AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RAT KING — “MORBOSO”

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Dec 062021
 

 

In April 2017 at Seattle’s tiny Funhouse venue I witnessed one of the earliest live performances by Rat King (along with my first exposure to live performances by Seattle’s Rhine and Arizona’s Lago). I wrote about the show here, At that point Rat King was a complete unknown to me (the two key members, bassist/vocalist Daniel Racines and guitarist Ricardo Racines, had moved to Seattle from Ecuador), but they made an immediate positive impression.

At that point Rat King had a debut album (Garbage Island), an EP, and a split in their discography, and they released a second album (Vicious Inhumanity) in 2020. That second album reflected a change in style, moving toward a fast-paced and vicious blend of death metal and grind, and on their new EP Santa Hipocresía (set for release on December 10th via Within The Mind Records) they mainly stay in the fast and furious lane.

But not everything on the new EP is high-speed savagery, as you’ll discover through our video premiere today of a bludgeoning and sinister track called “Morboso” (“morbid” in English). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MAC GOLLEHON — “BRONX MOTOR INN”

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Dec 062021
 

 

Every musician has two voices, the one that uses the larynx and the other that uses the manufactured instrument they’ve trained themselves to play. Even in the case of musicians who can sing (or growl or scream), the voice they create through a collaboration with their manufactured instrument is often so much more expressive than the other voice, and even more capable of bringing emotions to life in ways that every other human being can understand.

How that happens is a grand mystery. People spoke and sang to each other millennia before the first musical instrument was created. And when instruments came into existence, what were they used for? To speak and to sing in a different but still recognizable way, and to mimic the beat of hearts and the throb of pulses. Sure, they can be used to create sensations we think of as utterly inhuman, but even then they’re still really being used to create voices our own throats aren’t capable of creating but that convey moods we all understand — even if what we understand are nightmares.

Which brings us to the subject of this post, brass musician extraordinaire Mac Gollehon. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORDOM — “BETRAYED”

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Dec 032021
 

 

“Combining the leaden misery of funeral doom, the hideous unconventional songwriting of death metal and the monomaniacal disgust of black metal, Mordom prove themselves to be preternaturally gifted at transmuting their darkest moods into monstrous moments of crushing sonic majesty.”

Those words aren’t ours, but instead were crafted by Decibel Magazine’s Dutch Pearce when he reviewed this San Diego band’s debut demo about a year ago. However, the description is too on-point for us to ignore. We repeat them now because Mordom‘s debut album Cry Of The Dying World is fast-approaching its December 10 release via Transylvanian Recordings.

Like the demo, the album blends ingredients of funeral doom and death metal, but also includes elements of sludge, crust punk, and post-rock. Unlike the demo, it includes the work of drummer Nathan Gonzalez joining in with the band’s founder (and his Cessation bandmate) Max Hoffman, who decided to drop guitars almost entirely for this album and rely heavily on pulverizing bass tones, plus his own harrowing harsh vocals. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TORMENTOR TYRANT — “PRIMAL EVIL”

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Dec 032021
 

 

The tale of Tormentor Tyrant‘s inception points the way toward the kind of evil death metal they’ve laid down on their debut self-titled EP. We’re told that the band was born in late 2020, but that the seeds of the idea might be traced back even a few years earlier “to some obscure drunken nights when the trio had the innocent idea of ‘how cool would it be to just jam some early Deicide songs together?'”

From that starting point this Finnish threesome — guitarist/vocalist S. and drummer J. (who played together in such bands as Cataleptic and Solothus) plus bassist/vocalist M. (from Corpsessed, Tyranny, and Profetus) — moved on from playing cover songs to creating their own fiendish material, but still under the influences of the early demos and albums of groups like Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, and Malevolent Creation, as well as the abrupt and unhinged bands of South America and Europe of the same era.

And hell yes, what they’ve made is thoroughly evil — death metal that’s grimy, grotesque, untamed, and savagely primal in its sound. We’ve got a great example of their formidable talents in a song off their forthcoming EP that’s fittingly named “Primal Evil“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HUSQWARNAH — “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY”

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Dec 022021
 

This is the time of year when ardent fans of metal, or at least the ones who enjoy bestowing accolades via year-end lists, are thinking hard about what they’ve been listening to over the last 11+ months. As all such list-makers know, it’s a time of year when December releases tend to get overlooked, even though the release schedule does tend to slow down some as we barrel ahead toward December 31st.

We’re probably as guilty of this as anyone else, but we’re still making an effort to keep at least one of our eyes focused on the horizons ahead, and the truth is that some very good records are still set for release this month, and Husqwarnah‘s debut album Front Toward Enemy is one of them. It’s so good that devoted fans of death metal might want to check it out before putting the finishing touches on their year-end lists.

And although we’re still a day away from the album’s official release, you can check it out right now, because we’re now hosting the premiere of Front Toward Enemy in its entirety. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLK OPS — “THE HEROIC DOSE”

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Dec 012021
 

 

Austin-based BLK OPS haven’t been prolific. Until now, following their formation in 2014, their discography consisted of a pair of 2017 splits (with Cave Bastard and KRVSHR) and a live album released just at the start of the pandemic in 2020. But though their output has been limited, their abrasive but cathartic amalgamation of hardcore, metal, and harsh noise has made a crater-sized impact, harrowing to hear but impossible to forget. And now, at last, we have their debut album, The Heroic Dose.

From what we hear, getting the album to the point of release — which will happen via Roman Numeral Records on December 3rd — has itself been a harrowing and frustrating ordeal. But the considerable time that BLK OPS spent working and re-working the record, that time shows itself in the outcome. The Heroic Dose builds upon all the qualities that made BLK OPS‘ splits so striking, and creates an even more daunting, elaborate, and demanding edifice of sound, which you’ll get to experience in its entirety today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HADAL MAW — “OBLIQUE ORDER”

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Dec 012021
 

 

Since 2014 Australia’s Hadal Maw have released two albums (2014’s Senium and 2017’s Olm) as well as a 2018 EP named Charlatan, and throughout that time we’ve followed them closely, as attested by the appearance of 10 different posts in which we’ve discussed their music since 2014. Now we have the chance to focus on them again, because at last they’re releasing a new record destined for detonation at the very end of this miserable year.

The clock continues to tick on the arrival of a new Hadal Maw album, but at least we now have a new four-song EP, the name of which is Oblique Order, and it’s the EP’s jaw-dropping title track that we have for you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GATEWAYS — “GODS OF THE GAPS”

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Nov 302021
 

We’ wrote frequently and favorably about the music of the solo project Haustið (the work of one A. Enrique), which consisted of five demos released in 2018 and 2019. Haustið‘s creator has now prepared a new EP, Gods of the Gaps, although under a new name — Gateways — and today we’re presenting a premiere stream of its captivating title track in advance of the EP’s December 3 release date.

I learned about Haustið just before Thanksgiving Day in 2018, thanks to a recommendation from Rennie of starkweather, who vividly compared Haustið’s then-latest demo to “a cross of Emanation and Wolok on a suicide mission”. When I wrote about that demo, Howling, the Sol Above, Nothing Below, I described “a surreal quality to the music as it flows along its twisting course, with outbursts of dark, dissonant, thorny permutations interwoven with soulful, gliding, and sinuous instrumental passages, both moody and mystical, that sometimes partake of traditions other than extreme metal”.

The next Haustið recording, released in the spring of 2019, and also discussed here, was a two-track EP named Long Lost Ruins Cried their Black Soot. It was also a marvelously multifaceted experience, with both a “physically” powerful impact and a bitter and chilly atmosphere, delivering one changing experience after another. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LIEWEAVER — “OBSESSED WITH PURITY”

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Nov 302021
 

In September of this waning year the Italian label Lethal Scissor Records released a debut EP named The Origin by the Ukrainian extremists Lieweaver. The band first began to coalesce in October 2018 through the union of vocalist Vasiliy Kutsenko, guitarist Alex Choopov, and drummer Bogdan Fesenko. Soon, guitarist Alex Reshetnuk joined the group, and together they released a a debut single, “Paradox Of Creation“. A few months later bassist Bogdan Khoroshilov joined the band, and in February 2021 Ruslan Kovtun (keys/synth) completed the line-up for the recording of The Origin.

What we have for you today is a playthrough video for the EP’s closing track, “Obsessed With Purity“, and it features the talents of guitarists Choopov and Reshetnuk and bassist Khoroshilov. Watching them execute their missions within “Obsessed With Purity” is a fascinating thing to see, and the music has its own fascinations — in addition to delivering a bludgeoning beating. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): REJEKTS — “ADAMO”

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Nov 292021
 

 

I was unfamiliar with the previous recordings of the Italian band REJEKTS, but experienced a reflexive thrill when I read that their new album Adamo embraces “grindcore, black metal and more”. Blackened grindcore, when done well, usually gets my motor running, but it turns out that perhaps the most meaningful part of that quoted PR passage is the part that says “and more”.

The lyrical themes of REJEKTS are politically charged, in keeping with their punk and grindcore ethos, and on Adamo they do indeed strike with black-metal bursts of blasting drums, grim and cutting tremolo’d riffs, and shrieking vocal intensity. But yes, there’s more going on here — a lot more.

Unlike standard grindcore, the songs are elaborate and constantly surprising, fueled with gripping mood-changing melodies, and as devoted to the creation of harrowing “atmosphere” (for want of a better word) as they are to pushing a listener’s adrenaline into overdrive. The album experience is disturbing, but absolutely riveting from start to finish. And thus we take great pleasure in presenting a full stream in advance of its rapidly approaching December 3rd release by Slaughterhouse Records. Continue reading »

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