AN NCS PREMIERE: JOHN, THE VOID — “CURSED”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 262019
 

 

In their first two releases, a self-titled EP in 2014 and an album entitled II in 2016, the Italian band John, the Void explored conceptual themes rooted in science-fiction and visionary experiences. Their new album, III Adversa, follows a different path. As they have described, each track represents a different feeling, “based on a more-concrete sense of despair, where the human kind must face the irreparable sense of helplessness against the fate, the pain, the loss, the guilt, and the exhausting war to conquer a moment of peace”.

In manifesting such struggles through sound, the band have drawn upon ingredients from catastrophic sludge, post-black metal, and doom, with careful use of electronic accents. It’s not “easy listening”. Like the ever-present and immutable experiences of human existence that inspired these songs, they are instead intense, often harrowing sensations — but they’re emotionally gripping, like strong hands that have seized the back of your neck, forcing you to look at things you might rather not see but won’t be able to ignore for very long. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEFECRATOR — “CONFRONTING CHORONZON”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 252019
 

 

With each new release, I’ve become increasingly transfixed by the music of Sacramento-based Defecrator. That’s saying something, given that I was knocked down pretty hard by their very first recording, the 2015 demo Tales of Defecration (reviewed here). But they’ve moved from strength to further strength, through their 2016 EP Satanic Martydom (reviewed here) to the three songs on their 2017 split with Ritual Genocide (reviewed here).

At last, Defecrator will be releasing a debut album. Entitled Abortion of Humanity, it will be released on March 29th through Drakkar Productions, and the early signs are that Defecrator have continued to advance their sound, moving deeper into dimensions of their music which add a sense of terrifying grandeur to the merciless destructive power of their black/death onslaughts. We have one of those early signs for you today, a new track named “Confronting Choronzon“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLOSON — “USURPER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 252019
 

 

In fairly short order the Swedish sludge/post-metal band Gloson have plowed a massive furrow through the landscape of metal — and not the kind of furrow in which pliable earth has been turned, but more like a deep, jagged track carved through granite. We’ve had the pleasure of watching this happen from the beginning, and done our own small part to spread the word, following them from their eye-opening 2014 debut EP Yearwalker through the release of their stunning first album Grimen in 2017. Along the way we hosted premieres, and chose songs from each of those releases for our lists of the years’ Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

It is thus with great pleasure that today we present the premiere of a video for a song from Gloson’s new EP, Mara, which will be released on April 5th by Black Lion Records. With “Usurper“, Gloson have again created something that’s immediately in contention for our Most Infectious Song list, and, at last, have hit upon visual imagery that’s a match for the prodigious power and unsettling, unearthly atmosphere of their music. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLEEDING UTOPIA — “WHERE THE LIGHT COMES TO DIE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 222019
 

 

There’s an entire generation, and probably more than one, for whom Swedish melodic death metal was a gateway into extreme metal, ushered into a new world of musical experiences by the likes of At the Gates, In Flames, and Dark Tranquillity. For a stretch of years, a certain golden age, it seemed to rule the underground, and eventually some of the surface world. And then, as always happens with a sound that strikes such widespread sparks among audiences, the genre became saturated with lesser lights and then overtaken by the next new thing, and the next.

It isn’t what it used to be, but as in the case of Mark Twain’s rumored demise in 1897, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Undeniably, it’s enormously more difficult for a band to succeed with this style in the current age than when the sound was in its infancy, and seemed like a revelation. But as daunting as the task may be now, it’s not impossible, and Bleeding Utopia from Västerås, Sweden, have proved that with their new album Where the Light Comes To Die, which is being released today by Black Lion Records.

They succeed (in spades) in part because they’ve brought some other ingredients into the mix, and in part because they’re just so damned good at what they’re doing — so good, in fact, that one could imagine this album also being a gateway of its own to a new generation, in addition to being a great reminder of this music’s appeal to those of us who were led down the path by those legendary progenitors. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INFERI — “QUEST FOR THE TRINITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 212019
 

 

Let’s be clear up-front: The End of an Era | Rebirth is not a reissue. A mere reissue of Inferi’s 2009 second album, The End of an Era, would have been welcome for those who relish physical editions of music they feel passionate about, and those are almost impossible to find these days. But as the name suggests, The End of an Era | Rebirth is a great deal more than a re-printing of the original CD.

During 2018, in addition to releasing their latest album, Revenant, and engaging in extensive tours, Inferi also found time to re-record The End of an Era. It thus features not only new performances by the band’s current line-up (which is significantly different from the one that recorded the original album), captured with more robust production techniques, but also presents changes in the bass-guitar and drum contributions to the music. And on top of all that, the revised album includes eye-catching new cover art by Helge C. Balzer.

One track from Rebirth has already surfaced, and today, in advance of the album’s April 12 release by The Artisan Era, we present another one through a lyric video (which is itself loaded with wonderful artwork): “Quest For the Trinity“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE FLAYING — “ANGRY, UNDEAD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 212019
 

 

True to the band’s name, the music of The Flaying will slash the skin from your face in paroxysms of blood-spraying savagery. But it does more than that. It will also suck the air from your lungs, boil the brain, and hammer your bones into fragments fine enough to blow away in the wind.

The second album by these death-dealers from Quebec City, the name of which is Angry, Undead, will be released by PRC Music on March 22nd. It comes recommended for fans of The Black Dahlia Murder, Deicide, Archspire, Suffocation, and Cryptopsy — all of which are indeed good reference points for what you’re about to hear in our album premiere — and it was Cryptopsy’s own Chris Donaldson who produced, mixed, and mastered this rampant barrage of brutalizing barbarity at The Grid in Montreal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHWOMB — “MOLOCH’S DOMAIN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 202019
 

 

April 19th is the date set by Iron Bonehead Productions for release of the debut album by the Spanish black metal band Deathwomb, Its title, Moonless Night Sacraments, conveys the band’s devotion to resurrecting a certain primitive and primeval form of ’90s black metal that combines a cold, wraithlike mysticism with brutish depravity. These wolves hunt their prey in the pitch-black, and the light that gleams from their eyes comes from another world.

These references still don’t fully exhaust what Deathwomb have accomplished in their music. As revealed by the song we’re about to premiere, “Moloch’s Domain“, their musical toxins syphon from the brutishness of death metal and the dismal ghastliness of occult doom to create an experience that’s blood-freezing as well as heart-pumping. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOCTURNAL HOLLOW — “TRAPPED IN A COFFIN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 202019
 

 

Prepare to feel the fear of being nailed into a coffin and the adrenaline rush of trying to claw your way out before your pumping lungs exhaust all the oxygen.

“Trapped In A Coffin” is the name of the song we’re about to present, and as the name suggests, it summons those desperate sensations — through music that rampages and romps in a vicious, head-hammering fury. It comes from A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul, the new fifth album by the Venezuelan death metal band Nocturnal Hollow, which will be released on March 29th by Redefining Darkness Records in the U.S. and by Raw Skull Recordz in Europe. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WARFORGED — “VOICE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 192019
 

 

Something unsettling is happening in this video, but it’s not clear what. Something mysterious and perhaps unnatural, off in the dense woods across the expanse of a long gray lake. People seem to be watching this on a screen, made frantic by what they see, or what they think they see. Maybe something else is looking back at them.

Meanwhile, as we’re drawn into these perplexities on our own screens, the band Warforged, blinking in and out of view like fireflies at midnight, throw themselves into a song called “Voice“, which is even more mystifying and destabilizing than whatever is going on in the woods. There is no way to predict what happens in the music, or the shocking and sometimes violent ways in which the music changes. Paradoxically, it becomes absolutely transfixing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ROTTING GRAVE — “ROTTING GRAVE”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Mar 192019
 

 

In the month of June, 2018, Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, gave birth to a monster. Inspired by the horrific atmosphere and cadaverous sound of especially gruesome strains of death metal from the ’90s, guitarist Roberto Trejo, guitarist/vocalist Pablo Aceves, bassist Néstor Márquez, and drummer Saúl Anzaldo joined forces to spawn this ghastly entity known as Rotting Grave.

Rotting Grave wasn’t the first fruits of their labors within the fetid spawning grounds of extreme metal. Those four had sharpened their skills in such other bands as Morbid Messiah, Ictiosis, Worthless, Condemnation, Portrait of Ruin, and Human Trash. But with Rotting Grave they’ve clearly created something that puts their talents to very good use — as you’re about to discover.

Rotting Grave’s first EP, Horrid Pestilence of Death, will be released on April 29th in a CD edition by Death In Pieces Records, and what we have for you today is one of its six tracks, one that shares the band’s name, one that’s hideous and thrilling, repellent and addictive. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries