AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NORDICWINTER — “SOMBER WINDS OF DESPAIR (PART I)”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Feb 032021
 

 

In the summer of 2020 the solo atmospheric/depressive black metal band Nordicwinter from Quebec, Canada (which was originally founded by evillair in 2006) self-released in limited fashion a new album named Desolation. That album seized the attention of Hypnotic Dirge Records, who in mid-January of this year gave it a more expansive release in a 6-panel digipack CD edition. But it turns out that this re-issue was also a precursor to the label’s plans for a further Nordicwinter release.

That next release is a new Nordicwinter album entitled Sorrow. As Hypnotic Dirge faithfully explains: “Laden with haunting melodies and cryptic vocals, Nordicwinter creates music that is crafted to obliterate all remnants of light and hope leaving only despair and death”. As a sign of how true those words are, we are today premiering a lyric video for the record’s opening track, “Somber Winds of Despair (Part I)“, in advance of its March 26 release. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK HOLE DEITY — “LAIR OF XENOLICH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 032021
 

 

Black Hole Deity is a new name in death metal, but it has a veteran line-up, whose instrumental and songwriting skills are on full display in the band’s absolutely electrifying debut EP Lair of Xenolich, which we’re premiering in full today in advance of its February 5th release by Everlasting Spew Records.

The band was first conceived by Cam Pinkerton and Chris White, co-founders of the death metal band Chaos Inception, and they then recruited Alec Cordero (from the death metal bands Cruelty Exalted and Calcemia) to handle lead guitar duties, and finally got none other than Mike Heller of Malignancy, Fear Factory, and Raven to handle the drumming.

Drawing upon supernatural and sci-fi themes, what this fearsome foursome have created is an explosive assault that’s a pure adrenaline rush, as well as one that inflicts megaton levels of stunning destructiveness. Listening to the EP, it’s very easy to imagine that you’ve been teleported straight into an alien war zone where advanced technologies are being deployed with both machine-like precision and breathtaking ferocity. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NATHR — “BEINAHRÚGA”

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Feb 022021
 

 

Manipulating and intertwining ingredients of black metal and funeral doom, the multinational band Nathr have pronounced themselves ready to open the graves of the old Viking capital of Nidaros and to make us imagine what will come forth. They proclaim their inspiration in these words: “We start to dig up the somber emptiness of our souls, to express the grievances of life.”

Nathr only began last year, and took shape as the union among Italian vocalist/lyricist Nathas (Funeral Harvest), the Dutch musician Northr (Funeral Harvest, and the dark ambient project Northr), who performs guitars, bass, and synths, and the Norwegian drummer Ond (Funeral Harvest, Keiser). Their first release is an expansive four-track EP named Beinahrúga, which seems to be an Old Norse word for a pile of bones, and it will be released through Signal Rex on February 12th.

What we have for you today is a full stream of Beinahrúga, preceded by some thoughts about the disturbing experience of it. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AD NAUSEAM — “IMPERATIVE IMPERCEPTIBLE IMPULSE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 292021
 

 

On February 12th Avantgarde Music will release Imperative Imperceptible Impulse, the second album by the Italian band Ad Nauseam.

The label states that the album is not for everyone, but represents “the true meaning of Avantgarde”. And while that statement could be interpreted as a calculated effort to create intrigue, when you hear the album you will realize that it is honest and accurate. And hear it you shall, because below you’ll find our premiere of a full stream of the record.

It is indisputably true that Imperative Imperceptible Impulse is not “easy listening”. Although it includes moments that become eerily mesmerizing, most of the minutes are supercharged with maniacal energy and packed with mind-boggling instrumental extravagance. Though structures and repeating patterns can be discerned as they loop back around to where they began, the dominant impression of all the intricate permutations is one of madness run rampant, and the inventive use of dissonance and discord, executed with eye-popping technical prowess, creates an experience that is both dazzling and disturbing. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STARGAZER – “PSYCHIC SECRETIONS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 282021
 

 

(On February 1st Nuclear War Now! Productions will release the fourth full-length by the Australian genre-splicing band StarGazer, and today we premiere a full stream along with a review by Andy Synn.)

Australian alchemists StarGazer have always been a hard band to properly pin down.

Ask ten different people to describe them and you’re likely to receive ten different answers.

They’re a Black Metal band. Or a Thrash band. Or a Death Metal band. And what that play is either Progressive Black Metal, Blackened Thrash, or Technical Death Metal… or some uniquely unorthodox hybrid of all three.

Or maybe they’re something else entirely.

Long story short, no-one seems to be able to agree, and the various permutations of style and genre which people ascribe to the band are now almost as innumerable as the stars themselves.

And now, with the release of their long-awaited fourth album (which we’re premiering here today) it’s time for that debate to begin anew. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GRAVEDÄNCER — “RIPPING METAL”

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Jan 272021
 

 

As much as many of us enjoy the realms of the avant garde within the world of metal, no dyed-in-the-wool metalhead would ever deny the continuing appeal of the Old Guard, or the visceral thrills that can be generated by newer bands who embrace the sounds that formed the foundations of heavy metal and carry them forward with the right spirit and uncommon skill. Which brings us to Gravedäncer.

This Brazilian duo, composed of members of Flageladör and Tyranno, have created a debut demo, righteously named Ripping Metal, that’s an electrifying hybrid of early black metal and NWOBHM — think of a union between Judas Priest and Venom. The songs are stripped-down and unpretentious, neither forward-looking nor artificially embellished. They depend on the power of the riff, and a devotion to sulphurous audio aromas that promise the delights and dangers of hell.

And as you’ll discover through our premiere of the demo today in advance of its January 29 release by the Helldprod Records, the primal appeal of what they’ve done is damned near irresistible. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABIGORUM — “ERHEBT EURE MIT BLUT GEFÜLLTEN HÖRNER”

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Jan 262021
 

 

Abigorum began as the solo project of Russian musician Aleksey Korolyov, who is also the owner of Satanath Records. Operating on his own, and drawing upon traditions of doom, black metal, and dark ambient music, he recorded a sequence of releases that included a collaboration with Cryostasium (2016’s Unholy Ghost Liturgy) and a split with Striborg (2018’s Spectral Shadows). After that he expanded the line-up of Abigorum with the addition of two German musicians — guitarist/vocalist Tino Thiele (from Wulfgar and Metamorph) and bassist Sandra Batsch — and together they completed a 2019 debut album named Exaltatus Mechanism.

Ms. Batsch subsequently departed, and now the remaining duo of Korolyov and Thiele have recorded a new Abigorum album named Vergessene Stille that’s set for release by a consortium of labels on April 13th. Today we present the premiere of its first advance track, “Erhebt eure mit Blut gefüllten Hörner“, which manages to create an experience that’s both hypnotizing and nightmarish, both hauntingly seductive and terrorizing. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OCEANA — “THE PATTERN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 262021
 

 

It has been a long time coming — a very long time — but on January 29th the Roman band Oceana will release their debut album The Pattern through Time To Kill Records. But it seems the time is right, even if the album is arriving 25 years after Oceana’s debut demo and EP, and the strength of the new album is such that fans of progressively inclined melodic death metal will be grateful the band did not die an early death.

Given the passage of so much time, all will be forgiven who are unfamiliar with the band. It was the brainchild of Massimiliano Pagliuso, who has been the guitarist for the Italian band Novembre throughout those same 25 years, and it was he who revived Oceana, bringing together original drummer Alessandro “Sancho” Marconcini and another old friend, Gianpaolo Caprino, as second guitarist.

How the rebirth happened, and the themes that inspired The Pattern, are subjects addressed by Massimiliano Pagliuso in an extensive statement that you will find below. What you will also find below is a full stream of the new album, preceded by a few reactions of our own. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OATH OF DAMNATION — “IMHULLU”

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Jan 222021
 

 

Last February we had the pleasure of presenting a lyric video for a song by the Australian black/death ravagers Oath of Damnation. That song, “I Curse Thee, O Lord!” was an eye-popping thrill-ride, both eerily majestic and utterly hellish, both atmospheric and barbaric. And there were a lot more thrills awaiting listeners in the album that included it — the well-named Fury and Malevolence — which was released by Gore House Productions in March 2020, roughly six years after the band’s full-length debut. Months later, that record popped up on numerous year-end lists around the web, and now we have a vivid reminder of just how good the album is.

Fury and Malevolence is brimming with well-told tales of darkness, horror, and ancient mythologies, and one of the most compelling tales is “Imhullu“, the track that opens the record and carries the listener into an unearthly world of titanic struggle and gargantuan bloodshed. No wonder that the band chose that song as the subject of the video we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FERAL LIGHT’S “CONJOINT LIGHTLESSNESS” (AND A REVIEW OF THE NEW “CEREMONIAL TOWER” EP)

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 222021
 

 

Last September at NCS Andy Synn devoted the 125th edition of his Synn Report (here) to the discography of Minnesota-based Feral Light, whose music he recommended for fans of  Tombs, Cobalt, and Wolvhammer. In Andy’s words, Feral Light (drummer Andrew Reesen and guitarist/vocalist Andy Schoengrund) “deal in a gritty, gruesomely groovesome brand of Black ‘n’ Roll which has, over the years, also developed an increasingly savage-yet-sombre (not to mention ever-so-slightly proggy) edge to it”.

The latest record in their discography as it existed at the time of Andy’s retrospective was the 2020 album Life Vapor, which he characterized as Feral Light‘s “darkest record yet”, a “more refined and more atmosphere-heavy album than either of its predecessors”, but also “even more focussed and ferocious”: “[F]or what it might lack (or sacrifice) in terms of bombastic hooks and swaggering attitude it more than makes up for in sheer intensity and potent staying-power, making for an overall more fulfilling, and no less thrilling, listening experience from start to finish.”

If you haven’t yet encountered Feral Light, you should definitely check out Life Vapor — but you really couldn’t go wrong with any of their albums. And thankfully, the band continue to forge ahead. On February 26th they will be releasing a new three-song EP named Ceremonial Tower, and today it’s our pleasure to premiere one of those three tracks — “Conjoint Lightlessness“. Continue reading »

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