AN NCS EP PREMIERE: ODRAZA – “ACEDIA”

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May 212021
 

 

(It is our privilege to bring you this premiere of the experimental and unpredictable new release from Odraza, out tomorrow on Gods Ov War Productions, featuring a foreword by our own Andy Synn)

Ah, Odraza. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard since… well, since just last year, as a matter of fact, when I heaped praised upon their sublime second album, Rzeczom (an album which only just missed out on a place on my “Critical Top Ten” of 2020).

The band’s latest release, however, is even more unique and unusual than its provocative predecessor, comprising as it does a single twenty-minute track, conceived and brought to term as part of an exhibition to be presented at the Museum of Podgórze later this year.

Of course. this isn’t the first time that Odraza have strayed off the beaten (left-hand) path – their 2015 EP, Kir, for example, was a twenty-minute instrumental commissioned and performed live for an event at The Museum of the City of Krakow in tribute to the fallen in the Płaszów concentration camp – but there’s no question in my mind that Acedia is the band’s most unorthodox and unpredictable work yet, as well as a welcome reminder that strange times often breed even stranger art.

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AN NCS PREMIERE: SEANCE OF… (TRACK 7)

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May 202021
 

 

The Colour of Magick is one of those albums whose name fits the music to a T, not only because the music itself operates as a kind of sonic sorcery but also because the permutations that its creator has worked into the genre-spine of the music (in this case, black metal) are themselves devilishly dazzling, far from the hide-bond conventions for which black metal is often known.

The band here is Seance Of…, which began as a side project of AR, vocalist and guitarist of the Australian black metal band Grave Worship, but it has grown into the main vessel for AR’s expression and exploration. 2020 proved to be a fertile year for the project, which wrote three albums’ worth of material. The Colour of Magick is actually the third of those in the order of creation, though not the third in the sequence of releases.

Signal Rex will be releasing it on June 21st, on CD and vinyl LP formats. It consists of eight tracks, identified by number rather than title (we’re told that AR encourages listeners to create their own titles, and that this unorthodox freedom is his intent.) What we have for you today is a stream of Track #7. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): IO — “FIRE”

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May 202021
 

 

The Roman sludge/doom band IO chose their name with well-calculated intent, taking for themselves the appellation of the moon of Jupiter which is both the most dense of all moons in the solar system and, with more than 400 active volcanos, the most geologically active object in our system. It produces massive sulfurous plumes that climb hundreds of miles into the sky as well as gargantuan magma lakes, and it’s home to mountains higher than Everest. Keep those features in mind as you listen today to IO‘s debut album, Fire.

The album will be released tomorrow — May 21st — by one of the prime purveyors of ultra-heavy music, Argonauta Records. Not for naught does Argonauta describe the music as “hazy yet blistering”, a sound that “equals a cosmic trip into volcanic space dimensions, and without any doubt owns its parallels to an entire moon”.

Fire consists of four significant tracks ranging in length from 6 1/2 to 16 1/2 minutes, which collectively provide more than 40 minutes of humongous lava-flow riffs, skull-busting percussion, truly harrowing vocals, and an unearthly atmosphere. Continue reading »

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AN NCS PREMIERE: EYE OF PURGATORY — “WHERE LIFE SLOWLY FADES”

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May 192021
 

 

Among the masterful Rogga Johansson‘s multitude of bands and solo projects, each of which seems to indulge some different aspect of his interests under the encompassing umbrella of Swedish death metal, Eye of Purgatory is one of those in which emotive melody plays a more vital role than in others.

Eye of Purgatory released a debut full-length (The Rotting Enigma) in 2018, and a second album is now headed our way. Entitled The Lighthouse, it will be released on June 18th by Transcending Obscurity Records, and for this new record Rogga is joined by Taylor Nordberg (Ribspreader, Goregang, The Absence) on drums, lead guitars, and keyboards, and by Jeramie Kling (Venom Inc., Goregang, The Absence) on bass.

Through the premieres of three previous tracks from the album, it’s likely that many people have already discovered how much enjoyment The Lighthouse brings us, but perhaps we’ll still pick up additional ears through the song we’re presenting today — one that’s thrilling to hear but also has genuine staying power. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SCARRED — “NOTHING INSTEAD”

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May 192021
 

 

In January of this year the Klonosphere label released the third full-length by the Luxembourg-based death-metal group Scarred — almost eight years after the band’s second album, Gaia – Medea. The product of four years of work, this new album was self-titled, an intentional signal that it represented a transformation of the band’s sound. And indeed it is a remarkably wide-ranging experience, organized by design in a way that was intended, from start to finish, “to embark the listener on the same journey the band has traveled, from the initial disaggregation, up and down, to the final liberation”.

The album is daring and risky, repeatedly confounding expectations — not just expectations based on the band’s past releases, but also based on the last song you just heard. It’s stylistically diverse to the point of being unpredictable, which perhaps explains why the many reviews it has received collectively name-drop references to Gojira, Amenra, Opeth, Gaerea, Devin Townsend, and Pink Floyd (among others).

To showcase the album, Scarred have also released a sequence of music videos, all of which are well worth seeing (as well as hearing), and today we’re adding another one, the subject of which is a song that appears dead-center in the album’s track-list progression. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CATHEXIS — “GIVEN TO THE COLONY”

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May 192021
 

 

(Nathan Ferreira wrote the following introduction to our premiere of a song from Untethered Abyss, the forthcoming third album by the Texas band Cathexis, which will be released by Willowtip on June 25th.)

The meteoric rise of bands like Ulcerate, the rebirth of Gorguts, and the general need of tech-death fans to move into more nuanced and tasteful realms have all combined to make tech-y dissodeath a saturated genre. It’s easily marketable with its immediately harrowing aesthetics, but like any style of music, it takes a careful ear to make something worth coming back to more than once, and it could be argued that outside of the big names, there are far more unmemorable misses than hits.

That’s why I approached Cathexis with a bit of caution – not because I’m not expecting something good, but simply because I’ve been burned and had my time wasted before. That being said, they get the seal of approval from Willowtip, who have been a mainstay for this kind of music long before it was ever popular or trendy, so that’s worth at least one honest listen. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: XINGAIA — “I TOUCH MYSELF”

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May 182021
 

 

In November 1990, the Australian band Divinyls released “I Touch Myself” as the lead single from their fourth album. Described as “a paean to eroticism, orgasm and female masturbation”, it became a big international hit, driven in part by the song’s music video directed by Michael Bay, which was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year. Almost 15 years later it was covered by a big group of female performers as part of a project designed to raise awareness about breast cancer — the disease that had taken the life of Divinyls vocalist Chrissy Amphlett about 12 months earlier.

It’s a catchy post-punk song that hasn’t lost its allure — witness the fact that as of this writing the music video (here), which didn’t launch on YouTube until 2009, has been viewed almost 34 million times. But it hasn’t exactly been crying out for a death metal/grindcore cover. Nevertheless, that’s what it’s gotten, courtesy of Spokane’s Xingaia, a band lovingly named after the disease of the Sumatran rat-monkey from the ultra-gory Peter Jackson film Dead Alive.

Xingaia have also given the song their own video treatment, whose humor derives (at least in part) from how it repeatedly confounds what you think is really going on. And thus, with smiles on our faces, we present the Xingaia cover and video to you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROGOD — “REMAIN THE SAME AGAIN”

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May 182021
 

 

As many will already know, Necrogod is a Rogga Johansson death metal project that combines his well-established songwriting and instrumental talents with the vocal horrors of The Master Butcher from Costa Rica, who is also a fixture in Morbid Stench and Insepulto.

Following on the heels of a 2015 debut EP (The Inexorable Death Reign) and a 2017 split with the afore-mentioned Morbid Stench (The Bifid Tongue of Doom & Death), this demolishing duo now have a debut full-length headed our way. Entitled In Extremis, it’s set for a July 23 release by Transcending Obscurity Records, and as you can see, it’s ornamented by the unmistakable cover art of Mariusz Lewandowski.

A couple of beastly and dynamically electrifying advance tracks have been uncaged so far, and today we’ve got a third one — “Remain the Same Again” — which reveals a further dimension of Necrogod’s songwriting for the new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VORVAŇ — “SUPERSCUM”

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May 172021
 

 

If you’re in need of a high-powered jolt of energy, we’ve got just the thing for you in our premiere of a song off Awakened, the new album by the Russian blackened hardcore punk and metal band Vorvaň. “Superscum” fires on all cylinders, and it happens to be as highly addictive as it is ferociously supercharged.

Lyrically, the song is a condemnation, reflecting the self-entitled and dismissive attitude of a person for whom everything she wishes “works out just fine”. Musically, the song is all about the pulse — its own and yours. Continue reading »

FELLED: OUR PREMIERE OF “SPHAGNUM IN THE HINTERLANDS” AND REVIEW OF “THE INTIMATE EARTH”

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May 172021
 

 

(In this article Nathan Ferreira reviews The Intimate Earth, the new album by Oregon-based Felled, and introduces our premiere of a song from the album.)

As any self-respecting metalhead should, I keep regular tabs on Transcending Obscurity Records. Their versatility and ear for quality sets the pace for other small-to-medium-sized labels, and I particularly appreciate their willingness to wiggle a little bit outside of their comfort zone in terms of style/genre. You never quite know what you’re going to get from the folks at T.O., you just know it’s gonna be good.

I am also one of those tree-hugging types that is infatuated with Cascadian black metal. Combine these two factors and it becomes easy to see why, when the label announced they were releasing the debut album of Felled, an Oregon-based band that cited some of my all-time favorite artists as influences (early Ulver, Agalloch, Drudkh, Saor), I was already reserving a spot in my AOTY list for it. Continue reading »

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