AN NCS EP PREMIERE: WITCHTRIP — “A BURNT OFFERING”

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Jan 242020
 

 

During the early morning hours of July 23, 2019, a fiery inferno engulfed and consumed a warehouse on Jarvis Avenue in Winnipeg, Canada. By the time the sun rose that day, according to this report, there was nothing left of the building but some skeletal exterior walls. The flames devastated more than the structure itself. The three-story warehouse had been home to the work of some of the city’s most distinguished artists, and it also housed the jam space of Witchtrip, a metal band whose membership significantly overlaps with Occvlt Hand and whose debut EP (Cosmic Cauldron) we premiered in 2018. Lost in that conflagration were thousands of dollars of the band’s instruments, gear, band merchandise, and other possessions, all of it uninsured.

Sometimes even disasters like that one have a silver lining, and in this instance it spurred Witchtrip to record a new two-track EP, their first music to be released since Cosmic Cauldron, as a means of trying to raise money to replace what they lost. Fittingly, and perhaps with a rueful smile, Witchtrip named the EP A Burnt Offering, and we’re premiering it today in advance of its official release on February 1st. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PRIMEVAL MASS — “BURNING SORCERY”

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Jan 242020
 

 

I’ve been following the activities of the Greek solo project Primeval Mass since having my eyes opened wide by Karmazid‘s cover art for the band’s third album, To Empyrean Thrones, in 2016. After hearing only one song I described the music there as “a treasure chest of riffs, one jewel after another”: ” When the music accelerates into a white-hot fury, it’s a mainline injection of pure adrenaline, but its’s just as gripping when it courses like shimmering streamers of lights. The inflamed vocals — a combination of demonic barking and head-back howls — are a perfect match to the molten, cyclonic surging of the music.”

In a subsequent review accompanying our premiere of a full stream of that album I summed up its atmosphere as “one of chaos made manifest in sound”, yet observed that “within these thrashing maelstroms lurk tantalizing melodies, booming grooves, white-hot solos, and well-timed changes of pace”, as well as surprising diversions and digressions that made the album fascinating and also highly infectious.

Now, Primeval Mass is returning with a fourth album, Nine Altars (with equally stunning cover art by Martin from LGN Art), that’s set for release on February 21st by Katoptron IX Records, and today we get the chance to share a track from it, fittingly named “Burning Sorcery“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: MENTAL CASKET — “DEMO 2020”

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Jan 232020
 

 

Mental Casket first crawled forth from some stinking grave in Warsaw, Poland, in 2018, inspired by the early works of Chuck Schuldiner and other fore-runners of Floridian death metal, with an affinity for the likes of Autopsy and Pestilence as well, plus newer bands like Gruesome. Last year they released their debut demo, and today their second one is making its grotesque appearance. We’re fiendishly happy to help spread the word through this premiere of its three tracks.

Mental Casket proudly wear their influences on their ragged and rotting sleeves, but while their chosen formulations of death metal may be quite familiar, they’re so good at composing and executing their sonic monstrosities that it’s still a thrill to hear what they do. Sometimes you don’t need to break any molds in order to put a charge into a listener’s brain stem, and Mental Casket definitely do that. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: POSTVORTA — “DECIDUA TRAUMA CATHARSIS”

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Jan 232020
 

 

The video we’re premiering today for a song by the Italian post-metal/doom band Postvorta has a hazy, dreamlike appearance. Glimpses of a gauzy youthful form appear in a dirty and degraded dwelling — along with ominous black-clad figures whose countenances are also masked in black. The effect is haunted and frightening, and the mounting tension is palpable… but the music has a lot to do with that as well.

Eventually, the music becomes orders of magnitude more crushing and harrowing — just as the child in the video leads his mother up the stairs, both of them dressed in black as well, perhaps in mourning, to the area where we know those threatening figures lurk in the corners and loom in narrow hallways. The music pounds and seethes, torquing the tension, and the scalding vocals enhance the feelings of fear and a mood of imminent violence. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THOREN — “EGLADHRIM”

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Jan 222020
 

 

Hold onto your heads. You might want to use both hands, and possibly tether it to your torso with bungee cords too — because otherwise the song we’re about to present could spin it clean off and spiral it up into the stratosphere like one of these things, except moving about 10 times faster.

“Egladhrim” has no vocals, and once you hear it the reason is obvious: A normal human voice couldn’t possibly keep up with the rocketing pace of the music, nor contort vowels or syllables in a way that would match the blinding exuberance and mercurial morphing of the music. It’s difficult enough to imagine that human beings are performing the instruments — easier to imagine the sudden appearance overhead of an alien hive swarm furiously constructing a devilishly intricate device that, when ready, will burn a hole straight through the planet.

But we’re assured that the music is indeed the creation of humans, despite all outward evidence, and they’ve chosen the name Thoren — a name that will surely be familiar to many of you as a result of their first two albums, Brennenburg (2016) and Gwarth I (2018). Their latest full-length, which is home to this track we’re premiering today, is Gwarth II, and it will be released by Drylands Records on February 7th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MEDIUM — “SKULLCOMET SORCERY”

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Jan 222020
 

 

It’s early days yet, but if you’re keeping track of the best metal song names of 2020, “Skullcomet Sorcery” absolutely must go on the list. And in addition to being a fantastically evocative name, it turns out to fit the music like a finely tailored suit.

This song, which we’re delighted to present today, comes from the self-titled debut album by the Argentinian band Medium, which will be released on March 6th by Transcending Obscurity Records. That album presents an electrifying amalgam of grindcore, crust, punk, and death metal that’s capable of leaving a listener battered and bruised, but does more than deliver physical assaults with palpable fury — as “Skullcomet Sorcery” ably demonstrates. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): JORDABLOD — “THE CABINET OF NUMINOUS SONG”

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Jan 212020
 

 

Perhaps because I often confuse “numinous” with “luminous“, I resorted to a dictionary to be sure about the meaning of the former before listening to the Jordablod album we’re premiering today. And in doing that I saw this explanation:

“Numinous is from the Latin word numen, meaning ‘divine will’ or ‘nod’ (it suggests a figurative nodding, of assent or of command, of the divine head). English speakers have been using numen for centuries with the meaning ‘a spiritual force or influence.’ We began using numinous in the mid-1600s, subsequently endowing it with several senses: ‘supernatural’ or ‘mysterious’ (as in “possessed of a numinous energy force”), ‘holy’ (as in ‘the numinous atmosphere of the catacombs’), and ‘appealing to the aesthetic sense’ (as in ‘the numinous nuances of her art’).”

I also found a quote by CS Lewis about the meaning of numinous that I also think is worth sharing — but not until after we’ve considered The Cabinet of Numinous Song, which you’ll be able to stream now, just a few days before its January 24 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZİFİR — “DEMONIAC ETHICS”

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Jan 202020
 

 

Rage and disgust fuel the music on Zifir‘s new album Demoniac Ethics, most of it directed at the calculated lies of religious institutions and the submissive delusions of their followers. Of course, within the realms of extreme metal such inspirations aren’t unique to this Turkish black metal trio. But how they have translated their intense convictions into sound is very much out of the ordinary, as you shall witness for yourselves.

Today we present a full stream of this new album, just days before its release by Duplicate Records, preceded by further impressions of the remarkable music. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LACASTA — “VULTURES”

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Jan 172020
 

 

In retrospect, we should have foreseen the surge of bands over the last five years and more who have brought elements of black metal into the traditions of metallic hardcore. Both genres have found their own ways of expressing rage and disgust, and combining them was a natural and potent means of pushing the cathartic intensity of those emotions further into the red zone.

The Italian band laCasta (from Monopoli) made their own furious foray into that hybrid musical soundscape through their 2015 EP Encyclia, and on February 28th they’ll follow that debut with an album entitled Æternvm on the label of Argonauta Records. laCasta mince no words and pull no punches. Their name itself, as the label explains, “was inspired by the system that surrounds us and controls the entire planet, where all the castes hold more power day by day”, and their music gives a powerful voice to their nihilistic world-view. We have a prime example today in our premiere of a video for a track off the new album named “Vultures“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONS OF A WANTED MAN — “ABSENT”

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Jan 162020
 

 

Roughly five years into their existence, the Belgian metal band Sons Of A Wanted Man have sought to blaze a musical path that reflects the varying interests of its members and to find the right combination of genre elements to express the feelings and convictions that inspire them. Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions, the label that will release the band’s debut album Kenoma on February 7th, describes their hybrid of sounds as one that “incorporates the melancholic atmosphere of post-metal, the rhythmic intensity of black metal, the layered approach of shoegaze and the ethics of hardcore punk”.

The results of the band’s efforts, as revealed through Kenoma, is multi-faceted music of great emotional and immersive power, and the lyrical content of the songs is equally engrossing. The song we’re presenting today, “Absent“, is a vivid example of these qualities. The track is a meticulously embroidered tapestry of emotional change, although you could also think of it as a panorama of a pilgrim’s travel through the heart of darkness, through kingdoms of desolation and death. Continue reading »

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