AN NCS PREMIERE: SCITALIS — “SLITHERING IN SINS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 212022
 

In the spring of last year the Swedish black metal band Scitalis made an explosive debut with their Awakening EP on Vendetta Records, and we had the pleasure of premiering and reviewing here. We wrote then: “Presented through a clear and powerful production (which makes effective use of channel shifting), the music is persistently pitch-black in its temperaments, though it explores them in dynamic fashion and with piercing, mood-altering melodies that become key ingredients within changing episodes of upheaval and surrender”.

Now Scitalis are following up those six ravaging tracks with their first full-length, Doomed Before Time, and Vendetta will again usher it into the world. It continues to brandish the hallmarks that made Awakening such a startling advent, but the band have built upon them to reach new heights of power in the forthcoming album. You’ll discover that for yourselves when you hear the song we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VAAMATAR — “PLUNDERING CLAWS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 202022
 

 

Even the most devoted fans of black metal may stifle a yawn when they read about a new band whose music is portrayed as an embrace of the genre’s groundbreaking second wave. After all, that wave has been rolling forward and swelling in its mass for 30 years. It doesn’t need to be revived, and some may already feel drowned by it. But embracing the second wave doesn’t mean becoming entirely one with it, and it’s the differences that can still make a band stand out.

Vaamatar are a band who stand out, and that’s strikingly obvious when you listen to their debut album Medievalgeist. We can plainly hear what inspired this SoCal group, but we can also marvel at the sophistication and multi-faceted nature of the songwriting, and at how well they have succeeded in creating magical and mesmerizing atmospheres to go along with assaults of racing ferocity and bouts of brawn and brazenness that are red meat for a battle-vested headbanger.

We’ve got tangible proof of this in the fantastic song we’re premiering today. It’s time to feel the band’s “Plundering Claws” in action. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FERAL LIGHT – PSYCHIC CONTORTIONS

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 202022
 

(Andy Synn presents a review, and full premiere, of the new album by Minnesota’s Feral Light)

Let me tell you a bit about how premieres work here at NCS.

Generally speaking, a label (or a band) will contact us at some point in advance of the release date of whatever they want us to host – whether it’s a single, a video, or a full album stream – and ask us directly if we’d like to handle a premiere for them.

Before we say yes we have to check two things – firstly, do we have time and space in our schedule to actually do the hosting (the more lead-in time we have the better, obviously)? And, secondly, do we actually like the music enough to want to host it?

This latter question is definitely the more important of the two. After all, we only want to promote things that we honestly think are good – we do have some integrity, after all – so we need to be sure that what we’re premiering is something that’s definitely worth your time, and ours.

Every so often, however, things just seem to line up and we’ll get offered a premiere for something which we were already writing about… which is exactly what happened in the case of Psychic Contortions, the upcoming fourth album (set for release this Friday by I, Voidhanger) from Feral Light.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WHITE MARE — “THE WHITE MARES’ PROCESSION”

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Apr 202022
 

 

White Mare is a new melodic doom/death formation created in 2019 through the collaboration of Swiss musician D.G. (Duthaig, 3 Days Of Silence, Nightshade) and J.A. from Doomcult (hailing from The Netherlands). Later they were joined by T.W. (Nightshade), in time to perform drums in the recording of their debut album Isle Of Bliss, which is now set for co-release by Symbol Of Domination and Negre Plany on April 25th.

The new album was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, and like its inspiration the music is epic in its scale and tragic in its moods. It’s a deeply moving and immediately memorable record that unfolds like a grand but harrowing tapestry. Even a single song from the album creates those impressions, and we have one for you in today’s premiere of “The White Mares’ Procession“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VULNIFICUS — “THE INCREDULOUS INVOCATION”

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Apr 192022
 

We’re about to turn our focus to a dangerous place where the vicious vectors of technical, brutal, and slamming death metal intersect, a place from which the U.S. band Vulnificus have launched their savage and scintillating attacks.

The band is a fairly new project, having formed just last year, but the project’s two members — multi-instrumentalist Wilson Sherels (Epidermolysis. among many others) and Eston Browne (Abolishing The Ignominious, ex-Gigan) — aren’t novices. That will become apparent from the song we’re premiering today from their second EP, Invocation, which is set for release on June 10th by New Standard Elite. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONSECRATION — “THE DWELLER IN THE TUMULUS”

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Apr 192022
 

Cinis is the name of the forthcoming third album by the UK doom/death metal band Consecration. We’re told that the word is taken from the Latin and that it means “cold ashes, and has numerous associations with death, destruction and ruin, extinguished love and burnt-out hate” — which makes it a form-fitting title for the record.

As we’ve said more than once, we don’t usually copy-paste promotional material, preferring instead to create our own impressions independently and express them in our own words. But this is one of those rare instances where the words circulated by Redefining Darkness Records (who will release Cinis on June 17th) eloquently capture much of what makes this album so dauntingly powerful: Continue reading »

AN NCS PEMIERE: ANNIHILATION RITE — “DAMNATION CROWNS”

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Apr 182022
 

The name of the debut album by the German band Annihilation Rite is World Below, and that is where it takes us — to a blood-freezing subterranean domain of merciless terrors, endless torment, and utter downfall. It’s a cold nightmare world where bones are smashed and minds are ruined, and also a summoning of the Lord of Darkness to ascend, and retaliate against life.

This new entity is the solo work of Entweider, who is also a member of Crypt Witch, Dark Fields, Necrochaos, Sinister Downfall, Urschmerz. The music is branded black metal, but draws from death and doom metal as well, in order to make its rendering of ferocity and fear even more apocalyptic. And Annihilation Rite has written its rites in long form, in ways that become hideously spellbinding.

As a tangible sign of all these qualities, we have for you today the premiere of an album track named “Damnation Crowns“, in advance of World Below‘s April 28 release by Satanath Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: APARTHIVA RAKTADHARA — “NADA OF CREATION COLLAPSES ONTO PRIMAL BINDU”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 182022
 

Aparthiva Raktadhara‘s 2018 debut demo Agyat Ishvar popped a lot of eyes wide open, including ours. Even at only 12 1/2 minutes in length, it struck like a nuclear-tipped missile, often breathtakingly fast, cyclonic in the intensity of its riffing, and berserk in the ferocity of the vocals. Yet the frontal assault of the music didn’t completely obscure its intricacy or its insidiously seductive effects. It left us as intrigued as it did obliterated.

Now we’re about to have an even more formidable demonstration of this trio’s powers, because on May 20th Iron Bonehead Productions will release their debut album Adyapeeth Maranasamhita (আদ্যাপীঠ মরণসংহিতা). It was received, as the band explain, “as a burning revelation of riktata, realized within our hearts as we meditated under a Bodhi tree by the Ganges in Chanak, Uttar Kalikshetra, in fall 2019.”

Now that revelation has taken its complete form through sound, and we bring you part of that experience in today’s premiere of the album’s closing track, “Nada of Creation Collapses Onto Primal Bindu“. We think you’ll be quickly convinced that this isn’t like any other death metal you’re likely to hear this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISHARMONY — “THE CYNIC AND THE BEGGAR”

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Apr 182022
 

During 2017 and 2018 we devoted quite a lot of attention to The Abyss Noir, the second album by the Athenian metal band Disharmony, whose multifaceted musical textures have drawn comparisons to the sounds of Nevermore, Sanctuary, Judas Priest, Iced Earth, and Anthrax. Five years later, Disharmony are returning with their third full-length, Gods Made of Flesh, and it deserves a lot of attention to.

In its conceptual focus the music revolves around “the different kinds of Enslavery we all have to confront since the time we are born,” with each song reminding us of “the Divinity of our Spirit and the Chains it entails”. In the sounds themselves, Disharmony‘s influences and inspirations lead them into a captivating fusion of styles and sensations — which you’ll discover for yourselves through our premiere today of “The Cynic and the Beggar“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORGUE SUPPLIER — “MY PATH TO HELL”

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Apr 152022
 

Chicago-based Morgue Supplier don’t rush things. The band’s roots go back to a group named Jugular Appetizer with one 1999 demo to its name, but after changing that name to the current one Morgue Supplier have put out only two albums and a pair of EPs over the last 20 years, with significant amounts of time in between them. Now they’ve got a third full-length on the way, six years after the last one. Its name is Inevitability.

Respect should be owed to a band whose music over the course of two decades has remained as vicious, as hate-fueled, and as abrasive as Morgue Suppier‘s — if anything, it’s grown even more unabashedly confrontational, even more unreservedly hostile, even more mentally discombobulating, like an increasingly difficult test of their listeners’ fortitude in body and mind.

On the other hand, as you’ll discover from the song we’re premiering today — the aptly named “My Path To Hell” — the band’s music also presents numerous unsettling fascinations, like drugs you know are potentially ruinous to your health but are still powerfully addictive. Continue reading »

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