AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SOMBRE HÉRITAGE — “ALPHA URSAE MINORIS”

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Jun 192020
 

 

This road to this album premiere began in much the same way as yesterday’s premiere of the superb new album by Serment. In mid-May we posted an article by our friend Speelie that focused on Métal Noir Québécois. Along with Serment, it included the news that Sepulchral Productions would also be releasing, on the same day, the debut of Québec project Sombre Héritage, the title of which is Alpha Ursae Minoris.

With our interest having been piqued by that news, we paid close attention to the first track that Sepulchral Productions revealed from the album, a song that shares the band’s name — and it proved to be damned exciting, prompting the inclusion of the song in one of our Shades of Black features. And now we have the chance to bring you a stream of the entire record in advance of its June 24 release date. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SERMENT — “CHANTE, Ô FLAMME DE LA LIBERTÉ”

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Jun 182020
 

 

One thing leads to another, sometimes with terrible results, sometimes with great ones. Fortune has smiled upon us this time.

In mid-May our valued ally Speelie prepared for us an overview of recent and forthcoming black metal releases from Québec (Métal Noir Québécois), and the first band he highlighted was a solo project of Forteresse guitarist Moribond named Serment. A few days later Serment released the first two tracks from the debut album, Chante, Ô Flamme de la Liberté, and presented them together in a single stream. The music was so striking that we were moved to write about it immediately (here).

And now we have the opportunity to premiere a stream of the entire album, which is set for release on June 24th by Sepulchral Productions, a label that has been home to many brilliant releases of Québécois black metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HIGH FIGHTER — “BEFORE I DISAPPEAR”

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Jun 182020
 


photo by Basti Grim

 

Of all the songs on High Fighter‘s tremendous second album Champain (released last summer by Argonauta Records), “Before I Disappear” is one of the most punishing and emotionally piercing. It’s a bruising, battering, and compulsively head-moving experience, coupled with melodies of searing impact. It showcases the whole band’s riveting power but perhaps especially the gripping intensity of Mona Miluski‘s voice in all of its dramatically changing manifestations. No wonder that the band chose it as the subject of the music video we’re premiering today — a video that provides a gripping presentation of a transfixing song.

Champain represents a new chapter in the band’s evolution, revealing a coherent (and heavy-as-hell) amalgamation of contrasting sensations that draws upon elements of doom, sludge, stoner, psychedelia, blues, and more. The changes will be quite evident if you compare it to the band’s 2014 debut EP (Goat Ritual) and their 2016 debut album Scars & Crosses, and it represents a great leap ahead. “Before I Disappear” doesn’t completely reveal all of the album’s many facets, but it definitely displays the marked increase in brutality, ferocity, and emotional darkness, as well as the penetrating intensity of the song-writing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: YSENGRIN — “ODE À L’ESCARBOUCLE”

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Jun 172020
 

 

In 2008 the unusual French band Ysengrin released their debut demo, an album-length presentation entitled T.R.I.A.D.E. In the dozen years since then more than a dozen additional releases have followed, including two albums and many splits, but it seems that the life of Ysengrin is drawing to a close, with what will be the final album now slated for release by I, Voidhanger Records on July 17th, to be followed by a final split release.

The new album, Initiatio, consists of four tracks from that early T.R.I.A.D.E. demo, “re-imagined” and re-recorded under the direction of the band’s guiding hand, Guido Saint Roch. In addition, the album includes a revised version of “Monumentum” from the Archivum MMV-MMX demo dating to 2010, plus four new compositions, including two ambient numbers recorded live with the help of Frater Stéphane (N.K.R.T., Rosa Crux). As I, Voidhanger, says, “Initiatio is therefore an ouroboros serpent biting its tail: the end is the beginning, and the beginning becomes the end”.

One song from the new album, “Potencée d’Or”, has alredy been revealed, and we’ll come back to that one later. But our primary mission today is to present another track from the album, “Ode à l’Escarboucle“, which is one of the pieces that had its origins on the T.R.I.A.D.E. demo. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): IVAN — “SILVER SCREENS”

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Jun 172020
 

 

As a way of complimenting an unusually long piece of music, it has become almost cliched to say that the time passes without really noticing it, that the music seems shorter than the clock tells you it is. At least in the case of rock and metal, that kind of description may also be intended to break down a barrier to entry, to induce people to listen who otherwise might be deterred by the demands on their time.

But promises of losing track of time are often exaggerated. Hell, even in making my own way through very long tracks that I ultimately enjoy, I sometimes find myself checking the player to see where I am, and how many minutes are left. Life is too full of distractions, and the pestering voice in the back of your head that says you should be doing something else, even if you don’t know what, can often be hard to ignore.

So, we take such promises with a grain of salt, and with good reason, but I’ll still promise you this: time really does seem to vanish in listening to “Silver Screens“, the 19 1/2 minute title track to the new fourth album by the unusual Australian funeral death-doom band Ivan. And the same phenomenon happens again and again over the course of the next three tracks. Getting lost in them is very easy, because they are so incredibly absorbing in so many ways, and so surprising in how they unfold.

You’ll learn that for yourselves today, because we’re premiering a full stream of the album in advance of its June 19 release by Solitude Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BULLETBELT — “BLADE ON THE FIRE”

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Jun 162020
 

 

First time I heard Bulletbelt was back in September 2014. It was a song off their then-forthcoming album Rise of the Banshee (their second full-length), which had premiered at NZ writer Craig Hayes‘ Six Noises blog. I hammered out my immediate reaction on the keyboard: “Punk stomp and black metal acid and heavy metal swagger, gun-shot drumming and gut-shot riffing, risk of serious neck strain, catchy as chlamydia.” Not long after that we premiered the whole album, with Craig Hayes writing an enthusiastic introduction.

Four years later Bulletbelt returned with their next album, Nine Centuries, which was the final album with vocalist Jolene Tempest, but also featured guest appearances by Midnight’s Vanik, Massacre’s Kam Lee, and a string quartet from The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. We were lucky to have Craig Hayes review it (here). He noted that the record was, in comparison to the preceding one, “a much grimmer release, lyrically”, and that the band had “matched that narrative darkness with a rawer and more visceral sound –– reflecting, perhaps, the violence of the album’s lyrics” — and was all the better for it.

And now Bulletbelt are returning again with another full-length, after an intervening EP (Faster Than Death) and a split with Sabbat. The new album is named Warlords and it’s set for release on July 1st. And today we’re fuckin’ pumped to premiere the first single off the album: “Blade On the Fire“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SVART LOTUS — “NEKROESTETIKK”

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Jun 152020
 

 

Sometimes bands that begin as “side projects” are destined to live in the shadows of their members’ main bands, even when all evidence demonstrates that they have become living things in their own right, with their own personalities and strengths, and bright futures of their own. That is certainly true of the Norwegian black metal band Svart Lotus, which began as the solo project of 1349 bassist Tor R. Stavenes and has come to include Disintegration members Eivin Brye (drums) and Øyvind Kaslegard (bass), as well as guitarist Sigve Jordheim.

This isn’t to suggest that people are failing to give Svart Lotus the recognition they deserve, but it might be to suggest that not enough people are doing that. The band may have begun as a way for Tor R. Stavenes to spread his wings, picking up the guitar and using his own voice and songwriting talents, but it has blossomed into a musically compelling entity that’s both true to the spirit of Norwegian black metal but also adventurous. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: POEMA ARCANVS — “STRAITS OF DEVOTION”

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Jun 122020
 

 

Like other genres of metal, Doom has become a big tent since its formative years, gathering beneath its large canopy a variety of stylistic formulations that are nonetheless united by an attraction to moods of longing and loss, misery and grief. But the Chilean Doom band Poema Arcanvs seem to be a big tent themselves, evolving their arcane musical poetry into an embrace of many formulations of Doom, and their new album Stardust Solitude might be their most complete and cohesive expression of that talent to date.

With their roots in the ’90s and their original inspiration drawn from the likes of Paradise Lost, Anathema, and My Dying Bride, the band have built an impressive discography that now includes six albums. This new one, their first in eight years, is their first for Transcending Obscurity Records, and it isn’t mere puffery to say, as T.O. does, that it is “a beautiful album that unravels gracefully, revealing a wealth of variations and moods”, delivering “plaintive melodies and entreating vocals that remain with you like warnings from the other side”.

The track we’re premiering today, through a video that captures the band’s performance of the song, is “Straits of Devotion“, and it is a prime example of the band’s successful amalgamation of styles and sensations. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KATHAROS XIII — “NO SUN SWIMS THUNDERED”

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Jun 122020
 

 

Romanian quartet Katharos XIII may have started out life as a DSBM band, but their sound has massively changed and evolved over the years, and their third album Palindrome, released last fall by Loud Rage Music, moved them even further into the realms of dark ambience and jazz-inflected doom.

The majority of the record is built around a sombre, shadowy soundscape of moody synths and noirish saxophone, underpinned by some brilliantly subtle and creative drum work and topped off with the hypnotic, dramatic vocals of Manuela Marchi, resulting in a sound and style that’s unusual, and unusually captivating.

There are still occasional touches that call back to the group’s early works, including some suitably nasty harsh vocals here and there, but also entire tracks (such as haunting closer “Xavernah Glory” or the mid-album masterwork that is “Caloian Voices”) which are almost entirely stripped of any metallic elements. Even when the band maneuver toward heavier sounds, it’s more in the vein of latter-day Katatonia or Portuguese Post-Metal maestros Sinistro, using looming, lambent chords and taut, restrained rhythms to cultivate a sense of ominous weight and shivering tension just waiting to be broken.

The mysteriously named “No Sun Swims Thundered” is in that latter category. It becomes an ebbing and flowing tide of intensity, gradually building, receding, and crashing against the shores of sanity and comfort with heavyweight power and mind-bending ingenuity. The movements are enthralling and often dreamlike, but persistently disturbing, and the visual interpretation of the song by director Alexandru Das that we’re presenting today channels all of those same sensations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SOULROT — “ALL THAT REMAINS”

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Jun 112020
 

 

On July 27th Memento Mori Records will release Victims of Spiritual Warfare, the second album by the Chilean death metal band Soulrot. Last month we came across the album’s first “single”, a song named “God Forsaken“, which prompted us to blurt out: “Crunchy, raw, and rotten Swedish-style death metal and grindcore from Chile, with hideous (in a good way) vocals, a toxic guitar tone, and a berserker spirit. Really looking forward to hearing more of this menacing mayhem….”

Well, it didn’t take long for us to dive into the rest of Victims…, and to discover just how hard these Chilean barbarians punch all the right buttons in their quest to reanimate the rotten corpse of early ’90s death metal while simultaneously blistering listeners with grindcore explosiveness. This would have been less surprising had we known that Soulrot had its earliest origins circa 1993-1994, or had we heard their Horrors from Beyond demo in 2014, their Revelations EP two years later, or their 2017 debut album, Nameless Hideous Manifestations. But better late than never!

“God Forsaken” was goddamned good, and now we get a chance to add another track for public consumption, one named “All That Remains” — and it’s a terrifically explosive and electrifying onslaught too. Continue reading »

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