AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “IN THE MOUTHS OF GIANTS”

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Oct 082021
 

 

Last summer we had the pleasure of premiering the title track from No Center, the latest album by Graveslave from the Minnesota Twin Cities, which was subsequently released on July 30th by TRVASFUK Music, adorned by the terrific cover art of Adam Burke. In an effort to sum up the music, we called it “a rich and relentlessly dynamic mix of sounds and sensations, which underscores the progressive elements of Graveslave‘s brand of death metal… intense in different ways and highly memorable”.

If you overlooked the album, today we have a reminder of just how good it is. What we’ve got today is a new music video for the album’s epic and unnerving closing track, “In the Mouths of Giants“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SVPREMACIST — “DRUG OF CHOICE”

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Oct 082021
 

 

We’ve been covering the fiery ascent of the Israeli black metal band Svpremacist since their debut release in 2018 — Black Fuck You Metal. They released a second demo that same year (Book Burner) and a single for a compilation (“No Life Matters“) the following year. And now a debut album is at hand. Entitled Meaningless Death, it’s set for a November 5 release by the UK label Repose Records.

Our previous writings about Svpremacist‘s feral brand of take-no-prisoners black thrash have included such phrases as “raw and ripping”, “electrifying and infectious”, “diabolically unhinged and unpredictable”, “imperious and volcanic”, “delirious and explosive” — but we’ve also praised the well-structured nature of the songs and the band’s incorporation of other heavy metal ingredients to make the music even more attention-grabbing and contagious.

And so it’s a real pleasure to continue yelling about the band today, the occasion being our premiere of a track named “Drug of Choice” off the debut album. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ILLYRIAN — “AGE OF CHAOS”

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Oct 072021
 

 

Take some big gulps of air and make sure your head is screwed on tight, because the fireball of a song we’re premiering today through a lyric video will suck the wind from your lungs and threaten to send your head spinning off into the clouds.

The track is “Age of Chaos“, and it’s off a forthcoming concept EP (Aegis) by Illyrian from Calgary, Canada, which presents an electrifying combination of thrash-fueled death metal with impressive technicality and an ear for evocative melody. The EP will also appeal to gamers, because it draws inspiration from the gaming world, and specifically Dark Souls. The song we present today is a prime example of these inspirations. The band explain:

“‘Age of Chaos’ is a song about a king’s hubris, a witch’s creation, and the downfall of a kingdom they built together. The Dark Souls fans in the room will recognize this story, along with those told on rest of the EP, but if you’re not familiar – it’s a whole lot of demons, dragons, and death (metal).” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BURIAL –“INNER GATEWAYS TO THE SLUMBERING EQUILIBIRUM AT THE CENTER OF THE COSMOS”

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Oct 072021
 

 

Today we present our second track premiere from the debut album by the Italian death metal band Burial in advance of its October 29 release by Everlasting Spew Records. When presenting the first premiere, a track named “Halls of the Formless Unraveler“, we summed up the music as “both hideous and haunting, assaulting and anguished, unearthly and oppressive,” with “the capacity to hypnotize, and to create harrowing emotional disturbances”.

What we have for you today is the album’s title track, “Inner Gateways To The Slumbering Equilibrium At The Center Of Cosmos“. It’s a mammoth song, both in its length and in the stunning impact of the nightmarish musical sensations it presents. It sounds like a monstrous intrusion from some horrifying realm beyond our own plane of existence. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE DESIGN ABSTRACT — “DECRYPTOR”

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Oct 062021
 

 

Today marks the first appearance at our site of The Design Abstract from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, and it’s an enormously eye-opening advent. Though only a trio, their brand of sci-fi-inspired melodic death metal sounds like a cast of thousands, bringing into play orchestral and other electronic/industrial synth elements that magnify the scale, the sweep, and the mind-bending extravagance of the music in ways that vividly suit their futuristic narratives.

The band’s new concept album, Metemtechnosis, is their fifth record overall and it’s set for release on October 29th by Abstrakted Records. Through music that should appeal to fans of Scar Symmetry, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Soilwork, it tells the story of humanity being reborn as a creation of hyper-intelligent technology. The song we’re premiering today is “Decryptor“, and the band describe it’s place in their larger narrative with these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BELL — “COLD WALL RADIO”

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Oct 062021
 

 

Cyclopean Eye is a small label in India that releases black, death, and doom metal but has also been releasing power electronics/noise/ambient music from artists mostly based in the South Asian continent. Some of the more notable artists on the roster are Genocide Shrines, Serpents Athirst, Konflict, Reek of the Unzen Gas Fumes, Jyotisavedanga, and Sathara Ashtika, among others.

What we have for you today, however, is a track from the forthcoming second release by an mysterious American power-electronics/ambient artist named Bell. Entitled Enigma Calling, it’s an EP set for release by Cyclopean Eye on October 10th, and follows Bell‘s 2017 debut album Secrets from a Distant Star. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BELUSHI SPEED BALL — “WE’RE NOT THRASHERS, WE’RE HIPSTER POSERS”

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Oct 052021
 

 

As we all know, social media can become a cesspool of sarcasm, ignorance, and meanness. Most of the time, when you find yourself in the cesspool, the wise course is to stay silent and leave as fast as you can. The Kentucky band Belushi Speed Ball didn’t follow that advice, but instead used the nastiness as an inspiration.

This might not be a good long-term creative strategy, but it worked out pretty well in the case of the song that’s the basis for the video we’re premiering today. And it’s in keeping with the unorthodox (and sometimes absurdist) aesthetics of this crossover thrash band, who seem to revel in thumbing their noses at conformity.

For example, although I’ve never witnessed one of their live performances, I thoroughly enjoyed this evocative excerpt from a write-up in Louisville’s Leo Weekly: “Watching a Belushi Speed Ball show is a lot like going to a pro wrestling event. There are costumes, outlandish characters and antics, raw energy and the key ingredient: an involved audience.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLD SPIRE — “SKULL CHOIRS”

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Oct 052021
 

 

“Genre-bending” and “genre defying” are overworked phrases, and often misused in ways that exaggerate the extent to which bands bring differing genre ingredients into play. But those phrases are absolutely on-point in considering the wondrous music of the Swedish band Gold Spire.

The tale of the band points the way to the tales of the songs on their self-titled debut album, which will be released by Chaos Records on November 5th. Gold Spire was formed in 2019 in Uppsala by the brothers Erik and Påhl Sundström following the demise of Påhl‘s former band Usurpress. Functioning as co-producer and session drummer for Usurpress, Erik worked closely with Påhl on what came to be that band’s last album, 2018’s Interregnum.

We’re told that the ideas which were created during these sessions, together with the general focus on storytelling rather than genre considerations, formed the basis on which Gold Spire was born. And in keeping with those ideas, the brothers then enlisted musicians outside of the traditional metal spectrum: jazz saxophonist extraordinaire Magnus Kjellstrand and progressive rock bassist Petter Broman. They completed the circle by bringing in veteran death metal vocalist Heval Bozarslan (Sarcasm, Third Storm). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUNLESS — “ASCENDED FORMS”

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Oct 042021
 

 

As the song we’re premiering today abundantly demonstrates, Minnesota-based Sunless have mastered an unusual art form — the creation of intricate riffs and rhythms that are not conventionally melodic or predictable, and indeed are suggestive of chaos and madness, and yet still get quickly stuck in the head. This isn’t to say they’re the only band out there who have exhibited such mastery in making unnerving sounds seductive, but it’s definitely not a big crowd.

Today’s premiere, “Ascended Forms“, comes from the band’s new album Ylem, which will be released on October 29 via Willowtip Records. It follows their 2017 debut full-length Uracca, which we summed up as a record that delivers “an impressive variety of Gorguts-ian, dissonance-heavy technical death metal — an astonishingly well-composed, well-executed album that is frantic and terrifying in its sonic panic… a must-hear this year”.

Ylem functions as Part Two of a trilogy that Uracca began, and it’s even more fascinating than its predecessor — which is saying something. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FORDOM — “THE UPRISING OF BARBATOS”

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Oct 042021
 

 

I’m in the midst of reading a long essay that was prompted by the appearance of three new translations of Dante’s Purgatory, which were recently published to coincide with the seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death, at fifty-six, in September of 1321. While devoted primarily to Purgatory, the essayist eventually brings into play the depravities rendered in Dante’s Inferno, the place where (as one writer put it) “the self and its despair [are] forever inseparable”. At that point the essayist included this quotation from an Inferno translation:

I never saw a barrel burst apart,
Having sprung a hoop or slipped a stave,
Like that man split down to where we fart,

His guts between his legs, his body splayed,
Its organs hanging out, among them that foul sac
Which turns to shit all that we eat.
As I beheld this gore he looked at me
And even wider tore his breast apart
“See how I spread myself,” said he.

Not long after stopping at that blood-congealing point in my reading, I listened for the first time to the song we’re premiering today, and became equally horrified. The juxtaposition couldn’t have been more abominably perfect. Continue reading »

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