AN NCS PREMIERE: WOMBBATH — “THE SEVENTH SEAL”

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Nov 012021
 

What do you do if you have mastered a particular art form? Some artists would just happily continue doing what they had mastered, on the theory that success breeds more success and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Others might retire and rest on their laurels. But some might create new challenges for themselves by focusing their energies on how to make what they had mastered sound different and new. And that’s what the Swedish death metal band Wombbath have done on their new album, Agma.

It should go without saying by now that Wombbath have mastered the art form of old-school HM-2-powered Swedish-style death metal. They got an early start on their mastery in the mid-’90s, went away for about 20 years, and then resumed work with 2015’s Downfall Rising. Since then founding guitarist Håkan Stuvemark and a new group of very talented comrades have pumped out three more albums which collectively proved, in increasingly convincing ways, that they were on very sure footing.

But now we have Agma, which is brimming with new ideas, so many of them that it’s a double-album, encompassing 16 tracks and more than an hour and 12 minutes of music. We are revealing one of those today in advance of Agma‘s December 31st release by Transcending Obscurity Records, a late date that we hope won’t cause Agma to be overlooked on EOY lists, because it can certainly lay just claim to be included. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRVNA — “TIMELESS… AGELESS…”

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Oct 292021
 

The Australian black metal band KRVNA made its recorded debut just last month with a debut demo consisting of two substantial tracks. Under the title Long Forgotten Relic it was released by Seance Records. In its lyrical themes, and through the visions of imagination spawned by the music, it explored the vampire mythos from the ancient world to Biblical times, and the black forests and mountainous castle crypts of Balkan and Carpathian incarnations of the vampire.

Now, following closely on the heels of that very promising advent, Seance Records is readying the release of KRVNA’s debut album Sempinfernus. It too delves into vampyric mythology but in an even more expansive and far-reaching way. Moreover, KRVNA’s solo creator Krvna Vatra has disclosed more precisely the nature of his interest in the subject matter, and how it stands for themes that extend beyond tales of the undead: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOLGOTHAN — “PARENT ORGANISM”

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Oct 292021
 

Most of us are familiar with Golgotha, the skull-shaped hill of execution in ancient Jerusalem where, according to the Gospels, Jesus was crucified (along with many others charged with crimes). But what, pray tell, is a Golgothan? The creature seems to have originated in Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie Dogma. According to the Metal-Archives listing for the Louisiana death metal band who took that same name for themselves:

“A Golgothan (also called a ‘shit demon’ or ‘excremental’) is a fictional creature composed of human excrement. The creature derives its name from the hill where Christ was crucified; the collective suffering of the souls sentenced to death by crucifixion on that hill gives birth to the demon’s existence. The Golgathan rises from the collected offal secreted by each prisoner’s loosened bowels upon the moment of death”.

In keeping with the genesis of their name, Golgothan (the band) are thematically attracted to gore and horror, and apparently the more outrageous, the better. They’ve released a handful of EPs and singles beginning in 2014, and at last will have a debut album named Leech coming out on February 4, 2022 through Lacerated Enemy Records, who recommends it for fans of Aborted, Cattle Decapitation, and Bloodbath.

February 4th is a long way off, but we’re presenting a first single from the album that makes it a date worth remembering. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BURIAL — “INNER GATEWAYS TO THE SLUMBERING EQUILIBRIUM AT THE CENTER OF THE COSMOS”

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Oct 282021
 

It has been our hideous pleasure to premiere two tracks from the staggering and slaughtering debut album of the Italian death metal band Burial, and today we’re even more fiendishly pleased to bring you a stream of the full album, evocatively titled Inner Gateways To The Slumbering Equilibrium At The Center Of Cosmos and graced by the ghastly cover art of maestro Paolo Girardi.

Everlasting Spew Records, who will release the record on October 29th, recommends it for fans of Spectral Voice, Mortiferum, Krypts, and dISEMBOWELMENT. We recommend it for anyone who relishes expertly written and meticulously executed death metal which succeeds in creating a wide-ranging amalgam of unearthly terrors, ranging from assaults of mind-mauling, bone-splintering barbarity to episodes of crushing gloom and hypnotic supernatural trances steeped in woe. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: STAGWOUNDER — “DAS PHANTOM ZERRINNT”

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Oct 282021
 

 

Extreme metal need not draw its inspirations or lyrical themes from philosophy and literature to be worth our time. Of course it doesn’t — visions of pentagrams, skulls, haunted graveyards, and steaming viscera will do just fine, as long as the music hooks us. Still,  provocative thinking can sometimes add an extra dimension to the experience, apart from the role it may play in providing inspiration to the musicians, and learning something new can be a welcome bonus.

Which brings us to the German band Stagwounder‘s new album The Shrouded Muse of the World´s Lament. In the press materials it is introduced by this quotation:

“Thou, eager to ascend to the sun on waxen wings, consider: even in the bleak caves of the deep it is better to reside than in the boundless ether. Between heaven and hell the child of Gaea is born, soon willing to lie itself down among the photophobic creatures of the chthonic dark, soon fluttering upward to the splendorous heights whose reflections radiate around it like garments of light.“

That passage was written by the 19th century German philosopher Julius Bahnsen. It appears in Pessimistenbrevier, a work translated as “The Pessimist’s Breviary”. That work provides the foundation for Stagwounder‘s new album, along with Japanese author and cultural critic Mishima Yukio. How these thinkers influenced the album is an interesting tale, and we think one worth telling before we get to the music itself (and yes, we will get to the music in due course, because we’re premiering a song from The Shrouded Muse… today, in the lead-up to its release by Crawling Chaos on November 26th). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FUNERAL CHANT — “DAWN OF ANNIHILATION”

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Oct 272021
 

 

In February 2017 Funeral Chant from Oakland, California independently released their self-titled debut, a six-track, 27-minute affair that was subsequently picked up for physical editions by Duplicate Records and Caverna Abismal Records. It was a remarkable release in more ways than one, but the dominant impression it left in our heads was summed up in these passages from our review:

“The band walk a fine line between berserker chaos and the kind of intricate instrumental inventiveness and rhythmic dynamism that produces fascination. It’s a high-wire display of acrobatics, but Funeral Chant are so nimble that they don’t lose their balance no matter how fast they’re flying along that thin cord.

“And so, the songs are crushing, eviscerating, hateful, and ferocious at a primal level, but are also intricate, well-plotted, and eerie. In the heat of the moment, they trigger an enormous adrenaline rush, but it takes multiple listens before you begin to follow all the labyrinthine exercises going on within these raging storms of sound”.

It’s thus no wonder that we leaped at the chance to premiere the band’s new album, Dawn Of Annihilation, which will be released via Carbonized Records on November 1st. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MINNESJORD / TEUFELSBERG

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Oct 272021
 

 

On October 31st Signal Rex will release a vinyl-only album-length split by two bands in the raw black metal brotherhood, the Portuguese duo Minnesjord and the Polish duo Teufelsberg. Each band contributes four tracks to the release, both of them revealing their own particular hellish personalities, and collectively creating a harsh and ravaging but nonetheless thrilling experience.

The album is available for order here, as well as through Bandcamp for each band’s side (here and here), and today we’ve got the premiere streams for all 8 songs, preceded (of course) by our own take on what these two groups have created. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SAVAGE DEITY — “PERISH MANGDA”

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Oct 262021
 

On November 28th Inhuman Assault Productions will release Decade of Savagery, the infernally barbaric third album by Savage Deity from Bangkok, Thailand, and today we’re presenting the second track premiere in the run-up to its release.

Steadfastly connecting with the kind of ’90s-era death metal spawned in the earliest days of Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Malevolent Creation (among others), Savage Deity have indeed created music that’s genuinely savage, using compelling songcraft, ferocious execution, and authentic spirit to mount their malicious, adrenaline-fueled attacks rather than trickery or gimmicks. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASTROPHOBOS — “TILL DJUPET”

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Oct 262021
 

 

Today we present the third and final single leading up to the release of a new album by the Swedish black metal band Astrophobos. The name of the album is Corpus, but Corpus is more than the album, and is also the title of a cross-disciplinary collaboration spanning several years in which sculpture, photography, and music have intermingled to explore themes of impermanence, death and decay.

As Astrophobos explain, “Teaming up with artists Lisa Wallert and Morgan Norman, the band ventured into these concepts, taking inspiration from their work to write both music and lyrics”. The artwork of Wallert and Norman can be found on the cover of the Corpus album and throughout the layout of the gatefold vinyl record. The collaboration will culminate in an exhibition/live show taking place in Stockholm on November 13th

But now let’s get to the song you’ll have the chance to hear for the first time today: “Till Djupet“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CONTRITION — “BROKEN MORTAL COIL”

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Oct 252021
 

 

The resumes of the people in Chicago-based Contrition open eyes. Those people are Jerome Marshall (Cobalt, Yakuza) on vocals, Garry Naples (Novembers Doom, Without Waves) on drums, Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, Deeper Graves, ex-Wolvhammer) on guitars and synth, and Jon Woodring (Bones, ex-Usurper) on bass. As an educated guess, they’ve got all sorts of different music swirling through their heads from day to day, even making room for the silence of sleep and maybe a few other silences. So, where did they go under the name Contrition on their debut album, Broken Mortal Coil?

The astute among you will already have an idea, based on the singles that have emerged in the run-up to the October 29 release by Wilson’s Disorder Recordings. Some of you may even know that a couple of these people already collaborated in a band called Doomsday, which released one self-titled EP in 2012 (worth tracking down if you don’t have it), and which itself provides some distant clues.

But I’m going to pretend you don’t know where these four (and their noteworthy guests) coalesced on Broken Mortal Coil, that your minds are as clean as an erased chalkboard, still dusty but ready to be filled, or wrecked. Continue reading »

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