AN NCS PREMIERE: ABYSMAL LORD — “NUCLEAR ABSOLUTION”

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Aug 092019
 

 

Attention metal sophisticates and other souls in search of nuance and meticulously stitched musical finery: The door is over there. Please show ourselves out before we turn on the hellfire furnace. Those who don’t mind reveling in a bestial orgy with the hot fumes of sulphur in your nostrils and Abysmal Lord‘s teeth in your throat, make yourselves right at home.

Yes indeed, four years after their Disciples of the Inferno debut album, and following on from their 2018 split with Crurifragium, this New Orleans-based war command is returning with a new full-length — and it could hardly have been better-named: Exaltation of the Infernal Cabal. In addition to exalting the powers of hell, the music also fulfills the other meaning of that initial word — it’s exultant. Although it is a berserker form of ecstasy that explodes from the speakers, for the right kind of reveler, the album’s over-the-top mayhem is fiendishly contagious.

As a prime example of the album’s nuclear-strength depravity, we present “Nuclear Absolution” in advance of the record’s August 16 release by Hells Headbangers. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: STRUCTURAL — “TURN ON THE LIGHTS”

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Aug 092019
 

 

Structural are a relatively new melodic/technical death metal band from Tel-Aviv, Israel. Formed in 2015, they released their first album, Metacognition, in June of last year, and currently have a line-up that consists of co-founding guitarist Shani Friedman, guitarist Tomer Dembinsky, vocalist Nadav Zaidman, and drummer Vadim Sergyenko.

Metacognition is a very impressive debut, a record that showcases Structural’s whiz-bang technical chops but also reveals satisfying songwriting skills, through music that combines body-wracking grooves, head-hooking melodies, and explosive energy. For the official video we’re happily presenting today, the band chose a song from Metacognition that vividly embodies all those qualities — and the video amplifies the turbo-charged power of the track through the fast-cutting sights of the band throwing themselves into their performance. The name of the song is “Turn On the Lights“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WEEPING SORES — “SCARS WHISPERING SECRET TONGUES”

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Aug 082019
 

 

If you leave a sick person in one position for too long, unable to move by themselves, the mere pressure of their own weight on the bed will open draining ulcers in the skin. If untreated, the ulcers may penetrate to the muscle and the bone. Some may never completely heal.

Now, take a long, close look at Caroline Harrison‘s cover painting for the debut album of Weeping Sores.

That image, and the band’s name, are of course metaphorical. What comes through in the music of this new album, False Confession, is the sound of other wounds, of damage to the psyche and the soul brought about by other kinds of untreated pressures, some self-imposed, some inflicted as a consequence of abandonment by others, of being left in dire straits and unable to move without help, which never comes or arrives too late. Even when help comes, scars remain.

The title of the opening track on False Confession refers to scars — “Scars Whispering Secret Tongues”. As an opening statement, it makes a stunning first impression, even if you had some inkling of what might happen based on exposure to Weeping Sores‘ self-titled EP released in 2017. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FULCI — “LEGION OF THE RESURRECTED”

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Aug 082019
 

 

The particular brand of horror that inspires the Italian death metal band Fulci is disclosed in their name, chosen in honor of legendary Italian director Lucio Fulci, “The Godfather of Gore”, whose filmography includes “City of the Living Dead”, “The House by the Cemetery”, “The Beyond”, “The New York Ripper”, “Zombi 2”, and more. They also honor the director’s trademark graphic violence in their music, which is obliterating and eviscerating.

In 1979, Lucio Fulci achieved his international breakthrough with “Zombi 2“, a violent 1979 zombie film that was marketed as a sequel to George Romero‘s “Dawn of the Dead”, which was known internationally as “Zombi”. Fulci‘s film tells the story of a Caribbean island cursed by voodoo, whose dead residents rise as zombies to attack the living. It’s that film, “Zombi 2”, which became the basis for the latest record by Fulci (the band), a concept album called Tropical Sun that was released this past May by Time To Kill Records.

What we’re bringing you today is an official video for a track from Tropical Sun called “Legion of the Resurrected“. The video has a distinctively ’90s look, and is based on a representation of a corpse-raising voodoo ritual. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SYNTELEIA — “ITHAQUA, THY MIGHTY STORM”

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Aug 072019
 

 

“Hellenic black metal” could be misunderstood as simply a geographic descriptor, nothing more than a reference to black metal bands located in Greece. And if you were to survey music released over the last five years by the many fine black metal bands practicing their art from that ancient country, simply encompassing them in a straight-forward geographic category might be understandable, because that music displays considerable stylistic diversity.

But “Hellenic black metal” isn’t merely a geographic reference point. The phrase has another meaning, which refers to a distinctive combination of musical ingredients, and a certain undaunted spirit, reflected in the classic early releases of such bands as Varathron, Rotting Christ, and Necromantia. Last summer, Bandcamp Daily published a primer captioned “A Brief Guide to Hellenic Black Metal”, which included this description:

“Hellenic black metal,” as it’s often called, became a force in the cradle of Western civilization around the same time as the most infamous happenings in the Norwegian scene. Yet the bands associated with Hellenic black metal were worlds apart from the church-burning hordes—not just aesthetically, but also sonically and philosophically. The Hellenic sound was defined by an embrace of traditional heavy metal riffing, elements of Greek folk music, a reverence for epic stories rooted in the country’s history and mythology, and a sun-dappled atmosphere that places the music firmly next to the Mediterranean Sea rather than a freezing fjord”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRANIAL — “FAINT VOICE”

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Aug 072019
 

 

The music of Cranial is primeval. It connects with elemental aspects of humankind that stretch back tens of millennia, to some unrecorded time when our ancestors had barely formed the rudiments of speech but stomped and writhed about the bonfires they had learned to make, the only accompaniment to their howling rites the pounding of stone on stone and the rhythms of the hammering blood in their veins. But cast in more modern forms, the creations of Cranial become demolition machines, vastly more powerful and destructive than their primal antecedents, yet still rooted in the sensations or fear and exultation that have always been intrinsic to our species, the fear of death, the defiance of living.

If you think that opening paragraph sounds hyperbolic, then listen to “Faint Voice” and decide for yourselves. Those of you who have encountered this German band’s previous releases won’t need convincing, and can simply revel in these 12 1/2 extravagant minutes. Newcomers might need a bit of preparation, which of course we’re happy to provide. The preparation begins by advising you not to be misled by the title of this song, which will appear on Cranial’s second album, Alternate Endings. There is a reason for the title, but there is almost nothing faint about the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TRENCH WARFARE — “DECIMATE LEGIONS”

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Aug 062019
 

 

Trench Warfare is hatred and violence from the wasteland of West Texas. The Midland, Texas-based musicians are heavily influenced by bestial black metal, Florida death metal, and war metal. There are no beautiful melodies, no grooves, no slams, no fucking breakdowns. Just pure HATE and VIOLENCE!!!!! FUCK OFF!!!

If you have any suspicions about whether those words are accurate, let me first tell you that it’s a verbatim quote from the band’s Facebook page. And for a second thing, listen to “Decimate Legions“: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LORD GORE — “SCALPELS FOR BLIND SURGEONS”

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Aug 062019
 

 

Think back to 2004, if you can. It was the year when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, when Suddam Hussein was tried in Iraq for war crimes, when the summer Olympics were held in Athens, when Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl, when Ray Charles died, Dimebag Darrell was murdered, and George W. Bush was elected President for a second term. Most relevant for present purposes, it was the year of Lord Gore’s last album before a lengthy hiatus.

Some bands should not attempt to revive themselves after nearly 15 years of silence. But we’re all better off because Lord Gore chose to do so. Their first album after that long slumber, Scalpels For Blind Surgeons, is, without exaggeration, the best thing they’ve ever done in an interrupted career that goes back to the ’90s. It’s also one of the most explosive, electrifying — and unabashedly ghastly — death metal albums you’ll hear this year. It will be released at the end of this week by Everlasting Spew Records, but it’s our ghoulish pleasure to bring you a full stream of all 11 tracks today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SADOKIST — “DRIVEN BY DISGUST”

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Aug 052019
 

 

In many of their outward trappings, Sadokist come across as a crude-and-rude, foul-and-filthy, hell-blazing band of blasphemous barbarians. And yeah, they really are all that. “Evil Sado Fuckin’ Speed Metal of Death!!!” is their mantra, and those aren’t empty words in their case. But one listen to the song we’re premiering today is convincing evidence that these Finnish devils are much more nuanced and diabolically dynamic songwriters than the most superficial trappings might suggest. Their songs are meant to electrify the senses, but a lot of the undeniably high voltage derives from how much they pack into each track.

The song we’re presenting today, “Driven By Disgust“, is one of nine tracks on Sadokist’s shit-hot second album, Necrodual Dimension Funeral Storms, which follows 2014’s Thy Saviour’s Halo, Held by Horns. It’s set for release by Hells Headbangers on August 30, on CD, LP, and tape. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “ALL THRONES PERISH II”

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Aug 022019
 

 

Nearly two years ago we premiered a complete stream of Unhallowed Blood Oath, the debut album of the Australian black metal band Runespell. It seemed to be a portal into the past, in more ways than one. It linked arms with the venerated traditions of Scandinavian second-wave black metal, and it also created a mythic atmosphere, one that cast the mind’s eye back into distant centuries, to times (whether imagined or real) that spawned sagas of warlike defiance and sacrifice, of bloodshed and bereavement, of heroic striving and irredeemable loss.

A second Runespell album, Order of Vengeance, arrived the following year, but the creative fires within Runespell’s alter ego Nightwolf have remained unquenchable. A third album, Voice of Opprobrium, is now set for release on September 6th by Iron Bonehead Productions, which also released the first two albums. And today we have the premiere of one of the new record’s six tracks, a song that calls us back to one of the most moving tracks from the debut album two years ago. Continue reading »

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