AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: XINGAIA — “I TOUCH MYSELF”

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May 182021
 

 

In November 1990, the Australian band Divinyls released “I Touch Myself” as the lead single from their fourth album. Described as “a paean to eroticism, orgasm and female masturbation”, it became a big international hit, driven in part by the song’s music video directed by Michael Bay, which was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year. Almost 15 years later it was covered by a big group of female performers as part of a project designed to raise awareness about breast cancer — the disease that had taken the life of Divinyls vocalist Chrissy Amphlett about 12 months earlier.

It’s a catchy post-punk song that hasn’t lost its allure — witness the fact that as of this writing the music video (here), which didn’t launch on YouTube until 2009, has been viewed almost 34 million times. But it hasn’t exactly been crying out for a death metal/grindcore cover. Nevertheless, that’s what it’s gotten, courtesy of Spokane’s Xingaia, a band lovingly named after the disease of the Sumatran rat-monkey from the ultra-gory Peter Jackson film Dead Alive.

Xingaia have also given the song their own video treatment, whose humor derives (at least in part) from how it repeatedly confounds what you think is really going on. And thus, with smiles on our faces, we present the Xingaia cover and video to you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROGOD — “REMAIN THE SAME AGAIN”

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May 182021
 

 

As many will already know, Necrogod is a Rogga Johansson death metal project that combines his well-established songwriting and instrumental talents with the vocal horrors of The Master Butcher from Costa Rica, who is also a fixture in Morbid Stench and Insepulto.

Following on the heels of a 2015 debut EP (The Inexorable Death Reign) and a 2017 split with the afore-mentioned Morbid Stench (The Bifid Tongue of Doom & Death), this demolishing duo now have a debut full-length headed our way. Entitled In Extremis, it’s set for a July 23 release by Transcending Obscurity Records, and as you can see, it’s ornamented by the unmistakable cover art of Mariusz Lewandowski.

A couple of beastly and dynamically electrifying advance tracks have been uncaged so far, and today we’ve got a third one — “Remain the Same Again” — which reveals a further dimension of Necrogod’s songwriting for the new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VORVAŇ — “SUPERSCUM”

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May 172021
 

 

If you’re in need of a high-powered jolt of energy, we’ve got just the thing for you in our premiere of a song off Awakened, the new album by the Russian blackened hardcore punk and metal band Vorvaň. “Superscum” fires on all cylinders, and it happens to be as highly addictive as it is ferociously supercharged.

Lyrically, the song is a condemnation, reflecting the self-entitled and dismissive attitude of a person for whom everything she wishes “works out just fine”. Musically, the song is all about the pulse — its own and yours. Continue reading »

FELLED: OUR PREMIERE OF “SPHAGNUM IN THE HINTERLANDS” AND REVIEW OF “THE INTIMATE EARTH”

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May 172021
 

 

(In this article Nathan Ferreira reviews The Intimate Earth, the new album by Oregon-based Felled, and introduces our premiere of a song from the album.)

As any self-respecting metalhead should, I keep regular tabs on Transcending Obscurity Records. Their versatility and ear for quality sets the pace for other small-to-medium-sized labels, and I particularly appreciate their willingness to wiggle a little bit outside of their comfort zone in terms of style/genre. You never quite know what you’re going to get from the folks at T.O., you just know it’s gonna be good.

I am also one of those tree-hugging types that is infatuated with Cascadian black metal. Combine these two factors and it becomes easy to see why, when the label announced they were releasing the debut album of Felled, an Oregon-based band that cited some of my all-time favorite artists as influences (early Ulver, Agalloch, Drudkh, Saor), I was already reserving a spot in my AOTY list for it. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: BLOOD SPORE, COAGULATE, SOUL DEVOURMENT, GUTVOID (4 DIMENSIONS OF AUDITORY TERROR)

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May 142021
 

 

Over the last couple of weeks our friends at CVLT NATION have been premiering, one by one, the four ravaging tracks that make up 4 Dimensions of Auditory Terror, a four-way split that’s being released today in a variety of formats by a consortium of labels — Sewer Rot Records, Rotted Life, Blood Harvest, and Black Hole Productions. The participants in this terrorizing 32-minute assault are Blood Spore, Coagulate, Soul Devourment, and Gutvoid.

To celebrate this ghastly event we’re presenting all four tracks from the split in one place, along with new commentary from the bands and our own impressions of each song. Collectively, they make for a listening experience that’s as electrifying as it is mind-mauling, and a showcase for the talents of four up-and-coming death metal bands who deserve a lot more attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EPIPHANIC TRUTH — “DARK TRIAD: BITTER PSALMS TO A SORDID SPECIES”

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May 142021
 

 

We don’t know the identity of the masked members of Epiphanic Truth. We’re only told by the band’s label Church Road Records that they come from “a number of former and established acts” — a claim that’s easily accepted based on what they’ve created on their debut album, because it’s so mind-blowing on so many levels.

That album, Dark Triad: Bitter Psalms To A Sordid Species, is an exceptionally ambitious, strikingly adventurous, remarkably multi-faceted, and utterly captivating experience, and so accomplished in its conception and execution that it would come as no surprise to see it appearing on numerous year-end lists — if only word of its existence spreads far enough.

We’re damned well going to do our part to help spread the word, through a great torrent of our own words, but mainly through our premiere today of a full album stream in advance of the May 21 album release by Church Road. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MEDITATOR — “DUST”

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May 132021
 

 

Nashville-based Meditator began almost four years ago as a concept in the mind of front-man James Downs, a kind of musical meditation on the human condition, after the dissolution of his previous band. That led to an album named A Darkness Unknown, and its positive reception motivated Downs to assemble a full band, which included guitarist Nick Elder. While beginning to play live shows, Meditator also began work on another album, which took shape around the title World Watcher.

Of course, the global pandemic had other plans, and interfered with Meditator’s expectations for release of the new full-length. They decided to postpone the release, but to begin revealing singles from the record, beginning with “Star Gazer” in October 2020, and continuing not long ago with “Dust“. It’s that second song that’s the subject of the music video we’re premiering today, which shows the band performing the track in a plastic-wrapped room. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DRAWN AND QUARTERED, ERDVE, EUTHANIZED, USHANGVAGUSH

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May 122021
 

 

To my surprise, I found time to compile this mid-week round-up. It’s not quite as long as these things usually are, consisting of only four advance tracks from forthcoming releases, but it will make the next one I do that much less bloated. The music I chose is stylistically diverse, but all of it brings an electrifying intensity. Might be something on here you’ll want to add to your wish list.

DRAWN AND QUARTERED (U.S.)

Seattle’s beloved Drawn and Quartered are returning with their eighth album, Congregation Pestilence, preceded by the just-released single, “Rotting Abomination (The Cleansing)“. It’s indeed rotting and abominable, and also a mouth-watering feast for death metal ghouls. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTHROPOPHAGUS DEPRAVITY — “TEMPLE OF SACRIFICE”

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May 122021
 

 

On July 2nd Comatose Music will proudly (and perhaps sadistically) uncage Apocalypto, the ghastly debut album of Anthropophagus Depravity from Yogyakarta in Indonesia, a record that Comatose sums up as “a gory tale of human sacrifice and mutilation delivered with fearsome musical prowess and ruthless, relentless force,” an album “spawned from nightmares” that “radiates fear and panic”, and one that will secure the band’s place “at the top table of brutal death metal”.

What we have for you today is the premiere of “Temple of Sacrifice“, a song that earns those words. It’s a cruel fashioning of terror in multiple visceral forms, an amalgam of cold, ruthless, methodical brutality and skittering, scrambling madness, all of it shrouded in an atmosphere of supernatural horror. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PASSÉISME — “CHANT FOR PARADE”

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May 122021
 

 

The French label Antiq Records has become a paramount global source for medieval black metal (though not only that), and while the label tends to focus on the music of distinctive French bands, its forthcoming release of the debut album by Passéisme shows this is not exclusively true. Granted, the band chose a French name and have drawn upon French poetry for some of their inspirations, but this trio make their home in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

Passéisme’s debut album Eminence (which follows their 2019 demo Austerity Parade) is a sequence of seven Chants, but while there is a sense of nostalgic reverence for older eras that does emerge in the music, these are not sedate or sober recitals. They are instead usually fast, fierce, and often explosively ebullient, the kind of music that super-heats the blood and spins the mind, while the lyrics often reflect savage condemnation. We have a prime example of this in the lyric video we’re premiering today for “Chant For Parade“. Continue reading »

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