AN NCS PREMIERE: FUNERAL CHASM — “MESMERISING CLARITY”

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Jun 142021
 

 

The song we’re presenting today from the debut album by the Danish duo Funeral Chasm is a formulation of funeral doom that seems to occupy a dream state between life and death. Haunting, harrowing, and beautiful, the multi-faceted track fashions both an experience of ghostly elegance and grandeur — and one of torment, turmoil, and ravaging upheaval.

At least lyrically, “Mesmerising Clarity” was based upon a pair of mushroom trips by the band’s Danny Woe, one so disturbing that he terminated the trip and a second that reached a point of completion and became therapeutic. Whether intended or not, the music seems to trace such an experience as well, though (as suggested above) the music is capable of generating other visions in the listener’s imagination, and of making other emotional connections. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THYRFING — “JÄRNHAND”

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Jun 112021
 

 

Eight years on from their last album, the acclaimed De ödeslösa, the Swedish Viking/pagan metal band Thyrfing will be bringing forth their eight full-length on August 27th through their new label, Despotz Records. Consistent with the band’s inspirations of Norse mythology, its title is Vanagandr, an alternate name for the wolf creature known by the more familiar Fenrir.

In the run-up to the new album’s release, the band have already released two striking videos for two striking tracks from the new record, “Döp dem i eld” and “Jordafärd”, and today we’re privileged to bring you a third single, again accompanied by a tremendous video — filmed at the fortress known as Bohus Fästning along the old Swedish-Norwegian border, and directed by the great Patric Ullaeus. The song is “Järnhand“, which translates as “Iron hand”. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK CEREMONIAL KULT — “CROWNED IN CHAOS”

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Jun 112021
 

 

On June 14th the Chilean black/death band Black Ceremonial Kult will add to their collection of demos and splits that have been released since 2014. The newest release, which will come our way via Godz Ov War Productions, is named Crowned In Chaos. As you will discover through our full stream of the EP today, that title is well-chosen.

The band draw their inspiration, and the source of their powers, from occult mysticism, and it obviously leads them into frightening and dangerous places, because their music as represented on this new EP is unmistakably — and inhumanly — frightening and dangerous.

Through the first seven tracks of this 11-track release, the music alternates, creating chilling visions as well as explosions of breathtaking violence and madness, yet the tracks flow into each other seamlessly, creating a massive hallucinatory psychosis. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATH ON FIRE — “A HELL OF OUR OWN DESIGN”

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Jun 102021
 

 

For just a three-track EP, Death on Fire‘s Six Foot Box is a vibrantly diverse and dynamic experience that manages to hit home in multiple ways. After reaching the end, it’s really easy to loop back around to the beginning, to re-live the experience and try to get a better understanding of how the band managed to provoke such a reflexively visceral and physical response while simultaneously moving emotions in such different and powerful ways. By then, the songs have just dug their hooks deeper under the skin, even further strengthening the desire to go back to them.

You can pick out songwriting and recording techniques (and a dark world-view) that flow across all three tracks, but trying to dissect and enumerate all the stylistic strains in the music (which seem to span about five decades of rock and metal history) is a much more difficult task, though probably easier if you’ve got some gray hairs in your head. It’s better to just appreciate how well this Indiana band have integrated the sounds that inspired them.

What we have for you today, in advance of the EP’s July 16 release, is the premiere of the EP’s second track, “A Hell of Our Own Design“. It now joins the closing song, “Begging For Air“, as publicly available streams — but we’ll also give you a written preview of the EP opener as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MARRAS — “AS NIGHTS GET DARKER”

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Jun 092021
 

 

When last we wrote about the Finnish black metal band Marras the occasion was the premiere of a song from their strikingly good 2019 debut album Where Light Comes to Die. A new album, Endtime Sermon, provides the occasion for us to revisit them, through yet another premiere. Like the first album, this second one will be released by Spread Evil Productions. It’s destined to hit the streets on July 9th.

A story lies behind the song we’re presenting today, “As Night Gets Darker“. It’s a story inspired by Finnish writer Boris Hurtta, who just passed away in February 2021, and thus the song is a tribute to him. The band tell the tale as follows: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KARLOFF — “HATE CONSUMER”

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Jun 082021
 

 

Last year Dying Victims Productions released Raw Nights, a 20-minute vinyl/digital record that combined the German band Karloff’s new EP and the tracks from their debut demo. After encountering it, I wrote: “Karloff’s formulation of raw punk and black metal is undeniably sinister, and it runs like a wild wolf-pack on the hunt (or an angry gang marauding through mean streets), but it has made me feel not just glad to be alive, but kind of rapturous too. Its feral, stripped-down attack and high-voltage energy appeal at a primal level, and the immediately infectious nature of the songs makes them easy to stick with, and to use as a means of lighting a fire to any playlist whenever they pop up.”

It was thus exciting to learn that Karloff were following up Raw Nights with a debut album entitled The Appearing, which will also be released by Dying Victims (on July 30th), and we’re just as excited to now premiere a video for an album track named “Hate Consumer“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KILL THE IMPOSTER — “UNFIT COWARD”

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Jun 082021
 

 

Peace-loving people who believe that problems should be patiently worked out through calm discussion and empathetic understanding should stop reading now and go elsewhere. Listeners who are looking for melody and nuance in their music should head for the exits too. On the other hand, if you’re really pissed off, about anything, and you’re looking for a way to channel raw fury, or just happen to be in the mood for a violent sonic beating, you’ve come to the right place.

To satisfy yearnings for catharsis through bludgeoning, we present a video for “Unfit Coward“, the closing track off the new album by the Floridian deathcore band Kill the Imposter, which is aptly named The Violence Sessions. The album was released on May 28th through The Legend Agency and has been leaving deep smoking craters in concrete ever since. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KNIVES — “WAS IT WORTH IT?”

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Jun 072021
 

 

In February of this year the band Knives from Bilbao, Spain, released an explosive new record named Collapse. In advance of that release we featured its first single, “The Unknown“. With lyrics that expelled politically charged fury in blisteringly furious tones, that song melded punk cadences and bone-grinding riffs delivered with massive, chainsawing distortion, and coupled that with bursts of blaring melodic defiance and feverish bass outbursts, as well as a hellish breakdown.

That opening single truly was an electrifying discharge. But the balance of the tracks on Collapse proved to be equally thrilling, albeit in somewhat different ways. For example, the opener “Martyr” begins in soul-stricken and haunting fashion but then becomes a rain of megaton warheads, and then a fierce, galloping charge, and then a spasm of violence. It will give your spine a vigorous jolting, but also includes spit-fire soloing and the kind of rocketing, sky-high melodic riffing that gets hearts pounding.

And from there the band used Collapse to elaborate on their riveting brand of death/punk from one track to the next, bringing to bear one crusher after another, deploying humongously heavy chugs, incendiary leads, blood-spraying vocals, and gripping melodic accents (both grim and glorious) that keep the emotional intensity in the red zone.

Today it’s our pleasure to premiere a video for yet another song off Collapse, one entitled “Was It Worth It?“, which we hope will introduce still more listeners to Knive’s tumultuous talents. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FIAT NOX — “THE ARCHIVE OF NIGHTMARES”

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Jun 062021
 

 

Following up their 2016 debut EP Light the Torches, the German black metal band Fiat Nox will release their first album on June 25th through The Crawling Chaos Records. The album’s well-chosen name is Archive of Nightmares, and today, in a rare Sunday premiere for our site, we’re presenting a stream of the title track.

The label describes the album this way: “At the spiritual core of the music lies the profound and abysmal side of man, as he – inextricably bound to a world ensnared in perpetual descent within the maw of night – cannot but revel in negativity”. Those words are equally well-chosen, because the music is itself abysmal, but revels in madness. The song we’re premiering today is a great example of the band’s sinister powers, presenting a multi-faceted work that’s hallucinatory, hopeless, tormented, and viscerally pulse-pounding. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KVADRAT — “ΨΥΧΙΚΗ ΑΠΟΣΥΝΘΕΣΗ”

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Jun 042021
 

 

Desolate subjects and a desperate mission animate the music on Kvadrat’s debut EP Ψυχικη Αποσυνθεση (“mental decay”), which we’re now premiering in full. Rather than embracing folklore or mysticism, this Greek black metal duo grapple with the kind of severe personal estrangement that reduces a mind to a frightening and hopeless prison, a vessel of fear, frustration, pain, and desperation, capable of producing not only depression but also hatred and a desire for oblivion.

The lyrics speak of life denying us light, of time melting all hope, of toxic rain flooding the paths of salvation, of sounds of hysteria ringing from bottomless pits of madness, and of rising fires of destruction as a last resort.

And with that subject matter in mind, the music pours gasoline on the gates of an unwelcoming reality, and ignites it, perhaps as a way of shedding light on the causes of terrible predicaments, or as a violent means of freeing lost souls from mental paralysis.

Be forewarned: This music asks no quarter and gives none. These four songs are absolutely breathtaking in their intensity and sonic power — dense, near-overwhelming, onslaughts of sound capable of swallowing a listener whole — but they are somehow also strangely mesmerizing. The music rings as well as ravages, and while it’s unnerving in its discordance, it can also seem heavenly — if the heavens were on fire. Continue reading »

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