AN NCS PREMIERE: KRATZER — “DRECK”

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Oct 052020
 

 

I’ve never witnessed a live performance by Kratzer, though they’ve played over 100 shows in their native Germany, but it doesn’t take much imagination to envision the brawling mosh pits they must stir up from the stage. Just listening to their songs makes you want to kick over the furniture and ram your head into the walls. Maybe that’s just me, but I doubt it.

That primal, explosive power and riotous energy in their music leaves an immediate and lasting impression, but it’s not the only memorable aspect of their songs. They don’t waste time and they favor short, sharp shocks, but they have a talent for packing a lot of sensations into the generally short run-times of their tracks. We’ve got a good example of that talent in the song we’re premiering today from their debut album …Alles liegt in Scherben, and perhaps even better examples in the streams of previously released tracks that we’re also sharing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOID PARADIGM — “ULTIME PULSATION”

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Oct 052020
 

 

Misperceptions are often based on insufficient investigation. This has always been true, but seems even more pervasive in the current era, when opinions are often formed based on superficial experience and then become immune to change. When did we become so unreceptive to reconsideration and so self-assured in our ignorance? (I don’t mean you in particular, of course, but rather humanity in general.)

In the grand scheme of things, in which we have daily reminders of ignorance leading to misery and death, black metal may be a relatively inconsequential example of this phenomenon, but it’s an example nonetheless. On a daily basis I come across sentiments to the effect that black metal is hide-bound and resistant to change, stuck in the past and plagued by monotony. But that’s just because too many people aren’t willing to investigate, and to challenge their own conceptions (or pre-conceptions).

Which brings us to Void Paradigm. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VENTR — “NUMINOUS NEGATIVITY”

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Oct 022020
 

 

The title of Ventr’s debut EP — Numinous Negativity — is nearly perfect for the music. Numinous, Luminous Negativity might be slightly better. But the title has meaning beyond the sensations of the music and the visions they spawn in the mind. We’ll come to that momentarily.

The EP may be a debut recording, but it certainly doesn’t sound like a first effort. The band are Portuguese, and the EP will be released by Signal Rex (on October 9th), but the music doesn’t fit neatly into the kind of raw black metal aesthetic that you might expect from those facts.

As for the conceptual underpinning, we’re told that the title refers to “a spiritual and/or religious form of negative perception – the mysteries in the works within the omnipresence of the Devil.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): YOVEL — “FORTHCOMING HUMANITY”

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Oct 012020
 

 

In the midst of a time when it is all too easy to feel desperate and demoralized by forces both human and viral that seem bent on crushing both life and hope, it is worth remembering that humanity has been here before. Remembering such times, and the efforts of valiant people who survived and transcended them, can itself furnish hope. And maybe we can learn something about how this is to be done, as well.

In their new album Forthcoming Humanity, the Greek black metal band Yovel have devoted themselves to such remembrances, and others. A concept album, it is based upon the poems of Tasos Leivaditis, a brilliant poet and a revolutionary, who himself lived through harrowing times, including the second World War. Born in 1922, he died in 1988. Yovel themselves explain:

“Tasos Leivaditis lived and wrote for the hopes, struggles and losses of the Greek people and Greek left movement. We found in his writing mourning; but also radiant hope, rooted in our own history but also in touch with the history of the peoples of this world and their struggles up to date. Hιs work stands as a tribute to that history, but also as a statement for our present and our future.” They quote these words of Leivaditis himself (from Confession, The Manuscripts of Autumn):

“One day I want them to write on my grave: He lived on the border of an indefinite age and died for things far away that he once saw in an un-certain dream.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HELL:ON — “THE ARCHITECT’S TEMPLE”

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Oct 012020
 

 

As you can see, the cover art for Hell:On‘s new album, Scythian Stamm, is spectacular. And apart from seizing the attention of the eyes (and of the viewer’s imagination), it also very well suits many aspects of the music crafted for the album by this Ukrainian death metal band. Like the artwork, the music itself generates visions of otherworldly menace and power, of monstrosity and hideous glory.

Now fifteen years into their career, Hell:On have had plenty of time to focus and hone their sound, and this new sixth album makes that clear through superior songcraft and a combination of shuddering force and mesmerizing sorcery. This much is evident even from the single song we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s release on November 1st by Hell Serpent Music. Its name is “The Architect’s Temple“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HUMANITY IS CANCER — “HARLOT” (AND A REVIEW OF THE SELF-TITLED EP)

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Sep 302020
 

 

This is an example of “better late than never”, to put it mildly. Humanity Is Cancer wrote the songs on their forthcoming self-titled debut EP back in 2014/2015, as guitarist Thomas Haywood was just about to launch his two labels, Redefining Darkness Records and Seeing Red Records, whose releases have received considerable acclaim in the ensuing years. As a result of the effort devoted to the labels, the EP was put on hold — but it will now finally see the horrid light of a November day in a truly terrible year that has abundantly proven the truth of the band’s name.

And it is definitely better late than never. The four songs on the EP are all terrific, delivering with considerable mastery a style of death metal that draws upon the influence of Aeon, post-Barnes Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, early Decapitated, and Bloodbath. The music’s immediately addictive rhythms are pulverizing, its morbid, preternatural melodies are memorable and haunting, and it achieves heights of ferocity that are spine-tingling. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: APOCHRYPHAL REVELATION — “OBSCURE”

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Sep 302020
 

 

Conveniently, the first three tracks from Apochryphal Revelation‘s new album — the three that actually open the record — can be streamed right now, one after the other. Today, leading up to the November 1 release of Primeval Devilish Wisdom by Nuclear War Now! Productions, we’re adding a stream of a fourth song — “Obscure“. It comes later, sitting close to dead-center in this 15-track destroyer. Probably the right way to do this is for you to run the gauntlet of that opening trio before doing anything else.

We’ll make that easy for you, but as a preview we can say this: The first two of those tracks, the title song and “Wickedness”, are short ones, and that title track is a dream-like organ prelude (with a few rumbles of thunder in the distance). It’s the second one that begins to give you a sense of what this band are up to, even though it’s also an instrumental track — and what they’re up to is indeed wicked. The music pulses with primal, carnal vitality. It melds dirty, thrusting riffage, gut-busting drum blows, and eerie, screaming tones, like the emanations of a tortured specter.

On the other hand, the third track in the opening triumvirate, “Profane“, is longer than the first two combined. Still very wicked it is, still very devilish, but more than a little insane too. You get to hear voices (inhuman echoing roars bouncing from ear to ear), and while the music does continue to have a “stripped-down” sound, its galloping, hammering beats and raw, seething and searing chords channel blood-lusting frenzy. The guitar rakes like obsidian claws too, and becomes a demented, feverish, shrieking poltergeist as well. The music surges into wild chaos, a combination of maniac drumming, boiling fretwork, and rabidly sadistic vocals. Might make you imagine the ecstasy of demon lords raping and pillaging the damned souls given to them for an eternity of agony. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CYNABARE URNE — “MISOTHEIST”

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Sep 292020
 

 

Following the release of two well-received EPs, Fire the Torches (2016) and In the Cremation Ground (2018), the monstrous Finnish death metal band Cynabare Urne are at last ready for the release of a debut album, one that harnesses the extensive experience and gruesome talents of the three performers. Entitled Obsidian Daggers and Cinnabar Skulls, it will be released by Helter Skelter Productions on October 30th, and as you can see, we’re about to bring you the premiere of a genuinely evil piece of music named “Misotheist“.

Cynabare Urne‘s ghoulish songwriting and horrifying tonal proclivities don’t lend themselves to any neat and succinct comparisons with better-known bands — witness the references made in the PR materials to a range of stylistic influences that “span Sadistic Intent to Necros Christos, classic Grave to recent Dead Congregation, early Vader to later Repugnant, and plenty of other points in between.” All those compass points are one way of trying to capture the appealing ways in which the band create multi-faceted and dynamic music, albeit without ever surrendering their adherence to dreadful power and preternatural ghastliness. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERPENT COLUMN – “WIND AND FOG” (AND A REVIEW OF “KATHODOS”)

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Sep 292020
 

 

(Andy Synn introduces our premiere of “Wind and Fog” from the new third album by the U.S. black metal band Serpent Column — and reviews the album — in advance of its September 30 release by Mystiskaos and Iron Bonehead.)

To quote the late, great, Arthur C. Clarke:

“All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one prefers to call the powers behind the Universe.”

This was made eminently clear to me when, in preparation for this month’s edition of The Synn Report, I enquired as to whether we’d received a promo copy for the new Serpent Column album Kathodos.

Dutiful as ever, Islander reached out to the band’s label, who responded that they generally don’t do advance promo copies but, if we were really that interested in the band, they’d make an exception in our case… oh, and would we mind hosting an exclusive and unannounced last minute premiere at the same time?

Talk about an offer you can’t refuse… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SARCOPTES — “LA MORIA GRANDISSIMA”

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Sep 282020
 

 

Just a bit earlier today I was writing about the special thrill that heavy metal addicts can experience when discovering a band who are adept at blending stylistic influences in unexpected ways, and in the new EP by the Sacramento-based duo Sarcoptes, entitled Plague Hymns, we have another prime example of that.

In the most brutally shorthand way of describing these two songs, they’re a fashioning of blackened thrash, but that label really under-represents how remarkable they are. They do indeed blaze like hellfire driven by gale-force winds, but they also feature beautifully chosen symphonic accents as well as the kind of glorious guitar-work that brings to mind bands from the forefront of classic heavy metal.

One immediate sign that these two songs aren’t your typical black/thrash rippers is their length: The first song, “The Vertigo Soul“, is almost seven minutes long, and the one we’re premiering today, “La Moria Grandissima” almost reaches the 11-minute mark. Both songs really are stupendous, and it’s our devilish pleasure to bring you streams of both of them in advance of the EP’s release on October 2nd by Transcending Obscurity Records. Continue reading »

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