AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SYMBOLICAL — “EPIPHANY & REVIVAL”

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Dec 162021
 

 

The death metal mystics in Symbolical have embarked on a new musical campaign, the purpose of which is to draw you into the darkness that ancients believed was “the home of all that is not yet in form but holds the energy of the creative source”. These Polish musicians proclaim that “Symbolical is our darkness, filled with fat, gloomy, remorseless, simple, and morbid sounds which create and destroy sorrow, depression and grief.”

The new campaign consists of a three-part series of EPs, the first of which — Igne — will be released on December 25, with the next two coming in 2022. Each EP includes a trio of tracks, each of which will be presented through a video. Two of the tracks included within Igne have already premiered through videos, and today we present the third one, “Epiphany & Revival“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: MYRDØD — “THE MOURNING HOLLOW”

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Dec 152021
 

 

(Todd Manning provides the following introduction to our premiere of the new album by Myrdød, whose release is imminent.)

Emerging from the rural nether-swamps of Pennsylvania, the duo known as Myrdød are set to release their full-length The Mourning Hollow on December 17th courtesy of Wise Blood Records. Originally formed by the mysterious Søppelskaler, the project released several singles before enlisting collaborator Fractal Creature.

While many bands claim both death and black metal influences, Myrdød truly blend the two genres and not in a fanboy sense. The Mourning Hollow reeks of pure death mysticism.  Søppelskaler states the following: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BENEATH THE SOD — “BENEATH THE SOD”

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Dec 152021
 

 

“Beneath the Sod scrape back the top soil to lay bare all that is repulsive and feculent beneath. Narcotic and eldritch, Beneath the Sod erodes the listener with a writhing tapestry of industrial doom, grinding noise and hallucinatory horror. Punishing and bewildering, with each release Beneath the Sod sinks deeper into their unique and singularly maddening mire”.

Those are the accurately evocative words with which Cursed Monk Records introduces a new self-titled EP by this utterly diabolical Irish band, an EP set for release on December 17th that we’re presenting today in the full bloom of its terrors. We have more detailed commentary of our own, of course, but at least one more way of attempting to sum up the experience might be this:

It is deeply unsettling, even to the point of inducing queasiness in the listener, and brings forward the stuff of nightmares as old as humanity, and yet manages to become bewitching, to transfix attention, maybe in part because it is so fiendishly effective in crushing the soul and unhinging the mind. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEPLETED URANIUM — “BETA PARTICLES”

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Dec 142021
 

 

When does insanity begin to make sense? When you yourself begin to feel like you’re losing your mental moorings? When the whole fucking world seems to be going insane around you? Or when you realize there’s an appealing method to the madness you witness? Or some combination of all of the above?

These ruminations were spawned by listening to Origins, the new record by the brawlers and mad scientists in the Canadian band Depleted Uranium, which is set for release on January 28th of the coming new year. The music (which could be thought of as a blending of powerviolence and math metal) genuinely sounds insane — furiously so — and yet something about the experience makes sense. Not just because it sounds like people throwing away mental shackles and conventions, but also because the music simultaneously gets its hooks in your head. There’s a sense of order and precision of execution in it, at the same time as it seems completely disruptive of order. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KADAVEREICH — “RADIANCE OF DOOM”

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Dec 142021
 

 

On December 18th Godz Ov War Productions will release Radiance of Doom, the debut EP of the Russian blackened death metal band Kadavereich. Apart from a reference that the line-up includes members of Grond, Act Of God, and Gwarloth, Godz Ov War gave us no hints about the nature of the music the band had created when it asked that we host the EP’s full streaming premiere today. And thus the feeling of shock and awe that we experienced when listening to it was all the more stupefying.

In a nutshell, the sonic power of the EP is immense, and its impact is utterly devastating (but equally electrifying). It chokes the senses, blots out the ability to think of anything else, and becomes an all-consuming, bone-smashing, mind-mauling experience in remorseless destruction, abject terror, and paralyzing agony. If you’re looking for a transfixing visceral experience and don’t mind being subjected to ruthless audio ruination, you’ve come to the right place. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATBLOOD — “BLOODDAWN / ANNIHILATION OF THIS WORLD”

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Dec 132021
 

 

I’ve spilled many words about Goatblood over the years in a seemingly endless quest to describe just how maliciously ruinous yet gripping their music is. I have another opportunity today, because we’re premiering a new two-part album named Blooddawn​/​Annihilation Of This World.

Hatred, disgust, and violence have always seemed to be the dominating inspirations for this malefic duo’s bestial black/death metal ministrations, the more willfully offensive the better. The music’s not ostentatious or pretentious — quite the opposite, which is part of its primeval appeal. All those ingredients are again present and accounted for in this new album, but the two halves of it nonetheless present slightly different takes on the band’s core malignancy of sound. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THEURGIA — “IRRADIANT”

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Dec 102021
 

The Venezuelan black metal band Theurgia, now based in Bogotá, Colombia, has already built an impressive and continually ambitious and improving discography that consists of a 2015 EP (Anti perpetuo), a 2017 debut album (Transformation), and a 2020 split with Hacavitz and Veldraveth (Tercer nadir venenoso). Theurgia is now adding to those impressive records with a second full-length entitled VIRTUE, which will be released in mid-January by the Mexican label Vomit Records.

Trying to succinctly sum up Theurgia’s evolving music isn’t an easy task, but at a high level we can say that it has succeeded in creating haunting and disturbing occult atmospheric sensations and coupled those with viscerally powerful and significantly heavy rhythms and frighteningly impassioned vocals. The music is relentlessly dramatic, formidably savage, and immersive in its effects.

Those qualities (and others) come through again in the song we’re premiering today from VIRTUE, via a lyric video. Its name is “Irradiant“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NIHILITY — “WILL TO POWER”

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Dec 092021
 

 

“Go numb and let your mind go black, let your soul be engulfed and captured by the void, then let this be the vessel for all your pent-up aggression and rage, for this is Nihility and this is the void.” And with those words Vicious Instinct Records introduces Nihility‘s new album Beyond Human Concepts, which is set for release on January 8, 2022.

This Portuguese quartet, who draw their influences from both death and black metal, trace their roots back to 2012 and made their blasphemous full-length debut with 2019’s Thus Spoke The Antichrist. The new album again combines ingredients in a powerful way, inspiring thoughts of Cannibal Corpse’s insane brutality, Death’s technical dexterity, and the bitter-cold melodies of such bands as Necrophobic.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video for “Will To Power“, the second single to be released from Beyond Human Concepts — and it’s one that will kick your adrenaline into overdrive. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KVAEN — “THE GREAT BELOW”

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Dec 092021
 

 

Almost two years ago Black Lion Records released the killer debut album (The Funeral Pyre) by the Swedish band Kvaen. In the run-up to that release we premiered its title track, published an interview of the band, and launched a review by our Andy Synn which lauded the record as “a tight, forty-five (and a half) minutes of rip-roaring, Thrash and Speed injected, Black Metal that takes no prisoners and shows no mercy”. He wrote these words too:

“There’s just so much love, so much passion, so much fire (and ice) driving this album that you can’t help but fall in love with it. It’s fearless, shameless, and absolutely relentless, in its pursuit of pitch-black perfection, throwing in more riffs, more hooks, and more epic, extravagant solos (trust me, when you reach that point in the title-track you’ll know what I’m talking about) with the sort of reckless abandon that suggests its creator is either a madman or a genius (and I know which one I’m betting on). Inarguably one of the best albums, front to back, to have been released so far this year”.

And so we’re understandably pretty damned excited to help spread the word that Kvaen‘s madman/genius creator Jakob Björnfot (along with an eye-opening lineup of guests) is returning with a sophomore full-length that the same Black Lion Records has set for release on March 25th of next year. The new one is named The Great Below, and once again we’re delighted to host the premiere of its title song. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HAMMERDRONE — “A TRINITY OF RAGE”

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Dec 082021
 

 

This has been a day of many premieres at our site but we have one more that should not be missed — a complete stream of a new concept EP by Hammerdrone from Calgary, Canada. Its title is A Trinity of Rage, and it’s fast approaching a December 10 release.

This newest record adds to a Hammerdrone discography that includes a pair of albums and a pair of EPs. It has been four years in the making and is being presented along with an original short story, “Eversor” (available as a bonus download via Bandcamp). The story revolves around the fictional second book of Revelation, in which is foretold the threat of Heaven’s destruction at the hands of Eversor, The Destroyer. Lyrically, the EP’s three tracks pick up where the short story ends and carries the narrative forward to its conclusion. Continue reading »

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