AN NCS PREMIERE: SELTAR — “AURORA”

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Aug 182021
 

 

The gorgeous cover art created by Taya Rostovtseva for the debut album by the U.S.-based atmospheric black metal band Seltar is evocative of the music itself, and of its inspirations. As Seltar’s sole member Invierno explains:

“Shimmering lights silhouette the dense trees, obscuring the landscape. In solitude, the body rests vacant as time evaporates into the ether. A cosmic ancestral energy perfuses the spirit inciting it to depart the physical realm. This intangible power emanating with the accumulated wisdom from distant eras hearkens the lifeforce towards a transdimensional journey to experience worlds beyond. The ego is abandoned. Gazing upon its exhausted earthly chassis, the spirit is enchanted into an ancient passage to attain fathomless vision. Autoscopia is a series of hymns to detach from this dimension and travel to a spectral plane.”

Combining with the artwork and Invierno’s words, we have the premiere of a song from Autoscopia named “Aurora” which provides a further powerful insight into the journey encompassed by the album — which will be jointly released on October 1st by Casus Belli Musica and Beverina Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WRATH DIVISION — “BARBED WIRE VEINS”

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Aug 182021
 

 

The three members of the Polish war metal band Wrath Division identify themselves by latitude and longitude coordinates rather than names. Finding nothing about the significance of these coordinates in the promotional materials for the band’s debut album, Barbed Wire Veins, we resorted to Google maps, and made these chilling discoveries:

Vocalist: 7°41’22″N 59°57’0″W — the site in Guayana of the 1978 Jonestown mass murder-suicide that killed over 900 men, women, and children
Guitarist/bassist: 34°24’N 132°27’E — the approximate location of the 1945 atomic bomb detonation above Hiroshima, Japan
Drummer/vocalist: 44°6’23″N 19°17’49″E — the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, site of the genocidal slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys during the Bosnian War

And if those examples of humanity’s capacity for self-destruction aren’t grim enough for you, wait ’til you hear the album.

You won’t have to wait long, because we have a stream of all 10 tracks today, just days away from its August 21 release by Godz Ov War Productions and Left Hand Sounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: XENOSIS — “PROPHETIC BLIGHT”

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Aug 172021
 

 

The Connecticut-based death metal band Xenosis released their third album Devour and Birth in early 2018. Since then, the band has changed, with a revised lineup that now includes second guitarist Keith Benway as well as new bassist and backing vocalist Craig Breitsprecher (of Fires in the Distance), as well as guitarist Kenny Bullard, vocalist Sal Bova, and drummer Gary Marotta (Archaic Decapitator). And with these new members on board, the band’s music has changed as well.

These changes are reflected in the latest Xenosis album, Paralled Existence, which is set for release on October 1st. It would go too far to say that Xenosis have radically transformed themselves — their backbone is still made of a particularly head-spinning brand of technical death metal. But the changes are nonetheless apparent, with greater roles for progressive-metal excursions and groove. We have a prime example in the song we’re premiering today, “Prophetic Blight“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SACRIFIXION — “SHOWER ME IN DEATH”

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Aug 172021
 

 

On their debut EP Shower Me In Death, the German band Sacrifixion have embraced a formulation of death metal that’s rough and raw, hideous and horrifying, maniacal and marauding. They strike with evil intent and visceral, primeval power, managing to seem right on the edge of out-of-control mayhem but also triggering convulsive head movement, while simultaneously giving their songs a creepy, supernatural aura.

With four tracks that rush by in about 13 eviscerating and neck-ruining minutes, Sacrifixion have put their stakes in the ground in vivid fashion, with decapitated heads on top. It’s a hell of a start, and leaves us hungry for their full-length, which is already in the works. And thus we’re sadistically happy to present a full stream of the EP in advance of its August 20 release on 7″ vinyl by Hells Headbangers. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SENTIERO DEI PRINCIPI — “RINASCONO LE TAMERICI”

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Aug 162021
 

 

Today we premiere a song from Lustmord, the debut album of Sentiero Dei Principi, the solo work of Nicola Redavid from Bari, Italy, in advance of its October 1 release by Esercito della Chiesa Dorata. But before we turn to the music, we want to share information about the concepts that underlie the album, because it will shed further light on the sensations of the music itself, and on Nicola Redavid‘s characterization of the style as “romantic black metal”.

The album’s title is a German word meaning “lust murder”. As described by Sentiero Dei Principi, it is a theme “that brings to mind scenes of violence but which at the same time contains a less raw and more psychological meaning, useful for what is the vision of childhood (where love is not necessarily understood as a relationship between lovers but also as a “child/parent” relationship), which is hit by events and traumas that lead to a sort of ‘death of love’. The traumas of childhood then have repercussions on development and adulthood, becoming partly responsible for crimes such as lust murders”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PAYDRETZ — “SOUS LE BANNIÈRE BLANCHE”

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Aug 162021
 

 

Those of you who are already familiar with the releases of the distinctive French label Antiq Records know that the bands who gather beneath its banner have an affinity for tales and tunes of bygone ages and old instruments, often melded together with the ravaging power and intensity of metal. And to that congregation of talents Antiq has added Paydretz, a French black/folk metal project featuring members of Véhémence, Himinbjorg, Hanternoz, Grylle, Belenos, and Wÿntër Ärvn.

Paydretz’s striking debut album is entitled Chroniques de l’Insurrection, set for release on October 8th. It’s a 14-track musical narrative of “the War in the Vendée” that took place in France between 1793 and 1796. This was a counter-revolution, an uprising among the French peasantry and a few royalist noblemen in the Vendée region during the Revolution’s reign of terror in Paris. It achieved a series of military victories before the counter-revolution was finally (and brutally) suppressed.

The song we’re presenting today, “Sous le Bannière Blanche“, is the sixth track in this opus. Its title refers to the white royal flag, as opposed to the Revolution’s tri-color flags of blue, white, and red. Later on in history and on the album (to borrow Antiq’s words), “defeats and fatigue of the wartime made the peasants weary of the situation and they abandoned the uprising (around 1800 and the arrival of Napoléon), so this is quite the rising of power of the album, and afterwards it declines to more bitter rage and discouraged feelings”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PA VESH EN — “IN THE WOOD OF HANGED MEN”

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Aug 122021
 

 

An evocative title, this one: “In the Wood of Hanged Men“. If you let your mind dwell upon it, you might imagine a nightmarish experience, a vision of rotting flesh descending like pendulums from gnarled black branches, swaying to the movement of their own ghastly clockwork or simply gazing down with hollow eyes from the angles of broken necks. Maybe you can imagine their own terrors… maybe you can still hear them scream….

It’s a chilling vision, and a fitting title for the music itself, which is itself profoundly unearthly and terrorizing. What you might not expect is that this diabolical, ultra-disturbing, creation by Pa Vesh En is almost capable of simultaneously creating a fugue state, an appalling spell that somehow radiates through the shattering violence and becomes arresting. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FAWN LIMBS — “DARWIN FALLS”

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Aug 112021
 

(Andy Synn wrote the following review and introduction of our full streaming premiere for the new album by the trans-Atlantic band Fawn Limbs, which will soon be released by Roman Numeral and Wolves And Vibrancy.)

Even those who love Metal at its most brutal, its most technical, its most chaotic, must admit, when push comes to shove and their back is against the wall, that the pursuit of extremity, pure extremity, purely for its own sake, ultimately leads to an inevitable and inescapable evolutionary dead end.

Or, should I say, an almost inescapable dead end… because while it’s true that over-specialisation will ultimately limit the growth of any species band – once you’ve attained a certain level of maximum brutality, terminal velocity, inhuman technicality, where else do you have to go? – certain artists, certain entities, have still managed to discover new and unique ways to survive, and even to thrive, while continuing to push their own limits in different, but no less extravagant, ways.

The secret to achieving this, of course, is realising that extremity isn’t a linear scale. It’s a spectrum. One which extends in multiple directions and allows for multiple interpretations and expressions of what it means to be truly “extreme”.

Which brings us, at last, to the new album from Fawn Limbs, which finds the terrible trio choosing a new, yet also disturbingly familiar, path to follow, which leads to a place called… Darwin Falls. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ÆPOCH — “AMNESIA”

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Aug 102021
 

 

The Ontario progressive death metal band Æpoch are returning to the fray with a new line-up and a new EP set for release on September 10th named Hiraeth, and we’re presenting a track from it today. But before we experience “Amnesia“, we’ll share the band’s description about the chilling tale narrated through the music, which will illuminate the song you’re about to hear:

“Hiraeth is a concept EP about a character who has awoken in a post apocalyptic type environment with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He begins to wander in the desolate wasteland desert for days without any food or clean water. His body and mind grow weak from malnutrition and he begins to hallucinate. He eventually stumbles upon what appears to be fertile land. He sees a looming and eerie silhouette of some sort of decrepit totem. He becomes fixated on the monument.

“As he approaches, he gazes upon its carved trunk he notices the foul smell from all around him. This is the smell of the decaying flesh of those who walked this path before him, their minds consumed by the demonic spirit of the monolith. This creature, we call ‘The god of rot’ in the songs and the god of rot infects the mind of its victims, enthralling them to its will. The god of rot feeds off of the life source of its victims by having them sacrifice themselves once they are fully enthralled in a way similar to seppuku (Japanese samurai ritual suicide) and dress its limbs in their innards before they expire. The cover art depicts our protagonist approaching the god of rot.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “VENGEANCE REIGN”

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Aug 102021
 

 

The creative fires that burn in Australia’s Runespell seem unquenchable. Since the Unhallowed Blood Oath debut full-length in 2017, the band has released significant new works every year, including 2018’s Order of Vengeance, 2019’s Voice of Opprobrium, and the 2020 split with Forest Mysticism, Wandering Forlorn. And, like clockwork, Runespell has completed a new album that will be released on September 10th of this year by Iron Bonehead Productions, which has ushered forth all of the previous releases as well.

Runespell has already staked out a musical territory that presents (in the accurate words of the press materials) “grandiose melancholy given majestic flight” coupled with “bloodlusting energy no matter the tempo — widescreen in its vast landscapes yet fiercely focused….” And the new album displays those qualities again, but does so in ways that are perhaps even more dazzling in their extravagance, more unearthly in their aura, and more heart-stricken in their melodic moods. Witness the track we’re premiering today, “Vengeance Reign“. Continue reading »

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