AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AARA — “EN ERGÔ EINAI”

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Mar 232020
 

 

About six weeks ago, when the world was a very different place than today, we had the privilege of premiering a song from En Ergô Einai, the remarkable new album by the unconventional Swiss black metal band AARA. Some of what we wrote then bears repeating today, when we now get to bring you a stream of the entire album in advance of its April 3 release by Debemur Morti Productions.

In the first place, the album draws inspiration from the Age of Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe, and “serves as a tribute to the duality in man’s pursuit of perfection and the futility found therein.” With the album’s opening song “Arkanum” as the immediate context at the time of our previous premiere, we shared these words from the band: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MEMBARIS — “MISANTHROSOPHIE”

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Mar 202020
 

 

On March 24th W.T.C. Productions will release the long-awaited fifth album by the German black metal band Membaris. Eight years is indeed a long time in between records, and that’s how much time has elapsed since their last one, Entartet. But holy hell, the return they have made with Misanthrosophie is nothing short of spectacular.

To crib from some of the many words to follow in an introductory review, there is a theatrical quality to the album as a whole, like a fantastical Baroque pageant that seems to put the richness of humanity, in all its wildly swinging emotions — its madness and its never-ending grief, its joy and absurdity, its soulful poignancy and heedless cruelty — onto a grand stage. And to do this Membaris have seamlessly incorporated a wide range of musical styles across many decades, from both metal and rock, into their thorned framework of black metal. Every song holds wondrous surprises and thrilling experiences, every one of them fueled with undeniable passion and executed with tremendous skill. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOCTU — “ISOLATO DA UN MONDO SENZA SPERANZA”

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Mar 202020
 

 

Settle in. Prepare to lose yourself, to be excavated from the inside out and left in terrible emptiness, with a thousand-yard stare, shivering with the affliction of ghosts.

The song we’re presenting is 32 minutes long, far less than the flight-time to Jupiter’s moons or a journey to the entrance of Hades (either of which might be the source of these sounds), but long enough to sink you deeply into the chilling visions of Noctu, to the point of no return.

The song is “Isolato Da Un Mondo Senza Speranza” — which eerily suits the current day, as its English translation is “Isolated From A World Without Hope”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AVERSIO HUMANITATIS — “THE WANDERER OF ABSTRACT PATHS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 202020
 

 

Within the ever-expanding realms of black metal there are bands who will always be content to follow the old, well-trod paths, from the grim sounds of cold northern darkness to the vicious, thrusting revels that are fueled by hate and inspired by the worship of demons.

But there are others whose ambitions are greater, who seem to extend their reach toward vistas beyond our time and outside our tangible plane of existence, who seek to manifest visions that can’t be put into words, to channel forces beyond our normal perceptions, and to up-end the minds of listeners at the same time. To be sure, this kind of music may also be spawned by disgust for humankind and hatred for the chains with which some bind others, or with which we bind ourselves. But the music seeks not only to capture the dystopian terrors brought about by our own deeply flawed natures but also to cast off and transcend such imprisonments.

Which brings us to the new album by Aversio Humanitatis, and the song from the album we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SKAM — “SHIT OUT OF LUCK”

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Mar 192020
 

 

This is not a scam. It is Skam, a one-man Swedish band whose name (we’re told) means “great dishonor, shame, or humiliation”. It is (we’re further told) “an act of catharsis through music” whose “main purpose is the releasing of stress while lamenting the world’s declining mental health and the obscene amount of suicides caused by it”.

This is not idle talk, because the band and their label Redefining Darkness Records are making digital copies of Skam‘s album Sounds Of A Disease available for $1.00 “as a means of therapy for those who may benefit from it”. And upon the album’s April 3rd release date the digital version will be free.

The characterization of the music as “an act of catharsis” isn’t idle talk either. As a means of exorcising your own demons, this amalgamation of grindcore and death metal (with influences from d-beat punk) is absolutely explosive, as you’ll discover through today’s premiere of a track called “Shit Out of Luck“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RAIDER — “GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE”

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Mar 182020
 

 

Straight out of Waterloo, Ontario comes the ferocious death/thrashing band Raider, who in very short order have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, with nitroglycerine in their veins, demons in their heads, and the kind of machine precision in their execution that only makes their mayhem more electrifying.

They popped a lot of eyes wide open with their 2018 demo, Urge to Kill, and opened more eyes when they followed that with festival appearances at Hamilton Deathfest, Guelph Deathfest, and Kitchener Metalfest. What they’ve now done, however, is even more explosive. We’re talking about their debut album, Guardian of the Fire, which will be released on March 20th. The singles released so far from the album have already generated a lot of excitement, but now we’ve got the full thrill-ride for you as we premiere a stream of the entire record. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DESCEND TO ACHERON — “YOUR SUFFERING IS A GIFT”

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Mar 182020
 

 

Tirades within extreme metal against the victimization of the poor by religious figures aren’t new, but the song by Australia’s Descent To Acheron that we’re about to premiere through a lyric video is an especially fierce discharge of disgust and rage. In this track, “Your Suffering Is A Gift“, their subject is Mother Theresa, who was canonized by the Catholic Church but who has also been condemned for promoting “a cult of suffering” that glorified illness instead of treating it.

But in addition to venting fury with supercharged power and blazing speed, the song is an especially riveting experience because it turns out to be so surprisingly multi-faceted — and it provides a great introduction to this Adelaide band’s crushing debut EP, The Transience of Flesh. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DISINTER — “DEMOLITION OF THE MIND”

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Mar 182020
 

 

Explosive madness and electrifying mayhem! That’s what we’re about to hurl you into. It will feel like having a live power line jammed like a spike straight into your neck while demons furiously beat you with lengths of rebar steel and a maniac howls into your face. And the experience will seem all the more amazing when you realize that such full-throttle ferocity is coming from a band who first came together 30 years ago.

That band is Chicago’s Disinter, who released five albums and a handful of shorter releases from 1991 through 2006 and then fell silent for a decade before returning in 2016 with the Made in Iron EP. Now they have a new release coming our way via Pest Records (an affiliate of Loud Rage Music). Its name is Demolition Red, and today we’re premiering a lyric video for a digital single from that record, the name of which is “Demolition of the Mind“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SETOML — “THE SHADOWS PATH”

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Mar 172020
 

 

We are told that Setoml was the ancient name of a river that flowed into the Pochayna River in Kyiv city, Ukraine. Mentioned in chronicles that date back to the 11th and 12th centuries, it was the resting place of parts of an army of the Turkic Pechenegs who were defeated in 1036 by Yaroslav The Wise and drowned beneath its waters.

Setoml is also the name chosen by a new two-man Ukrainian melodic black metal band, formed by Semenenko Anton (known as one-man project Luna) and Krivoviaz Serge (founder, vocalist, guitarist of I Miss My Death). In Setoml, Anton is the composer of all songs and performer of all instruments, while Serge is the lyricist/vocalist. Their debut album Reincarnation (“Перевтілення”) will be co-released on April 24th by Satanath Records (Russia) and Kryrart Records (Germany).

The song we’re presenting today, “The Shadows Path (Шлях тiней)“, is the track that closes the album. And like all the other tracks, it explores the reincarnation of the soul after death, the symbol of which is the night butterfly. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WASTEWALKER — “VENGEANCE OF THE LOWBORN”

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Mar 172020
 

 

Back in 2016 we gave a lot of attention to the roll-out of tracks leading toward the release of Wastewalker’s debut album, Funeral Winds, culminating in a review by our own Andy Synn which praised the band for “blending a punishing backbone of deathly heaviness with an esoteric mix of unusual technical twists and fret-sparking leads.” And now this group of Sacramento stalwarts, whose line-up includes current or former members of Conducting From the Grave, Alterbeast, and The Odious Construct, have completed a new album. Entitled Lowborn, it’s set for release on May 12th.

So far, the band have released a lyric video for one song from the new album (“The Moth“), and today we’re presenting a second one — “Vengeance of the Lowborn“. Continue reading »

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