AN NCS PREMIERE: FERAL LIGHT – PSYCHIC CONTORTIONS

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 202022
 

(Andy Synn presents a review, and full premiere, of the new album by Minnesota’s Feral Light)

Let me tell you a bit about how premieres work here at NCS.

Generally speaking, a label (or a band) will contact us at some point in advance of the release date of whatever they want us to host – whether it’s a single, a video, or a full album stream – and ask us directly if we’d like to handle a premiere for them.

Before we say yes we have to check two things – firstly, do we have time and space in our schedule to actually do the hosting (the more lead-in time we have the better, obviously)? And, secondly, do we actually like the music enough to want to host it?

This latter question is definitely the more important of the two. After all, we only want to promote things that we honestly think are good – we do have some integrity, after all – so we need to be sure that what we’re premiering is something that’s definitely worth your time, and ours.

Every so often, however, things just seem to line up and we’ll get offered a premiere for something which we were already writing about… which is exactly what happened in the case of Psychic Contortions, the upcoming fourth album (set for release this Friday by I, Voidhanger) from Feral Light.

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AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WHITE MARE — “THE WHITE MARES’ PROCESSION”

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Apr 202022
 

 

White Mare is a new melodic doom/death formation created in 2019 through the collaboration of Swiss musician D.G. (Duthaig, 3 Days Of Silence, Nightshade) and J.A. from Doomcult (hailing from The Netherlands). Later they were joined by T.W. (Nightshade), in time to perform drums in the recording of their debut album Isle Of Bliss, which is now set for co-release by Symbol Of Domination and Negre Plany on April 25th.

The new album was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, and like its inspiration the music is epic in its scale and tragic in its moods. It’s a deeply moving and immediately memorable record that unfolds like a grand but harrowing tapestry. Even a single song from the album creates those impressions, and we have one for you in today’s premiere of “The White Mares’ Procession“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VULNIFICUS — “THE INCREDULOUS INVOCATION”

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Apr 192022
 

We’re about to turn our focus to a dangerous place where the vicious vectors of technical, brutal, and slamming death metal intersect, a place from which the U.S. band Vulnificus have launched their savage and scintillating attacks.

The band is a fairly new project, having formed just last year, but the project’s two members — multi-instrumentalist Wilson Sherels (Epidermolysis. among many others) and Eston Browne (Abolishing The Ignominious, ex-Gigan) — aren’t novices. That will become apparent from the song we’re premiering today from their second EP, Invocation, which is set for release on June 10th by New Standard Elite. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONSECRATION — “THE DWELLER IN THE TUMULUS”

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Apr 192022
 

Cinis is the name of the forthcoming third album by the UK doom/death metal band Consecration. We’re told that the word is taken from the Latin and that it means “cold ashes, and has numerous associations with death, destruction and ruin, extinguished love and burnt-out hate” — which makes it a form-fitting title for the record.

As we’ve said more than once, we don’t usually copy-paste promotional material, preferring instead to create our own impressions independently and express them in our own words. But this is one of those rare instances where the words circulated by Redefining Darkness Records (who will release Cinis on June 17th) eloquently capture much of what makes this album so dauntingly powerful: Continue reading »

AN NCS PEMIERE: ANNIHILATION RITE — “DAMNATION CROWNS”

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Apr 182022
 

The name of the debut album by the German band Annihilation Rite is World Below, and that is where it takes us — to a blood-freezing subterranean domain of merciless terrors, endless torment, and utter downfall. It’s a cold nightmare world where bones are smashed and minds are ruined, and also a summoning of the Lord of Darkness to ascend, and retaliate against life.

This new entity is the solo work of Entweider, who is also a member of Crypt Witch, Dark Fields, Necrochaos, Sinister Downfall, Urschmerz. The music is branded black metal, but draws from death and doom metal as well, in order to make its rendering of ferocity and fear even more apocalyptic. And Annihilation Rite has written its rites in long form, in ways that become hideously spellbinding.

As a tangible sign of all these qualities, we have for you today the premiere of an album track named “Damnation Crowns“, in advance of World Below‘s April 28 release by Satanath Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: APARTHIVA RAKTADHARA — “NADA OF CREATION COLLAPSES ONTO PRIMAL BINDU”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 182022
 

Aparthiva Raktadhara‘s 2018 debut demo Agyat Ishvar popped a lot of eyes wide open, including ours. Even at only 12 1/2 minutes in length, it struck like a nuclear-tipped missile, often breathtakingly fast, cyclonic in the intensity of its riffing, and berserk in the ferocity of the vocals. Yet the frontal assault of the music didn’t completely obscure its intricacy or its insidiously seductive effects. It left us as intrigued as it did obliterated.

Now we’re about to have an even more formidable demonstration of this trio’s powers, because on May 20th Iron Bonehead Productions will release their debut album Adyapeeth Maranasamhita (আদ্যাপীঠ মরণসংহিতা). It was received, as the band explain, “as a burning revelation of riktata, realized within our hearts as we meditated under a Bodhi tree by the Ganges in Chanak, Uttar Kalikshetra, in fall 2019.”

Now that revelation has taken its complete form through sound, and we bring you part of that experience in today’s premiere of the album’s closing track, “Nada of Creation Collapses Onto Primal Bindu“. We think you’ll be quickly convinced that this isn’t like any other death metal you’re likely to hear this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISHARMONY — “THE CYNIC AND THE BEGGAR”

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Apr 182022
 

During 2017 and 2018 we devoted quite a lot of attention to The Abyss Noir, the second album by the Athenian metal band Disharmony, whose multifaceted musical textures have drawn comparisons to the sounds of Nevermore, Sanctuary, Judas Priest, Iced Earth, and Anthrax. Five years later, Disharmony are returning with their third full-length, Gods Made of Flesh, and it deserves a lot of attention to.

In its conceptual focus the music revolves around “the different kinds of Enslavery we all have to confront since the time we are born,” with each song reminding us of “the Divinity of our Spirit and the Chains it entails”. In the sounds themselves, Disharmony‘s influences and inspirations lead them into a captivating fusion of styles and sensations — which you’ll discover for yourselves through our premiere today of “The Cynic and the Beggar“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORGUE SUPPLIER — “MY PATH TO HELL”

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Apr 152022
 

Chicago-based Morgue Supplier don’t rush things. The band’s roots go back to a group named Jugular Appetizer with one 1999 demo to its name, but after changing that name to the current one Morgue Supplier have put out only two albums and a pair of EPs over the last 20 years, with significant amounts of time in between them. Now they’ve got a third full-length on the way, six years after the last one. Its name is Inevitability.

Respect should be owed to a band whose music over the course of two decades has remained as vicious, as hate-fueled, and as abrasive as Morgue Suppier‘s — if anything, it’s grown even more unabashedly confrontational, even more unreservedly hostile, even more mentally discombobulating, like an increasingly difficult test of their listeners’ fortitude in body and mind.

On the other hand, as you’ll discover from the song we’re premiering today — the aptly named “My Path To Hell” — the band’s music also presents numerous unsettling fascinations, like drugs you know are potentially ruinous to your health but are still powerfully addictive. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTHEMS OF ISOLATION — “AS PAZUZU RISES”

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Apr 152022
 

On their forthcoming debut album Apocalyptic Portrayals, the Iraqi duo Anthems of Isolation demonstrate a formidable power to create music that’s simultaneously spellbinding and unnerving. It’s steeped in moods of despair and downfall, and harrows at any sense of well-being like the swing of a scythe against fragile shoots of wheat, but its measured beats and celestial melodies are also undeniably hypnotic.

The music is sinister and perilous, tension-filled and tormented, and yet it’s easy to fall into the cold and shining void-space of these sounds and then find it difficult to escape. You’ll discover this for yourselves by listening to the three tracks we’re streaming below, one of which we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s co-release by Satanath Records and More Hate Productions on April 23rd. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLEARxCUT – SONGS OF DESIRE ARMED

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 152022
 

(Andy Synn presents Songs of Desire Armed, the upcoming second album by CLEARxCUT)

While my love of Hardcore has been well-documented by now, there are still certain things about it which don’t always sit right with me (and I don’t just mean karate-dancing in the pit, whose ignorant, “look at me”, attitude has always seemed antithetical to the communal mindset of the genre).

In particular, despite supposedly being founded on principles of brotherhood and community, a lot of Hardcore bands/fans can be rather elitist and exclusionary – especially when it comes to emphasising the “brother” part – and while there have been a lot of moves towards changing this in the years since I first got into the genre, there’s still a fair way to go until Hardcore as a whole will be able to truly say that it practices what it preaches.

There are, however, still a lot of bands who both talk the talk and walk the walk, and CLEARxCUT – a vegan, anarchist, anti-fascist and straight-edge Metallic Hardcore collective made up of, among others, both current and ex-members of Implore, King Apathy, and Heaven Shall Burn – are unequivocally one of those bands, expressing their beliefs and ideals not to exclude or impugn others but to engage and inspire by example.

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