AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NAXEN — “TO WELCOME THE WITHERING”

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May 062020
 

 

Following their very well-received EP To Abide in Ancient Abysses, the German melodic black metal band Naxen completed work on their first full-length, a record entitled Towards the Tomb of Times, and it is now set for release by Berlin’s Vendetta Records on June 5th. As described in the promotional materials for the album, over the course of four tracks spanning more than 47 minutes of music, the record “explores the weakness of mankind, the unavoidable loss and the inevitable failure of our species”:

“Acknowledging that all hope is lost and remains redundant in the end, transcendence is sought through fire, the perishment of flesh and death as the ultimate liberation. These feelings of existential disappointment, depression and despair flow through the melodies, revolve in the lyrics and are captured in the visuals (by Arjen Kunnen)”.

These are serious subjects, and the music is a match in its tremendous dramatic power — as you will discover through our premiere of the opening track, “To Welcome the Withering“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLIGHT — “ELSEWHERE & ELSEWHEN”

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May 062020
 

 

Rising from obscure underground dimensions within Montreal, and inspired by studies of esoteric dark arts, the occult black metal band Blight now invite us to enter their Temple of Wounds, a full-length necromantic experience that will be released by Svart Records on the 5th of June.

In April the band delivered a striking first impression of this, their debut album, by releasing a lyric video for a song called “A Violent Light“. It provided not only an insight into the band’s lyrical themes (which explore “deep facets of inner alchemical transmutation, and antinomian philosophies”), delivered with literary flare, it also revealed an eclectic and arresting dynamism in their music.

And now, we have the opportunity to provide a further sign of what looms within Temple of Wounds as we premiere a lyric video for another song from the album, this one named “Elsewhere & Elsewhen“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: YETI ON HORSEBACK — “NOTHING”

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May 052020
 

 

Almost four years ago I learned the error of leaping to faulty conclusions about the music of Yeti On Horseback based on their band name. Their name seemed fanciful, maybe even fun-loving. The music on their 2016 debut album The Great Dying, as it turned out, was as serious as a heart attack and just as life-threatening, a fashioning of doom metal with a nihilistic vision and an apocalyptic impact that was somewhere over on the other side of a black galaxy from anything light-hearted.

Here we are nearly four years later, and this group from London, Ontario, Canada, haven’t softened their stance or become mellower with the passing years. Their new single “Nothing“, which we’re premiering today, is stunningly dark and dauntingly massive, and dynamic in a way that only reveals different dimensions of devastation, shaking the earth and the soul in equal measure. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANGES DE LA MORT — “WHERE SPIRITS NO MORE SHINE”

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May 052020
 

 

Last November the Montreal black metal duo Anges de la Mort (ADLM) made an electrifying debut with a self-titled EP, presenting four tracks packed with visceral rhythmic hooks, virally infectious riffs, scalding vocal savagery, and a flare for dynamic changes. The band rocked, thrashed, seethed, and ripped their way through 18 gloriously wild, action-packed minutes guaranteed to connect with a listener’s reptile brain but equally capable of sending the kind of chills down the spine that come from the apprehension of danger.

The EP benefited from clarity of production (and mastering by Joel Grind), but stood out most of all because of the animal magnetism of ADLM‘s top-shelf song-craft, the pin-point execution, and the sulfurous ferocity of the vocals.

It was clear that this band had the goods, and now we’re in the fortunate position of providing proof that lightning can indeed strike twice in the same place, and that proof is a new ADLM single named Where Spirits No More Shine, which we’re premiering in advance of its release on May 7th. It includes the title song plus the fascinating contrast created by an accompanying acoustic B-side track named “Where Night Shadows Shall Speak“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LARES — “GREY HAZE”

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May 052020
 

 

Berlin-based Lares made a striking first impression with their 2017 debut release, Mask of Discomfort. Induced to explore it by a description that recommended the music “for people who like dark doomy and sludgy riffs with a touch of black metal covered in clouds of psychedelics”, what we found was a big juggernaut of sound that took us on a hellish road trip, with slower detours that were both staggeringly crushing and nightmarishly hallucinatory, and the music proved to be melodically memorable as well.

We’re told that since then Lares embarked on a new path of evolution that began in late 2018 with the formation of their current lineup, and that path led them to the creation of a new album named Towards Nothingness (adorned by the distinctive artwork of the great Polish painter Mariusz Lewandowski), and to a partnership with Argonauta Records, who will release the record on June 20th.

We have been eager to learn where the journey of Lares has taken them, and now we can share with you a signpost, a stunning first track from Towards Nothingness entitled “Grey Haze“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MEAN MESSIAH — “DIVINE TECHNOLOGY”

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May 042020
 

 

Mean Messiah‘s new album Divine Technology is over-the-top in nearly every way, from the full-tilt but machine-precise drum obliteration to the soaring vocal harmonies, from the riotously dismantling grooves to the swarming guitar savagery, from the sweeping symphonic layers to the vast panoply of unhinged vocal extremity. It’s a combination of theatrical spectacle and industrial-strength demolition job which at various times brings to mind Strapping Young Lad, Devon Townsend‘s The Retinal Circus, Fear Factory, latter-day Dimmu, Yes, and even Aborted.

The thing is, this Czech trio (who sound like their line-up is a 100-strong army) throw caution to the winds in a way that makes their explosive energy contagious. They revel in their bombastic excess, packing as much as they can into each of these seven tracks, bound and determined to leave their audience breathless, and with ruined necks and spinning heads, and it’s hard not to get caught up and carried away by both the sheer enthusiasm and the surgical execution.

Divine Technology will be released tomorrow (May 5th) by Slovak Metal Army, and we’ve got a full stream of the madness today, along with further notes about the experience. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VORGA — “CATARACT MIND”

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May 042020
 

 

The Germany-based multinational black metal band Vorga made a striking first impression with their February 2019 debut EP, Radiant Gloom. With a modern production approach that delivered the music with vibrant immediacy, razor-sharp clarity, and visceral power, the EP revealed a band capable of combining full-throttle ferocity, bone-bruising heaviness, and emotionally penetrating melodies with a sheen of cosmic mystery and menace but also well-shaded by the old northern darkness and a knack for revealing human frailty and resilience. Each song had its own character, and each one proved to be memorable (and if you haven’t heard it, get yourself here and do that).

Greeted with enthusiasm by both critics and fans alike, Radiant Gloom drew the attention of Transcending Obscurity Records, which signed Vorga for the release of their debut album, Striving Toward Oblivion. The disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic have delayed the album’s release to some indefinite date later this year, and so to bridge the gap Vorga decided to release a stand-alone single, which will not appear on the new album. Its name is “Cataract Mind“, and we are privileged to premiere it today as it becomes available for download on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONGS FROM “PRISONERS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM” — A SPLIT BY SATANATH AND STRIBORG

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May 042020
 

 

Today we are presenting two tracks from a split, one by each band. They create a fascinating complement to each other. Both are mysterious, barely tethered to our material plane. Both of them are capable of provoking wonder, and both create trance-like reactions. But one is enlivened by a kind of eerie brightness, while the other is the stuff of nightmares.

That’s only one person’s impression, and you may take other sensations away from hearing them. But what’s undeniable is that both tracks nourish the imagination. The resulting visions will be highly personal to the listener, and maybe not even intersecting with the visions of the creators, but both are triggers for waking dreams.

The name of the split, almost 80 minutes in length, is Prisoners of the Solar System, and the participants are both one-person projects, Satanath from Russia and Striborg from Australia. All the songs are new. It will be released jointly by GrimmDistribution and Death Portal Studio on the 31st of May. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): IMPERCEPTUM — “ENTITY OF UNDEAD STARS”

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May 012020
 

 

So far, the German band Imperceptum has released two EPs and four albums. We’ve reviewed nearly all of them. At the risk of oversimplifying the experience of these releases, its creator (who calls himself Void) combines elements of atmospheric black metal, funeral doom, ambient music, and post-metal to create long, void-faring journeys that are both terrifying and beautiful.

To borrow again from what I’ve written elsewhere, the richly textured music moves from immense hurricanes of cataclysmic fury to slower, earth-shattering, and crushingly bleak expositions of doom, to illuminating drifts through astral planes or across the yawning maw of deep space. Sweeping and soaring movements of vast and alien grandeur are juxtaposed against harrowing, blood-freezing storms of shock and awe. All of the releases are immersive; the songs are long, but the spells they weave, both nightmarish and sublime, make the minutes seem to pass without any consciousness that time is passing.

And now Imperceptum is releasing another album, and we again are in the fortunate position of presenting it on the day of its release (a good day, because Bandcamp is once again foregoing its revenue share for purchases made today). This new album is entitled Entity of Undead Stars. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HVILE I KAOS — “RISE, ENGULF, ENVENOM”

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May 012020
 

 

The California-based cellist and composer Kakophonix has contributed his prodigious talents as a session musician to a long list of diverse bands, including Abigail Williams, Chrome Waves, Astralborne, Nòtt, and Grave Gnosis, in addition to performing in previous years as a member of Empyrean Throne (to name but a few of his credits). But it is his personal project Hvile I Kaos (“Rest In Chaos” in Norwegian) that has served as the central focus for his individual artistic trajectory and spiritual practice.

Variously described as “Black Ritual Chamber Musick” and “Cellistic Black Metal”, it has been an evolving vehicle for translating spiritual themes into sensory experiences that do have the atmosphere of rituals. We have previously described the music as “a version of spiritual black metal from an alternate dimension”, occupying “a space that is in between extreme metal and classical music, an abnormality in both worlds, creating a world of its own as it unfolds”.

The newest Hvile I Kaos release is a split EP named Never Without the Pentagram with the solo artist Emerson Sinclair, who has played violin with Hvile I Kaos in live performances over the last few years. Kakophonix tells us that the split EP “flows as a continuous work of ceremonial magick”, a ritual invocation in which Hvile I Kaos opens and closes the circle (and the record) and Emerson Sinclair‘s tracks fill in the middle. “Stylistically it’s best described as occult neoclassical with elements of black metal and electronic music.”

Never Without the Pentagram will be released on July 10th by Metal Assault, and today we are very pleased and very proud to present a video for “Rise, Engulf, Envenom“, the Hvile I Kaos piece that begins the split. In a word, the music is astonishing, and so is the imagery that accompanies it. Continue reading »

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