AN NCS PREMIERE: MURK RIDER — “DESCENT”

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Jun 172019
 

 

For many music fans what inspires artists to create their records is of secondary importance, if it’s a subject of interest at all. What matters more is what the music inspires within the listener. After all, what we take away from the experience, what makes immediate impressions and creates lasting memories, is in part a function of who we are, and might actually have little to do with what drove the creativity of the musicians.

Yet in some cases the back-story leads to a deeper appreciation of the sounds, and can become interesting in its own right. We have one of those cases here, in the story of Murk Rider and their debut album Exile of Shadows — a conceptual work that consists of three tracks ranging in length from 21 minutes to 30 minutes, one of which (the album opener) we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IATO — “SOGGETTO ALIENATO”

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Jun 172019
 

 

Rising from the ashes of a hardcore punk band, the death-metal/grindcore band Iato first came together in 2011 in the town of Quartu Sant’Elena on the Italian island of Sardinia. Now consisting of drummer Lorenzo Balia, bassist Andrea Manis, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Federico Pisano and vocalist/guitarist Francesco Nano, Iato have released a pair of EPs, and are now on the verge of seeing the release of their debut album Ucronia via GrimmDistribution (Ukraine) and The Triad Rec (Italy-Malta).

The release date of June 19th is only two days away, and so you won’t have to wait long to hear the entire album, but to whet your appetites for it we’re presenting a new track today named “Soggetto Alienato“. Continue reading »

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

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Jun 142019
 

 

After releasing an album, an EP, and a split under the name Aetherium Mors, the UK duo of multi-instrumentalist Dan Couch and vocalist/lyricist Kane Nelson changed their name to Itheist, a word that figured in a song on their last Aetherium Mors release, a word found in The Satanic Scriptures by Peter H Gilmore (and spelled there as I-theist). The name fits the philosophical underpinnings of their new self-titled album, which (as Dan Couch explains) “focused on forging one’s own reality through the Satanic virtue of discipline and creating an environment that cultivates the causal advancement of personal greatness and power”.

In keeping with the lyrical concepts, the album itself is dramatically powerful, with songs that are are rampantly dynamic, often electrifying, frequently disorienting, and almost always fearsome. They harness elements of classic bands such as Death, Carcass, and Dissection, together with more experimental bands such as Akercocke, Ulcerate, and Gorguts, and the results are riveting — as you will discover through our full stream of the album in advance of its summer-solstice release on June 21st. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THORNS OF GRIEF — “ILLUSIONS”

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Jun 142019
 

 

As I write this article I am in Iceland at a music festival, experiencing the strange effects of daylight throughout the waking hours, even at 2:30 a.m., when I finally fell into an exhausted slumber earlier this morning.

Iceland is just a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle, that imaginary line around the Earth that marks the latitude above which the sun does not set on the summer solstice and does not rise on the winter solstice. The summer solstice arrives on June 21st, one week from today.

The rhythms of the body rebel at so much light, but there is at least a temporary remedy for the disorientation, a balance to be found as the mind is seduced into deepest darkness through the sound of “Illusions“, the song from the debut album by Thorns of Grief that’s been devouring the light around me this morning. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WINTERWOLF — “LYCANTHROPIC METAL OF DEATH”

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Jun 132019
 

 

Bear with me, please. I need to indulge in a personal back-story, which is a partial explanation for why I’m so excited to present the premiere of Winterwolf’s new album, oh-so-fittingly entitled Lycanthropic Metal of Death. Or don’t bear with me, and just skip to the bottom and hit the play button (as long as you eventually do that, sooner or later, I’ll be a happy camper).

In December 2010, a month lost in the mists of time when this site was barely one year old, I impulsively embarked on a project impulsively named Finland Tribute Week. At that time, having become fascinated with (and eventually addicted to) extreme metal late in life, I was still trying to become educated about what I’d missed (a process that continues to this day).

I chose Finnish metal for a deep dive in part because I was so dumbfounded that a nation of such small population (relatively speaking) had succeeded in spawning sooooo many metal bands of soooo many different styles. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PESTIS INFEROS — “WITHIN THE DARKNESS, I DWELL”

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Jun 112019
 

 

Syracuse, New York, is home to a malevolent new black metal entity who’ve taken the name Pestis Inferos. Their debut EP, Beyond the Veil of Light, is a ruthless statement of intent by this hellish trio, and today, in advance of its June 24 release date, we reveal a new track from it that’s  fittingly entitled “Within the Darkness, I Dwell“.

When the band first began to take shape in the spring of last year, there were not-entirely-serious musings about embracing Darkthrone worship, but as the songwriting began, the direction shifted more in the direction of Dark Funeral (which perhaps explains the name of the EP’s opening song, “From Throne To Funeral”). The song we’re presenting today is certainly heavy as hell’s gates, and the kind of powerhouse track that is at once cold and cruel, and fiery and ferocious. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ATLAS ENTITY — “BENEATH THE COSMIC SILENCE”

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Jun 102019
 

 

Beneath the Cosmic Silence, the new album by the Florida progressive death metal band Atlas Entity, proves to be appealing on many levels. For those with a taste for fleet-fingered guitar technicality and agile, astute, and creative drumwork, it will deliver enormous smiles — in part because the top-shelf performance skill isn’t brandished for its own sake, but employed in the service of well-crafted songs. For listeners who enjoy becoming immersed in memorable, mood-changing melodies, both introspective and riotous, it offers that too. People who relish biting savagery will also get their fix. But perhaps above all else, the music is bursting with life — the kind of album whose irrepressible vitality makes you feel good to be alive, no matter how shitty your personal circumstances might be going into it.

The album also incorporates some evolutions in sound as compared to the band’s previous release, the 2015 EP Enceladus, even though the same two people are at the helm — composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Alex Gallegos and session drummer Samus Paulicelli (Decrepit Birth, Devin Townsend). And as compared to that first release, this one represents a big step forward. We’re very happy to present a full stream of it today in advance of its release on June 14th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOCTURNAL BREED — “SHARKS OF THE WEHRMACHT”

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Jun 102019
 

 

As you make your way through the new album by Nocturnal Breed, you might get flash after flash of past glories — memory bursts of Nuclear Assault and Accept, of vintage Metallica and Megadeth, of Celtic Frost and Black Sabbath, of Motörhead and Venom, of King Diamond and Iron Maiden. It’s as much a matter of spirit as of sound, the feeling of fire in the blood and steel in the hand, a dedication to metal domination that won’t be diverted or denied. The music rips and rages, and revels.

Of course there’s a difference between trying to clone the music of legendary bands such as those mentioned above and revealing the influences because it’s what you love, because it’s part of your DNA and thus works its way naturally into what you do, without calculation. That’s the feeling of this new record, We Only Came For the Violence, the sixth full-length by this Norwegian speed metal cult in a career that goes back to the mid-’90s. This is a hell-thrasher’s record, but one in which the backbone of thrash is fleshed out in other ways that channel the band-members’ inspirations and interests. The result is a record packed with killer riffs, razor-sharp rhythm-section work, and vocals that send chills down the spine.

It’s also the kind of dynamic experience that gives every song its own character, and we’ve got a prime example of that in the contrast between the first song revealed from the album and the one we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABIGORUM — “ÜBER DICH”

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Jun 092019
 

 

Abigorum began as the solo project of Russian musician Aleksey Korolyov, who is also the owner of Satanath Records. Operating on his own, and drawing upon traditions of doom, black metal, and dark ambient music, he recorded a sequence of releases that included a collaboration with Cryostasium (2016’s Unholy Ghost Liturgy) and a split with Striborg (2018’s Spectral Shadows). Since then he has expanded the line-up of Abigorum with the addition of two German musicians — guitarist/vocalist Tino Thiele (from Wulfgar and Metamorph) and bassist Sandra Batsch — and together they have completed a debut album named Exaltatus Mechanism.

The album, whose lyrics are in German, “tells the story of the fascination of the black and grey side of evil, the ridicule of vices and hatred for people who are accustomed to a normal life and do not understand that everything around them is just an illusion, and that they are slaves”. The album will be jointly released on June 14th by Satanath Records and the U.S. label Death Portal Studio, and what we have for you today is the second advance track from the album released so far — “Über Dich” (over you or above you). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LAUXNOS — “CRUSHED BY WAVES”

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Jun 072019
 

 

Lauxnos, the Russian atmospheric post-metal band who took their name from an old Prussian word that refers to the stars, the moon, and the dawn, have built a conceptual story line over the course of three albums that tells of escape from the hardships of daily life and immersion in the mysteries of dark ocean waters where peace might be found, but where raging storms also threaten a different kind of oblivion.

The third of those albums, Crushed By Waves, will be jointly released on June 11th by Symbol of Domination (a sub-label of Satanath Records) and The Ritual Productions. Today we present the debut of the album’s title track, which, like Poseidon’s domain itself, is immersive and multi-faceted. Continue reading »

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