AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VAROSHAN — “…AND THEN THE RAINS CAME”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 102022
 

 

Tomorrow the Finnish label Elitbolaget will release …And Then the Rains Came, the debut album by the multinational band Varoshan, whose members are divided among Helsinki (Finland), Berlin (Germany) and Leeds (UK). But you won’t have to wait until then to absorb what it has to offer because we are now presenting its complete streaming premiere.

What it has to offer is a stylistic amalgam that combines the ethos of hardcore with diverse sonic vibes that bring to mind (as Elitbolaget suggests) the likes of Neurosis, slow-burning Converge, sludge-era Tombs, and Soilent Green covering Black Sabbath, i.e., music that’s “slow, dark, and gritty”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WOLFBASTARD — “HAMMER THE BASTARDS”

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Jan 072022
 

Anyone with eyes to see and a mind that hasn’t been brainwashed or turned into docile slag knows full well that the world is mainly ruled by bastards — bastards in the boardrooms, bastards in the halls of government, bastards in the church. They do what they want, they get their way, and they’re rarely held to account for all the ways in which they make the lives of the powerless so much more miserable than they need to be.

What ought to be done? Isn’t the answer obvious? HAMMER THE BASTARDS.

That’s the name Manchester (UK)-based Wolfbastard gave to their new third album, which is set for release by Clobber Records on January 14th, and they back that message to the hilt with their music, which is a feral and ferocious barrage of D-Beat, crust punk, black metal, and blackened hardcore that takes no prisoners and asks for no mercy.

The press materials for the record include an evocative summing-up of the sensations the album channels, and it’s worth quoting here before we give you our own impressions along with a complete streaming premiere: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OAR — “THE BLOOD YOU CRAVE”

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Jan 052022
 

 

The cover image on OAR‘s debut album The Blood You Crave is an evocative yet mysterious one, seizing attention through the juxtaposition of a vibrant blaze-colored swath of light (which might be interpreted as a window into another world) and a downcast figure perched on the edge of a daunting precipice. No less than the cover art, the music quickly seizes attention too, and doesn’t let go. It too blazes, and reveals harrowing emotional chasms.

Through six tracks and nearly 45 minutes of music these Australians embrace the hostility and aggressiveness of black metal but they give equal attention to the creation of mood and atmosphere, bringing into play ingredients of post-metal, doom, hardcore, post-punk, and shoegaze (among others). The songs all prove to be dynamic experiences, as is the album as a whole, and that versatility makes it even easier to get caught up in what’s happening, and to hang on ’til the end. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COFFIN RITES — “BURIED IN BLOOD”

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Jan 042022
 

 

September 2021 brought the release of a new album named Human Erase by the Minneapolis-based extreme metal band Coffin Rites, preceded by a full premiere at Decibel, which rightly acclaimed the album as “one of the year’s most crazed black/death records”, but one that would also appeal to hardcore kids alike. “It has mood, menace, and a barrage of riffs like a doomsday air strike.”

If you haven’t heard the album, it presents a significant degree of diversity among the songs, each one telling its own story in different ways, and is well worth your time from beginning to end. But the way the album begins sets the hook hard and pulls you all the way in. It does that through the bone-smashing, flesh-scorching opening track “Buried In Blood” — and thus it makes a lot of sense that the band picked that song for the video we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEAVY META — “BLASTOCYST”

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Jan 032022
 

 

Just because New Year’s Eve is now in our rearview mirror doesn’t mean we have to stop with the fireworks displays, and man, have we got a musical fireworks display queued up for you today, one that will pop eyes, drop jaws, and leave listeners in a state of (perhaps deranged) joy.

The source of the head-spinning adventure that awaits you is a track from the debut album by Heavy Meta (no, that’s not a typo) from Lowell, Massachusetts. Mana Regmata is the name of this mind-scrambling full-length, and it’s set for release on February 11th. It defies genre categorization because it pulls from so many different wells, both metal and not-metal. The band themselves, with tongues in cheeks, brand it as “blackened progressive cowboy nintendocore”, which is really just a way of signifying that labels don’t make much sense here.

Further evidence of that (apart from the music itself) can be found in PR materials for the album that are making the rounds, which ask you to imagine what would happen if Sikth joined forces with Every Time I Die, Botch, Voivod, Mr. Bungle, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Rush, while also dropping references to Candiria, Faith No More, Converge, Atheist, King Crimson, Coroner, Boss Keloid, and Abigor. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DUSK — “ANCIENT SHATTERED MOON”

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Jan 032022
 

 

The Pakistani band Dusk has deep roots in the dark earth of heavy metal. It was born in Karachi in 1994 under the name Carcinogenic as the brainchild of Babar Sheikh and released a first demo the following year. By 1999 Babar had formed a partnership with guitarist Faraz Anwar, and along with drummer Irfan Ahmed they released their debut album My Infinite Nature Alone in 1999.

After that Dusk released two more albums and a handful of shorter releases. There were line-up changes, and the band’s stylistic directions changed as well. As Metal-Archives sums it up, Dusk began as a death metal band, moved into doom, further evolved into makers of progressive music, and then turned to death/thrash. But as you are about to discover, Dusk have returned to their death/doom roots.

This year Dusk will release their fourth full-length in a career that now spans a quarter-century. Babar Sheik is still at the helm, but has been joined on the new album by drummer Halim (Tremor ov Kaos of Impiety), long-time comrade Mike Bloodcurse (Illemauzar) on bass, and guest appearances by both metal and non-metal artists. The album is entitled The Imaginary Dead, and today we’re premiering a stunning song from the album in advance of its release early this year by Cyclopean Eye Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DRUID LORD — “RELICS OF THE DEAD”

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Dec 312021
 

 

We can only guess at why Druid Lord and their label chose the last day of 2021 to reveal the title track from their new album, Relics of the Dead. But contemplating that title and marinating in the horrors of the music (which are both crushing and spellbinding, both chillingly ghastly and brazenly exhilarating) confirms the wisdom of the decision. This rotten year must be buried, though something equally ghoulish may rise from its grave, still plagued by the terrible relics of what is now nearly dead.

Through two previous albums and a sequence of intervening short releases these Floridians have proven their mastery of a particularly supernatural and titanically heavy variant of death-doom. The new album confirms their diabolical talents, but if anything delves even more deeply into the contrasting sensations of their music, harnessing sounds and moods that are unearthly and uncanny with the kind of earth-shaking force that threatens a listener’s skeletal integrity. Witness the song we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KAPALA — “DOOMSDAY REQUIEM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Dec 272021
 

 

Few bands on the planet embrace and channel the violent destructiveness of War Metal with as much fanatic fervor as the Kolkata-based band Kapala. Their slaughtering amalgam of death metal and harsh noise seems to be fueled by hate and driven by a disdain for weakness of any kind.

And yet their talents are multi-faceted. There is much more going on within their creations than unapologetic sonic annihilation, and that makes their music fascinating and mind-altering as well as ruinous. It really doesn’t sound like anything else; indeed, linking it with War Metal, as that sub-genre is commonly understood, might be more misleading than descriptive.

Kapala‘s new 22-minute EP Doomsday Requiem is powerful proof of these points. It is indeed ruthlessly destructive and harrowing in its intensity, but its musical craftsmanship is also impressive, revealing nuances and embellishments that link it unmistakably to the ancient legends of the Indian subcontinent. The music creates an atmosphere of mysticism and spiritual possession, capable of inducing perilous trances.

Those qualities — and a panoply of killer riffs and electrifying rhythmic assaults — distinguish the EP from the kind of War Metal that might be cathartic on a first listen but doesn’t lure many people to listen more than once. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can test out the truth of these statements for yourselves, because today we premiere a full stream of Doomsday Requiem in advance of its release by Dunkelheit Produktionen on the last day of this wretched year. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WITCHDEN — “RENEWAL”

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Dec 212021
 


Photo by David Rubene

Fair warning: You had better get your neck and shoulders loose before listening to the song we’re about to premiere on this winter solstice day. Hell, get your whole body loose, because “Renewal” will make you move, and your conscious mind will likely have no power over that impulse.

The song is a new one by Minneapolis-based Witchden, and it reveals a further progression in their ever-evolving manifestations of metallic extremity. With three full-lengths to their credit so far — Consulting the Bones (2012), Salt the Earth (2016), and Deus Nihil (2019) — our beloved Metal-Archives still brands them a Sludge band, but the truth is that their music has been increasingly much more of a hybrid than the Sludge label suggests — and “Renewal” makes that fact even more evident. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DØDSLEIE — “WHEN THE TRUTH GROWS”

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Dec 212021
 

 

The part-Swedish, part-U.S. black metal band Dødsleie, which features current and former members of Integrity, Broken Cross, and Unreal City (among others), made their first mark on the musical landscape in 2018 with the release of their self-titled demo. They have now prepared a debut album named Immortal Hand, which is set for release on February 11 by Bat Magick Records and Subversive Craft. It is intended (in the band’s words) “to serve as a guide to those lost souls who question conformity amidst the daily death of dreams”.

Unmistakably black metal, the album is nevertheless unorthodox. It is both feverish and gloomy, harrowing and eerily entrancing. As the press materials accurately portray, it will take listeners “on a fever dream journey beyond time and space”.

The opening track of Immortal Hand is a song called “When the Truth Grows“, and we’re premiering it today (through a surreal music video) as the first tangible sign of what the album holds in store. Continue reading »

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