AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RUNA — “NIGHT OF INITIATION”

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Jul 012020
 

 

Like most of you I’m curious and enjoy learning. It’s fair to say that a lot of metal bands and their music and lyrics don’t trigger curiosity or create learning experiences, even when their songs are very good. But when that happens, it’s a welcome bonus, and that happened in the case of the song and video premiere we’re presenting here.

The band whose music is the subject of the premiere are in Peru. Their name is Runa. Curious about the name, I did a little research and learned that “runa” is a name that speakers of the Quechua language (which originated in Peru but is found in many dialects throughout other South American countries) use to refer to themselves. According to this article, the word translates to “person”, but when Quechua speakers call themselves Runa, it means “the people”. I also learned that up to the present time Quechuas continue to be victims of political conflicts and ethnic persecution.

Runa (the band) draw upon ancestral culture in the creation of their music. Their new record, which will be released by the Peruvian label Guts ‘N’ Blood Records and follows by five years a debut EP named Bullets Of Annihilation, is titled Entrance To The Ancestral Wisdom. But, as the band’s vocalist/guitarist Alex explains, Runa’s mystical themes are also “immersed in magic, quantum, and alchemy”. The music through which they express these themes embraces the early raw power of death metal and the acidic viciousness of black metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLOOD STRONGHOLD — “SPECTRES OF BLOODSHED”

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Jun 302020
 

 

On their new third album, Spectres of Bloodshed, the international duo known as Blood Stronghold have created a musical soundscape that’s out of this world. To be sure, the music has visceral, physically compulsive energy, but it creates fantastical visions of ancient and mythical domains. It seems to draw menacing and vicious power from lycanthropic spirits but also spawns mental images of tragic grandeur and heart-swelling splendor. It’s a fashioning of black metal that’s both carnal and elegant, both blood-pumping and mesmerizing. It seems to hearken back to a long-lost age — or to one that only exists in the imagination. Once heard, it’s not easily forgotten.

And hear it you shall, because today we present a full stream in advance of the album’s release on vinyl LP by Nebular Carcoma and Satanik Requiem. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXTINCTION — “NORTHERN SQUARE-LIPPED RHINOCEROS”

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Jun 302020
 

 

The northern square-lipped rhinoceros, also known as the northern white rhinoceros, used to range over parts of Uganda, Chad, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But years of uncontrolled poaching and civil war in their home range decimated the species, and they are now considered extinct in the wild. Only two of them remain, both of them protected in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy on a 700-acre nature preserve in Kenya that’s also the largest black rhino sanctuary in east Africa. Both of the last survivors are female.

The story of the critically endangered northern white rhino is unusual subject matter for a slamming death metal band (or any extreme metal band), but the conceptual focus of the Swedish group Extinction encompasses not only that story but many other narratives of once flourishing species terminated by the actions of humankind.

Their forthcoming EP Smoldering Enfoulment, as they explain, “encapsulates a variety of disasters, degradations and extinctions of 2019 — from trees lost to sand mining and bird species loss to habitat destruction, and international conflagrations wiping out landscapes and exploited by monoliths of power”. The band further explain: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VANHELGA — “DAGAR SOM DENNA”

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Jun 292020
 

 

Vanhelga are a Swedish band, the brainchild of J. Ottosson (aka “145188”), who from its inception in 2001 until roughly 2013 was the band’s vocalist and sole instrumentalist. Beginning with the release of the 2013 EP Sommar (which followed a pair of albums and a handful of shorter releases), he has been joined by a changing line-up of other musicians.

We’ve been following Vanhelga’s progress since Sommar, which has taken us through three more albums and further shorter releases, and has demonstrated an evolving integration of stylistic ingredients that made the music (which could be simplistically labeled “melancholic black metal”) ever more difficult to pin down in genre terms but continually interesting.

Vanhelga have been at work on a new release, which follows up on their excellent 2018 album Fredagsmys, and today (as we previously announced) we’re premiering a song from it named “Dagar som denna” — which translates to “days like these”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BURIED REALM — “THE WONDER AND TERROR OF FORTUNE”

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Jun 262020
 

 

The Colorado-based melodic death metal band Buried Realm made quite a splash with its debut album The Ichor Carcinoma in 2017. It showcased the guitar wizardry and vocal dynamics of the band’s alter ego, solo artist Josh Dummer, and featured guest performances by such luminaries as such as Christopher Amott (Arch Enemy, Armageddon), Peter Wichers (Soilwork), Teemu Mäntysaari (Wintersun), and Travis Montgomery (Threat Signal, Jeff Loomis band). We summed it up as “so astoundingly exuberant and kaleidoscopic that it takes your breath away to hear it.”

Now Buried Realm is returning with a sophomore full-length named Embodiment of the Divine, which will be released on July 24th. Josh Dummer‘s songwriting and extravagant guitar talents are still the heart of the music, but he has again enlisted a tremendous array of guest performers. And as we did for the first album, we’re again premiering a song from the new one, a thoroughly exciting track called “The Wonder and Terror of Fortune“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANGEL MORGUE — “COSMIC TORMENT”

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Jun 262020
 

 

“This release is likely to induce head-banging, living room moshing, raising of the horns, and many invisible oranges and ‘metal’ faces!” That was the enthusiastic message that Redefining Darkness Records sent to the label’s Bandcamp followers yesterday about In the Morgue of Angels, the debut album of the blasphemous New Hampshire quintet Angel Morgue, which RDR will be releasing on August 7th. And as if that come-on weren’t persuasive enough, Redefining Darkness also recommended the album for fans of Incantation, Immolation, Desolate, and Cruciamentum.

I’ve learned through experience that this label’s enthusiasm is genuine, and their taste in metallic extremity dependable. Still, to borrow the unofficial motto of Missouri, I prefer that someone “show me”. And I’ve been shown, in convincing fashion, and now we’ll show you that the words and name-drops above aren’t empty, but very well-founded. To do that we’re sharing today the first single released from the album — the well-named “Cosmic Torment“. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: BLACK ALTAR AND KIRKEBRANN — “DEUS INVERSUS”

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Jun 252020
 

 

All devoted fans of black metal well know that it encompasses a broad range of variations, even among bands who maintain links to its earliest days. Even the bands who originated the first and second waves did not all follow the same path in the music they made. Truth be told, despite the rigid dictates of some hidebound fans and the debates we could have about when a band has crossed over into territories that don’t merit the name, the variability of black metal is one of its enduring strengths.

What we’re presenting today is proof of that assertion — a split by two abundantly talented groups who are unmistakably black metal bands but who each have their own distinctive approach. Both of them are capable of mounting hostile, diabolical assaults, to be sure, but each of them brings a lot more to the table than blasting fury, and the differences between those other ingredients makes this new album-length split a great one to pick up.

The bands are Black Altar from Poland and Kirkebrann from Norway. Their split is named Deus Inversus, and all the tracks are new and exclusive to this record. It will be released by Odium Records on June 30th, and today you can hear all of it — preceded by our thoughts about what each band has contributed. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHED THE SKIN — “THE FORBIDDEN ARTS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 242020
 

 

Regardless of how completely awful the current situation may be on almost too many levels to count, any year that includes a new album by Shed the Skin is a good year, and any day that gives us another chance to premiere their music is going to be a devilishly joyful one regardless of how miserable it might have been otherwise. It should also be a joy for all fans of evil but electrifying death metal.

We’ve been helping to spread the word about Shed the Skin for many years, but hopefully by now they don’t really need any more help. With a veteran line-up drawn from a host of well-known bands, they were able to hit the ground running with their 2014 EP Rebirth Through Brimstone and powered through to even greater acclaim with their first two albums, 2016’s Harrowing Faith and 2018’s We of Scorn. And now their steadfast label Hells Headbangers is poised to release their third album, The Forbidden Arts, on June 26th, and that’s what we’re giving you the chance to hear in full right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KEVLAR BIKINI — “QUENCH”

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Jun 242020
 

 

Almost a full year before COVID-19 was even a blip on the global radar screen, the Croatian band Kevlar Bikini were exhorting people to stay at home. Or maybe this hardcore punk trio were just voicing their own social disengagement. The title of their new fourth album, OPT-OUTism, which was released on May 22nd by Geenger Records, seems to brandish a philosophy of self-isolation. One of the songs on the album, “Quench“, makes it explicit — and lest you think that track was crafted to be especially relevant in the current viral age, the song was written in February 2019.

“Quench” is the subject of the video we’re premiering today. And for those of our usual metalhead NCS visitors who might be feeling either perplexed or skeptical based on the band’s name, put aside any such misgivings and just give the music your attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD SUN — “A/B”

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Jun 232020
 

 

This song doesn’t go where you think it will. How it starts and how it ends are two completely different experiences. The band build a bridge between these two places over the course of the passing minutes, using the sound to carry you across a chasm — though what’s really happening, as you’ll discover, is that their bridge is carrying you into that chasm.

The song we’re presenting is the title track to A/B, the debut album of the Chicago band Dead Sun, which will be released on August 21 by Flesh and Bone Records. Their music is a bit off our usual beaten paths here at NCS — “slowcore/doomgaze” is one genre descriptor you might see, and there’s singing. But the emotional darkness in the music suits our tastes, and the phased transition that happens within this particular track has proved to be persistently enthralling even after many listens. Continue reading »

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