AN NCS PREMIERE: AEGRUS — “ASCENDING SHADOWS”

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Sep 112019
 

 

Rapidly approaching their fifteenth year of existence, the Finnish black metal band Aegrus have pursued their visions of Luciferian darkness with unwavering dedication, but with increasing skill. As the years have passed, the band has also grown from its two founding members (vocalist Darkseer Inculta and guitarist Lux Tenebris) to include long-time session live members Serpentifer (drums) and Praestigiator (guitars), and they have all joined forces for the recording of the group’s remarkable third album, In Manus Satanas.

This new full-length will be released on October 11th by the band’s new partner, the cult Finnish record label Saturnal Records. One song from the album (“Nemesis“) has previously surfaced, and today it’s our privilege to present another, aptly named “Ascending Shadows“. It’s a tremendously dramatic and emotionally powerful piece of music, with an atmosphere that’s both reverent and fearsome, both ominous and tortured, and ultimately spellbinding. It builds in intensity at the same time as it’s methodically digging its razor claws ever more deeply into the imagination and the memory, to the point when its haunting after-effects seem to go on and on even after the song has concluded. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DOWNCROSS — “WHAT LIGHT COVERS NOT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Sep 102019
 

 

The debut album by the Belarusian black metal band Downcross, which we premiered in February, proved to be one of the best surprises of the new year, which was then barely two months old. The duo of vocalist/drummer Ldzmr and guitarist Dzmtr demonstrated impressive skill as songwriters and performers, creating emotionally powerful tracks loaded with magnetically attractive melodic hooks, physically compulsive rhythms, and dynamic changes of mood. With such abundant talent on display, Mysteries of Left Path left me quite interested to hear what Downcross might do next. I just didn’t expect I would find out so soon.

Not even seven months later, Downcross are on the verge of releasing a second album, What Light Covers Not, on September 11th. Of course Downcross didn’t start working on these seven new songs for the first time after their debut album was released. The process probably began long before that. But it might still be fair to wonder how good the album is, given the relatively short time between the two releases. Though my own opinion is obvious — because today we’re premiering the new album, as we did the first one — I’ll just make it explicit: What Light Covers Not is really, really good. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RANK AND VILE — “KILLDOZER”

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Sep 092019
 

 

The band is Rank and Vile (a nice play on words). The name of the song is “killdozer.” — intentionally lowercase, the period intentionally inserted at the end, just like all the song titles on their new album redistribution of flesh. (same with the album title). Regardless of punctuation choices, the song title is absolutely accurate. It is an audio killing machine, as heavy as a bulldozer, but capable of moving with the speed and agility of a big cat chasing prey on the savanna.

This death-grind unit from Portland, Oregon, only came together last year, but the newcomers aren’t tyros. And they already seem to have a very clear vision for their music, which pulls influence from the sounds of bands such as Entombed and Gatecreeper, Rotten Sound and Megrudergrind, and Black Breath. The results of their work turn out to be savagely mauling experiences, and big adrenaline triggers. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BARBARIAN SWORDS — “[CENSORED]”

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Sep 092019
 

 

The album Worms by the Spanish band Barbarian Swords was a late-year discovery for us in 2016, made possible by a request from Satanath Records and Cimmerian Shade Recordings that we host a premiere of the album stream. Not knowing what awaited me, I explored the music before giving an answer — and was blown away. In an attempt to describe the music in the review that accompanied the premiere, I wrote:

“In its predominant forms, Barbarian Swords traffic in a twisted but very compelling hybrid of doom and black metal — nihilistic and barbaric, moldering and mesmerizing, and frequently unnerving. And there are massive headbang triggers lurking like landmines in the album, too.”

I put one track from the album, “Outcast Warlords”, on our list of 2016’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, and later we premiered the lyric video for another potent (and addictive) track from the album — “Pure Demonology“.

Since then these Spanish blasphemers have participated in a three-way split (Tetrarchia Ex Bestia), which was released in June of this year, but they’ve also cooked up a new eight-track release entitled “[Censored]” that will be presented on October 18th by Third I Rex. The name of the release isn’t really the word “Censored”. The name is… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOATBURNER — “VORTEX OF CHAOS”

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Sep 092019
 

 

Unless Goatburner are clairvoyant they probably couldn’t have known, when this premiere was arranged, that their song “Vortex of Chaos” — which is about the obliterating power of an immense hurricane — would be released barely one week after the monstrous Hurricane Dorian absolutely destroyed portions of the Bahamas, leaving more than 70,000 people homeless and a death toll of 44 (at this writing) before moving on to ravage the Outer Banks of North Carolina and now far-eastern Canada.

On the other hand, their debut album Extreme Conditions thematically focuses on the extreme and unpredictable weather events that are increasingly plaguing the current world. If Hurricane Dorian had not followed the completion of the album, some other horrific extratropical or tropical cyclone undoubtedly would have. But this Finnish duo composed of Keijo Niinimaa (Rotten Sound, Morbid Evils, Age of Woe) and Jaakko Forsman (Ratface, Skulmagot) are aware of Dorian now, and Keijo provided this comment not long after that hurricane’s tragic destruction in the Bahamas: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: DIKASTERION — “STAVELOT 1597 / ROME 897”

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Sep 062019
 

 

Building on the strength of their slaughtering 2018 debut demo, the Belgian black/death band Dikasterion have escaped Hell again, and brought much of Hell with them in a new two-track release coming our way via Amor Fati Productions on September 9th — next Monday. If you think those references to hellish power were exaggerations, just listen to Stavelot 1597 / Rome 897 (which we’re giving you the chance to do a bit further on in this post).

Only two songs long, this is the kind of pull-no-punches barbarity capable of leaving a listener mind-mangled but crackling with electricity and wishing it were longer. Make no mistake, it’s a cruel and ugly assault on the senses, not any kind of experience for the faint of heart. But as toxic, brutish, and maniacal as the music may be, these sulfurous, diabolical assaults get the pulse pounding with primal power. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WELLS VALLEY — “PLEROMA”

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Sep 062019
 

 

Music can cause us to move and shake, to throw our heads back in joy or hammer them like ecstatic pistons, caught up in the thrill of being alive. Music also has the capacity to fire the imagination, to cause our minds to spontaneously conceive unbidden images and experiences that never actually happened, to carry us away to places we’ve never visited and that may not actually exist, to create spells that may haunt us for reasons we might not be able to readily identify.

Both kinds of music — the fun kinds and the more profound and mysterious varieties — can stay with us, but the latter often seem to settle in more deeply and to make mental and emotional connections that are longer-lasting. It’s fair to say that the new Wells Valley track we’re presenting today is of that variety, an immersive and spellbinding experience that sends the mind’s eye off into realms of the imagination while also evoking powerful emotions that might not be anywhere near the surface of your feelings when the song begins.

Because “Pleroma” is that kind of experience, it’s entirely fitting that this Portuguese band has presented it through a transfixing video (directed by Guilherme Henriques) that is itself a flight of the imagination, a sequence of surreal visions that sometimes seem to lurk at the edge of reality, reminiscent of sights that sometimes seem familiar but are bent from the normal frames of reference, but sometimes seem utterly alien — and frightening. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SACCAGE — “LA KERMESSE DU CHARNIER”

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Sep 052019
 

 

Now well into their second decade of existence, the Québec City band Saccage will be releasing their third album, Khaos Mortem, on September 20 through a triumvirate of labels. The name of their first album — Death Crust Satanique — provides a succinct summing up of their sound, but although the new album continues to lash together death metal and crust, it leans harder into the elements of death metal, creating an experience that’s heavier, darker, more brutal, more crushing — and absolutely explosive.

The new album also unmistakably displays the collective experience of the band’s members. They’re sonic executioners to be sure, but the performances are sharp as well as lethal, and the songs prove to be dynamic and multi-faceted, without diminishing the fury that propels them. We have a prime example of those qualities in the track we’re presenting today — “La Kermesse Du Charnier“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PHOBOPHILIC — “DIMINISHED TO UNBEING”

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Sep 052019
 

 

Like many (but not all) music writers, we prefer to concoct our own impressions and descriptive phrases for what we hear rather than lazily falling back on the PR verbiage that accompanies the music we receive, which isn’t exactly a disinterested assessment to begin with. On the other hand, sometimes the PR material nails it. A case in point: the press material for Undimensioned Identities, the impressive second demo by Phobophilic from Fargo, North Dakota. As recounted by Rotted Life Records and Blood Harvest Records, who will be releasing the demo in the U.S. and Europe, respectively:

“Undimensioned Identities is a tilted and deranged-enough variant of old-school death metal that it’s clear the four-piece are more focused on looking forward than backwards. Propelled by protean and corkscrewing riffs, the four tracks here are crafted with methodical precision, evoking majestic Lovecraftian horrors and creating cataclysmic maelstroms of madness and rot, while delivering a skillfully enunciated performance with a detailed production that never slips into the brackish sonic murk that’s typical of newer bands schooled on the seminal Incantation sound”.

Some nice turns of phrase in there, and better yet, it’s all true. Of course we have some words of our own, but better yet we have the premiere of a song from the demo named “Diminished To Unbeing“, presented through a video of the band’s performance of the song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RIPPER — “SENSORY STAGNATION”

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Sep 052019
 

 

If you’re unaware that Unspeakable Axe will be releasing a new Ripper EP on September 30, that means you haven’t been checking in with us every day (shame on you!). We’ve written enthusiastically about the first single from that EP here, and we’ve also reviewed the EP as a whole. In a nutshell, it’s fantastic. That should come as no shock to anyone who’s familiar with this Chilean band’s previous work, but what might be surprising is how much further they’ve spread their prodigious (dragon) wings through these five new songs.

The name of the new EP is Sensory Stagnation, which is an interesting title, because the music is instead the antidote to sensory stagnation. It’s hard to comprehend how anyone could be bored with the state of metal these days, though some über-elitists profess to be. But for any benighted souls who do think metal is stagnating, Ripper’s newest offering will wake you up just as effectively as taking a seat in Old Sparky and riding the lightning. As proof of that, we’re following up the EP’s first advance track with a premiere of the title song today. Continue reading »

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