AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DESOLATE SHRINE — “FIRES OF THE DYING WORLD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Mar 222022
 

 

In 2017 our man Andy Synn reviewed Desolate Shrine‘s Deliverance From the Godless Void (along with the band’s preceding three albums), calling that fourth full-length in the group’s discography “another triumph of will and wickedness, and well worth getting hold of if you’ve ever had an urge for a truly masochistic metallic experience.”

With “a production that may be more powerful than ever”, Andy wrote, “the band are still as foul and filthy at heart as they have always been, at times bringing to bear a crippling sense of dissonance and discordance,” meshing together “neck-wrecking grooves”, “gnarly, guttural vocals,” “bulldozing riffs,” “strangling bass lines,” and “foul, demonic atmospherics” to produce a truly electrifying experience.

After a 4 1/2 year wait this devastatingly talented Finnish trio now return with their new fifth album, Fires of the Dying World, which Dark Descent Records will release on March 25th. The wait is now only days away from ending, but today you’ll get to hear the album without any further delay, as we present a full stream below. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUNTOLD — “INTO NO MAN’S LAND”

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Mar 222022
 

History repeats itself. What was once old (and horrible) becomes new (and horrible) again.

Estimates of the human carnage inflicted during by the First World War vary to a great extent, but some place the number of military casualties (killed and wounded) at 9.7 million and the number of civilian casualties at 10 million. The magnitude of the slaughter is incomprehensible, but of course it didn’t sate the blood-lust of humankind. Another global conflagration began only two decades later. And now look at what’s happening, again.

The new part-American, part-Belgian black metal band Suntold have made World War I the central theme of their forthcoming debut album World Torn Asunder. It comes at a time when reminders of that brutal conflict centered in Europe are sadly all too relevant. And the music makes the reminder shockingly vivid. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NECROMANTE — “XI”

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Mar 212022
 

 

Most of our parents tried to educate us about the importance of first impressions, even the ones who didn’t seem to be very good about setting a useful example. Many of us didn’t take the lesson seriously, or tried and failed often enough that we stopped caring. Necromante, however, learned the lesson well.

The first track on their new album XI, “The Equinox of New Aeon“, seizes attention with a haunting melody of piano and strings and two speakers (one of them gloomily beseeching and one of them demonstrably demonic) fighting to be heard. Even people who don’t speak the language can make out the name “Lucifer”.

But this is only the first piece of their first impression, and they answer their own call with the rest of it when “Lucifer Rising” floods the senses with diabolical riffing that blares, jolts, skitters, and darts, backed by drums that pummel and clatter, overlaid with scorching goblin snarls. The aroma of sulphur is strong, the black magic is vivid, and Lucifer does indeed rise as the music itself rises in a vision of infernal grandeur. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAEDEOUS — “OBSCURUS PERPETUO” (AND A VIDEO PREMIERE TOO!)

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 182022
 

On March 22nd the Portuguese symphonic black metal metal band Caedeous will release their third album, Obscurus Perpetua, and today we present not only the premiere of the album as a whole but also an official video for the song “Magisteri Peccatorum“.

If we were trained medical professionals we’d advise you to take your seats and get a firm grip on something solid before embarking on this journey, because Obscurus Perpetua is a dazzling, diabolical, and disorienting trip through the imperiums of Hell. The music is elaborate and unpredictable, theatrical and bombastic, sometimes breathtaking in its splendor but always as scary as your worst nightmares. Fascinating music, to be sure, but also demented and intensely unnerving. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RISE TO THE SKY — “EVERY DAY, A FUNERAL”

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Mar 182022
 

Rise to the Sky is the vehicle for the music of its sole creator, Chilean multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Sergio González Catalán. Though the project’s earliest releases emerged only in 2019, it has already assembled an extensive discography devoted primarily to atmospheric death/doom metal.

2021 saw the release of not one but two albums, the second of which (Per Aspera Ad Astra) was the source of a song (“End My Night“) that we premiered and then later named as one of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Sergio‘s creative fires haven’t been quenched despite the production of two full-lengths last year. He has already completed another album, this one entitled Every Day, A Funeral. It’s now set for release on May 6th via Meuse Music Records, and once again we have the pleasure of premiering a song. Presented through a lyric video, it’s the first single from this new work, and fittingly it’s the title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PLANEPACKED — “THE DEMON CORE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 172022
 

On April 8th the Massachusetts-based “metaltronica” project Planepacked will release a multi-faceted new album named Transactinides. A head-spinning trip of changing moods and soundscapes, the music includes ingredients that should appeal to fans of extreme metal, but adventurously mixes those with both boisterous and mesmerizing electronica and dramatically varying vocal styles.

Not for naught does the press material explain that on this new record Planepacked draws influence from the likes of Autechre, Igorrr, Devin Townsend, and Susumu Hirasawa (among others), as well as the urban fantasy fiction series Endian Project created by the woman behind Planepacked, Jessica Kagan.

What we bring you today is the premiere of the second single from the new album, a pulse-pounding spectacle named “The Demon Core“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GLOSON — “THE RIFT”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 172022
 

 

All of the old-timers here at NCS have their own musical tastes, which are probably best portrayed as a Venn diagram in which there are areas of intersection but also swaths of area that largely stand apart from each other. But the Swedish band Gloson are one of those bands in which we all overlap in our enthusiasm for the music. And thus it’s a genuine thrill for us now to present a full stream of their new album, The Rift, which is set for release this coming Friday by Indie Recordings.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, our own Andy Synn presented a review of the album just yesterday. He called it “by some margin the best Post-/Sludge Metal album I’ve heard so far this year — surpassing even Cult of Luna‘s fantastic new record”, an album that “has most certainly re-set the bar for 2022, and only time will tell if anything else can match it”.

He then proceeded to explain why, should you need any further persuasion to dive into the full stream today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CULT BURIAL — “DISORDER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 172022
 

It’s fair to say that we here at NCS have been following the UK band Cult Burial very closely. We’ve reviewed and recommended every one of their releases so far — their debut EP Sorrow in 2020, their self-titled debut album that same year, and their second EP Oblivion in 2021. It thus took no second thoughts nor any pause for us to leap at the chance to hear the band’s new single, “Disorder“, and we leaped equally fast at the chance to premiere it (as soon as we re-assembled our spine and picked our teeth up from the floor).

In a broad way, Cult Burial‘s music can be described as a changing amalgam of Black, Death, and Doom Metal, but while the band are capable of creating dark, dense, and oppressive soundscapes, this new song is a high-speed hurricane of obliteration. As the band have explained to us, “The aim was to create a nasty, aggressive, energetic piece of music that would leave the listener suffering under the weight of the song.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MRTVI — “LAKE OF MEMORIES”

 Interviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 172022
 

Music videos can be entertaining to watch when they are well-made, even when they don’t have any deep connection (or sometimes any connection at all) to the music they accompany. But in those rare instances when they do connect, each aspect of the art can enhance the other, the sights and sounds intertwining to create a more powerful and emotionally involving experience than if each were experienced separately. We have one of those rarities to share with you today.

The song is “Lake of Memories“, and it brings the listener to the culmination of a story that unfolds across the fifth concept album created by the Serbian experimental black metal project MRTVI (that genre description isn’t really adequate, but it would be equally inadequate to concoct some other short-hand descriptor). Entitled The ExiZentialist, the album is now set for release on June 14th by Life Is A Dream Records.

All of MRTVI‘s albums have been rooted in the experiences and thinking of their solo creator, Damjan Stefanović, but this new one is even more autobiographical, inspired by his own experience of being uprooted long ago from his homeland, transported for many years to another country (the UK, where he began MRTVI), and much more recently returning to the country of his birth. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FLUMMOX — “FLUMMOXING ACT I: GARBANZO’S LEAP”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 162022
 

 

We have two premieres at our site today. The first of them was a new song by the legendary Wisconsin death metal band Viogression. The contrast between that one and the one we’re presenting now could hardly be more stark. I suspect that will be pleasing to the band who’s the focus of this premiere, because their mission is… to flummox… to flummox conventions and expectations.

It’s been a while since we checked in with this Nashville band, and so it may be worth repeating something I wrote long ago:

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us that no one is completely sure where the word flummox comes from, though its first known use was in Charles Dickens’ debut novel, The Pickwick Papers, published in 1837. It means “to confuse”, and among its synonyms are “baffle”, “perplex”, “bewilder”, “bemuse”, and “mystify”. And when you understand all that, it’s not confusing at all why this band chose Flummox as their name — because (as forecast above) flummoxing listeners seems to be their primary mission. Continue reading »

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