AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEAVING EARTH — “EARTHLY KINGDOM OF GOD IN RUINS”

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Aug 252022
 

When the Czech band Heaving Earth released their second album Denouncing the Holy Throne in 2015 our reviewer Austin Weber showered it with praise, writing:

“While their band name comes from the Morbid Angel song of the same name, and the band is indeed certainly steeped in early death metal influences, they come across with a sound all their own. Boatloads of killer serrated riffs are an integral part of the Heaving Earth experience, yet it’s their subtly erratic nature, off-kilter hairpin turns, and mountain-sized heaviness that keeps me coming back. That, and the way they come across as very dark and foreboding, very much in the mood and feeling that some of the most fucked-up and disturbing black metal channel so well.”

A long seven years later, Heaving Earth returned with a new album named Darkness of God that was released this past May by Lavadome Productions. Not surprisingly after such a long time, the band’s lineup has changed, but the music is still a striking experience, one that both exhilarates and challenges any sense of complacency.

The compositions are also challenging to perform, and demand a significant level of technical proficiency. Fortunately, Heaving Earth come well-armed for the challenge, and we have proof of that in the guitar playthrough video we’re presenting today, which features the formidable talents of lead guitarist Martin Meyer. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: MALAURIU — “DE NATURA OBSCRURITATIS”

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Aug 242022
 

The Sicilian band Malauriu have been a prolific source of black metal and dark experimental sounds for almost a decade. As detailed in an interview of mainman Schizoid published here at the beginning of 2022, Malauriu have tended to release their music mainly through EPs and splits. In March of this year they departed from the tradition by releasing their second (self-titled) full-length, but they now return to shorter works with a new EP named De Natura Obscuritatis that’s set for release on September 15th by the Italian label Black Mass Prayers.

To help spread the word about this new EP, we have already premiered a profoundly disturbing yet also frighteningly spellbinding song from it named “The Locust“, and today we reveal the whole soul-staggering work. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VISERION — “REBORN IN DARKNESS”

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Aug 232022
 

For their first new music since the 2021 album Natural Selection, the New York band Viserion (who took their name from Game of Thrones‘ resurrected ice dragon) chose to tell a narrative inspired by the the video game Destiny. They explain the choice in these words:

“Reborn in Darkness” is a story about rebirth, inspired by the character Oryx from Destiny. Oryx goes through transformations and becomes more powerful with each. This motif stood out to us particularly due to our own lineup changes. The instrumentation of the song was very raw and brutal as well, mirroring Oryx‘s campaign of destruction against the light.

With the influence of new members in the fold, this new song which we’re premiering today portrays the malice and heinous ferocity of its protagonist through a fusion of death metal, black metal, and hints of grindcore, and the combination yields an immersive and nightmarish experience that stays with you. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GREBER — “TREE CARVING”

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Aug 232022
 

The Canadian duo Greber have been making heavy and harrowing music for roughly 16 years. My first exposure to their hard-to-define creations was the 2018 album Cemetery Preston, which made me feel like like I’d been backhanded across the mouth, and then punched in the kidneys while having my skull hammered with a tire iron. It included other sensations, but the sense of experiencing marauding obliteration was the first and lasting impression.

Since then they’ve continued on with their campaign, such that their discography has swollen to four full-lengths and six splits. Their newest album, Fright Without, is marked for release by a group of labels on September 9th. It houses 10 tracks, most of them compact, for a totsl run-time that’s just shy of half an hour. Once again the band’s members — Steve Vargas (The Great Sabatini) and Marc Bourgon (ex-Fuck the Facts) confine themselves to drum and bass and share the vocals, with guests who contribute noise, vocals, and an actual guitar on one track.

So far, two tracks have been revealed from the new album, and today we add a third, which happens to be both the album closer and the shortest of the 10. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD VOID — “ENTRAILS OF CHAOS”

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Aug 222022
 

The discomforts of our lives are multitudinous and multifarious, ranging from niggling annoyances to traumatic terrors and crushing catastrophes. Though some people recoil from re-living such discomforts in the music they make or the music they listen to, some bands, at least in the expansive sphere of metal, throw themselves into the most unnerving ends of that spectrum with great relish and no remorse.

Dead Void are one of those bands. On their debut album Volatile Forms what they recoil from are half measures. They wholly devote their impressive talents to the creation of death metal that’s horrifically hostile, bestially savage, stunningly hopeless, and fiendishly unpredictable and unsettling. The music is brutally crushing and authentically unhinged, and just as likely to force listeners into claustrophobic caverns of doom as it is to gut you or shake you to pieces. As proof, we offer the song “Entrails of Chaos“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ESCARNIUM — “DELUGED IN MIASMA”

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Aug 192022
 

When we present song premieres we usually begin with information about the band and the forthcoming release, quickly followed by impressions of the music, and maybe, after all that, something about the conception of the song or its lyrical themes, assuming we know anything about those subjects. But for the Escarnium song “Deluged In Miasma” we’re reversing the usual order, and we think you’ll soon understand why.

Here is what Brasilian guitarist/vocalist Victor Elian tells us about the song’s inspiration and significance:

So, there is an expression in the area I grew up for when you have a place that kind of has a bad vibe/aura around it. You say, this place is ‘full of miasma’. Or, for example, if you have something like an old jacket of someone that has died, some people may say… ‘Don’t wear it, it is full of miasma.’ It’s sort of like a local superstition.

When the numbers of the dead from COVID started to get really high, our president ignored all the signs causing even more deaths. With all that was going on, I was thinking about the history of Brasil, all the bad things that we face on our daily life living in Brasil… so this song became sort of a metaphor of the dark side of Brasil. It’s a place that always believes things will get better, but it never gets better. Every good idea, or any good initiative, never comes to fruition. Life in Brasil is cheap. So, our land is full of miasma…

On the news recently one doctor said, Brasil now is like a leprosy home isolated from the rest of the world. Basically, every line of the lyrics is based on the dark side of Brasil from the coming of the Portuguese and slavery up to modern-day atrocities. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEGEMONE — “INFERENCE”

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Aug 182022
 

When we had the opportunity to premiere We Disappear, the second album by Poland’s Hegemone (released in 2018), we introduced it this way:

“If you’re looking for titanically heavy music, the kind that will loosen your teeth and vibrate your spinal fluid, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for music that glimmers and shimmers like the northern lights, you’ve also come to the right place. If you want the sounds of tension and pain, lead-weighted gloom and feverish desperation, mechanized warfare and sunrise grandeur, you’ll find that here as well — plus a steady dose of what makes people compulsively bob their heads…. The music surges and subsides, seems to crack the earth and heat the blood to a feverish boil, and spirits the listener away to heights of of perilous and panoramic wonder.”

We Disappear made our veteran writer Andy Synn‘s list of 2018’s “Great Albums”, and one of the tracks also appeared on our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. No wonder, then, that we got very excited to learn that Hegemone would be releasing another album this year. The name of the new one is Voyance, and it’s coming our way on September 15th via Brucia Records.

Thankfully, we again get a chance to help introduce Hegemone‘s music, through today’s premiere of a stunning new song named “Inference“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIABOLOGY — “BLACKBLOOD”

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Aug 162022
 

With a band name that refers to the study, theory, and doctrine of devils, we would expect nothing less than devilish music from them, and Los Angeles-based Diabology deliver that in spades on their forthcoming sophomore album Father of Serpents.

With thrash as their backbone, Diabology flesh out their new album by drawing on a mix of other genre ingredients — not in some scatter-shot, “we can’t figure out what we want to be” kind of way, but with the kind of focus and self-assurance one might not expect from a relatively young group. The songs are electric and vividly dynamic, but cohesive — and of course fiendish. We have a prime example in the piratical track we’re bringing you today — “Blackblood“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALTARS ABLAZE — “FOR THE LIFELESS LOVE OF A CRUCIFIED CORPSE”

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Aug 162022
 

The Czech band Altars Ablaze began as the brainchild of Tomas Halama (of Heaving Earth) after his departure from Brutally Deceased. He approached other established musicians in the Czech extreme metal scene, and they coalesced behind a musical vision that sought a place between blasphemous death metal and militant black metal, with a desire to push that conception to the extreme but simultaneously to introduce the unexpected.

The bitter fruits of this vision are to be found in the band’s debut album Life Desecration, which is set for release on September 16th by the Czech label Lavadome Productions. Up to now two singles from the album have been released, and today we add a third one with our premiere of the song that opens the album, “For the Lifeless Love of a Crucified Corpse“. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROWN OF ASTERIA / PETRICOR — “IN TENEBRIS SOLIS OCCASUM”

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Aug 122022
 

What we have for you here is the complete streaming premiere of a most unusual split release named In Tenebris Solis Occasum, which is being released by the New York label Fiadh Productions. It includes three tracks each from two solo projects, Michigan’s Crown of Asteria and the Chilean project Petricor. Our premiere coincides with the opening of pre-orders for the tape edition of the split.

All together, these six tracks provide a fascinating and highly varied experience. Both projects are connected to black metal, and with a broad brush someone might paint them both as “atmospheric black metal”. That’s always a nebulous term, but it’s even less informative in the case of this split, which really is impossible to sum up with a label or even a paragraph.

And so, many paragraphs lie ahead of you, though of course no one will give you a black mark for skipping down to the bottom and beginning to listen right away. Continue reading »

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