AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BIAŁYWILK — “PRÓŻNIA”

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Oct 012021
 

 

Fans of Chicago’s Vukari will want to pay special attention to the following album premiere on the day of its release. Entitled Próżnia, it’s the debut full-length by the atmospheric black metal band Bialywilk, which is the solo side project of leading Vukari member Marek Cimochowicz. For this album, he’s also aided by an impressive group of session musicians — drummer John Kerr (Marsh Dweller, Noltem, Seidr), bassist Spenser Morris (Vukari), and Adam Harris, who performs synths on “Próżnia I”.

The title of the album is a Polish word that refers to the void — to the vacuum of space. Although Próżnia is not a concept album, the songs do deal with space and celestial realms, as well as mysticism and philosophical subjects. As Marek has explained to us: “So, overall the inspiration is about space and the void, but how vast and humbling it could be to the human experience. We are all part of the universe in a way but our bodies and consciousness are just a blip in the grander scheme, and as bleak as that sounds I find it pretty relieving”.

As you will discover, the music fits the grand and momentous themes of the lyrics, creating panoramas of blazing splendor that channel moods of awe, fear, and loss, coupled with heart-pounding rhythmic propulsion and vocals of harrowing intensity — and a couple of gripping ambient excursions into the void of deep space. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ADLIGA — “ŽYVY” (ALIVE)

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Oct 012021
 

 

Today it is our pleasure to present a striking video for a powerful song off the forthcoming debut album by the band Adliga from Minsk, Belarus. The album, Vobrazy (set for release on November 5th), features six songs with lyrics in the Belarusian language, some based on Belarusian folklore, and in their music the band interweave elements of doom and post-metal with vocals that exhibit great variety and range.

The song featured in the video we’re premiering is “Žyvy” (Alive). Its lyrics narrate a horrible dream, in which all life has been extinguished, the earth laid waste in blood and fire, and the observer struggles to make sense of how to exist. The narrative, which includes ruminations about destiny, ends with these words, translated from the Belarusian:

Here you are alone, and your life is at stake.
Death’s call has sounded,
This round you’ve almost lost

And clenching my teeth,
And pulse beats in temple,
Only one thought – I’m alive!
Alive!
Alive! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MALGÖTH — “GLORY THROUGH SAVAGERY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 302021
 

 

Of all the titles that Malgöth might have chosen for their debut album, the one they picked is a near-perfect representation of the music: Glory Through Savagery. The experience is indeed one of breathtaking ferocity and destructive impact, but both the band and the songs also revel in their psychotic excesses, creating a continuous atmosphere of no-holds-barred derangement that glories in the chaos they create.

While the album maintains connections to the vaunted traditions of malignant Canadian blackened death metal, it carves its own abominable path in unorthodox yet still terrifying ways. The music is not merely a titan of globe-spanning ruination but it’s also delirious — and deliriously inventive. The press materials for Iron Bonehead Productions, who will release the album tomorrow (October 1st), describe it as “a kaleidoscopic experience, a fever dream of war metal turned absolutely inside out”, and that’s absolutely true — as you’re about to find out through our premiere of a complete album stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AYAHUASCA — “CENDRES ET RUINES”

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Sep 302021
 

 

Right here, right now, we have a great example of why music videos can matter. This one checks all the boxes: Highly energetic performances by the band members (who seem to be having a hell of a time), expertly filmed and edited; a creative depiction of an incendiary event that’s central to the lyrical theme of the song; and of course the success of the video in introducing some very good music to people who might never have been aware of it (including this writer).

The song is “Cendres et Ruines” (“Ashes and Ruins”) by the German progressive death metal band Ayahuasca. The song was originally released on Ahayuasca‘s 2018 debut album Beneath the Mind. Obviously, a lot of time passed in between the release of the album and today’s unveiling of the video. In that time a lot has happened, not only in the wider world but also in the life of this band, including line-up changes. And thus, as the band say, the video marks the end of one volume in their life, in advance of something new to come. And not surprisingly, the video itself required a lot of time and effort by a lot of people to bring it to fruition (you’ll see the names of many of them at the end of the video). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXSUL — “PSYCHOMACHIA”

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Sep 292021
 

 

In writing about new music I sometimes become intrigued by the titles of records or songs, or by conceptual themes or cover art, even if none of that may have anything to do with the experience of listening. Driven by nothing more than intellectual curiosity, I find myself tunneling down internet rabbit holes to satisfy that curiosity, and maybe to learn something new along the way. That happened in spades with Allegoresis, the forthcoming second EP by the Tucson-based death metal band Exsul.

There were already manifold hints of Exsul’s unusual intellectual interests in the song titles on their 2020 self-titled debut EP, and even more so in the titles strewn across their new one. Consider the name of the first song that was revealed from Allegoresis: “How in the Land of Satin We Saw Hearsay, Who Kept a School of Vouching“.

At first I thought this might just be clever wordplay, substituting “Satin” for you-know-who and “Hearsay” for “Heresy”. But my researching revealed that it is instead the title of Chapter XXXI of The Fifth Book by the French Renaissance writer, physician, humanist, monk, and Greek scholar François Rabelais.

And that isn’t the only reference to a Rabelaisian work in the songcraft of Exsul. There’s another song on the new EP named “Pantagruelion“, which I discovered is a name given by Rabelais to “a magical plant capable through its many applications of furthering the progress of the human race”. It appears in The Third Book (Le Tiers Livre in French), yet another book of the heroic deeds and sayings of the giant kings Gargantua and Pantagruel.

And then there’s “Psychomachia“, the name of the song we’re premiering today. Here’s what you’ll find about “Psychomachia” in The Font of All Human Knowledge: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LE CHANT NOIR — “LES MÉTAMORPHOSES DU VAMPIRE”

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Sep 292021
 

 

Imagine yourself as a character in a waking dream, finding yourself transported centuries into the past and venturing into a French cabaret populated by aristocratic Satanists and those practicing medieval witchcraft, with vampires roaming in their midst, draining blood from crystal goblets instead of wine. Imagining such a scene, an unreal dreamscape of ancient elegance and palpable danger, is one way of preparing yourself for the music to be found on the new second album by the Brazilian “supergroup” Le Chant Noir.

That album, La Société Satanique Des Poètes Morts, is set for release by Personal Records on October 22nd. As the press materials faithfully describe it, the songs “thread together the darkest fibers of archaic black metal, doom metal, and even dark metal, arriving at a sort of avant-garde symphonic black metal that’s simultaneously an authentic throwback and refreshingly modern”.

The album is indeed an out-of-the-ordinary experience, a kind of macabre musical theater that proves to be genuinely transportive. Even the one song we’re premiering today has that effect. Its name is “Les Métamorphoses Du Vampire“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERSUS — “THE WORLD EATER”

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Sep 282021
 

 

This is one of those times when we feel compelled to offer some words of warning. Before you listen to the song we’re about to premiere, you’d be best advised to lash yourself to something solid, don a crash helmet, and have some supplemental oxygen handy. The name of the song is “The World Eater“, and it does indeed sound like it’s doing its best to devour the world.

The band responsible for this breathtaking musical mayhem is Versus, a part-Swiss, part-French group formed in 2013 around Geneva. They introduce themselves this way: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VENEFIXION — “A SIGH FROM BELOW”

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Sep 282021
 

 

After a trio of short releases, the ravishing French death metal band Venefixion have at last prepared a debut full-length that’s set for an imminent October 1 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Curiously entitled A Sigh From Below, the only sighs it’s likely to produce are breaths of wonder at how explosive and exhilarating the music is.

With the exception of an ominous and eerie intro track in which distorted voices roar and howl through an increasingly cacophonous maelstrom, and an otherworldly, chiming and swirling instrumental interlude (“Subterranean Deathspell”) that creates an atmosphere of gloomy gothic horror, what stands out first and foremost about the album is the feeling of brazen and blazing haughtiness that the music generates — as well as the band’s formidable talent for melding sensations of grim defiance, violent ecstasy, and sinister supernatural downfall. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SKVERNA LINIYA — “IN A GARLAND OF WAX”

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Sep 272021
 

 

The magnificent cover art for Skverna Liniya‘s debut album В венке из воска (In A Garland Of Wax) portrays a scene that’s both classically elegant and desolate. It reveals grand architectural achievements that have become relics, looming beneath daunting grey skies, surrounding a cobble-stoned plaza virtually empty of life and a mysterious garland resting in a liquid pool. It’s a haunting vision, and an intriguing one. And it turns out to beautifully suit the music on the album.

This Russian band’s full-length advent (which will be co-released by Casus Belli Musica and Beverina Productions) summons adjectives like “atmospheric” and “progressive”, because it’s so powerful in creating moods and so fascinating in its dazzling instrumental and stylistic diversity (which include ingredients of doom and post-metal). As a preview of how the music will affect listeners, we share the conceptions that inspired it, as disclosed in the press materials: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FIAT NOX — “IN CONTEMPTUOUS DEFIANCE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 272021
 

 

The German band Fiat Nox have already established a prominent place for themselves in the fire-and-ice realms of black metal through the strength of a debut demo (2016’s Light the Torches), and a debut album (The Archive of Nightmares, released in June of this year). Wasting no time, Fiat Nox have now readied a new EP for release by Personal Records on October 1st, and it further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies.

We’ve previously lavished praise upon the EP, and now have the opportunity to present a stream of it in its entirety. Its entirely fitting title is In Contemptuous Defiance. Continue reading »

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