AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DUSKWALKER — “THE CRAWLING TONGUE”

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Dec 102020
 

 

H.P. Lovecraft never knew, nor could have imagined, what sumptuous source material his twisted storytelling would become for extreme metal bands half a century (and onward) after his death. But so it is, and that symbiosis shows no sign of ever diminishing. Across a wide range of genres and bands, his ghastly supernatural tales continue to exert a magnetic attraction, which inspired the heavyweight Canadian group Duskwalker when they wrote “The Crawling Tongue“, the song that’s the subject of official video we’re premiering today.

The track comes from Duskwalker’s 2019 album All They Know Is Fear, which was released by CDN Records. It’s the first full-length under the name Duskwalker, but is actually the band’s second album (the first one being released under the group’s previous name, The Offering). The album as a whole delves into themes of myth, conspiracy, and horror, and channels influences that range from Morbid Angel and Carcass to Cannibal Corpse and Pantera, blending traditional metal, old school death, and thrash. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MERGER REMNANT — “ALL-OUT VIOLENCE UPON LIFE”

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Dec 092020
 

 

Before listening to the song you’re now about to hear, I had some expectations about what it might sound like, but the expectations were based solely on the previous musical output of one of this new Swedish band’s members rather than any advance descriptive information about the music — of which there was none. What I found turned out to be an electrifying surprise.

The band is Merger Remnant, and it’s a collaboration between Björn Larsson (who performs vocals, guitars, bass, and drums) and his friend Jonas Ström (keys, samples, ambience, guitars). Larsson is best-known to me and to many others as a member of the death metal bands Mordbrand and God Macabre, and that’s what formed the early expectations. Ström, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any kind of metal pedigree.

What they’ve created together, as represented on their debut EP Dregs, is difficult to pin down in genre terms. Based on the song we’re premiering from the EP today — “All-out Violence Upon Life” — death metal is in the mix, but so are strains of black metal, doom, and ambient music, and the song also has a powerful and multi-faceted atmospheric quality. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAAT — “AURORA”

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Dec 092020
 

 

I’ve been closely following the progress of the Indian band Raat since the 2018 release of the projects’s debut EP (Once). The work of a single Delhi-based creator, S.R., who has been in involved in other solo endeavors, including Nightgrave, Raat’s music has displayed persistent connections to black metal, but without being hemmed in by black metal conventions. And so S.R. has also drawn upon other styles, some of which go beyond the bounds of metal altogether, to better channel the emotions that have inspired the sounds.

The animating emotions seem to vacillate between depressiveness and despair, on the one hand, and hope on the other, and the music is capable of being both intensely ravaging and unnerving as well as beautiful. In all of its changing phases, however, the music, as they say, always wears its heart on its sleeve, in ways that feel genuine and often poignant.

Raat’s latest creation is a new album named Raison D’être, which is set for release by the Italian label Flowing Downward on December 12th. It provides a contrast with Raat’s last album, Déraciné. As S.R. has commented, while that album “was quite distinct and warm sounding, the new album is at once decidedly heavier and darker in its atmosphere. In more ways than one, the sound portrays the present day calamity our world is crushed under. Simultaneously, it also maintains moments of rapture and euphoria.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE EYE OF THE NORTH — “WINDS OF DEATH”

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Dec 082020
 

 

The magnificent cover art for the debut album of The Eye of the North should be enough by itself to entice any died-in-the-wool metalhead to investigate the album, but if (somehow) that weren’t enough, we have a further enticement for you today in the form of the album’s opening track, “Winds of Death“.

The name of the album is Black Thrashing Onslaught, which is a vivid clue to the band’s music. The band is the solo project of G., who is the leader in the Norwegian bestial black metal horde Goatkraft, and in this new project he indulges a fascination with murderous thrash metal from the second part of the ’80s and the ’90’s mixed with black metal “in the raw and purest form”, building upon the inspiration of such bands as Kreator, Urgehal, and later on Destroyer 666 and Aura Noir. In the song we’re premiering today, he has created an experience of high-voltage electrification that’s as wildly magnificent as it is brazenly unhinged in its ferocity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WORMVEIL — “SAILS OF FLESH”

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Dec 082020
 

 

Jonny Pettersson seems to be a perpetually busy musician. The Metal-Archives list of active bands in which he’s a participant runs to more than 20 names, including Wombbath, Heads for the Dead, Pale King, and Henry Kane. And now MA will have to update its list, because Pettersson has given birth to a new project named Wormveil, in which he’s joined by his Wombbath and Pale King bandmate Jon Rudin performing the drums.

Wormveil’s debut outing is an album named Profane Excellence, which will be released in January 2021 by Hecatombe Records, and today it’s our pleasure to reveal a track from the album named “Sails of Flesh” — which includes a guest guitar solo by another one of Pettersson’s Wombbath and Pale King comrades, Håkan Stuvemark. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LACOLPA — “RELICS”

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Dec 082020
 

 

On the day of the Winter Solstice, the 21st of December, Brucia Records will release the second full-length by the Italian band LaColpa. Given the critical acclaim heaped upon the band’s first album, 2017’s Mea Maxima Culpa, both intrigue and anticipation have circled around this new one, the title of which is Post Tenebras Lux.

The album’s title translates to “after darkness, light”, but it is often difficult to imagine that any light will survive the nightmarish experiences that the band have crafted through their amalgam of blackened doom, drone, and improvisational harsh noise. Thematically, as the band’s label explains, “this new album outlines LaColpa’s philosophy of pain, deeply rooted in the human condition of eternal suffering”. In what we judge to be the band’s own words, the inspiration for the music is a harrowing philosophy: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE NOCTAMBULANT — “HELLRAZOR”

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Dec 072020
 

 

Black metal will probably always be principally associated with the cold climes of northern Europe. That is, after all, where the second wave originated and where it has achieved its greatest and most long-lasting popularity. Even as black metal has spread like another plague into almost every corner of the globe, much of the music still tends to gravitate toward the Scandinavian templates, even when bands come from places that couldn’t be more different.

One such place is southern Florida, where The Noctambulant make their home. With a trio of opening EPs under their belts and two albums, the last of which was 2019’s The Cold and Formless Deep, The Noctambulant had carved a black path that also drew upon Scandinavian traditions, albeit with an emphasis on hook-heavy melody as well as sinister, supernatural, and venomous atmosphere — and with a pronounced place for swaggering, hard-rocking heat.

Yet after five years of exploring the musical landscape of Black Metal, The Noctambulant have decided to adopt an aesthetic that they see as more authentic to their southern Floridian roots. “Being steeped in the traditions of Blues, Rockabilly, Goth rock and American Country”, they report that they have “found their niche in the Southern Gothic motif that they were raised around”. In a realm of pine forests and hot, oppressive swamps, they’ve changed course in a way that better reflects that environment.

As a sign of the band’s changed direction, we present a video for a new single being released today named “Hellrazor“, a video whose high production values contrast with the setting in which the band perform and a devilishly seductive figure cavorts. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIG ME NO GRAVE — “MORTUUS TEMPLARIS”

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Dec 072020
 

 

On December 15th of this waning year the Mexican label Iron Blood & Death Corp. will release the third album of the Russian “ancient death metal band” Dig Me No Grave. Entitled Under The Pyramids, it’s a 10-track onslaught whose song lengths are mainly in the three-to-four-minute range, and represents the work of the band’s new line-up of vocalist Alexey Rumyantsev, guitarist Nikita Smirnov, guitarist/bassist Ivan Mishin, and drummer Anatoly Schenikov (with appearances on some tracks by bassist Vlad Kotov and drummer Roman Galinov).

Today we present the new album’s fourth track, “Mortuus Templaris“, and if your ass happens to be dragging today, it will fix that problem quickly by providing a swift jolt of high-octane fuel for your nervous system. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SEA SLEEPER — “GEORGE VAN TASSEL”

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Dec 042020
 

 

Today we’re premiering an official video for the second single from Nostophobia, the debut album of Portland OR’s Sea Sleeper, who have dfrawn inspiration from such diverse bands as Gorguts and Gojira, Mastodon and Blut Aus Nord. The song’s name is “George Van Tassel“. That name may mean something to some of you (the ones who are wearing tin-foil hats as they read this). For others, a bit of background is in order.

According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, “Ufology is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most famously, extraterrestrial alien visitors).” According to the same source, the roots of this “pseudoscience” date back to the late 1890s but began to truly flourish after World War II. The lineage of ufologists is a long and colorful one, and certainly one of the more colorful and influential exponents was the man for whom this new song was named, American author George Van Tassel (1910-1978). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BURIAL OATH — “PAGAN FIRES”

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Dec 042020
 

 

It’s always a welcome day at our site when we have the chance to help spread the word about the music of Burial Oath. We had the pleasure of premiering and reviewing this Cleveland black metal trio’s debut album, Beyond the Vale of Shadowlands, back in 2017. It made a striking impression. The music was sulfurous and savage, but its ferocity was more than matched by the appeal of its dark melodies and the dynamism of its rhythms and energies. The next year the band released their second album, and we praised it as well:

“Subjugation of the Bastard Son was recorded live, and it has the sort of immediacy and visceral power of a powerhouse live performance. The vocals are persistently scalding in their intensity; the blazing, booming, and hard-rocking drumwork seizes control of your pulse; the deep bass thrum seems like a frantic heart; and the riffs are irresistible, whether the guitars are racing in a ferocious fury or jangling and jumping. The music is often black-hearted and bleak, but the energy is nevertheless explosive, and the hooks in these songs are razor-sharp…. It’s the kind of record that richly rewards a complete listen from start to finish because these dudes do such a fine job filling these songs with dynamic twists and turns, and giving each one its own memorable qualities.”

And now we’re excited to spread the word about Burial Oath again. The band are working on a new album that they plan to record by the end of the year, and as a sign of what they’re doing they’ve created a video for a new song called “Pagan Fires“, which we’re proud to reveal today. Continue reading »

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