AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLOOMY GRIM — “THEY ARE WAITING”

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Apr 272021
 

 

It seems, as wise people have said for millennia, that all good things must come to an end. And so, after a career that has spanned a quarter-century, the Finnish symphonic black metal band Gloomy Grim will be releasing their final album later this month.

This new and last release is entitled Agathonomicon, and it includes 10 tracks that revel in darkness and horror. So far, two singles from the album have emerged, and today we bring you a third one — “They Are Waiting” — before Satanath Records and MurdHer Records jointly issue the entire release on April 28th. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LUCIFUGE — “INFERNAL POWER”

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Apr 262021
 

 

The German band Lucifuge was born in 2018 as the solo project of Equinox, who wasted no time rapidly discharging a demo, an EP, and the Ride the Beast debut album that same year. The creative fires burned just as hot and bright in 2019, resulting in two more EPs and a second album, Der AntiChrist.

And just last year, Lucifuge released yet another full-length (The One Great Curse) and a single that proved to be the title track to Infernal Power, the latest and most accomplished Lucifuge album yet, which is rapidly approaching its April 30 release date via Dying Victims Productions — and which we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MAJESTIC DOWNFALL — “A DYING CROWN”

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Apr 232021
 

 

A persistent favorite of this site, the Mexican doom-death band Majestic Downfall have already provided abundant proof of their formidable talents, having erected, through five albums and a pair of splits, an imposing sonic edifice that’s as magnificent as it is heart-rending. And now they’re approaching the May 21 release date of their sixth full-length, Aorta, which will be released by the new but rapidly growing label Personal Records — and it reveals the band at the pinnacle of their soul-shaking power.

Written and recorded during the pandemic, Aorta consists of four songs that collectively span 70 minutes, and those songs are expansive in ways that transcend mere length, ranging in their sensations (to borrow the words of the PR material) “from suffocating to vibrating, damning to liberating, utterly devastated to strangely hopeful – but always crushing, and devastatingly so”.

As further evidence of the truth of those words, today we premiere an Aorta song named “A Dying Crown“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTARAGE — “SUCCUMB”

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Apr 222021
 

 

In 2015, which seems like a geologic epoch ago at this point, we came across a two-song debut demo by Altarage from the Spanish Basque Country and summed it up as “primitive, poisonous, electrifying music from a band that’s now squarely on my radar screen for the future”. They stayed squarely on our radar screen over the course of three subsequent albums, even though they eventually left it in sharp shards of wreckage.

We characterized 2016’s Nihl as “a monster of an album… that will melt your insides”, combining “sheer malignant intensity” and “catastrophic dirges” capable of “dragging your staggering body down into an abyss of despair”. Then came 2017’s Endingent, which we described as “dealing in a brand of pitch-black sonic horror” (“horrifically dense and devastating”), creating an atmosphere “so thick and choking that this album isn’t recommended for anyone who suffers from even a hint of claustrophobia”.

Altarage followed that with 2019’s The Approaching Roar, which we found even more “grim and gruesome” — “one of those records that hits you like a veritable force of nature, and leaves you with no other option except to kick and struggle as hard as you can to keep your head above the water”.

And now comes Succumb, the new Altarage album that Season of Mist has authorized us to put before you in full, the day before its April 23 release. What should you expect? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HADIT — “THE QUEST FOR HEARTS AND CONQUEST OF TIME”

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Apr 212021
 

 

We’ve all had the experience of being misled by PR descriptions of forthcoming metallic extremity, when the night-blooming rhetoric proves to be an exaggeration or a calculated inaccuracy. And so we take such linguistic previews with a grain of salt, even when they generate a reflexive eagerness to listen.

In the case of the new album by the Italian death metal band Hadit (from Varese), the advance press variously portrays the music as “an obfuscating spell of dark cosmological death metal destruction”, “occult ritualistic divinations of total aural chaos”, “sonically annihilating and aesthetically majestic”, “impenetrable and supernatural”, and “hallucinations shrouded in mysticism and esotericism”.

How sad it would be if such evocative and enticing written flourishes weren’t well-founded! Even though Hadit’s last release, the 2015 EP Introspective Contemplation of the Microcosmus, already provided a solid foundation for those descriptions, that was six years ago after all. The question is whether their debut full-length, With Joy and Ardour Through the Incommensurable Path, lives up to the advance billing.

Well, you know where we’re going with this: The answer is Hell Yes It Does. The fact that it’s being jointly released (on May 7th) by such tasteful labels as Caligari Records, Sentient Ruin, and Terror From Hell Records is evidence of that, and so is the song we’re premiering today: “The Quest for Hearts and Conquest of Time“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SNĚŤ — “FOLIVOR”

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Apr 212021
 

 

The Czech death metal band Sněť released a promising demo in 2019 (which we reviewed and streamed here.) and they had planned to follow that with an EP, but their drummer’s broken leg and a global pandemic interfered with those plans. In this case, however, there was a silver lining to the cloud, because the band used the time to write and eventually record more songs, enough to fill out a compact debut album. Entitled Mokvání V Okovech, it’s now set for release on May 14th via Blood Harvest Records on CD and vinyl LP formats, with a cassette version handled by Lycanthropic Chants in Europe and Headsplit Records in the US.

Two arresting album tracks have premiered so far, and today we bring you a third one, accompanied by a DIY video that gives you a chance to see the band in action. This song is “Folivor“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CICADA THE BURROWER — “CORPSEFLOWER”

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Apr 202021
 

 

Sometime in the middle of next month billions of so-called Brood X cicadas will emerge from the earth for the first time in 17 years, blanketing areas of the eastern and midwestern United States and lending their engine-revving cacophonies to the sounds of daily life. Theories abound as to why these periodic cicadas emerge during these synchronized moments separated by so many years, but no one really knows. It’s an evolutionary mystery.

But regardless of the reason, it’s fitting that on the eve of this great emergence Cicada the Burrower will be releasing an album that in itself represents the emergence of something new — the result of years of stylistic experimentation by the band’s sole creator Cameron Davis. It certainly represents a departure for us, because although the songs on Corpseflower incorporate recognizable metal ingredients, the sounds and styles extend well beyond conventional metal boundaries, resulting in an unusual and unusually captivating collage of contrasts. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORBID BREATH: “ANCIENT BEASTS”

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Apr 192021
 

 

Like many metal genres, thrash manifests itself in different ways, though some would say the variations are much more limited than in the sonic realms of (for example) death and black metal. And perhaps because variations on the style seem to operate within a limited range, the quality of the riffs becomes all the more critically important.

To cut to the chase, the Swedish band Morbid Breath write riffs that are lethally infectious. And as you’ll discover from our premiere of a track off their debut EP In the Hand of the Reaper, that’s not the only thing they do really well.

The febrile, pulsating riff that launches “Ancient Beasts” sinks its hooked claws into the listener’s brain damned fast, backed by punishing drum bursts, heavy and mauling bass lines, and savage, serrated-edge death-metal growls.  When the rhythm converts to a hammering gallop the band introduce an element of the supernatural through an eerie, sinister chord progression, and there’s a glorious, swirling and screaming guitar solo in the mix, as well as jolting sequences that will kick-start your headbang reflex.

But it’s that opening riff, which repeatedly rears its venomous head, that makes the track so fiendishly addictive. The punishing heaviness and bestial vocals are sweet icing on the cake. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PARAPHILIA — “PRIMORDIUM OF SINISTER BUTCHERY”

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Apr 192021
 

 

The Portland-based brothers SP and KRP are current members of Maestus and have joined forces before in such bands as Arkhum and Pillorian — all of them groups that we’ve devoted a lot of appreciative attention to over a long span of years. And now they’ve collaborated again in a new project named Paraphilia that embraces death metal influences of a particularly vicious and evil breed.

Their first effort under the Paraphilia name is an EP entitled Primordium of Sinister Butchery. As you’ll discover through our full streaming premiere in advance of the EP’s April 23 release, that title was well-chosen. “Primordium” refers to the first stage in the development of an organ, and the music is most definitely sinister and butchering. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTIMOZDEBEAST — “SINS OF THE MUSE”

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Apr 162021
 

 

We’re about to take a mad leap off our usual beaten paths, flying off a precipice into a chaotic collage of sounds that differ stylistically from the genres of our usual focus but are still extreme and, yes, still metal (at least in part).

What we’re doing is premiering a track named “Sins of the Muse” from a forthcoming EP by the Floridian project AntiMozdeBeast (the solo work of one Gabriel Palacio). Entitled The Ritual, the EP is a melting pot of industrial, harsh electronics, metal, and a general affinity for the macabre (which extends to the varying vocals). Continue reading »

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