AN NCS PREMIERE: DEFECT DESIGNER — “TROLLS”

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Apr 122022
 

Anyone who has dabbled in the discography of either Diskord or Defect Designer, who share a pair of members, know that both of these Norway-based bands revel in severely discombobulating their listeners, and beating them almost senseless.

At the risk of our own sanity and skeletal integrity we’ve done our own fair share of dabbling across their releases, and have always come up wildly smiling, albeit through broken teeth. And so the news of the first Defect Designer album in seven years, following on the heels of Diskord‘s own 2021 full-length (reviewed here), set our nerves a-tingling.

Sure enough, it’s a goddamned bonanza, and so insane that it makes Ian Miller‘s  bizarre cover art seem understated and entirely intelligible. The name of the album is Neanderthal, and from that album we’re really fucking delighted to drop a brain-bomb on you named “Trolls“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZORNESTRIEB – “LICHTBLICKE”

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Apr 122022
 

 

“A gentle spring wind blows on these lonely days. A star shines brightest in the endless and still cold night, in this pain-filled silence…Thousands of empty hearts, exposed to their fate. In this world we don’t want to be without you… ‘Memory breaks the desolate silence, awakens the ray of hope in all of us'”.

Those words accompany a song we’re premiering today from Der Eskapist, the forthcoming debut album by the Thuringian atmospheric black metal band Zornestrieb. The song’s name, “Lichtblicke“, itself translates in English to “rays of hope” — but the music itself seems to reach for those rays through dark and turbulent clouds of torment. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CIRCLE OF CHAOS — “PURGATORY”

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Apr 112022
 

On April 22nd Satanath Records (Georgia) and The Ritual Productions (Netherlands) will co-release Forlorn Reign, the third album by the Swedish death metal band Circle of Chaos. It comes a long eight years after the band’s second full-length, and represents the work of a changed line-up in pursuit of a new musical direction for the band, one that’s more extreme and aggressive and brings elements of black and thrash metal into the mix.

As a prime example of what the new album holds for listeners, we present the band’s official music video for a venomous, vicious, and preternatural track named “Purgatory“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PAGANIZER — “BEYOND THE MACABRE”

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Apr 112022
 

He might blush to hear it, but Rogga Johansson is death metal royalty. Prolific and seemingly indefatigable, he and hordes of talented allies have been churning out death metal and other forms of musical extremity since the mid-’90s under dozens of names. The oldest of all those bands (unless one counts the short-lived Terminal Grip) is of course Paganizer, a mauling and magnificent offspring that reached maturity long ago but still grows and flourishes.

All good things will come to an end, but Paganizer seems deathless — in the vanguard of Swedish death metal from the early days and relentless in its continuing momentum. On June 24th of this year we will witness the release of their 12th album Beyond the Macabre, nearly a quarter century after the first one, embellished with a cover painting by Juanjo Castellano that’s as much of a supernatural spectacle as the music is.

And yes it’s true — Beyond the Macabre is a supernatural spectacle, a display of Swedish death metal that continues to menace and maraud in the best of the old traditions, but with a knack for incorporating evocative melodies that both add to the music’s visceral and vicious vitality and makes the songs genuinely memorable. It’s thus an honor to present the title track today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GALVANIST — “CONNECTION”

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Apr 082022
 

If I’m being honest about what’s motivated me to help keep this site going and growing for 12+ years, it’s a mixture of selfishness and altruism.

Selfishly, it has become a vehicle for turning me on to a lot more music, and a lot faster, than would have happened if I were just a fan. E-mails and other messages bring me new music in droves every day, far more than I have the ability to check out and much of it that on its face doesn’t seem that interesting, but I still find gems in the flood that I’m sure would have escaped me were it not for NCS.

Altruistically, NCS also gives me and my co-writers the ability to share what excites us with a much bigger audience than we could reach by mere word of mouth. Helping underground bands and labels reach more people is a good feeling, and the feeling is even better when they don’t yet have the kind of profile that’s going to get them widely noticed regardless of what we do here.

And that brings me to the “esoteric doom band” Galvanist from Bozeman, Montana. But for NCS. it’s highly unlikely I would have discovered their forthcoming debut album Connection as quickly as I have, or maybe at all. And because of NCS, I now get the chance to share with you a record that has quickly become a thrilling favorite among all the many records I’ve heard this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHFUCKINGCUNT — “DEVOURED BY EUNUCHS”

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Apr 082022
 

Let’s not spend any time debating this Australian band’s choice of name — they obviously don’t care what you think about it, and besides, their music’s not going to get played where anyone would be squeamish about uttering the name in public. Except in certain quadrants of extreme metal, the name’s outrageous — but so is the music. So let’s talk about the music.

Specifically, let’s talk about “Devoured By Eunuchs“, the song we’re premiering today from DFC‘s debut album Decadent Perversity, which is pegged for release on June 10th by Transcending Obscurity Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INANNA — “FAR AWAY IN OTHER SPHERES”

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Apr 072022
 

Almost four years ago I finally came across the Chilean band Inanna. At that time the band’s latest release was their second album, 2012’s Transfigured in a Thousand Delusions, and it absolutely blew me away (as I wrote in one of our now-moribund Miscellany columns).

I lost track of the band after that, and I suppose for good reason because the only release that followed my discovery of Inanna was a 2020 live album. But now, a decade following Transfigured…, they have completed a third full-length named Void of Unending Depths that’s set for release on April 25th by Memento Mori. It’s an album you definitely will not want to miss, because it’s one of the best that death metal has offered in the year so far — and should rank highly at year-end too. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORFER — “DARK WISDOM”

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Apr 072022
 

 

In the 12 1/2 years this site has been active we have written about a grand total of one metal band (Kashgar) from the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Today we double that total.

Obviously, it’s still a rarity, and sent us off to get better educated, especially because the promotional material for Morfer, the band that’s the subject of today’s premiere, makes reference to their origins “among the rocky and snowy ridges, mountainous and hopeless forests of the Scandinavian Tien Shan”. What does that mean?!? Let’s learn together.

For those of us in the ignorant West, Kyrgyzstan is bounded by Kazakhstan on the northwest and north, by China on the east and south, and by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on the south and west. It was conquered by tsarist Russian forces in the 19th century, later became a republic of the U.S.S.R., and declared its independence from the former Soviet Union on August 31, 1991.

Most of Kyrgyzstan’s borders run along mountain crests, including the Tien Shan, which is one of the great mountain systems of Central Asia (its name is Chinese for “Celestial Mountains”). That range stretches for 1,500 miles (2,500 km) and mainly straddles the border between China and Kyrgyzstan.

There is much more to be learned about the history, cultures, and fascinating geography of Kyrgyzstan, but let’s stop there and now ask again what could have been meant by that reference to “the Scandinavian Tien Shan“? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MOANHAND – BLEEDING BIRD

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Apr 072022
 

(Andy Synn presents a brand new single from Moanhand – whose debut album, Present Serpent, was one of his top releases of 2021)

It’s impossible to begin writing today’s article without acknowledging the terrible elephant in the room.

It was just last year that I found my listening time dominated by numerous bands and albums from Russia, but now, in light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the seemingly daily reports of new and fresh atrocities being committed there, that seems like a lifetime ago.

Some of you, I’m sure, will be very much against the idea of us covering any Russian bands right now, but one thing that has become clear to me – after seeing all the protests, hearing all the bands, artists, and organisations speaking out against the invasion – is that the Russian government is not the Russian people, and the voices inside Russia decrying this war deserve to be heard.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERMÖRD — “NOSTALGIC PREDICTIONS”

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Apr 062022
 

 

Ghoulish faces with hollow eyes gaze through marble portals, mouths agape at a hooded wizard drawing lightning from a swirling pool of infinity. It’s an eye-catching scene that Matt Lawrence has created for the debut album by Baltimore-based Vermord, one that creates an amalgam of sensations — of unearthly ghastliness, mind-bending magic, and fathomless mystery.

The visual certainly spawns a feeling of excited intrigue about the music that Vermord have created within the realm of Nostalgic Predictions, but for those who heard the band’s first EP, 2015’s Dawn Of The Black Harvest (which we premiered here) or the Dissimulation demo that followed it in 2016, the seeds of intrigue about what might come next were already planted.

Many years have passed by since then, but now the band are ready to show us what they accomplished during a period of hiatus — and they have a lot to show, through 13 tracks and an hour’s worth of music, all of which we’re presenting today in advance of the April 8 release. Continue reading »

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