AN NCS PREMIERE: SINISTRAL KING — “SERPENT UNCOILING”

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Apr 072020
 

 

Sinistral King is a new formation that only began to take shape in 2018, but its members are not newcomers to the dark musical arts of death and black metal which form the backbone of this new band’s music, because Sinistral King‘s line-up features members of Unlight (Germany), Triumph of Death (Swizterland), and Vredehammer (Norway). But while each of the members brought their own experiences and influences to this new endeavor, they have not been confined by them, but have also integrated other stylistic ingredients into their songwriting and execution, which is richly displayed on their debut album, Serpent Uncoiling.

This new record consists of five significant tracks, each of which creates dramatic contrasts yet also draws all the differing movements together in unifying ways that manifest pitch-black occult darkness. Their success in doing so is vividly displayed by the album’s title track, which we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s release by Vendetta Records on April 24th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE PROJECTIONIST — “A STARTLING HOUSECALL”

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Apr 062020
 

 

Many fans of black metal, or other other metal genres, have heard descriptive references to music within such genres as “theatrical”, an adjective that may connote a sense of the dramatic, of the elaborate, or perhaps of the grandiose and bombastic. But   Canada’s The Projectionist has elevated their formulation of black metal to a level that literally is theatrical.

The band’s forthcoming fifth album, The Stench of Amalthia, is a full-concept operetta which tells a horrifying story, making use of an array of voices to play the characters in the nightmarish tale the band have crafted, and all of it destined for the kind of full theatrical stage performance for which The Projectionist have already become known.

In advance of the album’s release by Moribund Records on April 17th, today we’re presenting a track that occupies a pivotal place in the record’s fiendishly conceived narrative. You could listen to and appreciate “A Startling Housecall” without knowing anything about the scene it portrays or the album’s narrative as a whole, but this is an instance of music that really requires context. And so let’s begin with a description of the album’s story, and of what happens in this scene in particular. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANCIENT BURIAL — “INTO THE LAND OF DEATH”

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Apr 062020
 

 

Little is known about Ancient Burial. The line-up is anonymous, though rumor has it that it may include members of other better-known formations, and their unearthly renderings of raw black metal would draw comparisons to the music of the Portuguese Black Circle (whose bands we’ve paid significant attention to over the years). Perhaps more will be revealed in time, but for now what we have — or rather, will have on May 1st via the Signal Rex label — is Ancient Burial‘s debut album Beyond the Watchtowers.

Below you’ll find streams of the first two tracks revealed from the album, one that has been previously disclosed and one that we’re premiering today. Neither of them will have mass appeal. Both of them are sadistically abrasive and well-calculated to create sensations of terror and devastation, of infernal possession, and of other-dimensional eeriness and mortal threat. They are also perversely enthralling, capable of plunging at least some listeners into the same wicked state of possession and violent trance that seems to have overcome the performers. Other listeners will cower in corners or run for the hills Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SKARZ — “KIND OF GOD”

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Apr 052020
 

 

For most of us time is no longer like a methodically ticking clock, the days no longer marked by the calendar or the forward motion from one scheduled routine to the next. Instead it’s like a disorienting fog, the days running into each other, each one like the one before and the one after, to the point where it’s easy to forget what day it is, or what the point is — other than to stay away from other people. The calendar says today is a Sunday, but it might as well be a Monday or a Friday. So why not have a premiere today?

The one we have is a skin-shivering track named “Kind of God” from the Greek death metal band Skarz off their debut album What Remains, which is set for release on April 21st by the triumvirate of Satanath Records, More Hate Productions, and Exhumed Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORDER OF ORIAS — “RAGING IDOLS”

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Apr 032020
 

 

The vision of the cover art for the long-awaited new album by Australia’s Order of Orias would have demanded our attention, wholly apart from the lasting memories of their tremendous contribution to a split with Aosoth in 2015 and their 2011 debut album Inverse. It would have fit well in our long-defunct series “Eye-Catchers”, in which visual art alone was the basis for investigating new music.

In this instance, however, it was the opportunity to premiere a song from Ablaze in advance of its April 30 release by W.T.C. Productions that provided the occasion for investigation, and that song alone proves that the five-year wait for new music from this talented black metal duo has been richly rewarded. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HENRY KANE — “MY SWEET ESCAPE”

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Apr 022020
 

 

Given the usual volume of verbiage we unload in introducing premieres, there’s a better-than-even chance it would take you longer to read what we have to say than to listen to this new Henry Kane song. So, let’s speed things up:

Absolutemayhemnotimetobreathefullborepercussiveblastingandbatteringadensemassof
writhingmutilatingriffagehurtlingbassnotesunhingedhowlingvocalferocity!

Got that?

Okay, here’s “My Sweet Escape“: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE AND REVIEW: DEATH WHORE’S SELF-TITLED EP

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Apr 022020
 

 

“Imagine a cross between the brutalizing grooves of Y2K-era Metal Hardcore greats like Terror, Xibalba, Nails or Rotten Sound, and old school Swedish Death Metal breakneck riffing”. That’s part of the introduction that Death Whore gave us to their self-titled EP, along with references to Harm’s Way and Entombed. That description of the band’s amalgam of punishing hardcore and bone-mangling, neck-wrecking Swedish death metal punched all sorts of pleasure-center buttons in our brains, and then it turned out that the music fully lived up to the descriptions. And thus we were eager to help spread the word by premiering a full stream of the EP today, in advance of its April 10 release on CD and digital.

Death Whore rampage through seven tracks in 20 minutes, and every one of those compact brawlers is explosively destructive and propelled by the kind of feral and filthy savagery that will light a fire under your pulse rate. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ZAN — “HOUSE OF SPLENDOR”

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Apr 012020
 

 

Man, this video makes me so fucking nostalgic, amped-up by the memory of being in the midst of a packed crowd and in the presence of a band on stage kicking our adrenaline into collective overdrive, and longing for the day when that can happen again.

But beyond the intense nostalgia for happier times that this new video provokes, it’s also a tonic for all the other mental and emotional ailments many of us are experiencing these days, because both this new song by Zan and the way they kick it out in the film of this live performance is exhilarating on a bunch of different levels. That song, “House of Splendor“, is the kind of thing that does indeed transform a shoulder-to-shoulder venue into a house of raucous splendor. It comes from Zan’s new album Behold the Key, which was just released last Friday by Blackhouse Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASTARIUM — “SNOW STORM”

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Apr 012020
 

 

If you’re unfamiliar with Astarium’s creative impulses, the name of the song we’re premiering in this post may mislead you. Coming from a black metal band whose music is often characterized as “symphonic and ambient BM”, the name “Snow Storm” might make you expect one thing, and you might find something else instead — something much more intriguing and alluring than what you might expect. And we’ll say further that those characterizations of Astarium’s music as “symphonic black metal” (which you will see on Metal-Archives, among other places) may also prove to be a bit of a mis-direction, at least in the case of Astarium’s new album.

But before explaining what we mean, we should note that the name of the new album is Hyperborea, and it will be co-released on April 18th by GrimmDistribution (Ukraine) and Gravações Tunguska (Portugal). It is the eighth album since 2008 by this one-man project from Novosibirsk, Russia, and (we are informed) it was inspired by “the sagas of northern lands about honor and valor, about blood and revenge, about beauty and gloom, about glory and dishonor”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GUERRA TOTAL — “BATTLE OF YPRES”

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Mar 312020
 

 

In October 1914, near the Belgian city of Ypres, Allied and German forces begin the first of what would be a series of battles to control that ancient Flemish city and its strategically important location. Fighting continued, with stunning losses on both sides, until November 22, when the arrival of winter weather forced the battle to a halt. In that first battle alone, more than 250,000 combatants lost their lives, and the bloodbath would continue in the following spring and subsequent years.

The intensity of that conflict and the almost unimaginable scale and senselessness of the slaughter has inspired many metal bands in the past. As the song we’re presenting today proves, it has also inspired the Colombian band Guerra Total, whose name means “total war” in Spanish, and who themselves come from a country that has been home to one of the longest armed conflicts in the world. The band’s new album, their ninth release in a career that began in 1997, is a concept album about Death managing humanity, using war as its own benefit.

Entitled War Is The Pursuit Of Death: A Hymnal For The Misanthrope, it will be co-released on April 17th by Satanath Records (Russia) with Iron, Blood And Death Corporation (Mexico), and today we’re presenting the second track on the record, “Battle of Ypres“. Continue reading »

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