AN NCS PREMIERE: PA VESH EN — “IN THE WOOD OF HANGED MEN”

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Aug 122021
 

 

An evocative title, this one: “In the Wood of Hanged Men“. If you let your mind dwell upon it, you might imagine a nightmarish experience, a vision of rotting flesh descending like pendulums from gnarled black branches, swaying to the movement of their own ghastly clockwork or simply gazing down with hollow eyes from the angles of broken necks. Maybe you can imagine their own terrors… maybe you can still hear them scream….

It’s a chilling vision, and a fitting title for the music itself, which is itself profoundly unearthly and terrorizing. What you might not expect is that this diabolical, ultra-disturbing, creation by Pa Vesh En is almost capable of simultaneously creating a fugue state, an appalling spell that somehow radiates through the shattering violence and becomes arresting. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FAWN LIMBS — “DARWIN FALLS”

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Aug 112021
 

(Andy Synn wrote the following review and introduction of our full streaming premiere for the new album by the trans-Atlantic band Fawn Limbs, which will soon be released by Roman Numeral and Wolves And Vibrancy.)

Even those who love Metal at its most brutal, its most technical, its most chaotic, must admit, when push comes to shove and their back is against the wall, that the pursuit of extremity, pure extremity, purely for its own sake, ultimately leads to an inevitable and inescapable evolutionary dead end.

Or, should I say, an almost inescapable dead end… because while it’s true that over-specialisation will ultimately limit the growth of any species band – once you’ve attained a certain level of maximum brutality, terminal velocity, inhuman technicality, where else do you have to go? – certain artists, certain entities, have still managed to discover new and unique ways to survive, and even to thrive, while continuing to push their own limits in different, but no less extravagant, ways.

The secret to achieving this, of course, is realising that extremity isn’t a linear scale. It’s a spectrum. One which extends in multiple directions and allows for multiple interpretations and expressions of what it means to be truly “extreme”.

Which brings us, at last, to the new album from Fawn Limbs, which finds the terrible trio choosing a new, yet also disturbingly familiar, path to follow, which leads to a place called… Darwin Falls. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ÆPOCH — “AMNESIA”

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Aug 102021
 

 

The Ontario progressive death metal band Æpoch are returning to the fray with a new line-up and a new EP set for release on September 10th named Hiraeth, and we’re presenting a track from it today. But before we experience “Amnesia“, we’ll share the band’s description about the chilling tale narrated through the music, which will illuminate the song you’re about to hear:

“Hiraeth is a concept EP about a character who has awoken in a post apocalyptic type environment with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He begins to wander in the desolate wasteland desert for days without any food or clean water. His body and mind grow weak from malnutrition and he begins to hallucinate. He eventually stumbles upon what appears to be fertile land. He sees a looming and eerie silhouette of some sort of decrepit totem. He becomes fixated on the monument.

“As he approaches, he gazes upon its carved trunk he notices the foul smell from all around him. This is the smell of the decaying flesh of those who walked this path before him, their minds consumed by the demonic spirit of the monolith. This creature, we call ‘The god of rot’ in the songs and the god of rot infects the mind of its victims, enthralling them to its will. The god of rot feeds off of the life source of its victims by having them sacrifice themselves once they are fully enthralled in a way similar to seppuku (Japanese samurai ritual suicide) and dress its limbs in their innards before they expire. The cover art depicts our protagonist approaching the god of rot.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “VENGEANCE REIGN”

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Aug 102021
 

 

The creative fires that burn in Australia’s Runespell seem unquenchable. Since the Unhallowed Blood Oath debut full-length in 2017, the band has released significant new works every year, including 2018’s Order of Vengeance, 2019’s Voice of Opprobrium, and the 2020 split with Forest Mysticism, Wandering Forlorn. And, like clockwork, Runespell has completed a new album that will be released on September 10th of this year by Iron Bonehead Productions, which has ushered forth all of the previous releases as well.

Runespell has already staked out a musical territory that presents (in the accurate words of the press materials) “grandiose melancholy given majestic flight” coupled with “bloodlusting energy no matter the tempo — widescreen in its vast landscapes yet fiercely focused….” And the new album displays those qualities again, but does so in ways that are perhaps even more dazzling in their extravagance, more unearthly in their aura, and more heart-stricken in their melodic moods. Witness the track we’re premiering today, “Vengeance Reign“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VELA PULSAR — “REVERENCE OF BEING”

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Aug 092021
 

 

Vela Pulsar began as a transcontinental collaboration between Ryan Mueller from Toronto and Samantha Holmes from Portland, Oregon. When the project became more serious and Samantha proposed creating an album, Ryan recruited his brother Cam to handle the drums (both brothers are also members of A Flock Named Murder) — and thus they recorded their debut record Memoirs of Unbecoming, which was digitally released last December, adorned by the haunting cover art of Marie Cherniy.

The music is a hybrid of symphonic and post-black metal that’s both ravishing and profound. Over the course of three long tracks it creates wide-ranging sensations of turmoil, longing, and transcendence that are all artfully constructed and emotionally involving at a visceral level. What we have for you today is a lyric video for one of those three tracks, “Reverence of Being“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OCCULSED — “LURID PLACELESS ECHOES”

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Aug 092021
 

 

In what other genre of music but death metal could adjectives like “grotesque”, “putrid”, “abysmal”, and “abhorrent” be used as compliments? None come to mind. But of course even in the realm of death metal those adjectives are complimentary only when the music has other qualities that make it viscerally exciting and memorable. Simply wallowing in a choking vat of formless excrement and vomit does not alone become pleasurable, even for people whose tastes run hard to the more disgusting offshoots of old school death.

Which brings us back to Occulsed, and the second song we’re ghoulishly happy to premiere from their debut album Crepitation of Phlegethon in the run-up to its September 17 release by Everlasting Spew Records. The music of Occulsed merits all those adjectives above, but it’s also so well-constructed and maliciously well-realized that it becomes addictive (as well as foul). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FLESHBORE — “EMBERS GATHERING”

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Aug 062021
 

 

It’s our pleasure today to present a full stream of the debut album by the Indianapolis-based tech-death crew Fleshbore, which is set for an August 13 release by Innerstrength Records. It represents a redefining of the band’s sound over years of effort, and the results (to borrow some words you’ll see in the following review) are both body-mangling and mind-blowing.

In the opening track, “Momentum”, a compulsive rhythmic beat and grand ringing chords provide the introduction to an obliterating percussive assault accompanied by slicing, swirling, and darting fretwork and savage growls and screams. The music continues to morph, becoming both oppressive and eerily glorious, jolting the spine with punishing power and writhing like diseased reptiles. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLEEDING MALICE — “THY KINGDOM COME”

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Aug 062021
 

 

Thy Kingdom Come is the debut album of Bleeding Malice from Minsk, Belarus, and it’s being released today. In the band’s words, it’s a 9-track tale “about a man with his sins and weaknesses, who for a moment realized that the scales were irrevocably tilted to one side. Memories rush one by one, but the step into emptiness has already been taken….” In telling that tale, the song lyrics use words of disgust, vengeance, and hate, mixed with words of confusion, torment, and despair.

It’s an intense and disturbing narrative, and the music is equally intense and disturbing. The album is also surprising in its amalgam of genre ingredients. You may think, as you begin to move through the album, that you’ve figured out what Bleeding Malice are all about, but they continually defy expectations with unexpected twists that strengthen the desire to continue listening, and to listen again. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REPLICANT — “CHASSIS OF DECEIT”

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Aug 052021
 

 

New Jersey’s Replicant seized attention with their 2018 debut album Negative Life, which Steve Schwegler (of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores) beautifully reviewed for us. A couple of impressive splits followed that, along with an EP named Hypochondria of the Machine (reviewed here) that further marked Replicant as a truly distinctive band worth watching very closely.

Yet as attention-grabbing as all those releases were, they still might not have prepared listeners for the wild and often weird extravaganzas encompassed by the band’s forthcoming second full-length, Malignant Reality (set for release by Transcending Obscurity on September 10th). The music is wonderfully head-spinning (as well as savage), and there’s probably not a better example of just how head-spinning it can become than the song we’re premiering today — “Chassis of Deceit“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD SOUL ALLIANCE — “PERPETUAL RECYCLED EXISTENCE”

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Aug 052021
 

 

We’ve enjoyed watching the relentless forward progress of the Canadian death metal band Dead Soul Alliance, from the first self-titled demo in 2011 to the 2013 EP Proud To Die (reviewed here) and the 2017 EP Slaves to the Apocalypse (reviewed here), and now we have the band’s debut album, Behind the Scenes, which is set for a September 3 release by Bitter Loss Records.

From the beginning, the band has been the creative vehicle for vocalist and multi-instrumentalist W.D. On this new album he’s joined by drummer E.H., and together they’ve created a ravishing experience that revels in both the brutality and the eeriness of old school death metal, while displaying the kind of dynamic songcraft and attention to evocative melody that makes the songs memorable.

We have a great example of these qualities in the track we’re premiering today, a multi-faceted experience that presents an amalgam of rampant ruthlessness, berserker madness, and stirring melody. Continue reading »

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