AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HELIOSS — “LA LÈPRE DES HOMMES”

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Mar 162020
 

 

The creative fires of the French band Helioss continue to burn as bright as their namesake. Three years after their third album Antumbra, they now return with a new full-length, Devenir Le Soleil, set for release on April 23rd by their new labels Satanth Records and Mourning Light Records. Once again, Helioss mastermind Nicolas Muller is at the helm, joined again by vocalist D.M., but this time also aided by an extravagant array of guest performers, as well as by a live drummer — the very talented Mikko Koskinen (Nullentropy, The Lifted Veil, Proscription).

Musically, Helioss continue to embroider their strongly evocative music with classical orchestration, black metal, death metal, and progressive instrumental flourishes, and today, accompanied by a lyric video, we present a richly textured and kaleidoscopic track that displays all these ingredients in changing shades of darkness and blazing brilliance. Its name is “La Lèpre Des Hommes“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SHATTER BRAIN — “TALK IN FEAR”

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Mar 162020
 

 

Is it possible on this day after the Ides of March for me to introduce a premiere without mentioning the coronavirus? Theoretically, I suppose so. In practice, no way, especially when the band’s name is Shatter Brain and their song is “Talk In Fear“.

My brain is feeling pretty shattered at the moment, and there sure as hell is a lot of fearful talk going on. Social activity is shutting down at an increasingly accelerating rate, bars and restaurants are being closed down by government order or because the customers have vanished, service employees are being pitched out of work right and left, hoarders are looting market shelves, health care is teetering on the brink… it’s a shitty situation all the way around.

And that’s why this song is such a welcome tonic — virally infectious, head-busting music for viral, brain-shattering times. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOROTH — “SHADOW, MY PATRIARCH”

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Mar 132020
 

 

For decades Seattle has been a spawning ground for a broad array of extreme metal bands who have left their mark on every sub-genre. And now it has given birth to a true monstrosity, a mutilating beast mid-wifed in a sepulchral charnel pit by the muses of death and doom. This mysterious three-headed entity is known as Noroth, and none other than Caligari Records is poised to release their horrifying debut album, It Dwells Amongst Us, on April 10th.

We had a chance to sample some of Noroth’s music and reached out to offer our own putrid catacombs as a home for a track premiere, and it is with fiendish pleasure that we do that now, presenting the album’s opening song, “Shadow, My Patriarch“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TEMPLE OF VOID — “CEREMORPHOSIS”

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Mar 132020
 

 

As we’ve been reminding you for the last three days in a row, on March 16th Unspeakable Axe Records will deliver a spectacular split release that harnesses the talents of four hellaciously good death metal bands. The last time Unspeakable Axe did something like this was in 2016, when 4 Doors To Death brought together tracks by Cemetery Filth, Ectovoid, Sabbatory, and TrenchRot (check that one out over here if you haven’t already). This time, under the title 4 Doors To Death vol. II, the label is presenting a combination of 12 original new tracks by Nucleus, Ectoplasma, Fetid Zombie, and Temple of Void, amounting to a solid hour of ferocious and frightful metal.

Three days ago we began the roll-out of one track from the split by each of these four bands — one per day. If you haven’t checked out the Nucleus track we brought you on Tuesday, the Ectoplasma song we revealed on Wednesday, or the Fetid Zombie song we premiered yesterday, do that here, here, and here.

And now the time has come to wrap up this series with a song by the fourth band on this split, the Detroit doom-death titans Temple of Void. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: XPUS — “THE GATES OF DOOM”

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Mar 132020
 

 

Roughly four and a half years after the release of their debut album Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth, the Italian death metal band Xpus are rising up again from their dank and poisonous catacombs to deliver a blasphemous new portrayal of discord and death. Their new album In Umbra Mortis Sedent draws upon sinister and slaughtering old-school traditions established through the wickedness of such bands as Morbid Angel, Deicide, Incantation, and Sinister, but Xpus have used these antecedents as foundations for putting their own distinctive mark in the annals of death metal with a black and heavy hand.

Compared to their first record, the new album reveals a significant advance in songcraft and execution. For want of a better word, the music sounds “immense”, not merely in the ravishing power of the sound but also in the harrowing atmosphere of looming supernatural menace and terrifying savagery that it creates. It’s tempting to use the word “majestic” to characterize these pitch-black sensations, but if there is a throne in sight within the band’s creations, it’s an edifice of skulls brutally severed from the spines of the tortured. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AKURION — “BEDSORES TO THE BONE”

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Mar 122020
 

 

(We welcome back our old friend and former NCS writer Austin Weber, who introduces our premiere of a song from the forthcoming debut album by the formidable death metal band Akurion, as well as a bass-and-guitar playthrough video for the track featuring performances by Rob Milley and Oli Pinard.)

After many years in development, the upcoming debut album Come Forth to Me by Montreal-based death metal supergroup Akurion is finally nearing its release. The album will officially drop on Friday, April 10th, via Redefining Darkness Records.

Although I’ve already helped with a premiere for Akurion — “Year of the Long Pig” at Metal Injection — once it came to my attention that certain premiere partners fell through for today’s item, I felt a need to step in and make the official launch of “Bedsores to the Bone” happen on time.

Akurion has an immediate appeal to me as an uber death metal nerd due to its member’s multi-decade lineage spent playing in Cryptopsy, Cattle Decapitation, Neuraxis, Coma Cluster Void, and many more. That in and of itself is impressive, but honestly wouldn’t mean a lot if the current project we’re highlighting didn’t rule, but Akurion does indeed kick a tremendous amount of ass. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SEVENSINS — “IN A GROVE OF DANCING BIRCHES”

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Mar 122020
 

 

 

This marks the second appearance of the Kazakh band SevenSins at our putrid humble site. The first occasion was an enthusiastic review by our long lost friend Gorger of their second album, 2016’s Due Diaboli et Apocalypse. That record revealed a shift in the band’s musical style to a sound that Gorger described as “gentle, melodic, and grandiose symphonic extreme metal, with local seasoning,” integrating metal and symphony in ways that drew “inspiration from classical music, film score, and folk music,” and fluctuated “between waltz and epic drama, with elements of, amongst others, gothic, primitive, and occult undertones”.

With changes in their recording line-up, SevenSins are now returning with a third full-length, to be released on April 19th by Satanath Records (Russia) and Murdher Records (Italy). Its name is Legends Of Kazakhstan, and once again SevenSins have made significant changes in their sound. As one clue, the releasing labels recommend it for fans of Dark Funeral and Watain. As another clue, today we’re introducing a song from the album called “In A Grove of Dancing Birches“, accompanied by a lyric video that creatively displays the words in the band’s native tongue. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ECTOPLASMA — “INFESTATION OF THE EXTRANEOUS ONES”

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Mar 112020
 

 

On March 16th Unspeakable Axe Records will deliver a spectacular split release that harnesses the talents of four hellaciously good death metal bands. The last time Unspeakable Axe did something like this was in 2016, when 4 Doors To Death brought together tracks by Cemetery Filth, Ectovoid, Sabbatory, and TrenchRot (if you haven’t checked that one out, get your ass over here and do it). This time, under the title 4 Doors To Death vol. II, the label is presenting a combination of 12 original new tracks by Nucleus, Ectoplasma, Fetid Zombie, and Temple of Void, amounting to a solid hour of ferocious metal.

Yesterday we began the roll-out of one track from the split by each of these four bands — one per day from now through the end of this week. If you haven’t checked out the Nucleus track we brought you yesterday, what the hell are you waiting for? Do that here. And then scurry right back to this page to take in the mutilating marvels of the song we’re presenting today — “Infestation of the Extraneous Ones” by the Greek death metal band Ectoplasma. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SUNKEN STATE — “THIS IS THE END”

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Mar 102020
 

 

Rage powers great swaths of extreme metal, almost all of it directed toward scum-ridden sectors of humanity, and in some cases to humanity as a whole. Given how royally screwed up the world is, fury is an endless source of fuel — mostly carbon-neutral fuel, except when it reaches the point of wanting to burn everything to the ground and start over.

High-octane rage overflows in the new single by South Africa’s Sunken State that we’re premiering today through a lyric video, and although the murderous impulses channeled through the song seem to be limited to pulling out eyes and leaving the scum to rot and decay, the music is highly combustible. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NUCLEUS — “REPLICANT”

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Mar 102020
 

 

On March 16th Unspeakable Axe Records will deliver a spectacular split release that harnesses the talents of four hellaciously good death metal bands. The last time Unspeakable Axe did something like this was in 2016, when 4 Doors To Death brought together tracks by Cemetery Filth, Ectovoid, Sabbatory, and TrenchRot (if you haven’t checked that one out, get your ass over here and do it). This time, under the title 4 Doors To Death vol. II, the label is presenting a combination of 12 original new tracks by Nucleus, Ectoplasma, Fetid Zombie, and Temple of Void, amounting to a solid hour of ferocious metal.

Today we’re beginning the roll-out of one track from the split by each of these four bands — one per day from now through the end of this week. By then we fully expect you’ll be salivating over this release, though honestly, it shouldn’t take more than today’s song from Nucleus to get the slobber flowing. Continue reading »

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