AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MUR — “BRUTALISM”

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Oct 242019
 

 

With their self-titled debut EP released in 2014, the French band Mur (whose six-person line-up includes former members of Today is the Day, Glorior Belli, Mass Hysteria, Comity, and Four Question Marks) began feeling their way, searching for an identity for their music and beginning to establish one. When you listen to their new full-length record, Brutalism, which will be released on October 25th by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions, it becomes apparent that they have arrived — at a place where their confidence is strong and their identity (albeit a multi-faceted one) well-defined. It isn’t so much a sea-change in sound compared to the EP as it is a giant, adventurous stride ahead on the path they began five years ago.

The album is a fascinating experience because it is such a dynamic one. It offers constant surprises, but does so without losing the bonds that forge all the experiences together into a whole, and without sacrificing the explosive, searing intensity that’s the main hallmark of the record. Previously we premiered a song from the album (“Third“) and separately reviewed another one (“I See Through Stones”), but today we have for you a stream of the complete album — and a few more impressionistic thoughts about the music (okay, more than a few). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ODIOSORDO — “CON IL BUIO NEL SANGUE”

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Oct 232019
 

 

We’re told that “Odio Sordo” is the Italian translation for “Deaf Hate”, a phrase that connotes bitterness, fury, holding a grudge. And while the Italian trio Odiosordo have embraced those words in their name, and those sensations in their musical hybrid of hardcore and black metal, their new album Con Il Buio Nel Sangue becomes a musical journey in which different experiences also come to the surface. As they tell us, the name they’ve chosen represents internal struggle against personal challenges — “born by the need of merging a strong sense of discomfort, deep disorientation, but also the will of fighting back and finding a way through life.”

As you will have probably guessed by now, the music isn’t “easy listening”. It’s raw, bleak, and ravaging, stripped of pretense, authentic in its channeling of despair and rage, and of misery and defiance. Alternately bruising, oppressive, searing in its intensity, and soaring in its grasp for a way out of harrowing times, it proves to be a relentlessly gripping experience — and we’re giving you the chance to learn that for yourselves through our full-album stream today, before the record’s October 31 release by Third I Rex, VBMF (Italy), and the Third I Rex affiliate, Imperatrix Mundi Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DENIAL OF GOD — “THE HALLOW MASS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 222019
 

 

Denial of God are a distinctive presence in the long ranks of black metal bands. For one thing, the Danish brothers Azter (guitars) and Ustumallagam (vocals) have been creating music under that name since 1991. Apart from the fact that few bands have lasted so long, Denial of God have also crafted an unusual aesthetic for their music, moving in increasingly cinematic and theatrical directions, with a pronounced supernatural atmosphere, that has given birth to the description of their creations as “Black Horror Metal”.

Seven long years have passed since the band’s last album, Death and the Beyond, with only The Shapeless Mass EP (released this past June) as a sign of renewed activity. That EP was intended as a springboard into a new full-length, and that new album is now fast approaching. Entitled The Hallow Mass, it will be jointly released by Osmose Productions and Hells Headbangers this coming Friday, October 25th, and today it’s our privilege to bring you a complete stream of this massive new work. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WE.OWN.THE.SKY — “HEAVY HEART”

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Oct 222019
 

 

Given the tastes of the people who write for this site, we tend to focus on the more extreme forms of underground metal. But if you’ve been coming here regularly, you’ll know that there are exceptions, and we’re about to make another one — though not an exception to the general rule against singing, because there’s no singing at all in the song we’re about to present, which is accompanied by an eye-catching video.

The song in question, “Heavy Heart“, comes from the new album by the Athenian post-rock/post-metal band we.own.the.sky. Entitled Home, the album will be released on November 1st. While the song might not be as extreme as most of what you’ll find here, it’s definitely a heavyweight track, in keeping with its title — but that’s only one of its charismatic qualities. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OFFICIUM TRISTE — “LOSING GROUND”

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Oct 212019
 

 

With a couple of stops and re-starts in the early years, the Dutch doom/death heavyweights Officium Triste are now well into the third decade of their existence, having honed their mastery of tragedy to a razor’s edge, creating music of both heart-breaking poignancy and crushing despair. On December 13th they will release their sixth album, and their first through Transcending Obscurity Records. Entitled The Death of Gaia, it explores ruinous loss on an epic scale, with music that matches the sweeping catastrophe of its conceptions.

Today we present the album’s closing track, “Losing Ground“, which provides a grand summation of the band’s powers, and of the changing dynamics of their music. It provides little reason for hope, but its hopelessness is nevertheless absolutely spellbinding. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TYRANT GOATGALDRAKONA — “MARQUIS OF EVIL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 212019
 

 

In the ten years that have elapsed since the formation of Tyrant Goatgaldrakona, this Hungarian death metal duo have been measured in their release of music, with only one album (2013’s Horns In The Dark) and a pair of EPs to see the cold light of day since 2009. But now there’s a third EP on the horizon, a two-track offering named Marquis of Evil that’s set for an October 25th release on 7″ vinyl by Blood Harvest Records — and we have a full stream of it, in all its monstrous glory, for you today.

As trained medical professionals, we strongly advise you to get your neck loose before listening to the opening song, “Conspiracy With Marquis“. Okay, we’re not really trained medical professionals, but we still know sore-neck-trauma when we feel it, and this track is a merciless neck-wrecker — though it doesn’t begin that way. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MARRAS — “SEA OF TREES”

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Oct 182019
 

 

Where Light Comes to Die is the debut album of the Finnish black metal band Marras, whose members have been involved in Vargrav, Förgjord, Nekrokrist SS, and Mimorium. It will be released on November 18 by Spread Evil Productions.

What we’re presenting today is a song from the album name “Sea of Trees“, and Marras have explained that its their oldest song, one which actually pre-dated the band’s formation, and which became the vision for the project as a whole, as members Valgrinder and Obscurus began to discuss it:

“We asked Vilthor from Mimorium to play drums and H from Nekrokrist SS to handle the main vocals. I [Valgrinder] did the bass and some of the synths, Obscurus handled the guitars, and V-khaoz from Vargrav did additional synth compositions. Although the vision was clear from the very beginning, Marras started to sound like a collaboration of its creators.” Continue reading »

FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY: “THE SEA OF TRAGIC BEASTS”

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Oct 182019
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by New Jersey’s Fit For An Autopsy, which will be released on October 25th by Nuclear Blast and features cover art by Adam Burke.)

There’s a hoary old cliché that says “good artists borrow, great artists steal”.

We all know it, of course, but have you ever thought about what it’s really trying to say?

The point it’s trying to make, at least the way I see it, is that while some artists may borrow an influence here or there from various sources, the really great ones take these influences and make them their own.

And that’s precisely what prominent “Gojira-core” pioneers Fit for an Autopsy have done on their latest, greatest, album, taking the very best elements of the Duplantier brothers’ pre-mainstream work – the powerful riffs and primal vocals, the turbulent, tidal rhythms and melancholy melodies, the ear-catching, attention grabbing pick-scrapes – and stamping them with their own indelible mark. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERPENS LUMINIS — “BRIGHT EUPHORIA”

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Oct 182019
 

 

Competent vocals in the most extreme of metal genres are commonplace. Whether it be the guttural growls and grunts of death metal or the shrieks and howls of black metal, it seems that vast hordes of people can execute them well enough to pass — maybe not in ways that really pop open a listener’s eyes, but at least capably enough that they don’t distract from or diminish the surrounding music. But being merely competent would seem to be a failure in bands who devote themselves to spiritual black metal.

When the paramount goal of the music is to be guided by esoteric mysticism, to become consumed by the black flame, to reveal dimensions that lie outside the mundane world, and to channel the fervency of intense devotion, the vocals need to be out of the ordinary. The voice should sound like the performer is seeing visions most of us can’t see, overcome by inner flames that most of us don’t feel, out on the bleeding edge where rational thought has been banished and the madness of ecstasy or pain (or both) rules the day. Achieving that might test the limits of what human vocal chords can produce without injury, but must at least convey genuine spirit.

Which brings us to Bright Euphoria, the new album by Serpens Luminis. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHRINE OF INSANABILIS — “VAST VORTEX LITANIES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 172019
 

 

Today W.T.C. Productions is releasing Vast Vortex Litanies, the highly anticipated second album by the German black metal band Shrine of Insanabilis. It has been highly anticipated because the band’s first album, 2015’s Disciples of the Void, was so damned good (and the follow-on EP, 2016’s Tombs Opened by Fervent Tongues… Earth’s Final Necropolis, proved that the debut was no fluke). But Vast Vortex Litanies is nonetheless better than everything that has preceded it — as you’ll discover through the full album stream we’re sharing today.

While the band’s song-writing reveals improved dynamism and the enhanced infiltration of sorcerous melodies, it is the heights of glorious yet frightening frenzy that stand out, and that make the album such a continuously exhilarating experience. Continue reading »

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