AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BIZARREKULT — “BLIKKET HENNES”

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Dec 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The creation of music and its exposure to listeners is, as we all know, an inherently synergistic phenomenon. At least when the music is honest and authentic, the artist thinks something, feels something, is driven by the need to express those thoughts and emotions, maybe even as compulsively as the need to eat and drink. But the listener exposed to musical creations reacts based on their own thoughts, feelings, and histories. What they interpret, whether reflexively or through a thoughtful contemplation, is as much a function of themselves as it is the intention and spirit of the artist.

Bizarrekult is the black metal musical vehicle of Roman V., a native of Siberian Russia who moved to Norway roughly 20 years ago and then began recording music as a lone wolf, accompanying poetic verses he’d been writing since childhood. A demo emerged in 2006, followed by an early split with Theosophy, but then nothing surfaced until an EP in 2019 and then a first album in 2021, Vi overlevde (“We Survived”), followed by a second one, Den tapte krigen (“The Lost War”), in 2023.

Now a third one is on the way. Its title is Alt Som Finnes (“All There Is”), and it includes guest vocalists from Predatory Void, MØL, and Dødheimsgard. What inspired this one? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DAIDALOS — “DIS”

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Dec 162025
 

(written by Islander)

The German symphonic black metal band Daidalos was founded in 2020 by Tobias Püschner, originally as a one-man project. For the band’s debut album, The Expedition (2022), Daidalos drew inspiration from a truly harrowing tale from history, the Arctic journey led by the British explorer Sir John Franklin in 1845, an expedition that ended in disaster as Franklin’s two ships (Erebus and Terror) became trapped in the ice, suffering for more than a year; both Franklin and the entire crew perished.

Daidalus now has a second album coming our way in February 2026. For this one the band took its inspiration not from history but from the realm of imagination, and specifically from one one of the greatest works of global literature, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

But rather than simply retelling the epic through music, Püschner has crafted the new album (titled Dante) as a “reinterpretation” of the descent into Hell, one that “explores doubt, despair, and the hidden truths between faith and fear – a symphonic black metal audio drama, melancholic rather than evil.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALIGNANT AURA — “BENEATH A CROWN OF ANGUISH”

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Dec 162025
 

(written by Islander)

About 3 1/2 years ago we premiered a jaw-dropping debut album named Abysmal Misfortune Is Draped Upon Me by the Australian death/doom band Malignant Aura. We called it “a towering and soul-shuddering success, one that’s just as capable of kicking your heart into over-drive as it is of dragging you into abyssal netherworlds where dread and grief endlessly reign.” And now Malignant Aura return, building upon the success of that debut with their second full-length, Where All of Worth Comes to Wither.

The new album is more concise than the debut — five songs and 46 minutes versus six songs and 53 minutes — but it surpasses expectations that the band’s compelling debut generated, which is no mean feat. We have a sign of that achievement through our premiere today of the album’s second single, “Beneath A Crown of Anguish“, in advance of the album’s collaborative release by Memento Mori, Grindhead Records, and Primitive Moth. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ELEVATE THE VIRUS — “THE GROWTH OF DECAY”

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Dec 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Today we welcome to our site Elevate the Virus, a deathcore band from Saint John, New Brunswick, a place latitudinally close to our site’s Seattle-area HQ but roughly 3400 miles (5500 km) to the east of us. They formed up in 2012, and began making a name for themselves in the Maritime Provinces and elsewhere in Canada through their live performances, and eventually through a continuing sequence of releases starting in 2014.

The band’s latest release is a five-track EP named The Growth of Decay, which was discharged on November 13th. To help spread the word about it, what we bring you today is an official video for the EP’s title song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SADAEL — “ERASURE”

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Dec 152025
 

(written by Islander)

More than 20 years ago Sadael began life in Yerevan, Armenia as the death/doom metal brainchild of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Vahe Soghomonyan. Since then Sadael has amassed an extensive discography that includes 20 albums and many shorter releases.

Vahe now lives in Austria, but the changes in Sadael’s life include more than the geographic shift. For Sadael’s newest album, Paralytic Thrall, he recruited experienced U.S. vocalist Andrew Gossard (Nekrofade, Putrefaction), changed the logo, and created a conceptual underpinning for the album as well as alterations in musical style.

The new album is now set for release on December 28th by a trio of labels, and they preview the album this way: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EYELESSIGHT — “VUOTA SOLITUDINE”

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Dec 112025
 

(written by Islander)

The Eyelessight duo from Pescara, Italy present themselves as manifestations of the name they chose — blindfolded and bloodied, as if their sight had been destroyed by violent events, and their visions must now come from some other means of perception.

The pair have lived together in music since the project’s inception in 2011. The following years brought forth a demo, a live album, a collaborative release with Imber Luminis, and two albums — Mantra per sopravvivere inutilmente (2014) and Athazagorafobia (2018).

Originally released on CD, Athazagorafobia is now receiving vinyl treatment by Talheim Records Germany. The vinyl reissue will occur on December 17th, and it will include two bonus tracks, one of which we’re now premiering with a visualizer video. The song’s name is “Vuota Solitudine“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UPON THE ALTAR — “PROFANATION’S VAPOR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Dec 102025
 

(written by Islander)

In thinking about the music from Upon the Altar’s side of a 2022 split with DeathEpoch, we wrote that it left “no doubt that Upon the Altar’s mission is to devour all light.” The music was often toxic, suffocating, granite-heavy, vicious, and vocally horrifying. They allowed very little wholesome light to shine in their second album, Descendants of Evil, which followed that split. What did shine through was the band’s talent for creating hateful musical horror — a complex of vile, malicious, oppressive, desolate, and violently furious experiences.

Those of us who’ve enthusiastically fallen beneath the previous malign assaults of this Polish band will be thrilled to learn that on December 12th Godz Ov War Productions will release a new Upon the Altar EP, a six-track manifestation of pitch-black ruin named Profanation’s Vapor — and even more thrilled to hear it today through our full streaming premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE SECOND FOVEA — “CLAWS OF BENGAL”

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Dec 092025
 

(written by Islander)

Today we’re touching base again (for the seventh time in the last four years) with The Second Fovea, a band originally birthed in India but whose members are currently spread among the U.S., India, and Canada.

Two of their previous singles which were the subject of all those previous writings focused upon wildlife — manta rays and snakes – but all of their songs, including those two, have carried socio-political messages, and most directly in the song “Headshot”, which was a potent condemnation of racism and hate crimes across the globe.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video for a new single from the group, and as you can see, it’s devoted to Bengal tigers, and more specifically (as the band tell us), it’s “dedicated to the legendary Bengal Tigers of the Sundarbans in India — the world’s largest mangrove forest and one of the last remaining strongholds for this endangered species.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FOSSILIZATION — “CREMATION OF A SERAPH”

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Dec 082025
 

(written by Islander)

It is with terrible delight today that we help announce a new album by the tremendous Brasilian death/doom band Fossilization. It bears the name Advent of Wounds, and it’s set for release on February 13th by the ever-tasteful Everlasting Spew Records. The label rightly describes it as “a work of sheer ferocity and oppressive gloom” — “bleak, crushing and claustrophobic”, “a summoning of despair that drags the listener into a chasm where brutality and anguish entwine.”

In its current configuration, Fozzilization is still principally the work of V. (voices, guitars, bass) from the sludge/death/doom metal band Jupiterian, but now joined by  guitarist Z. Before we get to the main subject of this post — our premiere of the first advance song from Advent of Wounds — we want to share a statement by V. about this new album: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HARVESTED — “GATHERED AND DELUDED”

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Dec 042025
 

(written by Islander)

In August of this year the Ottawa-based death metal band Harvested released their debut album Dysthymia. We were very happy to help spread the word in advance of the release by premiering a playthrough video for one of the album’s most electrifying groove-monsters, a song called “Synaptic Confusion” — very happy, because the album is such a killer release.

We weren’t the only people who thought so. Lots of other metal writers and fans have heaped praise on it both before and after its release. But of course, because Harvested is an independent and unsigned band there’s undoubtedly a lot of people who still don’t know what they’ve missed. We’ll make a further effort to help clue them in today with another video premiere, this time for a song off Dysthymia called “Gathered and Deluded“. Continue reading »

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