AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CREEPING FEAR — “FEAST OF VIOLENCE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jun 022025
 

(written by Islander)

There are so many ways humanity could extinguish its own existence or render it vastly more miserable. No doubt you can count the ways as easily as we can. Death creeps toward us all, and sometimes races at us out of control. But if we don’t make it to the end of this year (place your bets!), at least the French death metal band Creeping Fear have provided us both a new soundtrack for the wretched end times, and a parting gift.

Their new album, Realm of the Impaled, will be released by Dolorem Records on June 27th — surely we will last that long! (place your bets…) It again features eye-impaling cover art by the great Paolo Girardi and again confronts us with the ghastly visage of the hellish horned creature (armored this time) that presided over their last album, 2021’s Hategod Triumph.

As for the music, it’s hellish too. Here’s how Dolorem sums it up: “Creeping Fear is the burning breath of the apocalypse in death metal: brutal, technical, and uncompromising. Devastating riffs, abysmal growls, and suffocating atmospheres—something between Immolation and Hate Eternal, prepare to dive into a masterful sonic chaos.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KVSKET — “HOT GRIP”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 302025
 

(written by Islander)

Maybe it’s because the second season of Last of Us is on my mind, but today I’m thinking of our site like a fungal node, a dense mass of nasty and nightmarish extreme metal from which creeping tendrils reach out into more remote underground territories. This imagery is on my mind because we’re about to premiere a video for a band and a song that are outside the core of our usual churning and blood-congealing musical infections, though they do have tendril-like connections to the infections we usually spotlight.

The band is kvsket (pronounced “casket”). They’re from Minnesota, they include a member of the death metal band Graveslave (that’s one tendril), and they describe themselves as “four friends who, all looking for something more outside of their former bands and projects,” concocted music they describe as sounding like, or for fans of, Deftones, Gojira, My Chemical Romance, Turnstile, and The Cure.

Those results are currently collected in an album named Patiently Awaiting Your Arrival that was released this past February. The video you’re about to see is for a song off that album named “Hot Grip“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DIG ME NO GRAVE — “DREADFUL MEMOIRS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 302025
 

(written by Islander)

We have avidly followed and written about the occult musical proceedings of the Russian death metal band Dig Me No Grave ever since discovering their Immemorial Curse album in 2017, which then led us back to their preceding full-length debut, 2014’s Cosmic Cult. They followed Immemorial Curse with a pair of EPs and their third album, Under the Pyramids, and now a new album entitled Necrocosmic Ceremony is set for co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Metal Race Records (Russia) on June 15th.

Like many of their previous abominable works, Necrocosmic Ceremony draws inspiration from the abominable works of H.P. Lovecraft. The album’s central figure is “the Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, a worshipper of Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu and the reputed author of The Necronomicon. As Lovecraft explained in his posthumously published History of the Necronomicon, that evil grimoire was originally called Al Azif, an Arabic word that Lovecraft defined as “that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons.”

We mention this because today we’re premiering a riveting video for a mad, heart-pounding song off Necrocosmic Ceremony that puts these inspirations front and center: “Dreadful Memoirs“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AZAMOTH — “ANCIENT SIGNS OF WAR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 292025
 

(written by Islander)

The Israeli black metal band Azamoth first formed in 2004 and released their debut album Eternity in 2006. In just a few days — roughly 18 1/2 years later — they will release their second album, Bellum Nostrum (“Our War”), via the Symbol Of Domination label.

Obviously, that’s a very long recording hiatus, and the lineup that created Bellum Nostrum isn’t identical to the one that made Eternity (though founding vocalist Scorch and founding guitarist Lord Grief remain in place). So the impulse is to take the new album as a re-launch of the band, as a new statement of intent, as a flaring of ideas and experiences that have accumulated over that long stretch of years.

Today we have a sign of what Bellum Nostrum holds for listeners as we premiere the album track “Ancient Signs of War“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVE WITH A VIEW — “THE LASH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 292025
 

In the long hours of night when the daylight will not come, when the ghosts of the past and the devils of the present toy with your sanity and dissect your sense of self and self respect… when the first razor cut, made with trembling hand, sends a shocking stream of crimson crawling sluggishly across the sickly pale white of your sun-starved skin… when there is no comfort to be found and you are lost in a shadowed labyrinth of torment and grief, sinking in a morass of blood and tears… on a night like this there is no salvation in the bottle or the needle. There is no god in heaven and no fallen angel in hell. There is only the emptiness that cannot be filled and the unbearable loneliness that gnaws at your soul. And the unshakeable certainty that there is no way out.

As album preambles go, that one is a particularly soul-shuddering thing to read. It is also an entirely fitting encapsulation of Raw Illumination, an album released last fall by Finland’s Grave With A View — not only the album’s bleak emotional inspiration but also the wretchedness, ruin, and rage of the musical experience itself.

The Dusktone label, which released the album, offered their own preview: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PUTERAEON — “MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
May 282025
 

(written by Islander)

We should begin this album-premiere feature with what the great Dan Swanö has said about Puteraeon‘s forthcoming fifth album, Mountains of Madness:

“I have had the pleasure to work with Puteraeon since 2017 and their releases have always been solid, but the quality of this new album completely took me by surprise. It is just so damn good it’s hard to fathom! It’s like they thought about every little detail on how to make the album brutal as hell, yet memorable and extremely epic. I dare to say this one will go down in the history books as one of the best Swe-Death releases ever.”

If that doesn’t make you sit up straight and pay attention, probably nothing will — though the name of the album and Ola Larsson‘s cover art should also seize your attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LOATHFINDER — “BROKEN BRANCHES AND TORN ROOTS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 272025
 

(written by Islander)

The Polish band Loathfinder made their recording debut with a 2017 EP (deliciously titled The Great Tired Ones), and then followed that two years later with the Aspects of Oblation split with Alaska-based Druj. Now at last they are on the verge of releasing their first album, Broken Branches and Torn Roots, through Godz Ov War Productions.

Our own Andy Synn reviewed that 2017 debut EP and described it as “hideously heavy and gloriously grim Blackened Death/Doom,” offering up “four tracks of bone-grinding riffs, putrid vocals, and suppurating, suffocating grooves, which seem purposefully designed to ruin your day.” He also wrote:

Yet as disgustingly dirty (love that guitar tone) and remorselessly gloomy as the band are, there’s a real method to their madness, above and beyond the compulsion to simply wallow in sonic filth…. All in all this is one hell of a nasty piece of work, and one which thoroughly deserves your time and attention.

But roughly 8 years have passed between the EP and the forthcoming album, long enough that even early fans of the band may wonder whether, and if so how, their music has changed over the interim. You’ll get your answers today as we premiere a full stream of Loathfinder‘s full-length debut. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LÖMSK — “FURIA”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 262025
 

(written by Islander)

Last fall the Gothenburg-based black metal band Lömsk made a tremendous first impression with their debut EP, Act I. Those four songs were dark and devastating, often towering in their scale and sweeping in their expansiveness. In Lömsk‘s renditions of war-zone chaos the music was fiery and harrowing, but their powerful melodies also channeled sensations of tragedy and despair with staggering intensity. (We had more to say about Act I here.)

Vendetta Records released Act I on CD and 12″ vinyl editions, and (not surprisingly) those sold out in just a few days after release. Reacting to demand, Vendetta ordered represses of those editions and they are now being made available. And, as a fresh reminder of Lömsk‘s daunting and exhilarating power, they are releasing a new single.

This new song, “Furia“, will be released on streaming platforms on May 30th, but we’re privileged to provide an exclusive premiere of the song today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRSNĪ — “LONG VOYAGE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 202025
 

(written by Islander)

Uzbekistan in Central Asia is remote from the knowledge of most people who are likely to come across this feature. Though populous and ancient in the history of the lands now encompassed by its boundaries, it’s geographically remote as well, and one of only two countries that is “doubly landlocked,” i.e., surrounded by five other countries that are themselves landlocked.

The country’s capital, Tashkent, also has an ancient history, reportedly first settled between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC as an oasis on the Chirchik River near the foothills of the West Tian Shan Mountains. Today, among its more than 2 million inhabitants, it is home to the atmospheric black metal band Krsnī (a word that means “night” in Sanskrit), the solo work of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Trizna.

Five days from now Satanath Records (Georgia) and The End Of Time Records (Ireland) will co-release Krsnī‘s fifth album, Neige éternelle, and it represents a new phase of sound, a departure from the project’s previous musical and lyrical directions. As a sign of the change and as an advance herald of the album, today we premiere a song called “Long Voyage.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IBEX ANGEL ORDER — “BELIAL INVOKED”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 202025
 

(written by Islander)

Contemplating new music from Ibex Angel Order is akin to contemplating the opening of a blast-furnace door to Hell, beyond which we will be blinded by enthroned Lucifer in his might and rage.

The last time we wrote about the music of this Dutch occult black metal band here (far too long ago) we described it as “cyclonic, dissonant, and berserk,” “a bewildering mix of toxicity and infernal majesty” that builds to “crescendos of catastrophe.”

That previous occasion was our premiere of a tremendous six-way split release named Ekstrophë in 2018. Ibex Angel Order returned the following year with a two-track EP, I.Ô. Creatôr / I.Ô. Destrôyer. Now, six years later, they’re returning again with their second full-length, II – Void Sermon.

The new album will be presented by Void Wanderer Productions on July 24th, and to help introduce it we’re premiering the album track “Belial Invoked.” Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries