AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOLDEN BATS — “VII”

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Oct 252019
 

 

Roughly one year ago the distinctive one-man mauling machine known as Golden Bats, then located in the vicinity of Brisbane, Australia, released an album named Residual Dread, the first official full-length after more than a dozen demos, splits, and EPs dating back to 2011. As recounted in this review, it was a titanically heavy album, steeped in a kind of gothic gloom, and so haunting in its laments that it threatened to split the heart even as it was splintering bone. With both a persistently brutal punch and an emotionally devastating conveyance of grief and pain, the music repeatedly hit home with staggering force on multiple levels. The songs were mainly slow or mid-paced, and relatively simple in their composition, but the music was tuned like a Stradivarius of suffering, supremely well-calculated to deliver punishment with tremendous primal force, and the songs so well-written that they were very hard to forget.

Since then, Golden Bats‘ alter ego Geordie Stafford has moved to Rome, Italy (just a couple of months ago), and is nearing completion of a follow-up album. In the meantime, he has decided to release some of his older but previously un-released creations, the first of which we’re premiering today. Denominated VII, to place it in line with a sequence of earlier demos, it includes four tracks, two of which are covers, and all of which again demonstrate the crushing power and mind-bending, emotionally wrenching impact of Golden Bats‘ formulation of sludge. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PRAISE THE PLAGUE — “TORMENT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 252019
 

 

We would like to offer two rounds of applause to begin this premiere. The first goes to Berlin’s Praise the Plague for the wrenching emotional power channeled by their song “Torment“. The second is for Sven Liebold, whose surreal video for the song is a nightmarish feast for the eyes, one of those ever-changing visual collages that you can’t look away from, and which in this case integrates frighteningly well with the music.

The song comes from a two-track EP by Praise the Plague that was released digitally, and on vinyl by Argonauta Records, on September 13th. Entitled Antagonist II, it follows the band’s debut full-length Antagonist, which was released last year. Both tracks are powerful mood-changers, amalgams of black metal and doom that have the capacity to make you forget about whatever you were doing or feeling before listening, and to transport you into the indigo-dark dimensions where this band dwell. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION — “PROTOPLASMIC IMPRISONMENT”

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Oct 242019
 

 

Any time we see the artwork of Eliran Kantor on an album cover, it becomes an irresistible lure into the record. Here, his painting captures the inspirations for the music, depicting a solemn solitary figure, who “stands surrounded by demonic deformities which represent the inner turmoil that torments those with mental illness” (to quote from the press materials from the album). We can almost hear the “screams of anguish and vicious voices whispering of fear, violence and self-loathing”.

And these conceptions are indeed the animating forces behind Enraged and Unbound, the stunning new album by Unfathomable Ruination, with each song “plumbing the depths of the deepest mental illness and exploring the primitive violence that lies within us all”.

That description is no exaggeration, as you’ll discover when you listen to “Protoplasmic Imprisonment“, the song we’re presenting today through an official video in advance of the album’s November 22 release by Willowtip Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: XENO OOZE — “XENOLOGICAL WARFARE”

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Oct 242019
 

 

Imagine what would happen if you could buy bags of death metal, crust, grindcore, and powerviolence at your local market, throw big handfuls of all that stuff into a blender, liberally lubricate it with alien blood fresh from the refrigerators at Area 51, spice up the mix with amphetamines and lysergic acid, puree the shit out of it, and then chug it straight down without breathing. Sound good?

Actually, you don’t have to tax your imaginations, you just have to listen to Parasligm Shift, the debut album by the deviant three-piece Phoenician band Xeno Ooze. You’ll have the chance to do that on November 1st, which is the day of its release by Last World Records. But in the meantime you can chug down “Xenological Warfare“, which is the opening track from the album that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

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

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 242019
 

 

With their self-titled debut EP released in 2014, the French band Mur (whose six-person line-up includes former members of Today is the Day, Glorior Belli, Mass Hysteria, Comity, and Four Question Marks) began feeling their way, searching for an identity for their music and beginning to establish one. When you listen to their new full-length record, Brutalism, which will be released on October 25th by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions, it becomes apparent that they have arrived — at a place where their confidence is strong and their identity (albeit a multi-faceted one) well-defined. It isn’t so much a sea-change in sound compared to the EP as it is a giant, adventurous stride ahead on the path they began five years ago.

The album is a fascinating experience because it is such a dynamic one. It offers constant surprises, but does so without losing the bonds that forge all the experiences together into a whole, and without sacrificing the explosive, searing intensity that’s the main hallmark of the record. Previously we premiered a song from the album (“Third“) and separately reviewed another one (“I See Through Stones”), but today we have for you a stream of the complete album — and a few more impressionistic thoughts about the music (okay, more than a few). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ODIOSORDO — “CON IL BUIO NEL SANGUE”

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Oct 232019
 

 

We’re told that “Odio Sordo” is the Italian translation for “Deaf Hate”, a phrase that connotes bitterness, fury, holding a grudge. And while the Italian trio Odiosordo have embraced those words in their name, and those sensations in their musical hybrid of hardcore and black metal, their new album Con Il Buio Nel Sangue becomes a musical journey in which different experiences also come to the surface. As they tell us, the name they’ve chosen represents internal struggle against personal challenges — “born by the need of merging a strong sense of discomfort, deep disorientation, but also the will of fighting back and finding a way through life.”

As you will have probably guessed by now, the music isn’t “easy listening”. It’s raw, bleak, and ravaging, stripped of pretense, authentic in its channeling of despair and rage, and of misery and defiance. Alternately bruising, oppressive, searing in its intensity, and soaring in its grasp for a way out of harrowing times, it proves to be a relentlessly gripping experience — and we’re giving you the chance to learn that for yourselves through our full-album stream today, before the record’s October 31 release by Third I Rex, VBMF (Italy), and the Third I Rex affiliate, Imperatrix Mundi Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DENIAL OF GOD — “THE HALLOW MASS”

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Oct 222019
 

 

Denial of God are a distinctive presence in the long ranks of black metal bands. For one thing, the Danish brothers Azter (guitars) and Ustumallagam (vocals) have been creating music under that name since 1991. Apart from the fact that few bands have lasted so long, Denial of God have also crafted an unusual aesthetic for their music, moving in increasingly cinematic and theatrical directions, with a pronounced supernatural atmosphere, that has given birth to the description of their creations as “Black Horror Metal”.

Seven long years have passed since the band’s last album, Death and the Beyond, with only The Shapeless Mass EP (released this past June) as a sign of renewed activity. That EP was intended as a springboard into a new full-length, and that new album is now fast approaching. Entitled The Hallow Mass, it will be jointly released by Osmose Productions and Hells Headbangers this coming Friday, October 25th, and today it’s our privilege to bring you a complete stream of this massive new work. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WE.OWN.THE.SKY — “HEAVY HEART”

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Oct 222019
 

 

Given the tastes of the people who write for this site, we tend to focus on the more extreme forms of underground metal. But if you’ve been coming here regularly, you’ll know that there are exceptions, and we’re about to make another one — though not an exception to the general rule against singing, because there’s no singing at all in the song we’re about to present, which is accompanied by an eye-catching video.

The song in question, “Heavy Heart“, comes from the new album by the Athenian post-rock/post-metal band we.own.the.sky. Entitled Home, the album will be released on November 1st. While the song might not be as extreme as most of what you’ll find here, it’s definitely a heavyweight track, in keeping with its title — but that’s only one of its charismatic qualities. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OFFICIUM TRISTE — “LOSING GROUND”

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Oct 212019
 

 

With a couple of stops and re-starts in the early years, the Dutch doom/death heavyweights Officium Triste are now well into the third decade of their existence, having honed their mastery of tragedy to a razor’s edge, creating music of both heart-breaking poignancy and crushing despair. On December 13th they will release their sixth album, and their first through Transcending Obscurity Records. Entitled The Death of Gaia, it explores ruinous loss on an epic scale, with music that matches the sweeping catastrophe of its conceptions.

Today we present the album’s closing track, “Losing Ground“, which provides a grand summation of the band’s powers, and of the changing dynamics of their music. It provides little reason for hope, but its hopelessness is nevertheless absolutely spellbinding. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TYRANT GOATGALDRAKONA — “MARQUIS OF EVIL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 212019
 

 

In the ten years that have elapsed since the formation of Tyrant Goatgaldrakona, this Hungarian death metal duo have been measured in their release of music, with only one album (2013’s Horns In The Dark) and a pair of EPs to see the cold light of day since 2009. But now there’s a third EP on the horizon, a two-track offering named Marquis of Evil that’s set for an October 25th release on 7″ vinyl by Blood Harvest Records — and we have a full stream of it, in all its monstrous glory, for you today.

As trained medical professionals, we strongly advise you to get your neck loose before listening to the opening song, “Conspiracy With Marquis“. Okay, we’re not really trained medical professionals, but we still know sore-neck-trauma when we feel it, and this track is a merciless neck-wrecker — though it doesn’t begin that way. Continue reading »

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