AN NCS PREMIERE: EVAPORATED SORES — “ROTE RESURRECTION”

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Aug 252020
 

 

Beginning in April and continuing over a period of weeks Evaporated Sores began teasing the music of their debut album Ulcerous Dimensions by posting disturbing lines of black poetry on their Facebook page, accompanied by unsettling imagery that gave further definition to the words. The lines alone were these, in the order they appeared:

Collapse is rebirth, is death, is nothing.

Cosmic indifference
Inconsequential toil

Birth, decay, death
A feedback loop

A poisoned sea swallows the land.

Existence regurgitated into the void

Marching heedlessly, pitilessly, blindly.

Crushed by the weight of a billion suns.

The last of the Facebook installments, with its accompanying photo, was this one: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VITAL SPIRIT — “IN THE FAITH THAT LOOKS THROUGH DEATH”

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Aug 242020
 

 

Before delving deeper into the sounds of Vital Spirit‘s debut EP, In the Faith That Looks Through Death, let’s begin with the band’s own stated list of musical influences: Ennio Morricone, Taake, Earth, Ulver, Marty Robbins, Dissection, Drudkh, Inquisition, and Wovenhand.

And then let’s add to that this list of their lyrical inspirations: Wovoka, Patti Smith, Chilam Balam, Townes Van Zandt, and the corridos of the Mexican Revolution (with subjects that range from Mayan cosmology and history, to Pancho Villa’s role in the Mexican Revolution, and Wovoka’s Ghost Dance movement).

Got that? Well, you probably don’t, because even though you can read all those names, comprehending how such disparate sources of inspiration could all work together in harness under the coaxing (and the whiphand) of this Vancouver duo is probably a challenge. But when you listen to the music, you’ll discover that it all integrates wonderfully well. And the fact that In the Faith That Looks Through Death doesn’t sound quite like anything else becomes a big part of its attraction. Continue reading »

AN NCS DOUBLE PREMIERE: ONIRIK (“MELODIES OF REFLECTION AND PRAISE”) AND NOITE (“A COR DO FOGO”)

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Aug 242020
 

 

We have a rare double premiere for you today. We have combined them because the songs come from two albums that will be released on the same day (September 25th) by the same label (I, Voidhanger Records), and because the artist behind the two bands is the same man — the Portuguese multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Gonius Rex.

One of these projects is Onirik, and the track we’re presenting today comes from Onirik’s fifth full-length, The Fire Cult Beyond Eternity. The other project is Noite (the Portuguese word for “night”), and the song we now present is the title track from Noite’s debut album A Cor do Fogo (“the color of fire”).

Both songs are fascinating, and together they are even more fascinating because they are so different from each other in their style — though they are kindred spirits in their inspirations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FALSE GODS — “STAY FROSTY”

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Aug 212020
 

 

‘After releasing three EPs since 2015, New York heavy-hitters False Gods are anxious to release their debut full-length, No Symmetry… Only Disillusion, to the world. The result is a brash, bulldozing juggernaut, shifting between between melancholy and rage with the stroke of a riff.”

So says Seeing Red Records, which will release this crusher of an album on October 16th. But none of us need take the label’s word for it, nor Seeing Red‘s references to such compelling influences as Eyehategod, Crowbar, Godflesh, and Killing Joke, because the song we’re premiering today bears out these claims.

The song is “Stay Frosty“, and it does turn out to be as multi-faceted as you might now be expecting. And it really is a crusher that hits hard on multiple levels. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIASMAL SABBATH — “THE ORACULAR VOICE”

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Aug 212020
 

 

On their debut album Ominous Radiance, the Greek band Miasmal Sabbath have pulled off a neat trick. They’ve combined d-beat death metal with — as the album title itself beautifully conveys — the sound of ominous radiance, which is to say the music radiates a sensation of otherworldly exoticism that’s charged with peril and dreadful grandeur.

The album masterfully accomplishes even more than that, but those are the sensations that probably best describe the song we’re presenting today in advance of the record’s September 25 release by Unholy Prophecies. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PITCHBLACK — “THE WORLD IS MINE”

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Aug 212020
 

 

That’s quite an arresting image up there, isn’t it? It’s the cover art accompanying Death & Disbelief, the forthcoming third album by the Danish band Pitchblack, which is set for release on October 23rd by Emanzipation Productions. The music turns out to be quite arresting too, as already demonstrated by a single from the album named “The World Is Mine“.

That single was released two weeks ago, but one good turn deserves another, and so today we’re premiering a lyric video for the same song. If you missed the single’s release, the video will give you the chance to discover the kind of hard-charging, ferocious, hook-filled melodic death metal that Pitchblack serve up on this newest full-length. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INDOCTRINATE — “FORBIDDEN RITES OF FERTILITY”

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Aug 202020
 

 

The Chilean black/death band Indoctrinate are making their recording debut in September, but are not newcomers to the realms of extreme musical mayhem. Indoctrinate is instead a new slaughtering vehicle for two former members of the now-defunct Sadistik Goathammer (they are also bandmates in Henosis), whose mission was to carry forward the lineage of such bestial rampagers as Sarcofago, Mystifier, Abhorer, Parabellum, Blasphemy, and Conqueror.

Indoctrinate haven’t abandoned those roots, but as you’ll discover through the song we’re premiering today, they’ve leavened their attacks of primitive barbarism with other ingredients that give the music an even more primal and carnal appeal as well as a frightening paranormal aura.

As a harbinger of those sensations, the name of Indoctrinate‘s debut album, which will be released by Unholy Prophecies, is Antilogos: Arcane Transmutation in the Temple of Flesh. And the song we present today is “Forbidden Rites of Fertility“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SENSORY AMUSIA — “BEREAVEMENT”

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Aug 202020
 

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen (and everyone else out there), lend us your ears… for a bit more than 17 minutes. That is how long it will take for Sensory Amusia (who hail from Perth rather than Rome) to run you through the gauntlet of their new EP, Bereavement. That title may suggest a doom-y, tear-stained experience, but the only tears to be shed will be from those who manage to survive this death metal meat-threshing machine.

A dismal guitar arpeggio backed by the sounds of a drenching and thunder-cracked storm begins to set the mood before the real storm breaks in the EP’s introductory track — a storm of blasting drums, rapidly raking riffage, and mercilessly pulverizing groove. And what comes next are four tracks of death metal chaos interwoven with influences of tech-death, hardcore, and grind. It’s our sadistic pleasure to present a full stream of the EP now, on the day of its release by Lacerated Enemy Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHROME WAVES — “NEW SKIN”

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Aug 182020
 

 

The Chrome Waves song we’re presenting here has multiple meanings, some intended and perhaps one that’s merely a relevant coincidence. As for the intended meanings, the band’s James Benson (also in Amiensus) explains:

“‘New Skin‘ is quite literally about shedding away your past, and the growth of humans as they begin to learn. It pertains to the way someone is raised is not always the worldview of the entire population of the country, or world. However it also addresses recognizing that there is some type of comfort in going back to how you were raised, and the worldview you grew up around, or the culture.”

That conception is a kind of dichotomy: The process of maturation inevitably involves, to greater and lesser degrees, shedding the skin of where we came from and who we were, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. If we’re lucky, we continue to slough away bad habits and bad memories and allow ourselves to become new, but sometimes we lose good things as well. Especially in godawful times, what we’ve left behind can sometimes be worth re-discovering. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONSUMPTION — “FERMENTED TISSUE”

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Aug 182020
 

 

Håkan Stuvemark and Jon Skäre are ever-busy men. Stuvemark’s list of active bands includes Wombbath, Skineater, Reek, Pale King, PermaDeath, and Rex Demonus, each one of them providing a different kind of outlet for his musical proclivities. Skäre has been a fixture in Defiatory and Wachenfeldt, in addition to joining Stuvemark in many of those projects just mentioned. But now the two can add one more project to their resumes, because they’ve joined forced to create Consumption.

This new band, in which Stuvemark performs vocals, guitars, and bass, and Skäre is of course behind the kit, was created under the influence of early ’90s Carcass and some old Finnish death metal bands, most prominently Disgrace. Their debut album is named Recursive Definitions Of Suppuration, and it’s our horrid pleasure to share with you today the opening cut, “Fermented Tissue“, in advance of the album’s September 15 release by Iron Blood and Death Corporation. Continue reading »

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