AN NCS PREMIERE: CURSE UPON A PRAYER — “HARAM”

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Mar 102020
 

 

In his review of Curse Upon A Prayer‘s last release, the 2018 EP The Three Woes, our writer Wil Cifer asserted that “hatred and darkness are two crucial components of black metal” and gave credit to this band for putting “every ounce of their hateful hearts” into that release, with an execution that was “razor-sharp and in a similar sonic zip code as Marduk and 1349“. Yet he also expressed the hope that they would take the opportunity on their next album “to explore a wider scale of dynamics”.

Now we will discover whether that wish has come to pass, because Curse Upon A Prayer have completed their third album, Infidel, which will be released by Saturnal Records on April 10th. Some things have not changed. As before, the band continue to direct the major force of their venom against Islam rather than the more commonplace target of Christianity (and really, why should any institutionalized religion be immune from the assault of blaspheming black metal?). As before, they show themselves capable of discharging music of gripping intensity with a balance of surgical precision and wild hostility. But have they chosen, to a greater degree, to leaven their breathtaking ferocity with other sensations this time?

The answer is yes, as you’ll discover through our premiere of a song from the album named “Haram“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CLOUDS — “EMPTY HEARTS”

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Mar 102020
 

 

Daniel Neagoe, the alter ego of Clouds, has explained that after the release of the 2018 album Dor he felt that the band had reached its inevitable consummation, and that nothing remained for him to say through Clouds. It was time to let it rest. And then one of life’s tragedies disrupted those plans.

In particular, Neagoe lost a parent to cancer, after first bearing witness to months of continuous torment. As he has written, seeing the fear, the panic, the pain, the delusions, and the helplessness of a parent, and the shame that comes to a loved one unable to take care of their most personal and private needs, is itself a terrible experience, made all the more frightening by the “the constant fear that one day they will close their eyes forever”. And of course, after struggling to be as much a comfort as possible, that fear became a reality for him.

This wrenching experience led to the rebirth of Clouds, and to the new album Durere, which was released on March 1st. It represents, in Neagoe’s words, “a part of a soul going out to another soul”. And that is what it sounds like, though the souls who may now receive and benefit from it still breathe. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “FATAL PUSH”

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Mar 092020
 

 

We know a thing or two about the music of Graveslave and we’ve seen a thing or two about their taste in videos. And no, we’re not selling property and casualty insurance — it’s death metal we’re peddling today, accompanied by a video that will bring smiles to many hardened faces.

Yes indeed, this isn’t the first time we’ve helped spread the music of this Minneapolis band to the soon-to-be-bruised masses. In 2017 we premiered their aptly titled debut album Sick/Nasty, which we summed up as a dynamic, body-mangling, brain-twisting thrill-ride — “an utterly wild, technically pyrotechnic, stunningly brutal fireworks display” that combined “thuggish skull-cleaving with eye-popping explosiveness, slow, sinuous sensuality and gruesome morbidity, and solos that will make you drool”.

And now Graveslave have just released a hellacious new EP named Devotion, the first of two brutal deathgrind EPs the band plan to release this year. Today we’re presenting a music video for a track from this first one named “Fatal Push” — a video that presents… well… a sharp contrast between what you see and what you hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MONUMENTUM DAMNATI — “INFERNAL SUN”

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Mar 092020
 

 

We are told that Monumentum Damnati is an international project whose leaders are based in Eastern Europe, with attachments to better-known projects. Here, they have chosen to conceal their countenances in grotesque masks and their names with pseudonyms, allowing their dark, genre-bending music to speak for itself. Their first presentation is In The Tomb Of A Forgotten King, a full-length album that will be co-released on March 30th by the triumvirate of GrimmDistribution, The End Of Time Records, and More Hate Productions.

As mentioned, the music on this debut album is difficult to classify in genre terms, drawing as it does from traditions of melodic death metal, doom, and the amorphous category of music that has come to be known as “dark metal”, accompanied by accents of orchestration. A further hint about the band’s disinterest in being tied to a particular defined genre comes from reference points that are provided, which include such disparate names as Crematory, Trail Of Tears, Ajattara, The Vision Bleak, Dark the Suns, Morgul, and Enshine.

It’s probably not the case that any one song on the album can be held up as a representation of the album as a whole, but we do have a track to share today, presented through a mysterious music video. Its name is “Infernal Sun“, and  the tale it tells is emblematic of the band’s occult and mythic inspirations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AETHERIUS OBSCURITAS — “ILYEN A VÉR (BLOOD IS LIKE THIS)”

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Mar 082020
 

 

The Hungarian black metal band Aetherius Obscuritas are certainly capable of mounting musical assaults of cut-throat savagery and spine-tingling wildness, but what makes their new album Mártír stand out from the barbaric pack is, for want of a better word, their adventurousness. The compositions are elaborate and multi-faceted, and the results can seem like musical potions that produce enthralling as well as electrifying effects. The song we’re premiering today, “Ilyen a vér (Blood Is Like This)“, is a great example of such ingeniously conceived and sharply executed adventures.

The core duo that makes up Aetherius Obscuritas, Viktor (vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards) and Zson (drums) have been working together under that name for roughly 18 years, long enough to become familiar with each other’s talents and propensities but quite obviously not so long as to settle into stagnancy. In that time they’ve recorded eight albums, including Mártír, but still seem to be pushing themselves into new musical territories, perhaps most obviously on this new album. It follows the last one by a significant five years and will be released on April 15th by GrimmDistribution (Ukraine) and Paragon Records (U.S.). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLACK CULT — “COSMIC STORM”

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Mar 062020
 

 

As divulged here, Black Cult‘s second album Cathedral of the Black Cult (2016) made me an immediate fan of their talent for discharging satanic black metal with such flair and dynamism. They proved themselves adept at delivering not only swarming malignant savagery, but also mid-paced dissonance and music with a sinister, occult atmosphere laced with highly seductive melodies.

It was thus welcome news to discover that these Croatians would be releasing a new album in 2020. Entitled Nekropola, it has a street date of March 27th via GrimmDistribution and InsArt Records, who recommend it for fans of Mayhem, Satyricon, Dødheimsgard, and Zyklon. And today we’re in the fortunate position of presenting one of the album’s eight tracks, the aptly titled “Cosmic Storm“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WALK THROUGH FIRE — “VÄGAR MOT SLUTET”

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Mar 062020
 

 

Vår Avgrund, the new album by the Gothenburg-based sludge/doom quintet Walk Through Fire, is not meant to be a joyous experience. Its very name, which translates to “Our Abyss“, foreshadows a 75-minute trip that’s intended to be heard straight through as an integrated piece of music, one designed to drag listeners ever-deeper into sensations of existential dread and misery, despair and anguish.

But while the album’s themes mostly circle around “the inevitability of tragedy and suffering in life – both as individuals, and as a collective”, this does not mean the music itself is relentlessly gloom-shrouded and oppressive, not something to be avoided like the sight of mass graves or a visit to the morgue.  As undeniably dark as the music is, it is also fascinating, and quite often inescapably mesmerizing. In part, that is because Walk Through Fire are open to experimentation — indeed eager for it. And the song we’re presenting today is a prime example of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FERAL LIGHT — “ASSUAGE”

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Mar 052020
 

 

It’s an absolute thrill for us to welcome the return of Feral Light. Originally a three-piece (and now a duo) from Minnesota formed by ex-members of Wolvhammer, Empires, Manetheren, and Finger of Scorn, they released (through Sentient Ruin) a fantastic debut EP in 2016 — A Sound of Moving Shields — that we wrote about twice (including a song premiere). That was followed by a 2017 debut album, Void/Sanctity (via Innit Records), and then by another full-length in 2019 (also on Innit Records), Fear Rides A Shadow, which prompted our own Andy Synn to praise it in his review as an “effortlessly well-realised example of groovesome, bombastic Black ‘n’ Roll at its very best”.

What we are now looking forward to is a new record named Life Vapor, which will be released by Hypnotic Dirge Records on May 8th (CD and digital), with a vinyl edition coming in the fall. And today we’re presenting the first glimpse of the new music through our premiere of a track named “Assuage“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BORGNE — “Y”

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Mar 052020
 

 

Originally the solo project of Bornyhake (whose name has been associated with a significant number of other groups), but eventually expanding into a full band, the Swiss entity Borgne released their first album in 1998, and their path since then has resulted in eight more full-lengths. The most recent of those, entitled Y, on which Bornyhake is joined by keyboardist Lady Kaos and other guests, will be released by Borgne‘s new label Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions tomorrow, and on the eve of that event we’re presenting a full stream of the record.

Borgne‘s musical hallmark has been the integration of industrial music into black metal, with an increasingly atmospheric quality that combines with the compulsive mechanical rhythms and intense, ravaging aggression. All those qualities are very much present and accounted for within Y, yet the combined impact of them on this new record reaches levels of staggering power and immersive intensity that may be the zenith of Borgne’s work to date, putting us in the presence of forces almost unimaginably more vast than we puny humans. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TRIAL BY COMBAT — “EXSANGUINATION EXCITE”

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Mar 042020
 

 

A couple of sleazy harassing dudes fall for the bait and pay the ultimate price — one gets off easy with a bullet to the head, while the other experiences exsanguination by a thousand vicious cuts. Sound exciting? That may depend on how well you react to maniacal torture and abundant blood spatter, which the video we’re presenting delivers in especially vivid fashion (thanks to the filmwork of Mike Sloat). But regardless of your taste for violence and gore, the song accompanied by the video is undeniably a full-throttle thrill ride.

The band in question, Trial By Combat, clearly know how to kick a listener’s pulse rate into high gear, using a hard-grooving, hard-charging amalgam of death/thrash and hardcore as their high-octane fuel. That they’re so good at this isn’t a big surprise, given that this California group from Santa Rosa and Sacramento have been honing their craft for more than 13 years, participating in two Vans Warped tours and sharing stages with such bands as Soulfly, Black Dahlia Murder, Tyr, Hatchet, Aenimus, and many others.

What’s perhaps more surprising is that only now are the band planning the release of their first full-length, after releasing three EPs. But based on the song we’re premiering today — “Exsanguination Excite” — the wait seems well worth it. Continue reading »

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