AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHATTERED HOPE — “VESPERS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 032020
 

 

In much of the northern hemisphere there is a chill in the air today as the seasons shift into winter, but not solely for that reason. You probably know other reasons for the intensifying chills across our skins that have nothing to do with air temperature, rain, wind, or snow. We live in a frightening and perilous time. The conjunction of the misery and anxiety spawned by what goes on around us and the inexorable sinking into winter makes this day a nearly perfect occasion for the revelation of Shattered Hope‘s new album Vespers.

And it truly is a revelation, one of the most completely immersive and emotionally powerful albums you’re likely to encounter this year. It consists of five extensive tracks that collectively exceed an hour in length. Despite their length, each track is so brilliantly crafted, and embodies so many gripping changes, that getting lost in them is almost inescapable. The entire experience is tragic, as one might expect from this Greek band, who have become so well-known in the halls of atmospheric doom-death and funeral doom, but the album’s monumental visions of devastating moods are magnificent.

And we are thus tremendously fortunate to present a full stream of Vespers today, just days before its November 6 release through the esteemed Solitude Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LIMINAL SHROUD — “LUCIDITY”

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Nov 022020
 

 

Liminal Shroud from Victoria, BC, made quite a striking impression with their 2018 self-titled demo (which we reviewed here), and are now following that with a debut album that drew the support of the wonderful Canadian label Hypnotic Dirge Records. That album, Through the False Narrows, will be released on November 20th.

The band’s home is a beautiful place, but its setting in the midst of surging oceans and fog-shrouded coasts, often blanketed in the fall and winter by grey and sodden skies, also tends to bring out darker moods. Drawing inspiration from that natural setting, Liminal Shroud have crafted black metal that is capable of becoming as turbulent as ocean whirlpools and crashing waves, but is also palpably atmospheric, providing channels for despair and fury, for the darkness of grief and the fires of defiance.

There are only three people in the band — Aidan Crossley (guitars and vocals), Rich Taylor (bass and vocals), and Drew Davidson (drums) — and they all play vital roles in an album that’s produced in a way which gives them each an even share of attention. Even in the record’s shortest songs, their compositions display remarkable dynamism, and on the two longest tracks, one of which we’re premiering today — “Lucidity” — they use the extended time to push the dynamism of the music’s energy, spirit, and mood to even greater heights. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LOTAN — “ACTA NON VERBA”

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Nov 022020
 

 

The biblical sea monster Leviathan was pre-figured by the serpent creature Lotan in the Ugaritic cycle of stories about the Canaanite god Ba’al, and Lotan is also the name chosen by a new Danish black metal band. Lotan may be new to the scene, but its two members are not — both guitarist/bassist Phillip Kaaber and vocalist Martin Rubini are also bandmates in Vanir (and they are joined in Lotan by session members from Ethereal Kingdoms, Fall Of Pantheon, and Abscission).

Lotan draw their inspiration from both satanic spiritualism and existential philosophy, with a credo framed as follows:  “The concept that we as individuals have a true form, a true purpose, or a true meaning dictated by deities or any truth Sayers being divine or political is ridiculous. To become the dragon, we must first break all chains of gods and men and revolt against the cosmic order. To be free one must truly live, and to do that, no god or man can be the subject of our destiny other than ourselves. Kill your masters – kill your god.”

Musically, Lotan have drawn upon traditions of Scandinavian melodic black metal that bring to mind such bands as Marduk, Taake, and Satyricon, but Rotting Christ will likely come to mind as well. The first sign of their creativity is a single named “Acta Non Verba” that will be released tomorrow — November 3rd — by the new label Uprising! Records. It is that song that we now present to you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UTHULLUN — “SILENCE”

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Nov 022020
 

 

On Friday the 13th of November the Dutch label Wolves of Hades Records will release the debut album of the mysterious Chicago-based entity known as Uthullun, which follows a debut EP (Sunless) released last year. Entitled Dirges for the Void, the new full-length draws its inspirations from the overwhelming of our terrestrial realm in havoc and bewilderment, and the music itself is bewildering, seemingly chaotic, and unexpectedly bewitching.

Uthullun do not traffic in straight-forward or simplistic compositions, nor do they seek to provide calm or assurance. To the contrary, the elaborate and puzzling intricacy of the songs, and the persistence of dissonance and discord, create disturbing experiences. They repeatedly throw the listener off-balance, but for a number of reasons the journey isn’t repellant, but instead unexpectedly seductive. Uthullun continually boggle the mind, but put strange spells on it at the same time. Witness the song we’re premiering today — “Silence“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ATOMIC WITCH — “DEATH, SEX, AND SATAN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Oct 302020
 

 

When we last checked in with Atomic Witch at our putrid site, about 14 months ago, the occasion was a premiere of the title track from their first EP, Void Curse. It caused us to conclude that the long-time disciples of the Cleveland metal and hardcore scene who formed Atomic Witch picked a damned good band name. As we wrote then, that EP “couples the wild radioactive energy of a runaway nuclear meltdown with the weird and witchy feeling of a supernatural orgy”. Together, those four tracks were supercharged with furious, pulse-pounding energy, head-spinning instrumental changes, and unhinged vocal intensity. The genre-bending music created a maniacal atmosphere, whole-heartedly indulging in a musical blood-spraying riot from beginning to end.

Now, 14 months later, the band’s label Seeing Red Records is on the verge of releasing a new Atomic Witch EP, entitled Death, Sex, and Satan. They picked Halloween as the release date (tomorrow!), for reasons that will become obvious when you find out what they’ve done — and yes, you can find out right away, because we’re premiering a full stream of the whole thing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NIBIRU — “ALKAEST” (AN EXCERPT)

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Oct 302020
 

 

The music of the Italian trio Nibiru is nearly unclassifiable. You can find references to their impetuous and esoteric creations as Ritual Psychedelic Sludge or Blackened Sludge & Drone. The press materials for their new album Panspermia state that “the influences of Neurosis, Black Sabbath or MZ.412 have always been pretty clear”, but those materials also report that “in terms of an atmosphere, Nibiru relate themselves to the post-punk/darkwave scenes of the early ’80s (Fields Of The Nephilim, Virgin Prunes, early Christian Death, Joy Division) and to the pioneers of Depressive Black Metal, as well as bands such as Xasthur or Shining.”

Those are all useful clues, but they also underscore the point above — that the music is extremely difficult to capture through genre labels and other typical reference points. Their non-musical inspirations, which range from occultists and esotericists such as Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant, Austin Osman Spare and Julius Evola, to “psychiatric essays, a deep inner illness and a peculiar cult for the actor Klaus Kinski”, also provide clues, but they too are a bit bewildering.

Even the premiere we’re presenting today in advance of the new album’s November 13 release by Argonauta Records, doesn’t function as a summing up — not even close — but it does provide a tantalizing glimpse. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PNEUMA HAGION — “ANTICOSMIC INCANTATIONS”

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Oct 292020
 

 

For those not in the know, the death metal band Pneuma Hagion is one of the many projects of the prolific Texas-based vocalist/multi-instrumentalist known here as R., whose other bands include Intestinal Disgorge, The Howling Void, Endless Disease, and Excantation. Under the guise of Pneuma Hagion he has released a handful of demos, splits, and an EP since 2015, and on December 1st will at last release a debut album through Nuclear War Now! Productions. Its name is Voidgazer.

The album’s title reflects not only some of the music’s themes but also its creator’s grim and gloomy perspectives on existence. As he explained in a recent in-depth interview (here), at its core the album is about alienation, and through various symbolic expressions it grapples with the idea that humans are beings of spirit imprisoned in fleshly vessels in an earthly domain that too often make human existence feel pointless. “The world of flesh and matter is ruled by a cruel, tyrannical Demiurge, and we feel this universe to be cruel and evil because we are, at our core, alien to this place. We are from a place that is not a place, and is everything that this place is not.”

This perspective, it turns out, is mirrored in R.‘s own personal turmoils. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HERETIC RITUAL — “BLACK PERVERTED ABOMINATION”

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Oct 292020
 

 

Like just about every other metal genre descriptor that’s been in common usage for more than about ten years, “blackened death metal” (or “black/death”) no longer provides a specific compass point to guide listeners. At one time it was closely associated (at least in this writer’s mind) with “war metal”, but the term clearly encompasses an increasingly wide range of stylistic approaches, with greater and lesser degrees of melody and significant variations in the extent to which bands employ ingredients from the even the more expansive realms of black metal and death metal.

But the Mexican band Heretic Ritual are still pretty firmly positioned in the war metal sector of the blackened death metal soundscape. Yet they execute their assaults of iron-fisted genocidal savagery in a way that, while undeniably raw and vicious, doesn’t wallow in near-formless murky abrasion and relentless hammering, and the music is definitely not monotonous (let’s be honest, it’s not hard to think of many bands who are guilty of all those failings).

We will prove this to you through today’s exclusive premiere of “Black Perverted Abomination“, a song from this slaughtering trio’s new album War-Desecration-Genocide / Passages of Infinite Hatred, which is set for release on November 10th by Death In Pieces Records and Goatthrone Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOXIS — “EXPANSE OF HELLISH BLACK MIRE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Oct 282020
 

 

Cleveland-based Noxis have only been active since 2019 but they have wasted no time in proving their fiendish talents. Setting their sites on a particular kind of death metal, they released the aptly named Necrotizing demo in the year of their birth and are now following that with the new four-track EP we’re premiering today, also aptly named: Expanse of Hellish Black Mire. Those fiendish talents quickly hooked the attention of both Pulverised Records and Rotted Life Records, who will jointly handle the release on October 30.

In formulating their approach, Noxis owe some debts to the great NYDM triumvirate of Incantation, Suffocation, and Immolation, as well as Finnish bands such as Demigod and Convulse, and they’ve paid those debts by creating music that’s thuggish in its bone-fracturing, organ-rupturing belligerence and disgustingly gruesome in its atmosphere, and yet also mind-boggling in its mad contortions and technical extravagances. Their music is thus thoroughly putrid and punishing but also a big adrenaline kick. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ICARE — “KHAOS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  15 Responses »
Oct 272020
 

 

Khaos is the new album by the Swiss band Icare. It’s set for release on October 30th by Division Records. It sounds like a musical diary, a recording of a band’s progress from a starting point four years ago to the extravagant destination they’ve now reached. Which is not to say their starting point was in any way mundane — far from it. It was as breathtaking as the place where time took them, albeit in a different way.

It turns out that the idea of a journey that comes to mind in listening to the album isn’t too far from the truth. When Icare joined together in 2016, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, their vision was to create an extremely virulent form of grindcore, which incorporated elements of black and death metal. They recorded an album in that year named Khaos. But things began to change. Those changes were manifested in a 2018 album named Charogne, which the band performed live as a single 45-minute song.

This year they returned to those early steps in Khaos, and transformed the album in the studio, among other things giving the music a greater connection to black metal. But it would be wrong to sum up the album as solely “blackened grindcore” — it goes to many other places as well, which you can discover for yourselves through our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

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