AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INSTIGATE — “INDOCTRINATED REBORN”

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Jun 092022
 

We are fast approaching a day we’ve been hoping would come — the June 24 release of a debut album by the Italian death metal band Instigate. Their first release, a 2020 EP named Echoes of A Dying World, elicited praise at our site from both myself (here) and Andy Synn (here), with comparative references being dropped to the likes of Misery Index, Suffocation, Dyscarnate, Hour of Penance, and Hideous Divinity. And we weren’t alone in our praise — that EP triggered lots of positive reactions across the metalverse.

So we’ve been both eager and curious to find out what Instigate might do on a first full-length. Now we’re getting our answers, and you’re getting them too, thanks to the debut of two singles already (“Witness of the End Times” and “Haruspex“) and a third one we’re bringing you today — “Indoctrinated Reborn” — which is paired with an electrifying video made by Maurizio del Piccolo (Movidel Production). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EGGS OF GOMORRH — “WOMBSPREADER”

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Jun 082022
 

The new album by Eggs of Gomorrh is lyrically devoted to a general disgust for humanity (or at least the Christ-worshiping segments of it) and to blasphemous occult visions of sadistic punishment and merciless retribution — scenes of mutilation, degradation, inhuman monstrosity, ruinous violence, and sexual perversion, all of it frothing in oceans of blood and semen. They revel in the foul riot of their words, and the music within Wombspreader is a fucking riot too, carrying the band to new heights of terrorizing excess.

But this should come as no surprise. Over the course of their 2016 debut album (Rot Prophet), a 2019 EP (Outpregnate), and a 2019 split with the Turkish blasphemers Sarinvomit (Encomium of Depraved Instincts), these Swiss fiends have already established a reputation for delivering astonishingly savage forms of jet-speed sonic annihilation with impressive technical skill — and slipping in some grooves and eerie melody in the midst of their slaughtering tirades.

As you’ll discover from our premiere of their forthcoming second album on the Godz Ov War label, all these qualities are again explosively displayed Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABOVE & BELOW — “SUFFER DECAY ALONE”

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Jun 072022
 

Some dreams take a long time gestating before they come screaming into the world. Many others die in the womb. Suffer Decay Alone is a dream realized, but it did take a long time for that to happen.

We’ve written often over the years about the Ohio band Plaguewielder, whose fantastic latest album Covenant Death we had the privilege of premiering here last year. What we didn’t know until more recently was that Plaguewielder‘s primary member Bryce Seditz has harbored a desire to make industrial music ever since the first time he listened to NIN‘s 1994 album The Downward Spiral. It took the covid quarantine to begin making that dream a reality.

Above & Below is the name Seditz chose for this plague-spawned project, and Suffer Decay Alone is the title he gave to its first fruits, an album that will be released on June 10th by Jeff Wilson‘s Disorder Recordings. The title has meaning, a sign of the times in which the music was made. It reflects some of the overarching moods of the music as well, but anyone familiar with Seditz‘s work in Plaguewielder could have already guessed that despite a change in genre-style this would be confrontational music with a raw and intense core — and so it is.

By the same token, anyone familiar with Covenant Death might also guess (correctly) that although Suffer Decay Alone is frequently dark as midnight, it isn’t a monotone, either emotionally or in its sonic textures. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE WORLD WITHOUT US — “WEEDS”

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Jun 062022
 

It’s fair to say that in recent years Pennsylvania has proven itself to be a hotbed of progressive death metal, with bands such as Rivers of Nihil, Black Crown Initiate, Alustrium, and Burial In The Sky all seizing international attention. In that environment, it would take something special for another similarly ambitious group to see their own star rise, but The World Without Us definitely bring something special to the firmament.

Building on their 2019 EP Incarnate, the band are now approaching the July 8 release date of their second EP, Body Forth, and the four songs it includes merit the eye-popping cover art by Magic the Gathering artist Poison Project that you see above. One of those songs, “Eden“, is already out in the world, and today we have the pleasure of presenting a second one — “Weeds“. Lest you misconceive the title as a message about dope, here’s how the band’s vocalist Mario Paulo Canavarro describes its meaning: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LACABRA — “FRACTURED”

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Jun 062022
 

The metal band Lacabra from the Pacific Northwest brings together the talents of Lance Neatherlin (Lead Vocals), Eric Snyder (Guitar), Eric Weber (Bass/Vocals), Michael Anthony (Guitar), and Ryan Yancey (Drums/Vocals). All of them have been tried and tested in other bands, but it’s fair to say that in Lacabra they’ve caught lightning in a bottle. We’ve got electrifying proof of that in the single “Fractured” that we’re premiering today through a powerful video.

Lyrically, the song foretells a nightmarish future in which humankind’s own technological innovations become the agent of its downfall. That grim conception is captured in the animated segments of the video (created by Maria Nicheva-Wicklund of Bulgaria), which were inspired by Netherlin‘s “disdain for technology and how it makes us desensitized and numb to events that should cripple the human heart”, and by his attraction to the work of Lotte Reiniger, a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation.

The video also captures the intensity of Lacabra‘s own live performances, and pairs extremely well with the turbocharged power and captivating dynamism of the song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VIDRES A LA SANG — “SALVEU-ME ELS ULLS”

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Jun 062022
 

 

Heads will spin, nerves will twitch, and jaws will drop. Those are among our predictions for listener reactions to Fragments de l’esdevenir, the new album by the Catalonian band Vidres A La Sang, their fifth full-length since 2004 and their first one in four years. It’s an unusual and thoroughly fascinating piece of musical alchemy, one that’s intricate and technically impressive, experimental and progressive, both bewildering and mesmerizing, and yet also fiery and ferocious in ways that will appeal to fans of death and black metal. Anyone who attempts to fashion a genre label for it will do so at their peril.

Much more could be said (and undoubtedly will be said) about Fragments de l’esdevenir, because it’s so multi-faceted and adventurous in its songwriting and so dazzling in its execution, one of those albums whose music demands close attention because it’s elaborate and ever-changing, but somehow also hits at a reflexive level, compulsively provoking movement and changing moods at the same time as it’s challenging your higher mental faculties to keep up with what’s happening.

The song we’re premiering today is a great example of what we’re struggling to say about the album experience — not that our struggles will cease, because we will forge ahead with some further linguistic exercises by way of introducing you to the marvels of “Salveu-me els ulls“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BRUTTA — “DEVON”

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Jun 032022
 

 

Imagine a maniacal murderer trapped within Dartmoor Prison in Devon, England. Fueled by unquenchable rage, he hammers at the walls that confine him, and the more he does so the more he longs to hurt, to teach the monstrosity of pain, to kill and kill again.

That vicious sociopath who is trying to escape the hell around him, and to bring hell to the outside world, is the first-person protagonist in the song we’re bringing you today from the self-titled debut album by the part-Brazilian, part-British band Brutta — and the song is just as viscerally violent and frightening as the lyrics. It’s also so physically compulsive that it’s likely to pump your head like a fully-fueled piston. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRISIS BENOIT — “EL CULTO DE LA MUERTE”

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Jun 032022
 

To be clear, we are not experts in Italian culture. Having said that, we must still express our surprise in discovering a trio of Italian death/grind punks whose lyrical themes are connected to pro wrestling, who hide their faces with masks connected to the Mexican lucha libre tradition, and who use stage names for themselves connected to the same tradition: El Terrible (drum/vocals), El Canibal (guitars), and Aidu Ientus (bass).

The connections of Crisis Benoit to the world of wrestling don’t stop there. They wrote the entrance theme for the Maltese pro wrestler Gianni Valletta (All Japan Pro Wrestling), for the Italian hardcore tag-team Urban Guerrilla, and for the Mexican extreme wrestling federation Zona23, and they collaborated with “Rise Underground Pro Wrestling” for a music/deathmatch show in Leeds (UK).

Is your curiosity piqued? Would you like to discover how these musical luchadors translate their inspirations into sound? Well, you should be, because their debut album El Culto De La Muerte is a hellish, harrowing, and often haunting experience, and one that turns out to be so musically multi-faceted that it keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BURIED REALM — “BURIED REALM”

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Jun 022022
 

 

Colorado-based Buried Realm has returned to the fray with a self-titled third album that’s just as much of an eye-popping attack as the Pär Olofsson artwork that blazes off its cover. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise for those who experienced the band’s startling debut album The Ichor Carcinoma (2017) or the very impressive sophomore full-length Embodiment of the Divine (2020), but even if you know those records, this one is still a spectacularly head-spinning and electrifying jolt to the system.

Once again, the band’s alter ego Josh Dummer has enlisted an impressive array of iconic names as guests to add their own fireworks to a show that’s already loaded with fireworks. Those names by themselves (which we’ll come to eventually) would be sufficient enticement for any newcomers to give Buried Realm a chance, but they really are just bit players (albeit famous ones). It’s Dummer‘s songwriting and performances that carry the main weight here, and he carries it easily — as you’ll discover through our premiere stream of the entire action-packed record on the eve of its release. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SACRILEGIOUS CROWN — “FORBIDDEN VESTIGES OF VENERATION”

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Jun 012022
 

Life is fear. Of course it’s other things too, but fear is inescapable. It always lurks, and sometimes dominates. Every living thing is prey, even if sometimes also predator, and that condition is rooted in our genes. How else could it be, when death eventually comes for all?

Music can channel fear, just as life is haunted by it, and sometimes it dives into esoteric dimensions where fear might be extinguished, because what causes it may be illuminated and embraced.

Well, these are obviously heavy thoughts, but what spawned them today is the hideous hypnosis created by a new EP named Forbidden Vestiges of Veneration from the Italian one-man raw black metal band Sacrilegious Crown, which is set for a June 3 release by Xenoglossy Productions. As the label describes, this new work is a concept release “about forbidden and forgotten religious cults, their mysticism blending occultism and religion with rituals involving hypnosis and underground processions”. Continue reading »

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