AN NCS PREMIERE: MAJESTIC MASS — “APOSTLES OF THE BLACK DAWN”

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Sep 212022
 

The last time I wrote at NCS about a song by Majestic Mass, back in 2018, I tried to explain my enthusiasm by spewing out a string of addled words that didn’t come close to a complete sentence, and ended by referring to the track as “a song with sensations of lewdness and lust, fire and triumph….”

Majestic Mass now have another album on the way, following up on that 2018 debut full-length Savage Empire of Death (and a 2019 EP named Onwards). And look at the epigram featured in the PR materials for the new record.

Feel no fear nor woe
Embrace the final blow
See the crimson glow
Let lust and fire grow… Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE LOOM OF TIME — “GRAND FALSE KARASS”

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Sep 202022
 

Many much-beloved metal albums, both very old and much newer, follow a straight and narrow path, charting a consistent stylistic course and staying in the lane, without much interest shown in the openings that lead off elsewhere into the thorny brambles and dark woods on either side. They work because the bands are so good at what they chose to do, and make their trails wander just enough to keep the eyes and ears of listeners alert.

On the other hand, some bands only seem to have eyes for the paths that twist and turn, the more tangled and unpredictable the better, and they relish the chance to dart off into side-openings whenever the opportunity presents itself. Some of those bands get lost, and lose listeners along the way, but others succeed in making their less-traveled paths more exciting than the straight and narrow.

The Loom of Time‘s new album Grand False Karass is certainly a vivid example of the latter, and an even more surprising one in light of the bamboozling (and dangerous) new adventures it offers by comparison to the band’s debut. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SCHELETRO — “UN FETO SCHIACCIATO SENZA TRE FALANGI”

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Sep 192022
 

If you’re not fluent in Italian and feel the urge to resort to google translate, we’ll save you that step: Un feto schiacciato senza tre falangi, the name of Scheletro‘s new album, means “A crushed fetus without three phalanges”.

That’s a grim and gruesome image to contemplate, but it’s just a hint of the traumatic nature of the album concept as a whole, which is described as a narrative “in which rebellion against patriarchy ends in suicide, social emancipation is humiliated by sexual blackmail, revenge is swept away by repression, and perversion is sublimated into necrophilia”.

How Scheletro tell this harrowing tale through their music is a tale all its own, one in which the group bring together ingredients of traditional Italian old-school hardcore, D-beat crust punk, and strands of old school death metal and thrash. The results are bleak, punishing, and emotionally moving, but also explosively wild and exhilarating. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CATALYST — “WORMS AND LOCUSTS”

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Sep 162022
 

As you can tell from the title of this feature, we’re about to premiere a video for a new song by the French technical death metal band Catalyst — one that they call “the fastest and most savage song” of their repertoire. It’s from their forthcoming second album, with the intriguing title A Different Painting for a New World. We have lots of interesting details to share about the band and the new record, but this is one of those times when we’re going to cut to the chase first.

What we’re chasing (or more accurately, what’s chasing us like a Formula One car with the agility of a cheetah) is the song “Worms and Locusts“. When we get to the details, you’ll learn that the song is part of an album-length conceptual narrative, and in the tale of this track a world is purified by apocalypse. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ATRUTA — “SŁAVA ČERAVIE-LILIT”

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Sep 152022
 

The band name Atruta probably won’t be familiar to you, but the names Downcross and Khandra should be. We’ve written frequently and appreciatively about the music of those two black metal bands from Belarus (as you can see here and here, respectively), and that’s worth noting because Atruta is a new trio whose members come from those other two groups.

That pedigree alone should inspire intrigue about their music. There’s proven talent here, for sure, but what have these three chosen to do under the banner of Atruta?

The answer to that question lies in a debut album named Da Varot Apramietnaj, which will be released on October 5th by Cavum Atrum Rex (also based in Belarus). Drawing inspiration from medieval personifications of evil, with lyrical themes in their native tongue concerning darkness, evil, and death worship, they’ve recorded 8 tracks for the album, and we’re providing the first track premiere here today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SINNERY — “BLACK BILE”

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Sep 142022
 

In just a couple of days the Israeli band Sinnery will release their second album, Black Bile. It comes a decade after the band’s formation and a long six years after their debut full-length, A Feast of Fools. To showcase what they accomplished in a first-class manner, they had the album mixed and mastered by Matt Hyde (Machine Head, Trivium, Slipknot, Bullet For My Valentine) and turned for the cover art to the legendary Travis Smith (yes, he’s earned that accolade).

“Death thrash” is the simplified genre description for what Sinnery do, but it’s the strong melodies and the variations among and within the songs that make the album such an adventure to experience from start to finish. Compared to the debut all those years ago, which was entirely written by vocalist/guitarist Alon Karnieli back when he was about 16-17 years of age, these tracks are more elaborate, more sophisticated, more reflective of different moods, while at the same time being more brutally extreme. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEFORMATORY — “HARBINGER”

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Sep 132022
 

Here on the unlucky 13th day of September the Canadian two-man wrecking machine known as Deformatory have returned to visit new death metal ruination on a pathetic world with a new EP named Harbinger. To help announce the EP, Deformatory are presenting it in its entirety as a music video that we have the ghastly pleasure of premiering down below.

This makes the fourth premiere we’ve hosted on behalf of Deformatory going back to 2015, including the video for a song off their mind-mauling 2021 album Inversion of The Unseen Horizon. We’ll crib some of our words from that premiere feature, because they’re still relevant as a harbinger of Harbinger: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BEYOND GRACE — “OUR KINGDOM UNDONE”

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Sep 122022
 

At the beginning of the month the UK death metal band Beyond Grace celebrated the first anniversary of the release of their second album, Our Kingdom Undone.

To commemorate the occasion, various members of the band have recorded a series of playthrough videos for some of their favorite tracks from the record, and we’re premiering the first of those today – a one take, no cuts, vocal rendition of the album’s 12 minute title-track as performed by our very own Andy Synn. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MISCREANCE — “CONVERGENCE”

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Sep 122022
 

Some of us have some fun playing the game of “What Will This Sound Like?” after seeing the cover art and logo for a band we’ve never heard before. Statisticians haven’t calculated the numbers, but it sure seems like a significant percentage of the time the art and logo telegraph the music, at least for people who’ve been paying attention to metal for a fair number of years.

But if you’re like us, you’ll be perplexed when you see the cover of Convergence, the debut album from the Italian group Miscreance. It’s wildly colorful, and the images packed into it create a crazy collage. Stars, lightning, sea creatures, heads, limbs, wombs, cemetery scenes as if glimpsed through inter-dimensional windows in a wall, lots of other things too difficult to identify… it’s a head-spinning vision, and it’s not a clear message about the style of music. The band’s logo doesn’t really telegraph a clear message about the music either.

Maybe you already know, because Miscreance did put out a demo in 2018 (From Awareness to Creation) and three tracks on a split with Australia’s Vile Creation last fall, and a couple of preview songs from the new album have surfaced, but if you missed all of that you might be befuddled right now. But then you see a photo of the band, and you’ll think, okay I got it now: This is a thrash band — a real old-school thrash band. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FÉLETH — “AVARICE”

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Sep 092022
 

Today the Norwegian band Féleth are releasing the second single from their new album Divine Blight, which will be released by Rob Mules Records on November 11th, and we’re presenting a first listen here to help spread the word.

Today’s new song is named “Avarice“, and it’s the track that closes the album. It was preceded by the debut of the album opener, “Majesty“, and thematically the two are connected. As the band explain, “‘Majesty‘ describes the rise of a diabolical king-like entity who corrupts, oppresses and kills everyone. The ‘king’-persona is basically humankind fucking itself up”.

When the album reaches its end after many musical twists and turns, “Avarice” returns to that king-like figure from “Majesty“, “declaring war on everything and itself”. As the band explain, “The hook is written in the first person from the view of the general greed and hate that lies in the hearts of men. But grimmer.” Continue reading »

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