AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THROWING BRICKS — “READY TO FALL”

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May 012020
 

 

The video we’re presenting here is an arresting collage of images, of film and still photos and hallucinatory visual effects — decrepit structures falling apart and being reclaimed by nature; barren midnight alleys lit by flickering lights; forests bathed in day-glo colors; branches distorted on the surface of a pond; a sleeping woman becoming a plaything for giant shadow hands; x-rays; tombstones; spiders waiting in their webs; naked bodies spinning on their axis; parched earth; computer code… and the Dutch band Throwing Bricks throwing themselves into a performance.

The video is intense and unnerving, a head-trip and a mind-fuck. The music it accompanies, a song called “Ready To Fall“, is also intense and unnerving… indeed catastrophic… and yet in some ways dreamlike. It is, in the band’s words, “a song about the fear of loss. A theme that, sadly, gets more and more relevant every day. This video is based on this deprivation of humanity.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TØRONTO — “RIDE THE RAILS”

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Apr 302020
 

 

Are you feeling miserable? Anxious over the disease, depressed at being shut in, broke as fuck and wondering how May’s rent is going to be paid? Well, much as we’d like to give you the solution to all those ills, we can’t — except for the ailment of emotional misery. Right now, at least for about four minutes, we can blast those dismal demons into outer darkness. Or more accurately, the Swedish band Tøronto can do that — man, can they do that!

In naming their debut EP Under Siege, it’s almost as if Tøronto foresaw the current siege, and also foresaw exactly what would be needed to break the siege — eight bursts of high-voltage speed metal delivered with a raucous punk vitality, the kind of wild thrill-ride that their label’s publicist sums up as “greased-up NWOBHM colliding headlong into early Razor and Warfare, but overseen by Inepsy, mid ‘80s Discharge, and even Howard Benson-era Motörhead“.

If those references get you salivating, wait ’til you hear “Ride the Rails“, the song from Under Siege that we’re premiering today in advance of the record’s May 22 release by Dying Victims Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RANNOCH — “THE DREAM”

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Apr 292020
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote the following introduction to our premiere, in video form, of a song off the new album by the UK’s Rannoch, which is set for release on May 25th.)

Every band is, ultimately, the sum of their influences. But it’s what they choose to do with them that makes all the difference…

Some bands (I’m sure we can all name a few) have built their entire careers out of essentially just imitating one or two key influences as best they can. Whereas others seem to think that the key to success lies in mushing together as many different influences as possible in the hopes that the resultant concoction of musical beige will be blandly appealing to a large enough number of people to guarantee their success.

But, thankfully, there are always going to be bands whose ambitions aim beyond these limited horizons. Bands who expect, and demand, more from themselves, and their music, and who seek to use what they take from their influences, however much or however little, as a foundation upon which to build something all their own.

And it’s these ambitions which drive Reflections Upon Darkness, the upcoming new album from Prog-Death alchemists Rannoch, whose first single, “The Dream”, we’re both pleased and proud to present to you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HINTERKAIFECK — “INCORRIGIBLE”

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Apr 292020
 

 

Hinterkaifeck‘s first release, a 2019 Live Promo Tape, drew significant attention in the most diseased bowels of the underground, perhaps especially because it was such a completely unhinged and so thoroughly abrasive assault on the senses that it left deep scars on the mind. As a sonic manifestation of maniacal depravity and plague-stricken degradation, it was a horrifying scourge, but one that managed to connect powerfully to the primitive flight-or-fight instincts of those who survived the running of its gauntlet.

It also had a potent cathartic effect, operating as a toxin that both sounded like, and provoked, a vomiting up of furious frustration, bitter bile, and venomous hate. That struck a chord, and struck it hard enough and widely enough that the first press of that live promo tape quickly sold out, and those copies have since then been eating their way through whatever structures tried to hold them in our squalid abodes, like the acid blood spilled by the xenomorph of Alien fame.

The news that this black metal duo from Brisbane, Australia, would be releasing a follow-on release was thus met, at least in these quarters, with a mixture of fear, disgust, and hunger. The second demo, named Kak, will be released on May 8th by Nihilistic Noise Propaganda. Today we’re joining with Cvlt Nation in helping spread the word by presenting one of the four new tracks, “Incorrigible“, which is plainly what Hinterkaifeck are. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZATYR — “HEART AND VISION”

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Apr 282020
 

 

Last September I came across a self-released, three-track digital EP, the first record of a new Swedish band named Zatyr. As a faithful homage to certain flavors of old-school heavy metal, and with clean singing dominating the vocals, it shouldn’t have made a positive impression on one whose tastes don’t normally lean in those directions, but Ornament of Proposition certainly did, and I wasted no time singing its praises here. At the end of that impulsive review I wrote:

“As for the music, it’s immediately infectious, and deliciously dynamic. The riffs are damned compulsive, the melodies are full of hooks, the soloing is fantastic, the rhythm section know what the hell they’re doing. It’s the kind of stuff that makes grown men lift their invisible oranges to the heavens. In short, Zatyr are a huge surprise, a bolt from the blue. It hardly seems possible this is their first release. I doubt it will take long for the word to spread and the fans to come thronging”.

That last line turned out to be an accurate prediction. Word has indeed spread, and it will spread further because on May 22nd Dying Victims Productions will release Zatyr’s eye-opening EP on noble vinyl, which will include not only the three original songs but a fourth track as a bonus — a track we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THECODONTION — “KENORLAND”

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Apr 282020
 

 

Today we are most fortunate and very pleased to help I, Voidhanger Records and Repose Records announce the debut album by the bass-driven black/death-metal prehistoric beast known as Thecodontion, which these two labels will jointly release on June 26th. That album, Supercontinent, has a fascinating conceptual focus, and the music (which has evolved from this Italian band’s previous releases) is equally fascinating, as you’ll begin to discover through our premiere of a song named “Kenorland“.

Concerning the album’s conceptual focus, it is a voyage through various stages of ancient Earth’s continental drift, from the earliest known supercontinent (“Vaalbara”) to the most recent one (“Pangaea”). We are told that the lyrics are based on extensive research into these formative phases of the world’s current geologic and geographical appearance, but also strive “for a certain vivid imagery, with poetic descriptions of ancient lifeforms populating the planet during the various geological eras, and cataclysmic events leading to the break up and collision of land-masses”. The album further includes four instrumental non-metal songs featuring short poems about “superoceans” — “enormous bodies of water which surrounded these continental assemblies”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAGE OF CREATION — “INTO NOWHERE II”

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Apr 282020
 

 

We are about to leap with glee off our well-trodden paths, leaving behind us our usual metal extremity, lured away by black magic into a strange (and for us, a largely unfamiliar) realm. The Russian sorcerers who have cast this spell of psychedelic black rock have named themselves Cage of Creation, and their most seductive incantations are now to be found within a new album named Into Nowhere II.

As the album’s title suggests, it is a sequel to their 2016 debut full-length Into Nowhere, the Roman-numeraled songs picking up where the last track of that one left off. And these are indeed masterful sorcerers, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin who will lead us dancing away, never to be seen again, or like Hansel and Gretel’s cannibalistic witch luring us with sweets into the oven, or like the Devil himself who invites us in charismatic commands to cavort around a midnight bonfire whose sulfurous fumes become deliciously aromatic to our bedazzled senses.

The album was first released digitally and on tape earlier this month by NEN Records, but on April 29th it will receive a CD release by Devoted Art Propaganda, which provides the occasion for today’s presentation of a complete album stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GABESTOK — “JEG SLÆBER”

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Apr 272020
 

 

The relatively new Danish label Strange Aeons Records is on a roll. After giving a vinyl release to a 2018 album by Poland’s Occultum, they’ve made a big move forward this year with the vinyl release of both the latest album by Horned Almighty (To Fathom the Master’s Grand Design) and the new EP by NyreDolk (Indebrændt), word of which seems to be spreading like wildfire among people I know. And now Strange Aeons is following that one with a new EP by the Danish band Gabestok.

As that list of band names would tell you, Strange Aeons has an affinity for black metal, and Gabestok are indeed a black metal band (though not, perhaps, in the conventionally understood sense). They’re part of what’s become known as the “Korpsånd circle”, a diverse group of DKBM bands who have rehearsed and recorded their releases at the venue/rehearsing space Mayhem in Copenhagen. Their debut album Tre (now sold out) was released last fall by Strange Aeons, and this new EP — På herrens brakmark — will be released on May 15th.

What we’ve got for you today is the premiere of a video for a track off the new EP named “Jeg slæber“, and both the sights and the sounds make for a hellishly good time. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MUR — “I SEE THROUGH STONES”

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Apr 242020
 

 

Get ready to witness one of the most stunning videos you’re likely to see this year, a rapidly changing panorama of reconstruction, deconstruction, and geometric juxtaposition in which the natural flow of time is up-ended. It is an ingenious, thrilling, and harrowing accompaniment to a song that also radiates all of those same qualities, and more. And it resonates with particular intensity in our current time, when everything we thought we knew about the world seems to be fracturing, to itself be deconstructing.

The song is “I See Through Stones“, and it appears on Brutalism, the first full-length by the French band Mur, whose six-person line-up includes former members of Today is the Day, Glorior Belli, Mass Hysteria, Comity, and Four Question Marks. The album was released last October by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions, and this video and song provide a terrific reminder of why it’s a record you should explore without delay if you haven’t already. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONCEIVED BY HATE — “DROWNED IN TOMB MOLD”

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Apr 232020
 

 

Four years after their second album, the Salvadoran band Conceived By Hate returns with another menacing and malignant full-length entitled Putrid Realms of the Occult. A nine-track release that’s as electrifying as it is monstrous, the album is now set for co-release on May 30th by Satanath Records (Russia) and Morbid Skull Records (El Salvador). Once again, the project’s mastermind Morbid is at the helm, performing guitars, bass, and vocals, and he is again joined by session drummer Iosif Najarro.

Having tweaked the production and growing even less tolerant of melody (and more focused on achieving a rabid sound), Conceived By Hate lashes together death metal, thrash, and black metal to create a musical juggernaut, but one that’s gruesome and horror-stricken as well as maniacally destructive. The song we’re premiering today, “Drowned In Tomb Mold“, is a riveting example of these features. Continue reading »

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