AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVEIR — “A FUTILE EXHORTATION”

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Apr 282026
 

(written by Islander)

For nearly a decade we’ve been recommending the recordings of the Brisbane-based black metal band Graveir, and we’re doing it again today. Their discography to date has included a pair of albums — Iconostasis (2016) and King of the Silent World (2020) — plus an EP and a pair of splits. And now they have a third album named The Festering Triad that’s set for release on May 29th by Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recordings.

As their label has accurately described, Graveir’s music has proven to be “bleak, violent and uncompromising.” It’s capable of evoking fury, chaos, and degradation, but also creating mind-warping melodic visions that are unearthly and even mesmerizing but also profoundly frightening. And here is how Apocalyptic Witchcraft describes their new full-length:

The Festering Triad, their third album, is a bleak vision of societal decay and corrupted power. Across eight tracks, bile-fuelled aggression surges through anxiety-ridden drums, convulsing guitars, and serpentine basslines—forming a suffocating, venomous descent into rot.

What we have for you today is a startling sign of just how accurate that description is, a song named “A Futile Exhortation“, which arrives with a tremendous video that captures many of the album’s dire concepts. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MASCA — “THE PERSEVERANCE OF SACRILEGE”

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Apr 282026
 

(written by Islander)

Masca is a new group that unites three long-time friends who have been involved in the Italian and international metal underground, with such names as Beheaded, Adversum, and Daemusinem on their resumes. They have recorded a debut album named Maskerie Filia Diaboli that will be co-released on May 22nd by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Underworld Echoes Records (Greece).

And beyond that we don’t have much other information to share about the band or the album, other than the labels’ recommendation of it for fans of Dark Funeral, Belphegor, Behemoth, and Immortal. That’s potentially useful in pointing the way to some kind of powerful amalgam of black and death metal, but we have a more immediate and tangible sign of what Masca have done through our premiere today of an album track called “The Perseverance of Sacrilege“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NON SERVIAM — “DÉESSE MORTE”

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Apr 272026
 

(written by Islander)

Five years after Le Cœur Bat (2021), and more than a decade after Un petit peu d’amour pour la haine, the genre-blurring French collective Non Serviam are returning with a third album named La Lune Dont Mon Âme Est Pleine, now set for release on June 12th.

The new full-length is described as “a symbolist concept album centered on the myth of Diana and Actaeon, exploring themes of the desire for the absolute, the violence it engenders, and the melancholy that follows.” And further:

Beyond the metamorphosed and tormented figure of Actaeon, the album also invokes Émile Henry, the late-19th-century French anarchist, as well as the apocalyptic goddess Kali, voiced by Mirai Kawashima (Sigh) in a powerful homage.

Those excerpts from the album’s press materials should create a sense of intrigue among listeners, even listeners who haven’t already been exposed to the shape-shifting musical nature of Non Serviam’s previous releases. They remain shape-shifters on the new album, and even more so, as you’ll discover from the new song and video we’re now premiering. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEFECT DESIGNER — “SCORCHING THE RIVAL POGONOMYRMEX BURROWS”

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Apr 272026
 

(written by Islander)

From the standpoint of a listener the idea of a band like Norway-based Defect Designer taking their music to a higher level is a bewildering concept — because their music has been so continuously bewildering. They have used death metal as a laboratory for experimentation, with results that are eccentric, subversive, unpredictable, and dazzling.

For this listener (and I suspect for all their fans), Defect Designer’s music produces big smiles. Maybe they were smiling too when they named their new album Depressants, because it is a powerful anti-depressant, no prescription needed. At least based on early listening, it also comes across as their best work yet.

Yes indeed, they have found ways to take their music to a higher level, though how to linguistically define the unconventional countours of that new plateau is no easier than it has been in the past.

We’ve premiered songs from each of Defect Designer’s last three releases, and fortune has smiled upon us because today we get to do it a fourth time, linguistic challenges and all. Speaking of linguistic challenges, the name of the song you’re about to hear is “Scorching The Rival Pogonomyrmex Burrows“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MOLOSSER — “STRYCHNINE HILL”

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Apr 242026
 

(written by Islander)

Brisbane-based Gutter Prince Cabal has established a reputation as a go-to platform for exposing the world to killer underground metal from Australia and New Zealand, and they’ll continue doing that in May when they present the debut of NZ’s Molosser. Here’s the vivid language they use in introducing the record:

Set for release on May 11, the band’s self-titled debut EP Molosser arrives as a full-frontal assault, an uncompromising barrage of aggression that wastes no time in establishing its intent. From the very first moments, the message is clear: rip and tear, kill and maim.

Built on muscular riffs, punishing rhythms, and an atmosphere of pure hostility, Molosser is a record that pulls no punches. Every track surges forward with unyielding force, carving a path through anything in its way. There is no restraint here, only momentum, impact, and the raw satisfaction of destruction.

We’ll have a tough time competing with those words in describing the EP track we’re premiering today, but of course that won’t stop us from trying! Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SCORDATURA — “LED INTO OBLIVION”

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Apr 242026
 

(written by Islander)

We heartily welcome the return of the Scottish death metal band Scordatura, whose music we’ve previously described as “a neck-wrecking, gut-churning, bowel-loosening bombardment of jagged riffs, technical twists, and gruesome, glass-gargling gutturals that floats like an atom bomb and stings like a beast,” and as “the kind of brutish and blistering treatment that our pathetic world so richly deserves.”

Six years on from their last album, the ruthlessly punishing Mass Failure, Scordatura have joined forces with Everlasting Spew Records to lead us into oblivion with a new full-length named… Led Into Oblivion… which we’re helping to announce today through the premiere of a video for the record’s brutally bombastic but also razor-sharp title song. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BRINGERS OF DISEASE — “SULPHUR”

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Apr 232026
 

(written by Islander)

If you heard the Bringers of Disease debut EP Gospel Of Pestilence it’s unlikely you’ve easily forgotten the experience, even though it was released 15 years ago. But maybe you never came across it. In that case, what should quickly seize your attention for the band’s debut album Sulphur are the people who made it.

The lineup includes founding guitarist Jason Phillips (ex-Acheron) and original vocalist Logan Madison alongside Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, ex-Nachtmystium, ex-Wolvhammer), drummer Zack Simmons (Goatwhore, Acid Bath), and bassist Jon Woodring (ex-Usurper, Bones).

On top of that, the album also features guest guitars on “First Born Of The Dead” by Nate Garnett (Skeletonwitch) and on “Flowers Bloom From The Prophet’s Skull” by Sonny Reinhardt (Necrot), and guest vocals on “Sacred Heart Of The Abyss” by Ben Falgoust (Goatwhore, Soilent Green).

Now that we have your attention with that information — which is probably all the inducement any lover of metallic extremity really needs to dive into Sulphur — we’ll present a full stream of the album, on the eve of its release by Disorder Recordings. But in the extremely unlikely event that someone wants to know more before spending time with the album, here’s more. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CNOC AN TURSA — “A CRY FOR THE SLAIN”

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Apr 222026
 

(written by Islander)

For those of us who were electrified and bewitched by Cnoc An Tursa’s first two albums, The Giants of Auld (2013) and The Forty Five (2017), the wait for something more from these Scots has brought its fair share of woe, because the wait has been so long. But even though it’s rarely true that all good things come to those who wait, something exceptionally good has at last arrived from Cnoc An Tursa, a new album named A Cry for the Slain.

The album richly rewards the long-suffering patience of the band’s fans. As their label Apocalyptic Witchcraft describes (and as we might have expected) it is “an evocative tribute to the history, the folklore, the unique magic of their homeland,” a compendium of songs “that bring together mourning and defiance, mystery and fear, pride and passion.” The band themselves have said:

“With this new album we feel like we are going back to our roots with a more guitar-driven style and bringing back some of the folk elements musically and lyrically which was the original inspiration for the band.”

Of course, we have thoughts of our own to share about the album (many of them), though the main purpose of this feature is to provide the chance for you to hear it in its entirety in advance of its release on April 24th by Apocalyptic Witchcraft. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEVOID OF THOUGHT – “DEVOID OF THOUGHT”

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Apr 212026
 

(Andy Synn has his own thoughts about an album which is far from devoid of them)

I wasn’t supposed to be writing this article.

I’m serious… it wasn’t until yesterday when I name-checked this Italian Death Metal battalion in another review that Islander slid into my DMs to inform me that we had this premiere scheduled (which gives you some insight into the well-polished and highly-professional outfit we’re running here) and to ask whether I’d like to take a run at writing the accompanying review.

Luckily he caught me in the mood for even more weird, mind-warping Metal… which is exactly what Devoid of Thought have delivered on their long-gestating, highly-anticipated, self-titled second album.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAHVIRA — “ETERNAL WAR”

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Apr 202026
 

(written by Islander)

On April 23rd the Armenian black metal band Rahvira will have their latest album in a 20+ year career jointly released by Holy Mountains Music (Yerevan, Armenia), Underworld Echoes Records (Greece), and More Hate Productions (Russia), with official distribution by Satanath Records (Georgia). The album’s title is In the Darkness of Silence (“Լռության խավարում”).

Once again the band’s founder Tigran Rahvira is the sole songwriter, and the lyrics are again in Armenian. We’re told that the texts “explore the search for personal and national identity, the idea of struggle, reflections on life and death, and the necessity of spiritual rebirth.”

What we have for you today is the premiere of the second song to be revealed from the album so far, and its name in English is “Eternal War” (Հավերժական Պատերազմ). Continue reading »

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