AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEBER — “ASPIRE TO AFFLICTION”

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Nov 032021
 

The relatively new Swedish band Deber named one of the songs on their debut album for the title of the album itself (Aspire To Affliction) and another for themselves. By far, those are the two shortest tracks, positioned in a such a way that one of them begins the record and the other ends it. In between are three monumental songs — a trio of towering edifices, in terms of both minutes and the imposing visions they create.

We say that Deber are a relatively new band, but the members aren’t newcomers, even if they’re pursuing some new directions here. These two are DIE (in charge of strings and organ), who is a member of Anguish and Ondskapt, and HCF (who handles drums and vocals). What they’ve turned their attention to in Deber is funeral doom, drawing upon the influence of such masters as Evoken, Worship, Skepticism, and Colosseum.

As the album title suggests, they aspire to sounds of affliction, and they have achieved their aspirations, with staggering power. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CUTTERRED FLESH — “GOOD BOY”

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Nov 022021
 

 

The video we’re about to present shows us… how shall we say it?… an interesting household. A seemingly innocent little boy and his pet rabbit. An abusive mother who doesn’t realize where her rages are going to lead. And in the living room, a bunch of death metal barbarians turning the humble surroundings into a psychotic war zone.

Oh yes, it’s an interesting video, with blood spatter in its future. And it makes an attention-riveting companion to the absolutely bludgeoning and eviscerating song “Good Boy” that it presents — a bombastic, mind-mauling, and terrifically brutalizing track by the Czech death metal band Cutterred Flesh.

Adorned by the macabre cover art of Par Olofsson, which itself features a couple of “good boys”, the album that includes this track will be released by Transcending Obscurity Records on December 3rd. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BROODING FEAR — “SCORN”

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Nov 022021
 

 

We’re about to give you a gift of thrills, the kind of full-throttle, head-spinning spectacle that comes with our occasional warning to take plenty of deep breaths before you press Play.

The song is “Scorn“, and it does indeed have a vicious, clobbering, and condemnatory intensity, but it’s also absolutely wild, and guaranteed to light a fire under your nerves. It’s the work of a part-Dutch, part-Hungarian band of technically jaw-dropping death metal marauders who’ve taken the name Brooding Fear. It comes from their explosive new release, Abomination, which will be detonated by Ungodly Ruins Productions on December 3rd.

Take a good look at the wild, savage cover art for Abomination, because it provides a further big clue as to what’s coming. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WINTAAR — “I WILL WAIT FOR YOU IN MY HELL”

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Nov 022021
 

We’re about to expose you to a big jolt of electrifying insanity, one that’s sure to get your pulse jumping and your head spinning. It’s a hell-for-leather, no-holds-barred song called “I Will Wait For You In My Hell” by the Russian black metal band Wintaar off their new album Tear You Down, which is set for release on November 25th by the triumvirate of Satanath Records, Valgriind, and Svanrenne Music.

Even a quick glance at Wintaar‘s Metal Archives page demonstrates that the project has been incredibly prolific, releasing nearly 30 albums in just the last four years, and that’s not counting the participation of its sole creator WV in many other bands. And now Tear You Down adds to that discography, but also represents a change, in that WV has now been joined by two other permanent members, guitarist Namiros and drummer E.J.C. (who also performs additional bass and backing vocal).

In addition, WIntaar characterizes the new album as one that takes the band’s aggressiveness to the boiling point, and represents its fastest and heaviest work yet, while still presenting significant variations among the songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONCRETE WINDS — “DEMONIC TRUCULENCE”

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Nov 012021
 

Good morning class. Today we have a case study for you, a study in paradox. The paradox in question is how musicians who have clearly taken leave of their senses are able to create sonic sensations that are utterly maniacal, and yet make their stupendously berserk convulsions somehow sound… catchy? Yes, catchy! (Although it’s possible we’ve taken leave of our senses as a result of listening to this.)

The subject of the case study is a track named “Demonic Truculence” (bonus points for using “truculence” in a song title, and for making music that merits the word, especially when modified by the adjective “demonic”). The two evident maniacs who made it (Jonatan Johansson and Mikko Josefsson) go by the name Concrete Winds. The album that includes the track goes by the accurately descriptive name Nerve Butcherer. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOMBBATH — “THE SEVENTH SEAL”

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Nov 012021
 

What do you do if you have mastered a particular art form? Some artists would just happily continue doing what they had mastered, on the theory that success breeds more success and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Others might retire and rest on their laurels. But some might create new challenges for themselves by focusing their energies on how to make what they had mastered sound different and new. And that’s what the Swedish death metal band Wombbath have done on their new album, Agma.

It should go without saying by now that Wombbath have mastered the art form of old-school HM-2-powered Swedish-style death metal. They got an early start on their mastery in the mid-’90s, went away for about 20 years, and then resumed work with 2015’s Downfall Rising. Since then founding guitarist Håkan Stuvemark and a new group of very talented comrades have pumped out three more albums which collectively proved, in increasingly convincing ways, that they were on very sure footing.

But now we have Agma, which is brimming with new ideas, so many of them that it’s a double-album, encompassing 16 tracks and more than an hour and 12 minutes of music. We are revealing one of those today in advance of Agma‘s December 31st release by Transcending Obscurity Records, a late date that we hope won’t cause Agma to be overlooked on EOY lists, because it can certainly lay just claim to be included. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRVNA — “TIMELESS… AGELESS…”

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Oct 292021
 

The Australian black metal band KRVNA made its recorded debut just last month with a debut demo consisting of two substantial tracks. Under the title Long Forgotten Relic it was released by Seance Records. In its lyrical themes, and through the visions of imagination spawned by the music, it explored the vampire mythos from the ancient world to Biblical times, and the black forests and mountainous castle crypts of Balkan and Carpathian incarnations of the vampire.

Now, following closely on the heels of that very promising advent, Seance Records is readying the release of KRVNA’s debut album Sempinfernus. It too delves into vampyric mythology but in an even more expansive and far-reaching way. Moreover, KRVNA’s solo creator Krvna Vatra has disclosed more precisely the nature of his interest in the subject matter, and how it stands for themes that extend beyond tales of the undead: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOLGOTHAN — “PARENT ORGANISM”

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Oct 292021
 

Most of us are familiar with Golgotha, the skull-shaped hill of execution in ancient Jerusalem where, according to the Gospels, Jesus was crucified (along with many others charged with crimes). But what, pray tell, is a Golgothan? The creature seems to have originated in Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie Dogma. According to the Metal-Archives listing for the Louisiana death metal band who took that same name for themselves:

“A Golgothan (also called a ‘shit demon’ or ‘excremental’) is a fictional creature composed of human excrement. The creature derives its name from the hill where Christ was crucified; the collective suffering of the souls sentenced to death by crucifixion on that hill gives birth to the demon’s existence. The Golgathan rises from the collected offal secreted by each prisoner’s loosened bowels upon the moment of death”.

In keeping with the genesis of their name, Golgothan (the band) are thematically attracted to gore and horror, and apparently the more outrageous, the better. They’ve released a handful of EPs and singles beginning in 2014, and at last will have a debut album named Leech coming out on February 4, 2022 through Lacerated Enemy Records, who recommends it for fans of Aborted, Cattle Decapitation, and Bloodbath.

February 4th is a long way off, but we’re presenting a first single from the album that makes it a date worth remembering. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BURIAL — “INNER GATEWAYS TO THE SLUMBERING EQUILIBRIUM AT THE CENTER OF THE COSMOS”

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Oct 282021
 

It has been our hideous pleasure to premiere two tracks from the staggering and slaughtering debut album of the Italian death metal band Burial, and today we’re even more fiendishly pleased to bring you a stream of the full album, evocatively titled Inner Gateways To The Slumbering Equilibrium At The Center Of Cosmos and graced by the ghastly cover art of maestro Paolo Girardi.

Everlasting Spew Records, who will release the record on October 29th, recommends it for fans of Spectral Voice, Mortiferum, Krypts, and dISEMBOWELMENT. We recommend it for anyone who relishes expertly written and meticulously executed death metal which succeeds in creating a wide-ranging amalgam of unearthly terrors, ranging from assaults of mind-mauling, bone-splintering barbarity to episodes of crushing gloom and hypnotic supernatural trances steeped in woe. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: STAGWOUNDER — “DAS PHANTOM ZERRINNT”

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Oct 282021
 

 

Extreme metal need not draw its inspirations or lyrical themes from philosophy and literature to be worth our time. Of course it doesn’t — visions of pentagrams, skulls, haunted graveyards, and steaming viscera will do just fine, as long as the music hooks us. Still,  provocative thinking can sometimes add an extra dimension to the experience, apart from the role it may play in providing inspiration to the musicians, and learning something new can be a welcome bonus.

Which brings us to the German band Stagwounder‘s new album The Shrouded Muse of the World´s Lament. In the press materials it is introduced by this quotation:

“Thou, eager to ascend to the sun on waxen wings, consider: even in the bleak caves of the deep it is better to reside than in the boundless ether. Between heaven and hell the child of Gaea is born, soon willing to lie itself down among the photophobic creatures of the chthonic dark, soon fluttering upward to the splendorous heights whose reflections radiate around it like garments of light.“

That passage was written by the 19th century German philosopher Julius Bahnsen. It appears in Pessimistenbrevier, a work translated as “The Pessimist’s Breviary”. That work provides the foundation for Stagwounder‘s new album, along with Japanese author and cultural critic Mishima Yukio. How these thinkers influenced the album is an interesting tale, and we think one worth telling before we get to the music itself (and yes, we will get to the music in due course, because we’re premiering a song from The Shrouded Muse… today, in the lead-up to its release by Crawling Chaos on November 26th). Continue reading »

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