AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LIMINAL SHROUD — “ALL VIRTUES ABLAZE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Aug 012022
 

 

Living in a dramatic natural setting can be a double-edged sword. Imagine a place bounded by the vast, untamed Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea, and indeed by water all around, with a mountain range running through it, encompassed by dense, towering forests and sheltered by skies both daunting and glorious. In a state of despondency, such a place might seem like a calculated reminder of how small, insignificant, fleeting, and unattractive your own existence really is. On the other hand, a place like that can so powerfully overwhelm all ugliness as to provide inspiration and hope.

The place we happen to be talking about is Vancouver Island, officially a part of British Columbia in Canada, but really a kind of world all its own. The largest community on that enormous island is Victoria, and Victoria is home to the black metal band Liminal Shroud. It’s no wonder that their natural surroundings have an influence on their music, in ways both dark and blazing — a carefully chosen word, because their forthcoming second album, which you’re about to hear, is named All Virtues Ablaze. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVE GNOSIS — “VULTURES”

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Aug 012022
 

In June of this year we premiered and reviewed a remarkable split release by Florida-based Grave Gnosis and California-based Hvile I Kaos. In part, the split functioned as a teaser for new albums that are in progress from each band, but it was much more than that. It also represented a singular conceptual collaboration, “expressing the nature of parallel spiritual forces, focusing on aspects of the Sun and its Shadow, as seen through the lens of Vedantic Nihilism”.

That term Vedantic Nihilism originated in the writings of Grave Gnosis founding member and Occult author Caine Del Sol, in his book Codex Aversum. It represents a magickal system (briefly described here) that describes a path to “complete immersion in the Void, in purest surrender of our illusion of Self”, as a means of achieving “unity with the beyond”.

With respect to the new split, “Each track represents and invokes a facet of the forces of Moloch as they may be interpreted in both the microcosmic front of the personal psychospiritual, and the macrocosmic sociopolitical and religious egregores. The magickal formulas draw from the alternating modes of invocation and evocation, typified by incitement to fervor and call to action, respectively”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRUSADIST — “PULVERIZED BY WARHAMMERS”

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Jul 292022
 

Right up there, staring you in the face, is one hell of a piece of cover art. It seizes attention in electrifying fashion, and when combined with the name of the song it accompanies — “Pulverized By Warhammers” — it makes a striking statement. It’s gratifying to see that the photo of the band who made the song — Chicago-based death/thrashers Crusadist — is just as savage and menacing.

But what of the song itself? Does it live up to all these outward trappings? Well hell yes, it truly does, as you’re about to discover for yourselves. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEADS FOR THE DEAD — “THE BREAKING WHEEL”

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Jul 292022
 

“Super groups” come and go, and more often than not they tend to go quickly, with the members pulling a “one off” stunt and then returning to their main projects. But sometimes the chemistry is so good, and the results so successful, that the groups live on. Such is the case (thankfully) with Heads for the Dead, who arrived on the scene with 2018’s Serpent’s Curse, made further hideous strides with 2020’s Into the Red, and are now running up to the September 2nd release of their third album, The Great Conjuration.

This new one continues the band’s gruesome addictions to supernatural horror in the trappings of chainsaw-powered death metal, and again unites the talents of Wombbath‘s Jonny Pettersson (guitar, bass, keys, FX) and vocalist/lyricist Ralf Hauber from Revel In Flesh, and this time they’re joined by Wombbath drummer Jon Rudin and by Matt Moliti from Sentient Horror, who performs guitar solos.

What we have for you today is the premiere of another song from the new album, to add to those which have already been scourging the ears and terrorizing the minds of the public. This one is called “The Breaking Wheel“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IN GRIEF — “DIG HOPES”

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Jul 282022
 

Comparative references are useful but risky techniques in writing about new music — useful because they function as short-hand summing-up’s for experienced listeners, risky because they so often go awry, or remind you of how great the referenced bands are, and by comparison how far short the newcomer falls.

Those reflections occurred to us when seeing the press materials for An Eternity of Misery, the debut album by an Italian band named In Grief that’s headed our way in September from Iron Bonehead Productions. Those materials included this passage, which might naturally provoke skepticism among some readers:

“Like much/most melodically inclined doom-death, the spectre of “the Peaceville Three” – My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, and Anathema – looms large here, but one can equally detect trace elements of the earliest works of Katatonia, The Gathering, and especially Tiamat‘s pivotal Clouds.”

That such words were offered in support of a band who only formed during the plague year of 2020, with only an EP and a demo to their name in advance of this album, is even more likely to inspire doubts. But it turns out those reference points are quite useful, and that In Grief‘s music indeed lives up to the billing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DE PROFUNDIS — “EMBRACE DYSTOPIA”

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Jul 282022
 

On the distant horizon we’re glimpsing the ominous approach of another full-length record by De Profundis , their sixth album since this UK band first coalesced roughly 17 years ago. In that span of time  line-ups have changed, and so have the group’s interweaving strands of metallic extremity. The changes have made each album an experience of discovery, undermining anyone’s effort to claim, “It’s De Profundis, you know what you’re going to get”.

The band’s latest creative endeavors are captured in a new album named The Corruption of Virtue, and it’s pegged for release on October 7th by Transcending Obscurity Records. So far, fans have received two excerpts from the album — a video for the song “Religious Cancer” and a stream of “Desecrating Innocence” — and today we’re bringing you a third one, in a track that invites us to “Embrace Dystopia“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CELESTIAL WIZARD — “REVENANT”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  4 Responses »
Jul 272022
 

Of all the genres of heavy metal our site covers, power metal is the one least-noticed by far. One glance at our site’s name suggests a reason, though that’s not the only one. However, we’re about to prove that there’s a way to present power metal that even attracts scoffing extremists such as ourselves, and we have Denver, Colorado’s Celestial Wizard to thank for that.

Should you happen to be familiar with this band’s 2018 debut album A Sinister Awakening, it must be said up-front that their second one, Winds of the Cosmos (just released on July 15th), reveals significant changes in their sound (plus the addition of drummer Tim Gillman to the line-up). Where the debut featured healthy doses of strings, choirs, and symphonic synthesizers to accompany their fantasy-inspired narratives, the new one places a big emphasis on hard-charging riffs — and extremely tasty ones at that — albeit without wholly abandoning their previous ingredients.

The band have continued to deploy death metal vocals (and other ingredients of melodic death metal), as well as the kind of singing familiar to power metal addicts, and that juxtaposition is certainly a big reason why this band’s hybrid sound has become appealing in dark corners such as ours. But those tasty riffs have a lot to do with the appeal as well, and the song “Revenant” is a fierce example of that. No wonder, then, that we happily agreed to premiere a guitar-playthrough video for that song today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SINISTER DOWNFALL — “SOULS ENSLAVED”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 272022
 

In October 2018 when we premiered a song from Sinister Downfall‘s first album Eremozoic, we introduced it this way:

“It will become immediately apparent, through the song we’re about to premiere, that the shadowed ranks of funeral doom practitioners spread across the globe must make way for another band in their vanguard. The band is Sinister Downfall, the work of a single individual who in this debut album has already demonstrated an impressive mastery of these very dark arts.”

A follow-on album in 2020, A Dark Shining Light, strengthened that conviction, and now it will be cemented through the band’s third full-length, The Last Witness, which will be jointly released on September 24th by Funere (Armenia) and Weird Truth Productions (Japan). You’ll begin to understand why this is one of the most impressive funeral doom albums of the year when you listen to the song we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLOODBOX — “EAT RAPE POPULATE”

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Jul 262022
 

 

“A New Zealand-based grindcore/power electronics trio that take grindcore and fuse it with jungle, power electronics, and distorted sub-bass stabs. Imagine Atari Teenage Riot vs Napalm Death or Full of Hell and you’re halfway there”.

That’s the come-on we received for the new music of Bloodbox, a grotesquely masked trio who’ve bounced around the world and now seem intent on bouncing the world around, and cutting it up with knives. We’re told that after the dis-banding of the New Zealand based experimental death metal act Vext in 1999, the core members (CyZERNOBrG and Megalith X) moved to London and eventually to Ireland, and that during that time they were inspired to push their music in a more radical and chaotic direction, and in early 2001 Bloodbox was born. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WYLD TIMEZ — “BURN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 262022
 

 

The Cleveland band Wyld Timez began life in 2019 during the pandemic as an off-shoot of the formidable black metal trio Burial Oath, whom we’ve praised repeatedly at this site, but they’ve really caught fire in the last year, with a self-titled EP released in April 2021, and another one named Let the Devil In that hit the streets just last month.

The releases so far were written and tracked by vocalist/guitarist J, creating a blend of speed metal and metal/punk in the vein of Venom, Motörhead, and The Casualties, but the live band also now includes drummer Luis and bassist Rob. You’ll get to see all three of them in action in the video we’re premiering today for a hell-raising track named “Burn” off the latest EP. Continue reading »

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