AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WINTER NIGHTS — “UNMARKED GRAVE”

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Jul 082020
 

 

From the introductory Scott Joplin excerpt to the suggestion that you take a shot, and the command to mosh, the lyric video we’re presenting today may give you some quick grins, but the only smiles you might get from the music will be evil ones — because while the the music is thrilling, it’s also dark and disturbing.

The song in question is “Unmarked Grave“, which is where the song’s protagonist asks to be buried. That song comes from the second full-length by the Brooklyn-based, guitar-driven melodic death metal band Winter Nights. Self-titled, the album is set for release on July 31st. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DAWN OF A DARK AGE — “LA TAVOLA OSCA”

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Jul 082020
 

 

Over time every music fan, including those of us who nourish our needs with extreme metal, discover our strongest preferences. We find what’s most appealing and we tend to stay with it, and we learn what sounds sour to our own ears and avoid it. Each of us also has different degrees of tolerance for musical adventurousness. It might be true that in the genres we love best that tolerance is more limited than in other genres where we usually have only a modest interest, if any at all.

Yet except for the most hidebound listeners, the prospect of discovering music that’s exploratory, that goes off the well-trod paths and introduces us to new terrains, is at least intriguing. And when the adventure succeeds, the discovery can become an even greater thrill than listening to music that satisfies our pre-existing and well-defined individual tastes.

That is precisely what happened to this listener while participating in the adventure of La Tavola Osca, the latest album by the Italian band Dawn Of A Dark Age. It proved to be a thrilling discovery for me, and thus the opportunity to share it with you today is also exciting. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CHAOS MOTION — “PERTURBATION OF A SPIN”

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Jul 072020
 

 

Chaos Motion drew an extravagant amount of attention to themselves last fall when they released their debut album Psychological Spasms Cacophony through Transcending Obscurity Records. Listening to the music was something akin to hearing a flock of starlings suddenly begin speaking in human languages, or witnessing a pack of wolves break out into improvisational dance, or perhaps seeing a falling star detour into tracing hieroglyphic letters across a night sky during its blazing descent through the atmosphere. A weird and wondrous experience it was — the words “mind fuck!” readily come to mind.

But despite all the attention, perhaps you missed the album? Well, that’s one reason bands create music videos months after a record’s release, to vacuum up a few more music fans who might not have been sucked into the music during the weeks surrounding its release or at year-end-list time. And a Chaos Motion music video is exactly what we have for you today — a video that’s especially riveting because it allows us to see with our own how the band’s two guitarists make such a cornucopia of bewildering yet strangely enthralling sounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WORSEN — “OPEN GRAVE”

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Jul 072020
 

 

The North Carolina black metal band Worsen began as the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Rick Contes. After a debut EP in 2014 named Blood, five years passed before the release of Worsen‘s debut album Cursed To Witness Life last year. Contes again wrote the music and recorded all instruments and vocals. He has explained the events that led to the album, and the time it took to write it:

“This was a very personal and cathartic record for me that is lyrically focused on the death of my brother as well as dramatic conclusions to hollow friendships and the removal of toxic people and things from my life. It’s something I started alone that I needed to finish alone.”

Although the album was his own personal work, Worsen has now become a full band, with a line-up that has performed live and that is now preparing material for Worsen‘s next release. That full line-up is featured in the video we’re presenting today for “Open Grave“, an especially intense and emotionally wrenching track off of Cursed To Witness Life  — and it follows the band’s announcement that the album will now be released on vinyl by The Hell Command (USA) and Wolves Of Hades (Europe). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE — “WREATHED IN AGONY”

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Jul 062020
 

 

Now approaching the end of their first decade of activity, Australia’s Temple Nightside have firmly established themselves as a nightmarish force of nature — though it’s perhaps more accurate to characterize their brand of blackened death metal as a terrorizing radiation of supernatural power. Dense, destructive, and domineering, their music has also seemed to be the stuff of necromantic ritual, a form of arcane pitch-black incantation which draws its eldritch energies from the shedding of blood on a massive scale.

Temple Nightside‘s dedication to crypt-born, blood-freezing death metal punishment has been unflinching over the course of their first three albums and assorted shorter releases, but their music has not remained static. Their forthcoming fourth album reveals further dimensions of sound, though without retreating even one small step from the ferocious forward momentum of their warlike ravages.

That new album, Pillars of Damnation, will be released by Iron Bonehead Productions on August 7th, and the song we’re premiering today — aptly named “Wreathed In Agony” — is a vivid sign of the latest permutations in Temple Nightside‘s decimating evolution. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHSTORM — “HUMAN INDIVIDUAL METAMORPHOSIS”

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Jul 032020
 

 

I think even the most devoted fans of thrash would admit that it’s hard to stand out from the pack, especially in 2020, after so many decades have been filled with so many bands and albums, both great and not-so-great. It’s even harder when a band feels a strong bond to such icons of the genre as the early works of Metallica, Slayer, and Death, as well as the continuing influence of Kreator and Demolition Hammer.

And that’s what makes Deathstorm so well worth your time — they relish those influences, and their music is unpretentious and uninterested in trying to reinvent the wheel or reconfiguring it into some new mechanism of propulsion, yet these Austrian wolves still do stand out from the pack. How do they do it? The song we’re premiering today from their upcoming fourth album Dread Shall Reign (which will be released by Dying Victims Productions on July 31st) will show you how — in spades. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NODUS TOLLENS — “MELANCHOLIC WATERS ABLAZE WITH THE FIRES OF LOSS”

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Jul 022020
 

 

Nodus Tollens n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore — that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre — which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.
– The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

That definition tells you more than you might guess about the debut album of the band who took the phrase as its name. The title of that album, Melancholic Waters Ablaze with the Fires of Loss, is another significant clue. As that title suggests, and as the band’s lone member Cicatrix has described, the album was created “as an emotional exorcism, and the lyrics reflect it, dealing with grief, broken relationship, and ultimately hope, each in their turn”.

The musical expression of such emotions is of course not unique to Nodus Tollens, but as you’ll discover today through our premiere of the complete album, the manner of expression is unusual, the emotional power of the music is penetrating, and the flow of styles and moods, both within each song and among them, is enthralling. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BAIN DE SANG — “SACRIFICED FOR A LOAD OF FILTH AND LIES”

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Jul 022020
 

 

If you’re a fan of such bands as Nasum, Pig Destroyer, Rotten Sound, and Napalm Death, we’ll lay favorable odds that you’re going to eat up Bain de Sang‘s new EP like a ravenous wolf. It takes only 11 minutes for the seven tracks on Sacrificed For A Load Of Filth And Lies to rampage through your cranium, almost too fast to take in, but the EP leaves a powerful impression, and you’ll probably find yourself letting it run riot through your mind a few more times in straight succession.

It’s immediately clear that Bain de Sang know what the hell they’re doing, and it’s not a shock that this Parisian band’s brand of grindcore and powerviolence is so electrifying and addictive because the band’s line-up includes ex-members of Blockheads, Comity, Judoboy, Sofy Major, and Department of Correction. Moreover, they’ve already played at Hellfest and Obscene Extreme, and shared the stage with the likes of Magrudergrind, Primitive Man, Rotten Sound, Gadget, Cloud Rat, Fuck the Facts, and Harm Done.

The EP will be released digitally by Terrain Vague as a name-tour-price download this Friday, July 3rd, which gives you another opportunity to take advantage of Bandcamp’s waiver of their revenue share on music sales if you want to make a donation. And people who prefer physical editions can also order them from Terrain Vague, who plans a release date of September 4th for those. And to make those decisions very easy, we’ve got a full stream of the EP for you right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RUNA — “NIGHT OF INITIATION”

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Jul 012020
 

 

Like most of you I’m curious and enjoy learning. It’s fair to say that a lot of metal bands and their music and lyrics don’t trigger curiosity or create learning experiences, even when their songs are very good. But when that happens, it’s a welcome bonus, and that happened in the case of the song and video premiere we’re presenting here.

The band whose music is the subject of the premiere are in Peru. Their name is Runa. Curious about the name, I did a little research and learned that “runa” is a name that speakers of the Quechua language (which originated in Peru but is found in many dialects throughout other South American countries) use to refer to themselves. According to this article, the word translates to “person”, but when Quechua speakers call themselves Runa, it means “the people”. I also learned that up to the present time Quechuas continue to be victims of political conflicts and ethnic persecution.

Runa (the band) draw upon ancestral culture in the creation of their music. Their new record, which will be released by the Peruvian label Guts ‘N’ Blood Records and follows by five years a debut EP named Bullets Of Annihilation, is titled Entrance To The Ancestral Wisdom. But, as the band’s vocalist/guitarist Alex explains, Runa’s mystical themes are also “immersed in magic, quantum, and alchemy”. The music through which they express these themes embraces the early raw power of death metal and the acidic viciousness of black metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLOOD STRONGHOLD — “SPECTRES OF BLOODSHED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 302020
 

 

On their new third album, Spectres of Bloodshed, the international duo known as Blood Stronghold have created a musical soundscape that’s out of this world. To be sure, the music has visceral, physically compulsive energy, but it creates fantastical visions of ancient and mythical domains. It seems to draw menacing and vicious power from lycanthropic spirits but also spawns mental images of tragic grandeur and heart-swelling splendor. It’s a fashioning of black metal that’s both carnal and elegant, both blood-pumping and mesmerizing. It seems to hearken back to a long-lost age — or to one that only exists in the imagination. Once heard, it’s not easily forgotten.

And hear it you shall, because today we present a full stream in advance of the album’s release on vinyl LP by Nebular Carcoma and Satanik Requiem. Continue reading »

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