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 »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INDUSTRIAL PUKE — “INDUSTRIAL PUKE”

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Aug 112022
 

This is one of those song premieres where it’s tempting for us to just tell you, “Here — listen to this!“, because reading much more than that would probably take you longer than listening to the track. After all, the song barely clips the minute-twenty mark. But writing is what we do, and write we shall, but in a way that might give you a bit more to chew on than our impressions of this one song.

The song in question shares the name of this Swedish band — Industrial Puke — and it’s the one that slams the door shut on their debut EP Where Life Crisis Starts, which is coming out on September 16th via Suicide Records. The EP itself is a swift kick in the jaw, four songs that collectively fight with you for less than eight minutes. And hell yes, it’s a fight. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLASTED HEATH — “VELA”

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Aug 102022
 

“Vela is a blast of blackened chaos from distant galaxies, mastered by death metal legend Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Bloodbath). Imagine early Bathory mixed with Darkthrone’s grim eclecticism and Black Breath‘s punk grime. Mutate that sound with Lovecraftian psychedelia and you get this unforgettable album.”

That’s the PR come-on from Wise Blood Records for the debut album by Blasted Heath from Indianapolis. I thought, if that’s even pretty close to accurate I’m going to be very happy with this one. The preview checks a lot of the right boxes for my tastes. Another one got checked when I read guitarist/vocalist Kyle Shumaker‘s comments about the last three conceptually linked songs on Vela, which are about neutron stars (aka pulsars) and “Killanova” events in which two such stars in a binary system collide and potentially release “strange matter”.

And then there’s the fact that the band named the album itself for a pulsar that’s the remnant of a supernova that occurred 11,000–12,300 years ago, and the brightest pulsar (at radio frequencies) in the sky.

So, lots of reasons to be intrigued and attracted before hearing a single note. But, as always, it comes down to the payoff: Do these black/thrash cosmonauts deliver what’s promised? You’re about to find out. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEKROTISK — “SULFUR AND ASH”

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Aug 082022
 

On the last day of 2021 the Minnesota-based extreme metal band Nekrotisk celebrated New Year’s Eve by releasing its debut EP, Apraxia I: Mors Certa. It was the solo work of Mehrunz Oel (aka Matt McGee), a six-track rendering of blackened death metal that impressively interweaves dire and hellish moods, searing and soaring riffage, jolting grooves, maniacally obliterating percussion, and crazed vocal tirades that are a fitting match for the frequent fretwork frenzies.

Mehrunz shouldered almost all the work that led to that EP, including recording, mixing, and mastering it and creating the cover art (with a guest appearance on the second track by James Benson of Amiensus and Chrome Waves). But his ambitions were greater than creating a studio project, and so in the coming months he assembled a talented live line-up and organized a first tour in June that took the band across the Northwest of the U.S., through Montana, Idaho, Washington, and back through North Dakota on the way home.

What we have for you today is a video that recaps that tour, set to the music of a riveting track from Apraxia I named “Sulfur and Ash“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INHUMAN DEPRAVITY — “BEYOND RHYTHM ZERO”

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Aug 082022
 

 

Let’s be honest: the Turkish band Inhuman Depravity are in a challenging place musically, and they consciously and confidently put themselves there.

They’ve chosen to embrace an old-school amalgam of technical/brutal death metal obviously influenced by the likes of Severe Torture and Deeds Of Flesh, Disavowed and Suffocation, Brutality and Sinister. They drop those names themselves. Those bands cast long shadows, and to stand in them risks remaining hidden, out of the light, because this style is so established and has been done so well before.

But even acknowledging the risks, it’s hard to fault the band for their choice of musical lineage. For one thing, this kind of music hasn’t gone out of style despite its age — people still hunger for it. For another, Inhuman Depravity are really fucking good at what they do. We’ve got the evidence of that today, through our premiere of the first advance song from the band’s forthcoming second album The Experimendead, which is Inhuman Depravity‘s first new music in a long seven years following their debut full-length. Continue reading »

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