AN NCS PREMIERE: INFILTRATED MANKIND — “WORLD WIDE DEICIDE”

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Aug 202021
 

 

As a long-time fan of Russian artist Anton Semenov (aka Gloom82), his “Horsemen of the Apocalypse” cover art for Infiltrated Mankind‘s forthcoming debut album Inside the Apelike caught my eye before hearing a single note. As it turns out, the band’s music is also apocalyptic and freakishly good, as you’ll discover through our premiere of a track from the album today.

“World Wide Deicide” is crushing and crazed. It generally moves fast, which makes the overflowing abundance of technical acrobatics even more mind-boggling. With fingers flying at centrifugal speed, the guitarist (and yes, there appears to be just one) executes savage blaring eruptions, deliriously shrieking and blurting frenzies, bursts of rapidly veering angularity, and unnerving spasms of boiling mania. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SEPULCHRE BY THE SEA — “GHOST OF THE DEPARTED”

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Aug 192021
 

 

Last fall we made one of those surprise discoveries that’s a source of constant motivation to dig deeper into the underground rather than just paying attention to the names most people already know. That discovery was Conqueror Worm, the debut album released by Anthrazit Records from Sepulchre by the Sea, a genre-bending one-man band who drew inspiration from the works of Edgar Allen Poe. As we explained here, the music explored some adventurous and interesting (and frightening) ideas that were embroidered around a spine of atmospheric black metal.

Now we’re pleased to report that Sepulchre by the Sea will be releasing a new EP on October 1st entitled Ratiocinations. It continues the Edgar Allen Poe theme and is based on the famous, and first ever, detective stories that Poe wrote. And to help spread the word about it, today we’re presenting the video premiere of the EP’s first single, a multifaceted song named “Ghost of the Departed“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AZAZEL — “JESUS CHRIST IMPOTENT ROTTING SAVIOUR”

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Aug 192021
 

 

The signposts are there for all to see — the spikes and the corpsepaint, the pentagrams and inverted crosses, the image of a cloven-hoofed, goat-headed demon defiling a nun, the arrogant and  insulting blasphemy of the song titles. And thus Azazel return after a six-year hiatus with a new album, their third, entitled Aegrus Satanas Tecum.

These Finnish demons trace their spawning to 1992, with their first evil fruits released in the mid-90s. It was not until 2012, after a long silence, that their first album Jesus Perversions emerged, followed by 2015’s Witches Deny Holy Trinity. And now the new one is set to arrive via Primitive Reaction on September 24th. To borrow from the promotional material (because it sums up the experience so well): Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORTAL VISION — “DEVASTATED EXISTENCE”

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Aug 192021
 

 

If you do a little poking around in the landfill of the internet you can find videos of legends before they were legends, such things as a 1989 rehearsal by Sepultura (here), a bootleg video of Carcass performing in that same year (here), and a Sodom concert from 1988 (here). One thing that jumps out, besides the energy of the music, is just how fucking young they all looked.

The Ukrainian thrash metal band Mortal Vision look damned young too — because they are damned young, in their early-to-mid 20s. But they’ve got that same kind of lightning-in-a-bottle energy you see in early performances by the legends, and a precocious talent for cooking up hell-raising, neck-wrecking music that’s highly contagious. Their label Redefining Darkness Records pitches them as “Schizophrenia-era Sepultura meets Persecution Mania-era Sodom at its finest”, and they are indeed a new force to be reckoned with.

As vivid proof of that, today we’ve got the premiere of an explosive video for “Devastated Existence“, which is a new single off Mortal Vision‘s forthcoming debut album, Mind Manipulation. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SELTAR — “AURORA”

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Aug 182021
 

 

The gorgeous cover art created by Taya Rostovtseva for the debut album by the U.S.-based atmospheric black metal band Seltar is evocative of the music itself, and of its inspirations. As Seltar’s sole member Invierno explains:

“Shimmering lights silhouette the dense trees, obscuring the landscape. In solitude, the body rests vacant as time evaporates into the ether. A cosmic ancestral energy perfuses the spirit inciting it to depart the physical realm. This intangible power emanating with the accumulated wisdom from distant eras hearkens the lifeforce towards a transdimensional journey to experience worlds beyond. The ego is abandoned. Gazing upon its exhausted earthly chassis, the spirit is enchanted into an ancient passage to attain fathomless vision. Autoscopia is a series of hymns to detach from this dimension and travel to a spectral plane.”

Combining with the artwork and Invierno’s words, we have the premiere of a song from Autoscopia named “Aurora” which provides a further powerful insight into the journey encompassed by the album — which will be jointly released on October 1st by Casus Belli Musica and Beverina Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WRATH DIVISION — “BARBED WIRE VEINS”

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Aug 182021
 

 

The three members of the Polish war metal band Wrath Division identify themselves by latitude and longitude coordinates rather than names. Finding nothing about the significance of these coordinates in the promotional materials for the band’s debut album, Barbed Wire Veins, we resorted to Google maps, and made these chilling discoveries:

Vocalist: 7°41’22″N 59°57’0″W — the site in Guayana of the 1978 Jonestown mass murder-suicide that killed over 900 men, women, and children
Guitarist/bassist: 34°24’N 132°27’E — the approximate location of the 1945 atomic bomb detonation above Hiroshima, Japan
Drummer/vocalist: 44°6’23″N 19°17’49″E — the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, site of the genocidal slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys during the Bosnian War

And if those examples of humanity’s capacity for self-destruction aren’t grim enough for you, wait ’til you hear the album.

You won’t have to wait long, because we have a stream of all 10 tracks today, just days away from its August 21 release by Godz Ov War Productions and Left Hand Sounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: XENOSIS — “PROPHETIC BLIGHT”

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Aug 172021
 

 

The Connecticut-based death metal band Xenosis released their third album Devour and Birth in early 2018. Since then, the band has changed, with a revised lineup that now includes second guitarist Keith Benway as well as new bassist and backing vocalist Craig Breitsprecher (of Fires in the Distance), as well as guitarist Kenny Bullard, vocalist Sal Bova, and drummer Gary Marotta (Archaic Decapitator). And with these new members on board, the band’s music has changed as well.

These changes are reflected in the latest Xenosis album, Paralled Existence, which is set for release on October 1st. It would go too far to say that Xenosis have radically transformed themselves — their backbone is still made of a particularly head-spinning brand of technical death metal. But the changes are nonetheless apparent, with greater roles for progressive-metal excursions and groove. We have a prime example in the song we’re premiering today, “Prophetic Blight“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SACRIFIXION — “SHOWER ME IN DEATH”

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Aug 172021
 

 

On their debut EP Shower Me In Death, the German band Sacrifixion have embraced a formulation of death metal that’s rough and raw, hideous and horrifying, maniacal and marauding. They strike with evil intent and visceral, primeval power, managing to seem right on the edge of out-of-control mayhem but also triggering convulsive head movement, while simultaneously giving their songs a creepy, supernatural aura.

With four tracks that rush by in about 13 eviscerating and neck-ruining minutes, Sacrifixion have put their stakes in the ground in vivid fashion, with decapitated heads on top. It’s a hell of a start, and leaves us hungry for their full-length, which is already in the works. And thus we’re sadistically happy to present a full stream of the EP in advance of its August 20 release on 7″ vinyl by Hells Headbangers. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SENTIERO DEI PRINCIPI — “RINASCONO LE TAMERICI”

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Aug 162021
 

 

Today we premiere a song from Lustmord, the debut album of Sentiero Dei Principi, the solo work of Nicola Redavid from Bari, Italy, in advance of its October 1 release by Esercito della Chiesa Dorata. But before we turn to the music, we want to share information about the concepts that underlie the album, because it will shed further light on the sensations of the music itself, and on Nicola Redavid‘s characterization of the style as “romantic black metal”.

The album’s title is a German word meaning “lust murder”. As described by Sentiero Dei Principi, it is a theme “that brings to mind scenes of violence but which at the same time contains a less raw and more psychological meaning, useful for what is the vision of childhood (where love is not necessarily understood as a relationship between lovers but also as a “child/parent” relationship), which is hit by events and traumas that lead to a sort of ‘death of love’. The traumas of childhood then have repercussions on development and adulthood, becoming partly responsible for crimes such as lust murders”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PAYDRETZ — “SOUS LE BANNIÈRE BLANCHE”

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Aug 162021
 

 

Those of you who are already familiar with the releases of the distinctive French label Antiq Records know that the bands who gather beneath its banner have an affinity for tales and tunes of bygone ages and old instruments, often melded together with the ravaging power and intensity of metal. And to that congregation of talents Antiq has added Paydretz, a French black/folk metal project featuring members of Véhémence, Himinbjorg, Hanternoz, Grylle, Belenos, and Wÿntër Ärvn.

Paydretz’s striking debut album is entitled Chroniques de l’Insurrection, set for release on October 8th. It’s a 14-track musical narrative of “the War in the Vendée” that took place in France between 1793 and 1796. This was a counter-revolution, an uprising among the French peasantry and a few royalist noblemen in the Vendée region during the Revolution’s reign of terror in Paris. It achieved a series of military victories before the counter-revolution was finally (and brutally) suppressed.

The song we’re presenting today, “Sous le Bannière Blanche“, is the sixth track in this opus. Its title refers to the white royal flag, as opposed to the Revolution’s tri-color flags of blue, white, and red. Later on in history and on the album (to borrow Antiq’s words), “defeats and fatigue of the wartime made the peasants weary of the situation and they abandoned the uprising (around 1800 and the arrival of Napoléon), so this is quite the rising of power of the album, and afterwards it declines to more bitter rage and discouraged feelings”. Continue reading »

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