AN NCS PREMIERE: DIABOLIZER — “CLOAKED IN AN AURA OF MADNESS”

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Jun 172021
 

 

(Nathan Ferreira prepared the following introduction to our premiere of another song off the forthcoming debut album by the Turkish death metal band Diabolizer, due for release in early July by Everlasting Spew Records.)

I’m going to drop a name for you: Mustafa Gürcalioğlu.

If mentioning that name made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you’ve probably already pre-ordered Khalkedonian Death and don’t need to read much more of this article. Good on you for knowing where to find the primo shit.

If that name inspired more confusion and curiosity than it did excitement, you’re exactly the person I wrote this for. To put it boldly, with the possible exception of Phil Tougas, there isn’t anyone else in the game right now who is as versatile and prolific while also maintaining a high quality standard for their music. Any new album from the four major projects he is involved in should be auto-buys (and the stuff he released with Burial Invocation is badass too!), and to make an even bolder claim, Diabolizer may be the best band of the bunch. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BRILLIANT COLDNESS — “TECHNOGENIC ILLUSION”

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Jun 172021
 

 

The inception of the Ukrainian technical death metal band Brilliant Coldness traces back to 1998, although their debut album Beyond Eternity didn’t emerge until 2003. Dead Center Productions released that first full-length, a long 18 years ago. Three years later, the band independently released a second full-length, Poisoned Reality, which was then released by the Dutch label Apollon Records in 2009. But after that second album a long period of silence ensued. Now that silence is being broken.

Dead Center Productions and Brilliant Coldness have re-united for the band’s third album, The Ultimate Dream. Plan B: Disposal Of Humanity, which is set for release on July 30th. Not surprisingly, the line-up that recorded it featured some new members, but still includes founding bassist Mor and founding  guitarist Angel.

Brilliant Coldness characterize the new music as “academic death metal”. They ask you to imagine Niccolò Paganini performing extreme metal, “the music played at the limit of physical abilities”. They say further: “It’s a powerful energetic flow of minds and feelings; a journey to the world of magic and wizardry of the human mind’s endless abilities!” As an illustration of what the band are talking about we have for you  today a premiere stream of one of the new songs, “Technogenic Illusion“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEXORCIST — “DENOUNCING THE IMMACULATE”

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Jun 162021
 

 

The title of Hexorcist’s debut album — Evil Reaping Death — is a vivid and entirely accurate signpost to what lies within, especially when coupled with the album’s evil and eye-catching cover art. And what lies within is fiendishly slaughtering old school death metal overlaid with the stench of the crypt.

With an attack firmly rooted in decades’ old traditions, these Floridian barbarians (whose line-up includes current or former members of such groups as Gnosis and Devastator) see no need to reinvent the wheel, and clearly have zero interest in following trends. But what they’ve done is so well-conceived and well-executed that the album is still likely to make an explosive impact among those who always hunger for maniacal metal of death.

The new album will get a lavish physical release, with Memento Mori providing the CD version, Unholy Prophecies the vinyl version, and Godz ov War the cassette version. The CD and tape editions will see release on July 26th, while the vinyl version will follow a bit later. And in advance of all that, today we’re premiering an album track that will give you an excellent preview of what to expect. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ARCHAEOPTERIS — “VISIONS CHAOTIQUES D’UN SONGE HALLUCINÉ”

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Jun 152021
 

 

The very strange last year has produced a fair share of musical collaborations that, seemingly out of nowhere, have emerged to reveal strange new visions. In some cases, musicians have used the occasion to branch out from the styles of music they had embraced in earlier times, as if the oppressiveness of the new age had become a well-spring of new freedom, or perhaps had led them to use their music as a “prison break” from the new confinement.

The debut EP by the French band Archaeopteris, which we’re premiering today, certainly seems to fall into that category. The group’s three members hail from various projects such as Croc Noir (black metal), Supertzar (doom/stoner), and Toward (folk), but the two long songs on Visions Chaotiques D´un Songe Halluciné represent something different, a kind of experimentation in sound that led the band into very strange territories. It is as if they had a collective vision, both disturbing and fascinating, and then found a way to represent it in what they executed. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARCANE EXISTENCE — “THE ALTAR”

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Jun 142021
 

 

Originally launched as the solo project of Bay Area, California multi-instrumentalist Kiera Pietrangelo in 2016, Arcane Existence has blossomed into a full band. And as a full band Arcane Existence are now poised for the August 20 release of their second album Colossus, which traces a fantastical journey through a mythical land and weaves a musical tapestry of the narrative through an intriguing amalgam of symphonic black and death metal.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a song from Colossus named “The Altar“, and it’s accompanied by a video filmed by Benjamin Casias and directed and edited by Eric Tracy-Cohen which well suits the magic and menace that flow through the music. Continue reading »

AENAON: SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND A VIDEO PREMIERE FOR “GRAND NARCOTIC REHARVEST”

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Jun 142021
 

 

Here at NCS we’ve been ardent supporters of the Greek progressive black metal band Aenaon ever since discovering the wonders of their 2014 album Extance, which made no fewer than four different year-end lists published at our site, as well as a host of our reader’s lists. Ever since, we’ve been devoting a lot of attention to the adventurous creativity of this group (whose line-up shares members with Varathron and Katavasia), which was further displayed on their latest album, 2016’s Hypnosophy, and which we characterized as an alchemical work in which Aenaon drew together “a multitude of base elements from disparate genres and transmuted them in wizard-like fashion into music that’s rare and mesmerizing”.

But even before those two acclaimed records was the band’s debut full-length Cendres et Sang — and it happens that today is the 10th anniversary of its release. To celebrate that anniversary Aenaon have re-created one of their favorite songs from the album, “Grand Narcotic Harvest” — and thus re-named the new version “Grand Narcotic Reharvest” — and they filmed the recording session in a video that we’re premiering in this article. The re-recorded track will be available digitally — and today we’re also sharing another special announcement by Aenaon. Here is their statement: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FUNERAL CHASM — “MESMERISING CLARITY”

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Jun 142021
 

 

The song we’re presenting today from the debut album by the Danish duo Funeral Chasm is a formulation of funeral doom that seems to occupy a dream state between life and death. Haunting, harrowing, and beautiful, the multi-faceted track fashions both an experience of ghostly elegance and grandeur — and one of torment, turmoil, and ravaging upheaval.

At least lyrically, “Mesmerising Clarity” was based upon a pair of mushroom trips by the band’s Danny Woe, one so disturbing that he terminated the trip and a second that reached a point of completion and became therapeutic. Whether intended or not, the music seems to trace such an experience as well, though (as suggested above) the music is capable of generating other visions in the listener’s imagination, and of making other emotional connections. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THYRFING — “JÄRNHAND”

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Jun 112021
 

 

Eight years on from their last album, the acclaimed De ödeslösa, the Swedish Viking/pagan metal band Thyrfing will be bringing forth their eight full-length on August 27th through their new label, Despotz Records. Consistent with the band’s inspirations of Norse mythology, its title is Vanagandr, an alternate name for the wolf creature known by the more familiar Fenrir.

In the run-up to the new album’s release, the band have already released two striking videos for two striking tracks from the new record, “Döp dem i eld” and “Jordafärd”, and today we’re privileged to bring you a third single, again accompanied by a tremendous video — filmed at the fortress known as Bohus Fästning along the old Swedish-Norwegian border, and directed by the great Patric Ullaeus. The song is “Järnhand“, which translates as “Iron hand”. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK CEREMONIAL KULT — “CROWNED IN CHAOS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 112021
 

 

On June 14th the Chilean black/death band Black Ceremonial Kult will add to their collection of demos and splits that have been released since 2014. The newest release, which will come our way via Godz Ov War Productions, is named Crowned In Chaos. As you will discover through our full stream of the EP today, that title is well-chosen.

The band draw their inspiration, and the source of their powers, from occult mysticism, and it obviously leads them into frightening and dangerous places, because their music as represented on this new EP is unmistakably — and inhumanly — frightening and dangerous.

Through the first seven tracks of this 11-track release, the music alternates, creating chilling visions as well as explosions of breathtaking violence and madness, yet the tracks flow into each other seamlessly, creating a massive hallucinatory psychosis. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATH ON FIRE — “A HELL OF OUR OWN DESIGN”

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Jun 102021
 

 

For just a three-track EP, Death on Fire‘s Six Foot Box is a vibrantly diverse and dynamic experience that manages to hit home in multiple ways. After reaching the end, it’s really easy to loop back around to the beginning, to re-live the experience and try to get a better understanding of how the band managed to provoke such a reflexively visceral and physical response while simultaneously moving emotions in such different and powerful ways. By then, the songs have just dug their hooks deeper under the skin, even further strengthening the desire to go back to them.

You can pick out songwriting and recording techniques (and a dark world-view) that flow across all three tracks, but trying to dissect and enumerate all the stylistic strains in the music (which seem to span about five decades of rock and metal history) is a much more difficult task, though probably easier if you’ve got some gray hairs in your head. It’s better to just appreciate how well this Indiana band have integrated the sounds that inspired them.

What we have for you today, in advance of the EP’s July 16 release, is the premiere of the EP’s second track, “A Hell of Our Own Design“. It now joins the closing song, “Begging For Air“, as publicly available streams — but we’ll also give you a written preview of the EP opener as well. Continue reading »

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