AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: DEVOID OF THOUGHT — “OUTER WORLD GRAVES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 262021
 

 

With the kind of genius planning and execution that built the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the “Iron Dam” in Zhumadian, China, and the tower in Pisa that subsequently leaned, we published our review of Devoid of Thought‘s new album yesterday, 24 hours before premiering a complete album stream today.

But truth be told, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A multiplicity of writings, even so closely juxtaposed, may catch more eyes and ears — and this album definitely deserves more eyes and ears. As yesterday’s reviewer Mr. Synn proclaimed:

“Outer World Graves is definitely a big step up from the band’s previous material, dealing in a blend of slithering muscle and otherworldly menace reminiscent of bands like Blood Incantation, Mithras, and Zealotry… a sort of ‘post-Demilich, post-Deeds of Flesh‘ approach that marries punchy, predatory riffs, gruesome, gut-churning grooves, and tormented technicality to an eerie, unsettling atmosphere of proto-cosmic dread”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VEIL OF CONSPIRACY — “ECHOES OF WINTER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Aug 252021
 

 

The seasons trace a cycle of death and re-birth in the natural world. Winter is commonly regarded as the season of death, the descent of bitter cold and stricken leaves, of creatures in hiding and comforts lost. These days, of course, death seems more ever-present than ever, with no regard for seasons, even as we think of baking heat and burning landscapes rather than frigid domains. Sometimes it seems that we’re in the midst of an endless winter of the soul.

Winter is the main protagonist of the forthcoming second album by the Italian band Veil of Conspiracy, and when you hear the band’s mesmerizing amalgam of doom, death, and black metal, you can easily understand it as a transfixing portrait not only of the season but of the darkness of our own freezing journeys through grief, despair, and solitude.

Echoes of Winter is the album’s name, and today we have a full stream of it for you in advance of its release this coming Friday by BadMoodMan Music. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RUIN — “SPREAD PLAGUE DEATH”

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Aug 242021
 

 

For those familiar with the previous recordings of the California death metal band Ruin, it will come as no surprise that their new album Spread Plague Death is ruinous — ruthlessly unapologetically ruinous, in multiple ways. It’s titanically crushing, subhuman in its savagery, grotesquely filthy in its sound, and unrelenting in its devotion to building a macabre atmosphere of mutilating depravity and horror. It also happens to be perversely contagious and neck-wrecking as well as sadistically grotesque.

The band’s success in creating such tremendously obliterating destructiveness coupled with so many blood-congealing terrors, and doing so over the course of more than 44 minutes without overpowering a listener’s endurance isn’t a matter of happenstance but of calculation. It’s a testament to the band’s songcraft and an attention to detail that might not be expected, given how steadfastly brutal, morbid, and maniacal their strategies are.

You’ll have a chance to discover this for yourselves, assuming you’re not faint of heart, because we have a full stream of the album for you, just a few days away from its August 27 release by Nameless Grave Records and other allied labels. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOLDEN GOD — “FLESH”

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Aug 232021
 

 

We’ve written repeatedly about the genre-splicing metal band Witchtrip from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, premiering music from all three of the EPs they’ve released so far, including 2021’s Sledmetal. But it’s not Witchtrip that’s the subject of today’s premiere, so why are we mentioning them?

Well, it’s because today’s band, Golden God, is a Witchtrip side project that includes three of that band’s five members — Sean Kaye (guitar/vocals), Josh Buors (bass/vocals), and Adrian Meijn (drums). Golden God will soon be announcing their debut EP, and what we’ve got today is a track from it named “Flesh“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALIGNAMENT — “CALL TO ARMS”

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Aug 232021
 

 

In November 2019 I came across the debut demo of the Finnish black metal band Malignament (reviewed here) that halted me in my tracks and sent my heart racing. It combined ferocious strength, a sense of panoramic scale, and intoxicating melodies of unbridled emotional power that penetrated deeply.

It was thus terrifically good news to learn that Malignament had completed work on a debut album. Entitled Hypocrisis Absolution, it’s an eight-track pageant of war and woe that builds upon the promise of the demo and really is breathtaking from beginning to end. And thus we’re thrilled to premiere an album track named “Call of Arms” today, in the lead-up to the album’s September 24 release by Primitive Reaction. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERMON OF FLAMES — “VEHEMENCE”

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Aug 202021
 

 

For all those loyal to I, Voidhanger Records (and I’m definitely a confirmed loyalist), it takes nothing more to become interested in a band than simply knowing that I, Voidhanger has chosen to release their music. Having said that, the range of the label’s musical interests is quote broad. The choices will always appeal to adventurous listeners, but may not always hit everyone’s bullseye, given variations in individual tastes. Hence, even for ardent fans of the label, there is still a place for premieres such as the one we’re presenting today.

The song we present today is a demonstration of the label’s range. It is out on the most violent and mind-defiling end of the roster spectrum. But like so many I, Voidhanger releases, it’s nevertheless out of the ordinary, though in this case its mercurial permutations are twisted and tyrannical, catastrophic and crippling. The music’s morbid and maniacal maneuvers still manage to involve the higher faculties, in addition to being viscerally unnerving.

The song is “Vehemence“. The album is I Have Seen The Light, And It Was Repulsive. And the band is a diabolical duo from Ireland named Sermon of Flames. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFILTRATED MANKIND — “WORLD WIDE DEICIDE”

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Aug 202021
 

 

As a long-time fan of Russian artist Anton Semenov (aka Gloom82), his “Horsemen of the Apocalypse” cover art for Infiltrated Mankind‘s forthcoming debut album Inside the Apelike caught my eye before hearing a single note. As it turns out, the band’s music is also apocalyptic and freakishly good, as you’ll discover through our premiere of a track from the album today.

“World Wide Deicide” is crushing and crazed. It generally moves fast, which makes the overflowing abundance of technical acrobatics even more mind-boggling. With fingers flying at centrifugal speed, the guitarist (and yes, there appears to be just one) executes savage blaring eruptions, deliriously shrieking and blurting frenzies, bursts of rapidly veering angularity, and unnerving spasms of boiling mania. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SEPULCHRE BY THE SEA — “GHOST OF THE DEPARTED”

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Aug 192021
 

 

Last fall we made one of those surprise discoveries that’s a source of constant motivation to dig deeper into the underground rather than just paying attention to the names most people already know. That discovery was Conqueror Worm, the debut album released by Anthrazit Records from Sepulchre by the Sea, a genre-bending one-man band who drew inspiration from the works of Edgar Allen Poe. As we explained here, the music explored some adventurous and interesting (and frightening) ideas that were embroidered around a spine of atmospheric black metal.

Now we’re pleased to report that Sepulchre by the Sea will be releasing a new EP on October 1st entitled Ratiocinations. It continues the Edgar Allen Poe theme and is based on the famous, and first ever, detective stories that Poe wrote. And to help spread the word about it, today we’re presenting the video premiere of the EP’s first single, a multifaceted song named “Ghost of the Departed“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AZAZEL — “JESUS CHRIST IMPOTENT ROTTING SAVIOUR”

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Aug 192021
 

 

The signposts are there for all to see — the spikes and the corpsepaint, the pentagrams and inverted crosses, the image of a cloven-hoofed, goat-headed demon defiling a nun, the arrogant and  insulting blasphemy of the song titles. And thus Azazel return after a six-year hiatus with a new album, their third, entitled Aegrus Satanas Tecum.

These Finnish demons trace their spawning to 1992, with their first evil fruits released in the mid-90s. It was not until 2012, after a long silence, that their first album Jesus Perversions emerged, followed by 2015’s Witches Deny Holy Trinity. And now the new one is set to arrive via Primitive Reaction on September 24th. To borrow from the promotional material (because it sums up the experience so well): Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORTAL VISION — “DEVASTATED EXISTENCE”

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Aug 192021
 

 

If you do a little poking around in the landfill of the internet you can find videos of legends before they were legends, such things as a 1989 rehearsal by Sepultura (here), a bootleg video of Carcass performing in that same year (here), and a Sodom concert from 1988 (here). One thing that jumps out, besides the energy of the music, is just how fucking young they all looked.

The Ukrainian thrash metal band Mortal Vision look damned young too — because they are damned young, in their early-to-mid 20s. But they’ve got that same kind of lightning-in-a-bottle energy you see in early performances by the legends, and a precocious talent for cooking up hell-raising, neck-wrecking music that’s highly contagious. Their label Redefining Darkness Records pitches them as “Schizophrenia-era Sepultura meets Persecution Mania-era Sodom at its finest”, and they are indeed a new force to be reckoned with.

As vivid proof of that, today we’ve got the premiere of an explosive video for “Devastated Existence“, which is a new single off Mortal Vision‘s forthcoming debut album, Mind Manipulation. Continue reading »

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