despair, and the surrender of all hope, or the merciless presence of inevitable death, then it becomes more evident why people feel no warmth despite the super-heated deliveries.

Such thoughts have come to mind in listening to the music of the Dutch band Grafhond, a duo consisting of Graaf Graf and Nachtvorst who first began their Grafhond collaboration in 2017, resolved to seek a deeper and darker emotional connection in their black metal than some of the more formulaic, antiseptic, or sunlit styles that have branched away in the modern age. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ISOLANT — “DRAIN”

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Feb 142023
 

Roughly seven years have passed since Isolant released their self-titled, album-length, debut demo. Those seven years have not been kind to the world, and (to put it mildly) Isolant aren’t in a kind-hearted mood either these days. Their new EP Drain is rightly summed up by the Sentient Ruin label as “6 lightless tracks of misery-infused, death-worshipping, and spine-breaking downtuned crush-depth, clad in enveloping atmospherics and scarred with an immanent sense of hopelessness and doom”.

For this new EP original member Max Furst (Malleus, The Watcher, ex-Morne) performed guitars, bass and drum programming, and he was joined by vocalist M. Alagna (Abstracter, Atrament, Ash Priso, Somnolent) and Spanish noisemaker M. Souto (Suspiral, Sepelio, S.E.K.H., Arkaik Excruciation, Excurse, ex-Bodybag).

What they’ve accomplished together on Drain has also been accurately summed up as a fusion of “cold and bleak industrial metal of acts like Spine Wrench, Godflesh, Scorn (Vae Solis era), and Skin Chamber with the atonal percussive grimness of early Swans, and the crawling heaviness and abysmal atmospherics of death-doom”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AS LIGHT DIES — “LA ASCENSIÓN”

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Feb 142023
 

More than eight and a half years ago we highlighted the Spanish black metal band As Light Dies as an example of a group who had surprisingly and successfully incorporated an extravagant variety of musical interests into their creations, exuberantly pushing them into the realms of the avant garde. At that time, the occasion was our premiere of a head-spinning song from a full-length record named The Love Album – Volume I, which was released in October 2014.

As Light Dies are now returning with their next album after this long hiatus. Their fourth one overall, its name is The Laniakea Architecture vol.II, and it will be released on March 9th via the Darkwoods label. It is described as “their most complex and multifaceted album in their whole career”, which is kind of a jaw-dropping thing to contemplate for those of us familiar with their previous bewildering and bedazzling works.

Two songs from the album have already surfaced, and today we present a lyric video (in Spanish) for a third one, so that you can judge this claim for yourselves. Its name is “La Ascensión“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KOLD — “VINDEN, DEN KALDER DIT NAVN”

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Feb 132023
 

 

The Danish duo Kold made an auspicious start in the summer of 2021 with their self-titled debut EP released by the respected German label Vendetta Records. Over the course of four substantial tracks totaling nearly 40 minutes, they earned their name, winding through ice-bound realms of black metal, both bleak and brittle, desolate and haunting, but also thrusting listeners into blizzard-storms of harrowing intensity and elevating them into daunting vistas of panoramic scale.

The EP’s songs were long excursions but never monotonous, thanks to the band’s already well-formed talent for moving the songs through striking contrasts of momentum and mood, and an aptitude for crafting moving melodies of dark and formidable power. Depressive gloom might shroud the music with a heavy mantle in one phase, and in another it might ring like ethereal chimes, beautiful as well as chilling, or race like a dangerous mountain avalanche.

That EP made such a great first impression that we’re happy to report that Kold now have a debut album named Intet Mere Er set for a March 3rd release by the same Vendetta Records. To help spread the word we’re now premiering a captivating album track named “Vinden, Den Kalder Dit Navn”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AGLO — “COLLECTOR”

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Feb 082023
 

 

If I had had my wits about me I would have asked where Melbourne-based Aaron Osborne got the name for his solo death metal project AGLO. It sounds like “aglow”, but the only glow generated from the music is the kind of radiation from thermonuclear detonations that turns stone into molten glass. “Aglo” is also the Esperanto term for “eagle”, and there is indeed a ruthless raptor-like quality to the music as well (with listeners playing the role of field mice).

But it probably refers to neither of these things, especially since AGLO is inspired by Star Trek, and especially by the Borg, those cybernetic organisms whose mission is to assimilate the technology and organisms of other species into the hive-mind Collective that’s intent on achieving a kind of soul-devouring perfection. Perhaps AGLO is an acronym… and perhaps we’ll find out and let you know later.

But for now the focus should be on AGLO‘s new EP Into the Maze, which will be released by the wonderfully named label Gutter Prince Cabal on February 16th, and even more specifically on the song we’re premiering today — “Collector“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE GIANT’S FALL — “DARK INSIDE”

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Feb 062023
 

In the annals of Greek mythology Talos was a giant bronze automaton, created by the god Hephaestus at the direction of Zeus, who gave Talos to the king of Crete to protect the island from invaders. To do so, Talos marched around the island three times every day and hurled boulders at approaching enemy ships.

At his core, Talos had one long vein running from his neck to his ankle, where the vein was closed shut by a bronze bolt. Within it flowed a mysterious life source of the gods that the Greeks called ichor. Talos met his end in the tale of the Argonauts, when the sorceress Medea induced Talos to dislodge the bolt, causing the ichor to flow out, exsanguinating him.

We summarize the tale of Talos because it is the conceptual core of the self-titled debut album by The Giant’s Fall, a Greek project that’s the experimental solo work of Mikebass (ex – Lucky Funeral & Bone To Rust) and whose name itself seems connected to the myth. The album’s song titles themselves point to the connection: “Ichor”, “Dark Inside”, “The End of Talos”, “The Giant King”, and “Hades Calling”, although it becomes clear that the album’s themes aren’t limited to the myth.

The Giant’s Fall was first released digitally by the band in December 2018, and then digitally by FYC Records on December 25, 2022. But FYC Records will also be releasing a limited CD edition of the album on February 28th, and to help spread the word we’re now premiering an official video for the album track “Dark Inside“. Continue reading »

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