AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEVALRA — “GROOM LAKE”

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Aug 122020
 

 

In the southern part of Nevada, northwest of Las Vegas, lies Groom Lake, a desolate and lifeless salt flat. It’s a place that few people will see with their own eyes because it’s located within the mysterious Area 51 installation of the U.S. Air Force and used there as a runway for bombers… and other less familiar aircraft. “Groom Lake” is also the name of a song by the Missouri-based blackened death metal band Nevalra that we’re presenting today through a new video.

“Groom Lake” was originally released as the closing track on Nevalra’s 2015 EP The Black Flame, which was followed in 2019 by the band’s debut album Conjure the Storm. Since the EP was first released, Nevalra have gone on to receive considerable acclaim in the metal press and to tour and perform in more than 20 countries. Now the band and their label M-Theory Audio have decided to digitally reissue The Black Flame, accompanied by an updated treatment of the original cover artwork by noted horror artist Brett Gray. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLACKEVIL — “LUCIFER’S SUPREMACY”

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Aug 122020
 

 

The immediately recognizable handiwork of Paolo Girardi that graces the cover of Blackevil‘s new album creates august expectations for the music all by itself. But high expectations were already raised for those of us who’ve encountered this German trio’s past works — their 2016 debut EP Hail the Cult, their 2017 first album The Ceremonial Fire, or their 2018 split with Italy’s Witchunter (Witchevil Attack!).

We are happy to report that such high expectations will not be disappointed. To the contrary, as you’ll learn for yourselves through the song we’re premiering today, Blackevil have, if anything, exceeded expectations on their second album Forever Baptised in Eternal Fire, which will be released on September 25th by Dying Victims Productions. That song is the aptly titled “Lucifer’s Supremacy“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEXECUTOR — “DANSE MACABRE”

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Aug 112020
 

 

The phrase “Danse Macabre” (sometimes also called the “Dance of Death”) is a very old one, with its roots in a medieval Europe decimated by the Black Plague and endless wars. In its most common imagery, the earliest of which dates to 1424, cavorting skeletons gleefully escort kings, knights, and commoners alike to their graves, leading them in a wild waltz that mocked the dismay of the fallen. Both satirical and cruel, the imagery seemed to convey, as one author wrote, that “regardless of status, wealth, or accomplishments in life, death comes for everyone”.

As you’re about to discover, that ancient phrase makes a very fitting title for the song we’re premiering off the forthcoming second album by the French hellraisers in Hexecutor. Entitled Beyond Any Human Conception of Knowledge, it will be released on September 25th by Dying Victims Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: A PRETEXT TO HUMAN SUFFERING — “ROTTING SANCTUM”

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Aug 102020
 

 

A Pretext to Human Suffering (hereafter “APTHS“) are a relatively new force for destruction in the extreme metal scene. They are an international triumvirate consisting of Chris Mathis (Defleshed and Gutted), who writes all the music and performs guitars and vocals, Lord Marco (Rings of Saturn, Six Feet Under, ex-Braindrill) on drums, and Kristian Jablonický on bass. They’ve just signed a record deal with RealityFade Records for the release of their debut EP, and today we’re bringing you a first listen to its title track, “Rotting Sanctum“.

As you’ll discover through this new song, APTHS occupy an intersection where different traditions of death metal meet. The music could be considered part slam, part brutal death metal, and part technical death metal. It metes out ferocious punishment, the kind that will get your motor running in a damned hurry, but will also give your head a swift and bewildering spin, and as icing on the cake it generates an atmosphere of ghastly horror. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NUG — “ALTER EGO”

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Aug 102020
 

 

Nug’s new album Alter Ego, which we’re premiering today, is a dimorphic creature, a union of beauty and the beast. This Ukrainian band’s formulation of progressive and post-metal is capable of both transporting your head into sunlit clouds and also clubbing them through the pavement and deep into the mantle below. You could also think of their hybrid of obliteration and wonder, of pile-driving destruction and head-swirling dreams, as the workings of a wondrous machine that constantly morphs — from an earth-ruining demolition device into a spaceship venturing through head-spinning wormholes to reveal astonishing vistas of vast, blazing nebulae.

These extremes of sound — which are soft and loud, breathtakingly intense and sublimely mesmerizing, bewildering and brazen — might seem to occupy distant and opposing points on an axis, but Nug fold the axis in on itself, not merely juxtaposing the extremes but laying them on top of each other with gripping and exhilarating consequences. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ELDERSEER — “BIND US AS ONE”

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Aug 062020
 

 

The British pagan doom band Elderseer are a relatively new presence, having come together in 2017 and with only a single record to their name so far — an EP entitled Bind Us As One that was released at the end of 2018. But that first EP was more of a giant assured step than a halting, timid feeling of a way forward. It drew considerable praise in the metal press, and in its varying stylistic dimensions it spawned references to the likes of My Silent Wake, Primordial, My Dying Bride, and Amorphis.

The title track was the one that closed the EP. At more than 10 minutes in length, it was the most substantial (and perhaps the most powerful) of the EP’s four songs. Not surprisingly, it’s the song that Elderseer chose as the subject of the video we’re privileged to bring you today — a lyric video that also includes footage of the band performing the song and of the imposing ancient landscapes that form a part of the band’s inspirations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IDOLATRIA — “NOCTULE – THE EMPEROR OF SCOURGE”

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Aug 052020
 

 

Tetrabestiarchy is the new album by the Italian black metal band Idolatria. It is book-ended by intro and outro tracks that are thematically and musically more significant than such tracks often are. Between them are four songs, each of them named for animals that occupy places in the myths of various cultures and that have also been associated with Satan as tools for the annihilation of other religions. The song titles give these creatures an arcane significance beyond their presence as features of the natural world. We are told this about what inspired such references:

“The descriptions of these four animals are inspired by a porphyry sculpture, dating from around 300 AD, called The Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs. It depicts the four rulers in charge of the entire Empire, instituted by Emperor Diocletian. The sculptural group has been fixed to a corner of the façade of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy since the Middle Ages. It probably originally formed part of the decorations of the Philadelphion in Constantinople, and was removed to Venice in 1204 or soon after.”

One of the four animals in this Tetrabestiarchy is the noctule — a name given to various species of vesper bats found in Europe and Asia, some of them golden in color. And it is the Idolatria song devoted to the noctule that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND AN INTERVIEW): EXITIUM SUI – “THE SINISTER BUSINESS OF SELLING HOPE”

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Aug 052020
 

 

(Andy Synn introduces our premiere stream of a new EP by Exitium Sui, the solo project of ex-Deadspace frontman Chris Gebauer, and presents an interview of him as well.)

Exitium Sui may be a relatively new name, but if you’ve been paying attention to this site over the last several months you’ll no doubt have spotted our coverage of the band’s debut EP, Nuclear Sundown, as well as our preview of “Eviscerate My Withered Soul”, the first song from their upcoming album, Ad Personam (which I’ve heard in full, and it’s a suffocatingly dense and doom-laden slab of grim, blackened filth, make no mistake).

Today we’re bringing you an exclusive stream of The Sinister Business of Selling Hope, which finds the band’s sound pivoting away from the more doom-inflected approach of their first EP in favour of something more closely related to the pulsating blackened belligerence of Leviathan or Blut Aus Nord.

That’s not to say that these four tracks are a total departure from what has gone before – in fact, when the full album is released you’ll likely gain a much better appreciation of  …Selling Hope’s role in the band’s overall development – but suffice it to say that those looking for some seriously oppressive, shockingly aggressive, and crushingly claustrophobic Black Metal will do well to check this one out at the earliest opportunity.

So, please, read on for a full stream of the entire EP accompanied by a short but illluminating interview with band mastermind ES. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORSE DRAWN — “AMONGST GHOSTS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 042020
 

 

We’ve already seen abundant evidence that pandemic shutdowns and searing economic calamity haven’t crushed musical creativity. Those two ruthless giant hands may be doing their best to choke the life from artists (along with the rest of us), but they haven’t succeeded. In fact, rather than becoming numb or being struck dumb, many musicians have continued to record new music, and for many of those the work has itself become a mental and emotional survival mechanism. Horse Drawn is a case in point.

This Ohio-based duo — multi-instrumentalist Jonny Doyle (Coldfells) and vocalist Bryce Seditz (Plaguewielder) — haven’t been prolific, but their output under the Horse Drawn name has for this writer become must-listen material. While in the midst of the giant mess we all now find ourselves in, they’ve recorded a new EP named Amongst Ghosts that’s being released today, and we are happily spreading the word through this premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RECORRUPTOR — “MORIBUND”

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Aug 032020
 

 

On the 21st of this month the death metal band Recorruptor, who are based in Lansing, Michigan, will release their second album The Funeral Corridor, which follows their well-received 2017 debut full-length, Bloodmoon. Pulling from inspirations both old and new, they’ve created a brace of well-conceived and well-executed songs that collectively make for a dynamic experience, showing themselves capable not only of discharging sensations of monstrous menace and electrifying savagery but also packing their onslaughts with melodic and rhythmic hooks that dig deep and are difficult to dislodge (even if some of them are seriously unsettling).

We have a prime example of these talents in the song we’re premiering today through an official video, a track named “Moribund” that’s pure undiluted evil. Continue reading »

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