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”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
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 »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DIABOLICAL RAW — “WISE OLD WOMAN”

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Sep 092022
 

The Turkish band Diabolical Raw has had a long history, and not an easy one. Starting life under the name Diabolical, they honed their talents during stage performances in the late ’90s and early 2000s but didn’t make their first release until the Daimonion EP in 2005, and soon after the group disbanded due to difficulties in finding a stable line-up.

After a dozen years of silence drummer Ozan Tunç and vocalist Ozan Erkmen decided to resurrect the band, but changed the name to what it is today. By 2019 they released their debut concept album Estrangement, revealing a more symphonic take on black metal, with Ozan Tunç handling all the instrumentation and orchestration, as well as the mixing and mastering.

A year later Diabolical Raw began work on a second album, but of course pandemic hell intervened and slowed down the process. Yet in the fall of 2021, the band completed the recording of that sophomore album, Elegy Of Fire Dusk, again with Ozan Tunc responsible for the music, the mixing, and the mastering, and Ozan Erkmen crafting the lyrics and delivering the vocals.

Like the first album, the new one is based on a unifying theme derived from a short story by Ozan Erkmen that uses ancient Central Asian Turkish mythology. One song from the album (“Face the Judgment”) debuted last spring, and today we present an official video for the second one — “Wise Old Woman“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INTERNAL ORGANS EXTERNAL — “PROPAGATING THE EXECUTION”

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Sep 082022
 

“Internal Organs External” — what a grisly and ghastly vision that name conjures! And speaking of visions, take in that cover art up there for this Arizona project’s new album, whose title reinforces the expectations: The Brutality of Tomorrow. And wait ’til you get a look at Vince Otero, the band’s sole member.

But some of you already have an idea of what’s coming without all those clues. That is, if you caught up with the first album of Internal Organs External, Into the Depths. It certainly caught the attention of Vicious Instinct Records, which quickly signed the project to a multi-record deal, one that began with the 2021 EP Apocalyptic Domination.

And now we’ve got The Brutality of Tomorrow fast approaching its September 30th release date. Traumatizing brutality is to be expected, but there’s more here than that. Let’s let Vince explain: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PLANEPACKED — “HARROWHARK”

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Sep 082022
 

Last spring we premiered a pulse-pounding track from a multi-faceted new album named Transactinides by the Massachusetts-based “metaltronica” project Planepacked. We summed it up then as “a head-spinning trip of changing moods and soundscapes”, bringing music which “includes ingredients that should appeal to fans of extreme metal, but adventurously mixes those with both boisterous and mesmerizing electronica and dramatically varying vocal styles”.

Planepacked (named after a glitch in the game Dwarf Fortress) identified a smorgasbord of influences for that album, including the likes of Autechre, Igorrr, Devin Townsend, and Susumu Hirasawa (among others), as well as the urban fantasy fiction series Endian Project created by the woman behind Planepacked, Jessica Kagan.

Planepacked‘s creative fires have continued to burn since then, and one result is a new single that we’re premiering today — a song named “Harrowhark” in which Planepacked has doubled-down on the project’s more extreme influences — providing a death/thrash flavored take on the more usual Planepacked sound. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CINIS — “AEGIS”

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Sep 072022
 

The Polish death metal band CINIS has had a long career, with a 20th anniversary coming up next year, but they’ve not filled those decades with plentiful releases. A demo began their recorded output in 2005, but three years passed between then and their first album, The Last Days of Ouroboros, and six more years elapsed before the second one arrived, 2014’s Subterranean Antiquity. Even that significant interval was exceeded by the time that has trudged by before a third full-length was completed and scheduled for release, but at last it’s almost here.

Lies That Comfort Me is the name of the new one, and September 23rd is the date on which it will be discharged by the excellent Polish label Selfmadegod Records. Nine tracks long, it proclaims an unyielding homage to such formidable trans-Atlantic forerunners as Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Cannibal Corpse, while also linking arms with the stylistic influences of CINIS countrymen Vader and Decapitated.

You could say it’s a way of proclaiming that certain old schools of death metal are undying, and still live in the hearts of veterans such as these four. But fear not, Lies That Comfort Me isn’t some uninspired nostalgia trip, but a full-bore juggernaut fueled by fire and fury, with the kind of riff mastery that proves to be highly addictive, a rhythm section that knows how to groove hard, and enough changing facets to keep listeners on the edge of their seats throughout the whole thrill-ride.

Witness the song we’re presenting today — an electrifying rush named “Aegis“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMBRACE OF THORNS — “THE BREATH OF THE BEAST”

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Sep 072022
 

With a career stretching back to the late ’90s and a sixth album on the way, Embrace of Thorns should need no introduction. One of the most formidable bands from Hellas, they have moved from strength to further strength, ever-advancing in their explorations of musical muscularity and mood, rendering creations of blackened death metal that both pulverize listeners and create compelling and harrowing atmospheres.

Some would argue that even 20 years into their career, they produced their best album in 2018’s Scorn Aesthetics, though others will steadfastly maintain that 2009’s Atonement Ritual or 2011’s Praying for Absolution are cult classics that have not yet been surpassed.

This kind of debate is likely to intensify with the advent of the band’s new album Entropy Dynamics, which is set for release on October 10th by Nuclear Winter Records. At a significant 50 minutes in length, it definitely won’t short-change fans, and that length alone is one sign of just how brightly the band’s creative fires continue to burn, and just how fervently they continue to explore wide-ranging dynamics in their ideas and in the kind of trip they wish listeners to take in their company.

Today we have an example of this in our premiere of the album’s second advance track, “The Breath of the Beast“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EATEN BY SHARKS — “KILL AND CONSUME”

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Sep 062022
 


Photo by Lisa Thompson

I was a fully grown young adult when I saw the movie Jaws for the first time, but I had recurring nightmares afterward as if I’d been a child. The greatest source of those night terrors was the scene of Quint’s consumption by the Great White, screaming while being eaten alive. I’ve gone back to the movie over and over again since then, but I’m still horrified by that scene. The thought of any creature being eaten alive still viscerally revolts and frightens, even though it happens millions of times a day throughout the animal world, even if largely unseen.

Jaws obviously made an impact on the Ontario band Eaten By Sharks, but rather than run from its horrors they run toward them. Lifting a line from the movie when the shark first reveals itself to the cantankerous crew of the Orca in all its frightening immensity, they named their first release We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat.

That was back in 2013, and after almost nine years of silence since then, one might be forgiven for wondering if they’d succumbed to a watery demise themselves. But they’ve risen again, prowling the surface with razor fins slicing the waves, teeth bared, and a new album of heavy-grooved technical death metal named Eradication that presents a nautical-themed, first-person horror experience.

The album was just released last month, and to help spread the word we’re presenting a playthrough video of the song “Kill and Consume” that features the performances of guitar duo Chris Chaperon and Dan Okowinsky. Continue reading »

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