AN NCS EP PREMIERE: OKTAS — “OKTAS”

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Sep 202019
 

 

Genre hybrids within the general ambit of extreme metal tend to be hit-or-miss affairs, and perhaps more miss than hit the further the hybridized ingredients differ from each other. Yet when the creative splicing of divergent ingredients and tonalities truly succeeds, the experience can stand out in ways that don’t often happen in the general run of genre monochromes, and reward the constant search of metal adventurists for something different. In my humble opinion, the self-titled premiere EP by Oktas, which is being released today, is one of those stand-out successes.

By way of background, an okta is a unit of measurement used to describe the amount of cloud cover at any given location. That term became the basis for the name chosen by this group of Philadelphia musicians, led by visual and musical artist Bob Stokes (Drones for Queens), who performs vocals and bass, and including friends of his from previous bands — drummer Rob Macauley and fellow bassist Carl Whitlock of Dirt Worshipper, and minimalist composer Jason Baron from Cloud Minder, who plays the cello with Oktas. (We did mention unusual tonalities, and here we have two bassists and a cellist, but no guitar.)

As forecast, this new EP embraces a range of influences, from ambient minimalism to atmospheric black metal and epic doom metal (and I hear a bit of gloomy post-punk in the mix, too), woven together with a cinematic edge. Lyrically “based in the filth ridden streets of south Philadelphia”, as Bob Stokes has told us, the words transport us “to a world destroyed by mankind’s own hubris, plagued with endless war, constant natural disasters and humanity desperate for redemption”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARCINOID — “SICKNESS”

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Sep 192019
 

 

Prepare your hardened ears for a mutated offspring of death and doom that’s as foul as a rotting corpse, as punishing as a jackhammer applied to the spine, and as horrifying as a runaway cancer. All of those ghastly sensations come through with blood-congealing power in “Sickness“, the sickening song we’re presenting today off the debut album by a quartet from Melbourne, Australia, who fittingly call themselves Carcinoid.

Speaking of fitting names, the title of that album, which will be get a vinyl LP release on November 1st through Blood Harvest, is Metastatic Declination. In keeping with these naming conventions, Blood Harvest‘s publicist writes (and we can’t resist quoting him): “So odorous, pugnacious, and hideous is the music that this quartet belch forth, it verily sounds like a radioactive, cancerous growth bubbling up from a post-apocalyptic landscape.” Continue reading »

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

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Sep 192019
 

 

The broad genre of doom metal bears that name for a reason. In different ways, the sub-genres under that banner summon sensations of dread, despair, gloom, and grief, sometimes of supernatural origin and often deriving from the familiar afflictions of daily human existence and the ultimate one that awaits us all at the end. But while the genre label of doom may have the naming rights for all our woes, it has no monopoly on the channeling of those feelings through extreme music.

Certain schools of atmospheric black metal are equally devoted to soul-crushing sensations, and arguably are even better suited to capturing the severity of intense suffering and the madness it can produce. The self-titled debut album by Iffernet that we’re premiering today in advance of its October 2nd release is a prime example. It presents emotionally wrenching music that penetrates deeply, relying on continuing cycles of squalling and searing riffs and severely tortured vocals to saturate the mind with changing moods of abandonment, fear, pain, delirious agony, and crushing grief. The album is a colossal panorama of despondency and despair that’s unrelenting in the intensity of its devotion to those visions, and so powerful in its achievements that it won’t leave most listeners unaffected. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLASPHEMOUS COVENANT — “HURRICANE OF NOOSEFIENDING”

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Sep 182019
 

 

The California-based black metal band Blasphemous Covenant is a rabid and riotous assault force created by members of Byyrth and Thy Sepulchral Moon. They describe their debut album, the accurately titled Disruption… Havoc, as “blind chaotic hatred sealed against its will inside a cage, frothing at the mouth, ready to destroy those that dare to open the gate.” Also absolutely accurate. The music violently assaults the senses with pure fury and sears the brain with its abrasive intensity and mutated tonalities. It is raw black metal that will indeed leave you scraped raw and gibbering like a lunatic.

But as you’ll find when you listen to the partial track we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s September 20 release by Grey Matter Productions, there are qualities in the music that you might not be expecting from that preceding description, and a method of execution that isn’t typical either. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SELENITE — “CHANNELING CHANTS FROM BEYOND”

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Sep 182019
 

 

Mahasamadhi is the debut album of Selenite, a project created by Stefan Traunmüller of the ’90s symphonic black metal band Golden Dawn. Here, he wrote and recorded everything, joined by professional opera singer Antonia Gust on two tracks. The music could be thought of as an amalgam of funeral doom, doom/death, and maybe a bit of symphonic black metal, yet the resulting fusion stands apart from all those antecedents, creating an experience that is both terrifically heavy and mesmerizingly mystical.

Clues to the visions captured in the songs can be found in the project’s name, which has two meanings: “Selenites” was the name given by certain sources to imagined inhabitants of the moon during the 19th century (and to extraterritorial civilization of lunar creatures encountered by human explorers in H.G. Wells‘ 1901 novel First Men in the Moon). “Selenite” is also the moonstone, a white gypsum crystal that is thought to calm and soothe the mind and to bring tranquility.

Further clues can be found in the album’s title. We are told that “Mahasamadhi means the intended death of a yogi who has reached unity beyond duality and is free from all karma,” and thus the integration of Sanskrit mantras and Eastern spirituality is part of Selenite’s concept. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANCIENT MOON — “BENEDICTUS DIABOLICA, GLORIA PATRI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Sep 172019
 

 

Two tracks. One of them nearly 17 1/2 minutes long, the other one just over 20 minutes, each of them denominated as a Part of a single work. That’s the new album by the black metal band Ancient Moon, Benedictus diabolica, Gloria Patri, which will be released by Iron Bonehead Productions on September 20th. Two very long pieces composed and performed by anonymous artists, locations unknown, but apparently crossing continents.

Music of such daunting length can be… daunting to listeners, and to people such as myself who feel compelled to wrestle with words as a means of communicating sound. But don’t be daunted, or deterred from listening. Patience is obviously required, but in this case it will be richly rewarded. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI (AND JESU) — “HITMEN” (AND A REVIEW OF “BURIED MEMORIES”)

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Sep 162019
 

 

Following hot on the heels of their 2018 album Continuum, the English instrumental post-rock band Sons of Alpha Centauri (SOAC) have created a second part to the journey which began there, and have done so in a stunning collaboration with industrial metal icon Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu…) and ambient gloom metal maestro James Plotkin (Khanate, Jodis, etc.). The results of these creative unions are relentlessly fascinating, amalgamating a wide range of stylistic ingredients in a way that’s both compulsively head-moving and equally mind-bending. The music has genuinely primal power, yet also transports listeners into an alien cosmos and seemingly spirits us away into haunting realms that we enter at our peril.

This new album, Buried Memories includes two 10-minute monoliths of eclectic ambient progressive rock by SOAC — “Hitmen” and “Warhero“. “Hitmen” was mixed by Broadrick, and the album further includes his interpetive remixes of the track, one in his guise as Jesu and the second as the eponymous JK Flesh. James Plotkin created the mix for the second long SOAC track, “Warhero“, and then the album further includes a third, shorter SOAC track (“Remembrance“) mixed by Plotkin, as well as his remix of “SS Montgomery“, a single from the band’s landmark self-titled debut album.

What we’re presenting today is the premiere of the Jesu remix of “Hitmen“, as well as an impressionistic review of Buried Memories as a whole, in advance of its release on October 13th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WAYWARD DAWN — “PROPHET”

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Sep 132019
 

 

The four marauders in Wayward Dawn from Skanderborg, Denmark, may not be grizzled veterans (in fact, their ages range from 19 to 21), but you’d never guess that from listening to their music. The brand of death metal they’ve embraced is ferociously powerful, demonically sinister, furiously enraged, and delivered with explosive energy. And they’ve already demonstrated precocious song-writing talent, injecting their slaughtering assaults with booming grooves and the kind of riffs that get stuck in a listener’s head.

Wayward Dawn made their mark last year with their debut album, Soil Organic Matter, and participated in a four-way split this past spring (Carriers of the Disease), and now on this lucky Friday the 13th, they’re releasing a new single through Mighty Music named “Prophet“. To commemorate the occasion we’re cooperating with a few other sites to present the debut of the song through a video that captures the band’s live energy. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: M:40 — “SVINAKUNGENS SAL”

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Sep 122019
 

 

You scuffle along dirty sidewalks that edge mean streets, kicking the detritus in front of you, head down and lost in your own gloomy and frustrated thoughts. Suddenly the gloom becomes a fury. Maybe you’ve walked right into someone else in your blind momentum, and the shock springs a fragile lock in your head. Maybe everything that’s been seething just suddenly reaches a violent boil of its own accord, because nothing you’ve been thinking leads to any solution, and all the agony and rage you’ve been trying to work through or suppress just won’t be held down any longer.

Repression only works for so long, and the growing pressure you’ve been trying to contain only magnifies the explosiveness of the release. Nothing is solved, no solace presents itself. But what else are you supposed to do? You eat yourself alive, or you let it go, and give the nitroglycerine in your veins something else to consume, with fire.

With emotionally powerful music, what we take away from it is always unique, because that’s an alchemical product of the immutable sounds and what’s inside of us, which is never exactly the same as what’s inside someone else, including the band who made it. The first paragraph above is just what I imagined and felt in listening to “Svinakungens sal“, the track we’re presenting today from the new album by M:40. You might get a different feeling, but whatever that might be, it’s bound to be intense — because this is a damned intense song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WINGS OF DAHAK — “DEATH AT YOUR SIDE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 112019
 

 

I’ve been closely following the work of Texas-based Wings of Dahak since coming across the tracks released in advance of their 2017 debut album, Unholy Wings. Initially drawn to the music by the pedigrees of the band’s three members — guitarist/vocalist/bassist Dave Tillery (Embalmed, ex-Gruesome Fate), lead guitarist Cody Daniels (Giant of the Mountain, Dour), and drummer Matt Thompson (King Diamond, and more) — I quickly became sold on the ravaging ferocity and immense evocative power of their particular amalgam of death and black metal (to mention only two ingredients).

Named for a legendary three-headed dragon (Azhi Dahaka) created by the spirit of destruction, whose reign brought to the earth “misery, hunger, thirst, old age and death, mourning and lamentation, excessive heat and cold, and intermingling of demons and men,” and creating music “with this spirit in heart and mind”, the band have succeeded in summoning those terrible visions through sound.

Wings of Dahak followed that debut album with a new single last fall — “The Day They Burned” — which we reviewed soon after discovering it. Now, the band are about to release a new EP named Death At Your Side, which includes both that single and two new tracks. Today, on the eve of that release, we’re premiering both the EP as a whole and a video for its title track. Let’s take the songs one at a time, beginning with the one we’re presenting through a frightening video… Continue reading »

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