AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK BEAST — “NOCTURNAL BLOODLUST”

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Nov 042019
 

 

On November 8th Primitive Reaction will release Nocturnal Bloodlust, the debut album of Finland’s Black Beast — which arrives a long 13 years after their last release (a split with Bloodhammer), so long ago that many of you may not be aware of their existence (I was not). But this debut full-length blazes like a meteor in the night sky, and should quickly elevate them from cult obscurity to a more exalted place in the Finnish black metal star-field.

Nocturnal Bloodlust presents a transfixing blend of bestiality, lust, and anthemic grandeur, with great song-craft to go along with the band’s unwavering devotion to rampant flame-spewing demonism. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LARVAE — “IMMORTAL CORPSES”

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Nov 012019
 

 

In the spring of this year the Bay Area band Larvae, with a revised line-up, returned after a five-year interlude following the release of their debut album (Grave Descent) with a new EP named Necroptuary. The EP consisted of three tracks that were thematically interlinked, seeming to function as a commentary on the sacrifice and scars, the pain and bodily corruption, that characterize human existence, and of the crossing over from chaos to another plane of existence that comes with death.

Today we’re presenting an evocative lyric video for the new EP’s closing track, “Immortal Corpses“. To introduce it, and to aid in understanding it, we’ll begin with a statement by the band’s founder, vocalist/guitarist Brad Kobylczak (who is joined in Larvae by lead guitarist Dara Santhai, bassist Wyatt Culbertson, and drummer Eric Evert, all of whom shine as integral parts of the music on this EP): Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRATER — “ZWISCHEN DEN WORTEN”

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Nov 012019
 

 

In mid-September we took the rare step (for us) of sharing the announcement of a new album by the German black metal band Krater even though we didn’t yet have any song streams to present, because their past releases have been so damned good. The opportunity to put Misanthropic-Art‘s creepy creation for the album’s cover at the top of our page was an added inducement. But now we have not one but two songs from the album available to your ears, one of which we’re premiering today.

The new full-length is named Venenare, and it will be released on November 15th by Eisenwald. A 50-minute work, it’s divided into nine tracks. In the flow of the album, the song that’s being revealed today, “Zwischen den Worten” (Between the Words), arrives third in the running order, and it’s immediately followed by “Stellar Sparks“, the other song from the album that’s now streaming (it premiered three weeks ago at DECIBEL). Listening to both of them back-to-back is highly recommended. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: POMBAJIRA — “VITAL LUCIFER”

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Oct 312019
 

 

I’ve never actually witnessed a Brazilian black magic ceremony or the sacrifices and possessions that are said to happen in them, though I’ve read that such things do occur in the rites of the Macumba cults. But listening to the music of Pombajira is a voodoo experience in its own right. The name chosen by this devilish trio is itself a sign of their Afro-Brazilian cultural roots, and the music, which creates its own kind of trance, awakens primeval impulses in the most primitive parts of the brain.

Pombajira’s self-titled debut record is a six-song amalgam of influences that range from Black Sabbath and Hellhammer to Venom and Pentagram, with the atmosphere of Celtic Frost’s Into the Pandemonium. It will be released on November 29th by Helldprod Records, and today we’ve got the premiere of a song named “Vital Lucifer” that is indeed electrifyingly vital and definitely demonic. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BEDNJA — “LEDENA PALACA”

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Oct 312019
 

 

This is kind of an odd premiere. In fact it’s probably a misnomer to call it a premiere at all. But the album on which the song appears is so fantastic that I’ve softened my usual rigid adherence to the literal meaning of the word in an effort to help further expose it to new listeners.

The album, Doline Su Ostale Iza Nas, was first briefly released for public streaming — but not for sale or download — by the Croatian band Bednja early last year. At their request we enthusiastically premiered that full stream of it along with an extensive review, from which I’m including a few excerpts below. Bednja’s plan then was to find one or more labels willing to release the album in a physical edition — and they succeeded. None other than Transcending Obscurity Records (whose label boss knows a good thing when he hears it) signed Bednja and will be releasing Doline Su Ostale Iza Nas on November 29th in a variety of formats.

And now, before we get to some specific comments about the song we’re presenting, “Ledena Palaca“, allow me to repeat a few things I wrote in last year’s review (which you can find here): Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBSIDIAN TONGUE — “RETURN TO THE FIELDS OF VIOLET”

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Oct 292019
 

 

It has been a long wait, six years now since Obsidian Tongue‘s wonderful second album, A Nest of Ravens in the Throat of Time, albeit with some great work in evidence through their track “The Lakeside Redemption” on a four-way split in 2015 (Northeastern Hymns). In that time guitarist/vocalist Brendan Hayter has joined forces with a new drummer, the formidable Ray Capizzo of Falls of Rauros (and a live member of Panopticon), and together — at last — they have completed a third full-length, simply entitled Volume III.

Today it’s our great pleasure not only to assist in announcing this Maine band’s new album — which will be released by Bindrune Recordings on January 31, 2020 — but also to premiere a stunning song from the record named “Return to the Fields of Violet“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DIE KUNST DER FINSTERNIS — “REVENANT IN A PHANTOM WORLD (QUEEN OF OWLS ADDENDUM)”

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Oct 292019
 

 

“Die Kunst der Finsternis plays Horror Metal exclusively.” So says this Sweden-based band, the macabre solo project of Deacon D. (also a fixture in Hetroertzen), and truer words were never spoken. There is equal truth in the title of the band’s third album, Revenant in a Phantom World (Queen of Owls Addendum), because the music does indeed sound like the expressions of one who has known death and returned from its domain to haunt the living, or to feed upon their blood. It also captures the transformation that listeners risk by becoming immersed in its deeply chilling sensations.

It’s the kind of album that kindles the imagination, in very discomfiting ways, and perhaps is best described by the visions it spawns rather than by a dissection of its ingredients, which include bits and pieces of black metal, death metal, gothic melody, and a cavalcade of demonic voices, all interwoven through the experimental and expressionistic imaginings of its creator. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LVXCAELIS — “MAHER SHALAL HASH BAZ”

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Oct 282019
 

 

Now fourteen years into their existence, the Chilean black metal band LvxCaelis have produced their strongest work yet, a ravishing third album entitled Maher Shalal Hash Baz that will be released by Lamech Records, fittingly on October 31st.

Pursuing ancient occult and mystical themes across seven tracks, the trio of Irad (guitars/vocals), Nimrod (bass), and Frater B. (drums) create a sonic tableau of varying sensations, from plundering cruelty to chilling reverence, from crushing bleakness to carnal swagger, from terrifying splendor to chaotic ecstasy — and all of it cloaked with a mantle of menace and mystery. Today we give you the chance to hear all of it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REMOTE VIEWING — “A DOG IN THE OVEN”

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Oct 282019
 

 

As we all know, musical heaviness comes in different shapes and sizes. Heaviness, for example, might be measured by the brute-force impact of low-frequency distortion and punishing drumwork. On the other hand, it might be gauged by a measure of emotional weight, by the transmission through bleak melody and tormented vocals of pain, grief, and despair. The song we’re presenting today by the London band Remote Viewing combines heaviness in both of those senses, and the consequences can be devastating.

“A Dog In The Oven” is the name of the track we’re premiering, and it’s one of eight on the band’s new album, It’s Better This Way, which will be released on November 29th by Sludgelord Records. Continue reading »

SARTEGOS: THE PREMIERE OF “AS DEVESAS SOM DOS LOBOS” AND A REVIEW OF “O SANGUE DA NOITE”

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Oct 282019
 

 

(On November 29th I, Voidhanger Records, in collaboration with Blood Harvest Records, will release the debut album of the Galician black metal band Sartegos. Today we’re premiering a song from the album, preceded by a review of the album by guest contributor Conchobar.)

 

“Behold, may that night be barren; may no joyful voice come into it.
May it be cursed by those who curse the day — those prepared to rouse Leviathan. May its morning stars grow dark; may it wait in vain for daylight; may it not see the breaking of dawn.…”

Job 3:7-9.

Darkness has an odd ontology; the metaphysics of night are pluripotent but also polysemic. Shadow has with it the dusky, twilit sense of a lessening, but also the waxing of a distance from daylit realities. There is, as night advances, a thickness and a viscosity in its tendrils – it stains and layers the fading of light. And as it advances, it consumes. Not ravenously, but purposively, relentlessly, indefatigably. The negentropic islands of solar reality are slowly blotted out by the obscurations of a lunar regime.That nocturnal density – its flows and coalescences, pulses and coagulations, are the blood of the night – o sangue da noite. Continue reading »

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