AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MASS PUNISHMENT — “ENEMY WITHIN”

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Aug 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Today we’re premiering both a hard-hitting new song from the New Jersey-based metal band Mass Punishment and a hair-raising video for it. The name is “Enemy Within“.

This new song follows on the heels of the band’s latest album, Proving Grounds Devastation, which was released last fall. Mass Punishment describe the theme of the song this way: “When you are infiltrated by those who seek to hold you back, cause you harm and celebrate your failures. Face your enemy within, and conquer them.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRUEL BOMB — “CRUEL BOMB”

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Aug 142025
 

(written by Islander)

Ferocious speed, riffs with mean hooks, beats with spine-shaking groove, howling mad vocals, hardcore belligerence, and enough flash and flair to keep listeners on their toes in between wanting to body-check someone in a mosh pit. In essence, that’s what the Pennsylvania thrash band Cruel Bomb bring to the table in their self-titled debut album which will see release tomorrow (August 15th).

To flesh this out, let’s take the album’s second track and lead single “Target Neutralized“, which arrived with a video that lets us see (through strange lenses) these marauders in action. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANTHRODYNIA — “UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS EMANATING FROM WITHIN”

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Aug 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Anthrodynia is a new two-person band formed last year in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, uniting the talents and experience of Derek Orthner (Begrime Exemious, Azath) and Durell Smith (ex-Mahria, ex-Kuroi Jukai). Their music, as captured on their blood-congealing and blood-rushing debut album Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within, manifests a love for both death and doom metal and a shuddering aptitude for marrying the mauling, miserable, and supernatural qualities of those genres.

Undeniably well-named, the album will be released this Friday, August 16th, by Nameless Grave Records, but you’ll have a chance to listen to all of it through our full streaming premiere today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIGSGRAV — “GHOSTS”

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Aug 122025
 

(written by Islander)

Let’s be honest, life is mostly a trudge from one mundane thing to another, flowered by moments of happiness, the petals soon enough fallen and stepped on by the need to keep moving — unless your shit is even worse than that and is more like one fall after another that makes you wonder how you keep getting upright, until you can’t.

Let’s be honest, this is also why so many of us search for experiences that banish the mundane, seeking our personal bouncers at life’s barroom door that won’t let the soul-draggers in. The musical banishers come in different shapes and sizes. Some just pump your heart and muscles full of electricity; some fire up your imagination; some give voice to your hurts and hopes.

Krigsgrav do all of that, and have done so for a long time. They do it again on their forthcoming eighth album, the perfectly named Stormcaller. They call it “the best album of our career thus far”, and while every long-running band says that about every new album, this claim is honesty in advertising. We have proof in the song we’re premiering today: “Ghosts“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL THORNS — “BLACK FLESH”

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Aug 122025
 

(written by Islander)

When I listen to music I know I’m going to write about I don’t do it the way “normal” people do (I use the term loosely because I know our usual visitors would abhor being labeled that way, and with good reason). I tend to jot down words and phrases, trying to capture what I’m feeling so I can write about it.

That didn’t happen when I listened for the first time to the Infernal Thorns song “Black Flesh“. I didn’t freeze up, but something like the opposite of freezing, caught up in the sheer flood of adrenaline in the bloodstream, marveling at the hellishness of the heat and the bolting changes, muscles twitching from all the diabolical musical barbs, and not one word jotted down.

It was so much hellish fun, such a bacchanal of barbarism, that I didn’t keep track of how many times I listened before reminding myself I needed to organize some thoughts as a way of introducing our premiere.

But fuck, I guess I just introduced our premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BRAIN DEAD — “SPEED LASER PENETRATION”

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Aug 112025
 

(written by Islander)

Prepare to put your higher faculties on hold for a few minutes. That won’t require any conscious decision on your part after you press Play below, because the song we’re about to premiere will wake up your reptile brain and light a fire under it. It will then romp and run wild and body-check your thinking mind into the wall of your skull.

The Italian satanic speed metal band responsible for this song make no pretenses. Hell, they named themselves Brain Dead! As you’ll learn for yourselves when you listen to “Speed Laser Penetration,” the music is “stripped down” and feral, nothing fancy and nothing clean, as nasty as a wolverine pack with rabies. But it’s also damned compulsive – your reptile brain will thank you – and your thinking mind will probably appreciate the break too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LVTHN — “MOTHER OF ABOMINATIONS”

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Aug 112025
 

(written by Islander)

The abandonment of vowels doesn’t obscure the meaning of LVTHN, a plain enough reference to the titanic serpent of primeval origin, the draconic embodiment of chaos, and in Revelations a manifestation of the power of the Devil. Isaiah prophesied that this “tortuous serpent” would be destroyed by the Almighty at the end of time, but in the meantime the Belgian band LVTHN continue offering musical devotionals of revelation and ruin in the name of the Adversary.

The title of LVTHN‘s forthcoming second album, The Devil’s Bridge, emblazons their inspiration. As described on behalf of Amor Fati Productions, which will release the album on September 6th: “This is a work of devotion. A weapon of Will. A hymn to Lucifer, as light-bearer and destroyer alike…. It is music as weapon. Music as curse. Music as rite.” The bridge is both a metaphor and a a real place of experience, and on the other side the Devil awaits: “Not as myth, but as force, as initiator, as destroyer of illusions.”

We have one aspect of the architecture of this bridge in a song from the album we’re now premiering: “Mother of Abominations“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HENERE — “WINDS OF ELDRITCH NORTH”

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Aug 082025
 

(written by Islander)

Gaze upon the cover art for Henere‘s new album The Chosen Path and you’ll begin to get a sense of the music, through the artwork’s portrayal of ice and snow, of ancient battle-death and looming peaks, of dark clouds and strange spiraling brilliance. The music itself conjures those same visions, and more, as you’ll discover today through our premiere of a song from the album named “Winds of Eldritch North” in advance of the record’s co-release by Void Wanderer Productions (Netherlands) and War Productions (Portugal) on September 19th.

For the new album (Henere‘s first full-length following a pair of EPs), founder Wretch (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist) was again joined by guitarist Blood clot and bassist Lament. As the labels describe, this U.S. band’s new music “captures the force and mournful grandeur of black metal shaped by cold winds, ancient myth, and the weight of destiny…. Carefully placed synth passages rise like distant signals through the snow, adding atmosphere without overtaking the storm.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IMPERISHABLE — “SPEWING RETRIBUTION”

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Aug 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Little more than a month ago we had the pleasure of premiering the jaw-dropping first single off Revelation In Purity, the debut album from the U.S. death metal band Imperishable, which is set for an August 29 release by Everlasting Spew Records. Today we’re happy to premiere another high-octane song from the album, this one aptly named “Spewing Retribution“.

If you haven’t already been introduced to these marauders, Imperishable started in 2020 as the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Brian Kingsland (from Nile and Enthean) and bassist Alex Rush (Olkoth, Enthean). They later completed the recording lineup with the addition of famed drummer Derek Roddy (of Hate Eternal, Malevolent Creation, and too many other bands to name). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MATT MILLER — “EFFECTIVELY NEUTRALIZED”

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Aug 052025
 

(written by Islander)

Whiz-bang can only carry an extreme metal guitarist so far, especially in a modern era marked by what one of our writers is prone to call the “tech death nuclear arms race,” in which blistering speed and near-inhuman dexterity have become main marks of competition, often leaving actual songwriting melted in the wake of the blast fronts.

And that brings us to the subject of Oregonian Matt Miller. He has earned a reputation as a death metal shredder par excellence, on top of his reputation as an award-winning producer and engineer. He built that reputation in part through a flurry of solo instrumental albums and EPs released from 2021 to 2023.

But with his new album Fiber Tormentum, forthcoming from Exitus Stratagem Records in September, it is entirely fair to say that Miller has reached a pivotal moment in his musical evolution, with new ambitions made evident and new stylistic ingredients impressively melded together. We have vivid signs of this in the song from Fiber Tormentum we’re presenting today through a video premiere. Continue reading »

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