AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PITCHBLACK — “THE WORLD IS MINE”

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Aug 212020
 

 

That’s quite an arresting image up there, isn’t it? It’s the cover art accompanying Death & Disbelief, the forthcoming third album by the Danish band Pitchblack, which is set for release on October 23rd by Emanzipation Productions. The music turns out to be quite arresting too, as already demonstrated by a single from the album named “The World Is Mine“.

That single was released two weeks ago, but one good turn deserves another, and so today we’re premiering a lyric video for the same song. If you missed the single’s release, the video will give you the chance to discover the kind of hard-charging, ferocious, hook-filled melodic death metal that Pitchblack serve up on this newest full-length. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INDOCTRINATE — “FORBIDDEN RITES OF FERTILITY”

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Aug 202020
 

 

The Chilean black/death band Indoctrinate are making their recording debut in September, but are not newcomers to the realms of extreme musical mayhem. Indoctrinate is instead a new slaughtering vehicle for two former members of the now-defunct Sadistik Goathammer (they are also bandmates in Henosis), whose mission was to carry forward the lineage of such bestial rampagers as Sarcofago, Mystifier, Abhorer, Parabellum, Blasphemy, and Conqueror.

Indoctrinate haven’t abandoned those roots, but as you’ll discover through the song we’re premiering today, they’ve leavened their attacks of primitive barbarism with other ingredients that give the music an even more primal and carnal appeal as well as a frightening paranormal aura.

As a harbinger of those sensations, the name of Indoctrinate‘s debut album, which will be released by Unholy Prophecies, is Antilogos: Arcane Transmutation in the Temple of Flesh. And the song we present today is “Forbidden Rites of Fertility“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SENSORY AMUSIA — “BEREAVEMENT”

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Aug 202020
 

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen (and everyone else out there), lend us your ears… for a bit more than 17 minutes. That is how long it will take for Sensory Amusia (who hail from Perth rather than Rome) to run you through the gauntlet of their new EP, Bereavement. That title may suggest a doom-y, tear-stained experience, but the only tears to be shed will be from those who manage to survive this death metal meat-threshing machine.

A dismal guitar arpeggio backed by the sounds of a drenching and thunder-cracked storm begins to set the mood before the real storm breaks in the EP’s introductory track — a storm of blasting drums, rapidly raking riffage, and mercilessly pulverizing groove. And what comes next are four tracks of death metal chaos interwoven with influences of tech-death, hardcore, and grind. It’s our sadistic pleasure to present a full stream of the EP now, on the day of its release by Lacerated Enemy Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHROME WAVES — “NEW SKIN”

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Aug 182020
 

 

The Chrome Waves song we’re presenting here has multiple meanings, some intended and perhaps one that’s merely a relevant coincidence. As for the intended meanings, the band’s James Benson (also in Amiensus) explains:

“‘New Skin‘ is quite literally about shedding away your past, and the growth of humans as they begin to learn. It pertains to the way someone is raised is not always the worldview of the entire population of the country, or world. However it also addresses recognizing that there is some type of comfort in going back to how you were raised, and the worldview you grew up around, or the culture.”

That conception is a kind of dichotomy: The process of maturation inevitably involves, to greater and lesser degrees, shedding the skin of where we came from and who we were, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. If we’re lucky, we continue to slough away bad habits and bad memories and allow ourselves to become new, but sometimes we lose good things as well. Especially in godawful times, what we’ve left behind can sometimes be worth re-discovering. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONSUMPTION — “FERMENTED TISSUE”

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Aug 182020
 

 

Håkan Stuvemark and Jon Skäre are ever-busy men. Stuvemark’s list of active bands includes Wombbath, Skineater, Reek, Pale King, PermaDeath, and Rex Demonus, each one of them providing a different kind of outlet for his musical proclivities. Skäre has been a fixture in Defiatory and Wachenfeldt, in addition to joining Stuvemark in many of those projects just mentioned. But now the two can add one more project to their resumes, because they’ve joined forced to create Consumption.

This new band, in which Stuvemark performs vocals, guitars, and bass, and Skäre is of course behind the kit, was created under the influence of early ’90s Carcass and some old Finnish death metal bands, most prominently Disgrace. Their debut album is named Recursive Definitions Of Suppuration, and it’s our horrid pleasure to share with you today the opening cut, “Fermented Tissue“, in advance of the album’s September 15 release by Iron Blood and Death Corporation. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOLDEN BATS — “VIII”

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Aug 182020
 

 

I was about six years late in discovering Golden Bats, a one-man band then based in Brisbane but now ensconced in Rome. I climbed aboard this musical sludge/doom juggernaut in 2017 after the release of the Superplateau EP and then hung on for dear life through the band’s 2018 debut album Residual Dread and a 2019 EP entitled VII, reviewing all of them.

In the recording session that produced Residual Dread, the original plan was to track material for both an album and an EP. But the songs chosen for the album changed once they were all recorded, as some fit better together, so the EP changed as well. And it’s that EP — named VIII — that’s finally being released today, with this premiere as a way of helping spread the word. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZED DESTRUCTIVE — “RAPED EXISTENCE”

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Aug 182020
 

 

The Israeli band Zed Destructive shares the name of its founder, who is the vocalist of Winterhorde and the former lead guitarist of Thokkian Vortex. He started the band in 2017 after leaving Thokkian Vortex and began working on music with former Thokkian Vortex drummer Ariel Lior. In time Dani White joined the band as second guitarist, and Daniel Kitchka rounded out the group as its bassist.

Their first record is an album named Corroded By Darkness, which will be jointly released on August 31st by Satanath Records‘ label-partner GrimmDistribution (Ukraine) and Wings Of Destruction (Russia). In the music there are occasional hints of Winterhorde’s air of theatrical drama, but don’t go thinking that Zed Destructive is Winterhorde by a different name, because the music here is a distinctive experience that stands apart, a hybrid of death and black metal that rightly led the releasing labels to recommend it for fans of Deicide, Death, Behemoth, Dissection, Gorgoroth, Marduk, and Dark Funeral. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WOODED MEMORY — “MY SECRET HORROR”

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Aug 142020
 

 

What will become of us when we die? Merely the eventual reunion of our bodies with the earth? Or will we also leave a residue of memories in the minds of those who survive us? What kind of memories will those be? And when we take our last stumbling steps, what memories of our own will we seek out as most dear?

The video we present today, which has the aesthetic of a silent movie, seems to be a meditation on such questions (and more), seen through the eyes of a person on a solitary walk through brambled woods to their death. With little time remaining they search out a place to relive a beautiful moment.

The words and scenes in the video make for a haunting complement to the music, but it’s the spell of the music that is most arresting. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: APHONIC THRENODY — “DROWNING”

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Aug 132020
 

 

We all have metal bands whom we consider good old friends, not because we’ve ever met or even communicated with their members but because we’ve lived with their music for such a long time, without ever being disappointed by their work, and often associating it with signal events and powerful moods in our own lives. And so when we “meet” them again through a new release, the feelings are akin to a happy reunion. For this writer, Aphonic Threnody are one of those bands — even though happiness is almost always a foreign concept in their music.

I’ve been following and writing about this funeral doom/death band since 2011 when I came across their debut EP First Funeral, and have closely tracked their movements ever since. Their newest work is a full-length named The Great Hatred that becomes the third album in their discography. It’s set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on October 16, and we’re in the fortunate position of hosting the premiere of the album’s third advance track, “Drowning“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABYSSAL ASCENDANT — “MARTYRS OF MORDIGGIAN”

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Aug 132020
 

 

“Abyssal Ascendant’s death metal is inspired by the Cthulhu mythos. Some bands who claim a similar Lovecraftian muse create music that’s turgid and murky, but Abyssal Ascendant fly like turbocharged bats, lacing the music with speedy riffs, writhing creepy melodies, and an abundance of machine-gun drumming. The vocals, as you might expect, are convincingly ravenous.”

Those are among the words we wrote here five years ago after encountering music from this French band’s debut album, Chronicles of the Doomed Worlds – Part. I: Enlightenment from Beyond, which was released by Dolorem Records with album art by Daniele Lupidi. And now, at last, Abyssal Ascendant are returning to our world from the realms of The Great Old Ones with their second album.

The new record is named Chronicles of the Doomed Worlds – Part. II : Deacons of Abhorrence, and it will be released by the same Dolorem Records on October 9th, again accompanied by the striking artistic handiwork of Daniele Lupidi. From that album, it’s our ghoulish pleasure to premiere a track named “Martyrs of Mordiggian“. Continue reading »

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