AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MONTAÑA SAGRADA — “THE LIVING GREEN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 232020
 

 

Not all metal bands, and in fact very few of them, unite behind a concept that’s as harrowing and as intriguing as the music they make. This isn’t intended as a criticism of bands who are content to make music that isn’t rooted in a conceptual vision or narrative. Good music is good music, regardless of its inspiration. And by the same token, a thought-provoking concept doesn’t make mediocre music any better. Yet when the two come together, the experience is even more special.

The Chilean trio Montaña Sagrada (“the Sacred Mountain”) have based their debut EP The Living Green, which we’re premiering in full today in advance of its September 25 release, on an especially intriguing (and mysterious) conception. Set during the 15th and 16th centuries, it focuses on a powerful group of people located on what would become known as Chiloé Island, a large island off the southern coast of Chile. “Shrouded in myth and protected by irrational fear”, these people had a firm hold on the population, with plans for domination that rivaled those of the European colonial powers. The band explain: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NETHER — “TO THE SHORES”

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Sep 232020
 

 

On October 30th Art Gates Records will release Between Shades and Shadows, the debut album of the Belgian black metal band nether, whose music relies on both raw, visceral intensity and dark, evocative melodies. What we have for you today is the premiere of a song named “To the Shores“, accompanied by a video that draws out further dimensions of the music (perhaps metaphorical ones).

The video features dramatic images of natural power, from the violent assault of waves on rocky shores to building thunderheads, as well as scenes of lonesome wandering and of forests both barren and lush, and shrouded in mist. While the song itself, like the sea, packs plenty of assaulting power, it also has very human emotional connections — all of them fraught with tension and turmoil.

A listener might understand the music as a reflection of life’s misfortunes crashing against us, or of us crashing against life’s obstacles, but perhaps with other meditations in mind as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARALLU — “MORBID SHADOW”

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Sep 222020
 

 

This makes the third time we’ve done a premiere for the Israeli black metal band Arallu. The first time was about six weeks before the release of their 2017 album Six. The next time, roughly two years later, it was a song from their most recent full-length, En Olam. And today it’s a video for a song that’s… more than 20 years old!

It was 1999 when Arallu released their debut album, The War on the Wailing Wall, following an initial 1997 demo with the same title. In the decades that have followed that release, the band’s music evolved in dramatic ways. As we wrote about their most recent record, “the songs capture archetypes of violence and bloodshed, defiance of orthodoxy and devilish supremacy, but they also become spells,” and, as they had done before, the band augmented the metal “with the tones of ancient instruments, among them Saz, Oud, Kanoon, and Drabukka”, which were used to enhance the strong influence of Middle Eastern melodies.

Turning back the clock to the 1999 debut album, you can perceive the seeds that would grow into what the band has become today. But apart from the historical significance of the record, it turns out to have withstood the test of time very well. And so it’s not surprising that, at last, the album is being reissued on vinyl for the first time, complete with new vinyl mastering by Patrick W. Engel at “Temple of Disharmony”. And it’s one of those 1999 tracks that we’re bringing you today, accompanied by video of Arallu, as they are today, performing the song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INTO OBLIVION — “EAGLE OF THE SERPENT SUN”

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Sep 212020
 

 

Winds of Serpentine Ascension is the title of a new EP by the Toronto band Into Oblivion, and we’ll call it an EP because its tracklist is just three songs long — although they collectively amount to 35 minutes of music. The first two tracks, “Where Winds Wail and Gnaw” and “The Shattering Ascent” are longer than average, both of them falling between seven and eight minutes in length, but they lead up to a truly extravagant musical odyssey in “Eagle of the Serpent Sun“. That song, which we’re presenting today in advance of the EP’s September 29 release by Hessian Firm, is almost 20 minutes long.

The song is an odyssey in more than duration alone. As the band lead us through the richly varying movements of the song and its dramatic range of instrumentation and moods, it really does seem that we have embarked on a harrowing and heart-breaking journey, one that may only end in death for all concerned. And not only because of the EP’s cover art, it seems like the narrative of a warrior’s journey that crosses the sea and hostile lands. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DYATLOVE — “DIE!KILL!PIG!”

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Sep 182020
 

 

“I feel my throat tightening. It’s not the coronavirus or smoke. It’s rage—rage radiating up from my belly and my heart. We’re trapped inside because of the pandemic and because of the fires, but ultimately we are most confined by the inequality, selfishness, and greed that created this moment. Even in the wide-open West, we’re still stuck in the United States of America.” — Emma Maris, The Atlantic, Sept. 10, 2020

Unlike Emma Maris (and me), Dyatlove aren’t stuck in the United States. But they’re from the West, albeit the Canadian West (Vancouver BC, to be precise), and like Emma Maris (and me) they’ve probably been breathing what used to be forests in Washington and Oregon during the last week (and counting). They also sound plenty pissed-off, about some of the same things.

The band’s music isn’t the kind of extreme metal we usually cover at this site, but I’d say they’re “adjacent” — and there’s an explosive emotional fury in the song and video we’re presenting today that’s so cathartic (and so demolishing) that it’s more than welcome here. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEADS FOR THE DEAD — “AT THE DEAD OF NIGHT”

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Sep 182020
 

 

Roughly two years after the release of their Serpent’s Curse debut album, Heads For the Dead have risen from whatever moldering, lightless tomb where they’ve been hibernating, and they’re hungry… for your flesh. Or at least they certainly sound famished for the delights of crunching bones, rendered entrails, and gushing ichor based on the new song we’re about to present.

That debut album was a massive-sounding exposition of Swedish death metal with an attraction to the tropes of old-school horror, and an addictive work of mauling terror it was, as exemplified by our dropping of one of its tracks into our list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal songs that year. Based on this new song — “At the Dead of Night“, which we’re presenting through a lyric video — they’ve lost none of their ability to crush, rend, and frighten in the intervening time.

But before we get to it, that image at the top of this post isn’t the cover of their forthcoming sophomore album Into the Red — this is: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DYSTOPIA — “RAZERNIJ: III”

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Sep 172020
 

 

Three years after the epic opus Chaos Philosophorum, the Dutch band Dystopia are returning with a remarkably multi-faceted new album named Geen Weg Uit, which will be released by Wolves of Hades on September 25th. It consists of three songs, two of which are divided into multiple parts.

Trying to sum up the album’s kaleidoscope of musical sensations is a daunting task. At its core, the music is black metal, but the band also incorporate elements of death metal, ethereal ambient music, prog-rock, and psychedelia — and they give a prominent role to a brass section. You might wonder how in the world all these moving parts could be joined together into something that makes sense, but banish any doubts you might have, because they do — with spectacular results. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HUMANITAS ERROR EST — “AN INEXCUSABLE EXISTENCE”

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Sep 172020
 

 

Four years after a debut album named Human Pathomorphism, and following a hiatus, the black metal band Humanitas Error Est have made a new beginning, and have recorded new music. While the musical and lyrical thematics follow the same misanthropic and anti-human tropes expressed in that earlier work, the line-up has been newly formed. The band’s two founders, vocalist S. Caedes and drummer Ahephaïm (both of whom are also in Lebenssucht) remain in place, but they are now joined by new faces in what has become an international collective, with members from Germany, Belgium, France and Australia:

S CAEDES – lead vocals
BASMU – lead vocals
AHEPHAÏM – drums
ARBORIA – guitar
MICTIAN – guitar
FENRIR – bass

As the first sign of what they have done together, today we present a video for a shattering new song named “An Inexcusable Existence“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MY DEATH BELONGS TO YOU — “TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY”

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Sep 172020
 

 

Over a long span of years the Swiss composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Bornyhake Ormenos has been involved in an equally long list of bands and solo projects, including Borgne, Pure, Enoid, Ancient Moon, and The Path of Memory. Through most of those, he has delved into variants of black and death metal. But in his solo project My death belongs to you, he has turned his talents to funeral doom. The first album of this project is The world seems to be fading, and it will be released by Funere on October 10th.

What we have for you today is a track from this forthcoming album named “Tomorrow is the last day“, and even standing alone it proves that Bornyhake has a sure-handed mastery of this old and miserably magnificent musical style. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROSS BRINGER — “THE SIGNS OF SPIRITUAL DELUSION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 162020
 

 

They say you should never judge a book an album by its cover, but when the image is as arresting and enigmatic as the one which adorns this record it’s practically impossible not to.

Are we to take this image as a vision of strength or a study of scars? A meditation on vulnerability, or a celebration of our vitality? Is it about pain and loss, or our ability to resist and to endure, no matter what is thrown at us?

Or is it none of these things. Is it simply about what makes up a body, not just as a conglomeration of flesh and bone, but as a collection of years and experiences which mark us, and shape us, in ways both big and small?

And, if so, what does that say about Cross Bringer and their visceral, venomous debut, which we’re premiering today? Continue reading »

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