AN NCS PREMIERE: ARA — “JURISPRUDENCE”

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Mar 042020
 

 

A long five years (and change) have passed since the Wisconsin death metal band Ara released their debut album, Devourer of Worlds. That proved to be a serious eye-opener and jaw-dropper, an approach to technical death metal that our review likened to an amalgam of such bands as Anata, Gorguts, and Necrophagist, presenting complexity, dissonance, and brutality, and achieving “a fine balance between beating you down and freaking you out”.

Five years on, and now we welcome the return of Ara, most of whose members also share roster spots in the sludge metal/post-rock band Northless. Their sophomore album Jurisprudence is now set for release on May 15th, and today it’s our pleasure to present a premiere stream of the title track. Continue reading »

KANNUSTAA: A REVIEW OF “KANNUSTAA” AND THE PREMIERE OF “MOTHER”

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Mar 042020
 

 

One glance at the track list for the self-titled debut release of the multinational band Kannustaa will clue you in that their music is not conventional black metal. Song titles such as “To Give and Forget”, “Don’t Leave Me”, “Encourage”, or the track we’re premiering today — “Mother” — point in different directions than more typical misanthropic, anticosmic, or blasphemous lyrical outbursts of the genre. Truth be told, the music isn’t conventional either.

To be sure, Kannustaa are full capable of viciously stabbing your neck with high-voltage electrification. That much was evident from the first track they released, “Don’t Leave Me”. The wild yowling tone of the opening riff is so potent that it almost drowns out the rampant drumming and the throat-ripping vocal madness. The drumming switches gears into more measured cadences, but the thermonuclear guitar work continues to dominate, rising and falling, twisting and turning, flickering in anguish and moaning in despair, slashing and scything and whirring with incredible vitality. Near the end, the bass becomes a bludgeoning presence, helping to send the song out in an explosive, vertebrae-cracking finale. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: STROMPTHA — “BRÛLE, PRAIRIE DE ROSES”

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Mar 032020
 

 

Those of us who have followed Icelandic metal (particularly black metal) have by now become used to seeing videos that incorporate that country’s dramatic and desolate landscapes, and the video we’re presenting today also features panoramas of equally dramatic and desolate terrains blanketed in snow and ice — but these scenes come from a different and lesser-known land. The video also includes a narrative, a surreal one in which a troubled man, hood up, searches for and encounters the undulating and eventually still form of a woman with roses for eyes.

The song accompanied by the video is also surreal and dramatic, one that creates an alchemy of differing ingredients — from atmospheric black metal to doom, from coldwave to industrial and dark folk — to fashion its own mysterious, dark, and desperate narrative. That song, “Brûle, Prairie De Roses“, appears on the new third album by Stromptha, which is the solo project vocalist/musician J, a native of Greenland who has returned there after a sojourn in France. Entitled Endura Pleniluniis, the record will be co-released by Satanath Records (Russia) and Pest Records (Romania) on March 24th. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TRAUMA — “OMINOUS BLACK”

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Mar 032020
 

 

At a point in their long career when the Polish death metal band Trauma might be expected to slow down or even get stuck in their tracks, there is zero sign of malaise in their forthcoming eighth album, Ominous Black. Instead, they have created a record that’s explosively exuberant and persistently inventive.

To be sure, the music is unmistakably ferocious and fully capable of bludgeoning you black and blue, but what drives the album to heights of great fascination are all the head-spinning instrumental pyrotechnics and wildly mercurial permutations that mark the twisted path of each song. It’s almost tempting to call this music “progressive death metal”, except this album seems too weird and wondrous, and maybe even too malevolent, for that kind of label. On the other hand, just calling it “death metal” seems inadequate, because it’s so out of the ordinary in its ingenuity.

It’s our fiendish pleasure to throw a full stream of the album at you today, in advance of its March 6 release by Selfmadegod Records, and to imagine the looks on your faces when you figure out what’s happening to you. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WARLUST — “I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE”

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Mar 022020
 

 

“I Spit On Your Grave!” Those are fighting words, and in the song of that name which we’re premiering today through a lyric video, the German hellraisers in Warlust back that disgusted condemnation to the hilt, and simultaneously prove why their new album Unearthing Shattered Philosophies (forthcoming from Dying Victims Productions on April 24th) is such a savage yet multi-faceted thrillride.

Through their previous album, 2017’s Morbid Execution, Warlust amply demonstrated their prowess in discharging electrifying black/thrash, leavened with other ingredients that made it more than an assault of rip-roaring hellfire. But the new album reveals an even further spreading of the band’s dragon wings, demonstrating an elevation in the dynamism and diversity of their songwriting skills, and “I Spit On Your Grave” is a prime example of those achievements. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MAZIKEEN — “VEXATION THROUGH THE GOLDEN SUN”

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Mar 022020
 

 

After a scattering of short releases that mainly began emerging in 2017, the Australian symphonic black/death band Mazikeen has completed a debut album named The Solace of Death that’s now set for co-release by Satanath Records and Iron, Blood And Death Corporation on March 23rd.

From its beginning as a solo project, Mazikeen has been the brain-child of Andrew Shiells, but for this new album he was joined by a formidable line-up of allies. With Shiells on guitar and synths, he is accompanied by drummer Marco Pitrruzzella (Six Feet Under, Sleep Terror, ex-Brain Drill), guitar soloist Kris Marchant, pianist Aretstikapha (Plasmodium, Klavierkrieger), and vocalist James Edmeades (Claret Ash).

The album includes eight original songs as well as four cover songs, putting Mazikeen‘s spin on tracks by Mayhem, Dissection, Dimmu Borgir, and Darkthrone. It’s one of the original songs that we present today, a dazzling track named “Vexation Through the Golden Sun“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESPAWN — “BARBARIAN MISANTHROPY”

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Mar 012020
 

 

The ringing tons of an archaic instrument announce the song we’re premiering today through a video, and an ancient, mythic atmosphere continues to cloak this musical tale of warfare and death as it unfolds and moves through changing moods. The song, “Barbarian Misanthropy“, comes from the new album by Gravespawn, which will be released on March 21st by Satanath Records.

That album, The Elder Darkness, is is the third full-length to be released by this southern California black metal band in a career that’s now roughly 16 years old. Once again, it is the work of a single individual, Reaver, though here he’s aided by session drummer Baalgrath and bassist/backing-vocalist Advorsus. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FIRES IN THE DISTANCE — “THE CLIMB”

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Feb 282020
 

 

Fires in the Distance is a Connecticut-based band that includes three members of the long-running melodic death metal project Archaic Decapitator. Their friendship and existing familiarity with each other’s talents created a smooth path into this new project, but the musical conception of Fires in the Distance gave it a distinct identity, one that draws upon death/doom influences as well as inclinations toward atmospheric and progressive metal. Among their inspirations, the band cite such groups as Man-Eating Tree, Type O, Enshine, Swallow The Sun, Amorphis, and Dark Tranquillity.

The band’s debut album, Echoes From Deep November, is now set for release on May 22nd. Conceptually, as the band have told us, “The record primarily encompasses a perpetual struggle with mental health, primarily living with major depression. The songs generally reflect the progression of going through the peaks and valleys of torment and internal rationalization of existing with chronic mental illness.”

Serious and decidedly melancholy subjects, to be sure, and the music does indeed have strong emotional resonance. But listening to it is far from a depressive experience, as you’ll discover through our premiere of the album’s opening track, “The Climb“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENOID — “JE NE VOLERAI PLUS DANS LES CIEUX”

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Feb 282020
 

 

If you’ve been paying attention, this is the second time this month when we’ve mentioned the name Bornyhake. The first time was when we premiered a song from the new album by Borgne (here), the Swiss band that he began in the ’90s as a solo project. Today, the subject is another one of this prolific musician’s musical endeavors, a solo black metal project that bears the name Enoid.

Enoid’s debut album appeared in 2006, but already an eighth full-length has been readied for release. Entitled Négation Du Corps, it will be ushered into the world on March 20th through the combined efforts of Satanath Records and The Ritual Productions, and today we’re presenting a ravishing track from the album named “Je ne volerai plus dans les cieux“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AMNUTSEBA — “TABULA”

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Feb 272020
 

 

Over the course of two demos released by Caligari Records in 2017 and 2018 (and later released in a vinyl compilation by Iron Bonehead Productions), the enigmatic French band Amnutseba demonstrated a mastery in the creation of unpredictable and unnerving black metal. In reviewing them (here and here), we characterized the first demo as “dissonant, delirious, and disorienting”, “fiery and ferocious, marauding and majestic, eerie and ominous”, and the second one as “pensive and petrifying, brawling and beautiful, unearthly and apocalyptic”. And the reviews included a lot more adjectives besides those.

Amnutseba’s creations on those first demos spawned so many adjectives in this quarter not only because the music was so intricate and labyrinthine but also because it produced so many visceral responses, usually frightening but also mesmerizing, and in its bewildering permutations it was also capable of seeming revelatory.

Little wonder that so many underground-dwellers familiar with Amnutseba have been so anxious for a full-length album by this mysterious entity since falling prey to those first recordings, and now we’re about to get one: On March 27th Iron Bonehead Productions will release the first Amnutseba full-length, the name of which is Emanatism. Not surprisingly, it is wondrously otherworldly — and scary as hell. Continue reading »

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