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”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
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 »

AN NCS PREMIERE: 30 IMMOLATED; 16 RETURNED — “THE AUGURS OF SPRING (THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD)”

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May 112021
 

 

Sometimes in our song premieres (in this case one that’s presented through a lyric video), it’s best to cut to the chase and then come back and fill in the back-story. This is one of those times.

The song here, which is as fascinating as it is unnerving, is “The Augurs of Spring (The Burial of the Dead)“. It’s the second movement in a rendition of excerpts from Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 orchestral work The Rite of Spring, and the people responsible for this rendition have taken the name 30 immolated; 16 returned. The lyrics, which seemingly appear as random words, were inspired by T.S. Eliot‘s great poem “The Waste Land“.

A compelling rhythmic pulse runs through this performance, executed in different ways, from primitive, titanic pounding by all instruments to brittle chords or a popping snare (and more). Around that reflex-triggering pulse (which occasionally changes in jarring ways), madness ensues — a cavalcade of burbling bass notes, dissonant slithering, seething, and screeching guitars, frantic drum acrobatics, insectile fretwork fevers, and an array of caustic growls and howls whose lunatic vehemence is almost as unsettling as all the bizarre instrumental intricacy.

It is, in a word, wild. Stravinsky may be spinning in his grave, almost at the speed your own head will spin. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLOAK OF ALTERING — “THE JESUSCRAFT”

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May 112021
 

 

In the neverending musical combat between catharsis and comfort, byzantine boundary-stretching and banal convention, Cloak of Altering continues to leave no doubt where its allegiances lie. In the band’s eccentric and perpetually experimental maneuvers, it seems dedicated to rooting around in our subconscious in a way that makes it difficult to keep certain things buried that perhaps we’d rather remain hidden, just as it provides a necessary outlet for its creator’s own unsettling and unpredictable impulses.

Yet every new excursion by the band provides a multitude of fascinations, no matter how disorienting they may become, further proof of which is provided in Cloak of Altering‘s new album, Sheathed swords drip with poisonous honey (set for release on June 4th by Brucia Records).

We have the premiere of a song from that album for you today, “The Jesuscraft“. The opening line of our introduction, which is a few paragraphs below, is this: “The song seems diabolically calculated to keep listeners continually off-balance.” Perhaps, then, there is some hilarity to be found in the comment about the song from Cloak of Altering‘s alter ego Mories (the fiendish mind also behind Gnaw Their Tongues, The Sombre, The Night Specter, Hagetisse, and Golden Ashes, among other projects): “The Jesuscraft is the most straightforward song on the album.” Continue reading »

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