AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WHYTHRE — “STILLBORN WORLD”

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Mar 052019
 

 

If your ass has been dragging, beaten down and disgusted by the daily grind, strapped for sleep, short on cash, and your reservoirs of hope running low as well, we’ve got a sure-fire antidote for most of those ails. Granted, it won’t put any cash in your pocket (though it won’t demand any from you either), but it will make you feel a whole hell of a lot better. And if you’ve got a bellyful of rage you’d like to get out of your system, what you’re about to hear will provide some catharsis for that, too.

What we’ve got for you is a premiere stream of Stillborn World, the explosive new EP by Whythre, which is being released today as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp. It really will make everything better, at least as long as you’re listening to it. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RINGARË — “UNDER PALE MOON”

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Mar 042019
 

 

Ringarë is the name of a project that was started 14 years ago by Chaos Moon‘s mainman Esoterica. A debut album was recorded, but never released. Instead, half the music from that recording session became part of Chaos Moon‘s second album, Languor Into Echoes, Beyond (2007). The other half is now going to be released on March 8th by Iron Bonehead Productions with the title Under Pale Moon.

“Pure worship of synth-ridden black metal of the early ’90s” is the way the music is described in the press sheets. “Moonlit magick” is another phrase that appears in the album’s promotional material, and that description is spot-on. While the shrieked vocals are mind-abrading and the drum and bass rhythms have a way of hooking into your pulse, it’s those mystical midnight melodies and ethereal keyboard notes that will carry you aloft into cold and starry skies, mesmerized.

The album consists of four tracks and 40 minutes of music, and today we have a full stream for you, preceded by a few more thoughts about the dark and delirious enchantments of this experience. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABDUCTION — “PRAYER OF ELECTROCUTION”

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Mar 042019
 

 

Abduction is a one-man UK black metal band whose ravaging debut album To Further Dreams of Failure we reviewed (in part) in March 2017. The band also released an album last year, A Crown of Curses, and now they’ve already got a third one geared up for release on March 29th via Inferna Profundus Records.

All Pain As Penance is the name of the new one, and “Infinite Ancient Hexes” was the first track made available for streaming a couple of weeks ago. It seized attention immediately. On that track, as on all the others, A|V handles everything except drums, which were performed by session member EG. His drumming on that first song to be revealed from the album is physically powerful, driving the pace in a plundering fury while delivering neck-cracking fills along the way. Meanwhile, the riffing creates a dismal and poisonous atmosphere, a thick, desolating miasma of sound, parsed by chiming chords that are still moody but also hypnotic, and by an incendiary solo.

It made for an absolutely explosive, irresistibly head-moving herald for this album, notwithstanding the music’s aura of pestilence and wretchedness. It rocks as well as ravages, and it’s easy to get addicted to it very quickly. But there is so much more to come from this album, and now it’s our pleasure to present a second excerpt, a song called “Prayer For Electrocution“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SACRIFICIAL SLAUGHTER — “THE SEPARATION OF INNOCENCE”

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Feb 282019
 

 

Last November Horror Pain Gore Death Productions released an utterly decimating three-way split called The Hate Divide, which included a total of 13 tracks by Coathanger Abortion (Tennessee), Rottenness (Mexico), and the band that’s the subject of today’s video premiere — California’s Sacrificial Slaughter.

Sacrificial Slaughter‘s four tracks on the split (all of them new original songs) add to a discography that now includes three full-length albums dating back to 2002 and a collection of shorter releases, the most recent of which was the Generation of Terror EP in 2017.

What we have for you today is a lyric video for a breathtakingly ferocious track from the split entitled “The Separation of Innocence“. The subject matter deals with a horrid subject that has been dominating the headlines in recent weeks, and discharges the kind of explosive fury that the subject matter demands. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MALPHAS — “FLOODS (AN ACT OF GOD)”

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Feb 272019
 

A bit of demonological internet sleuthing reveals that Malphas is a Great Prince of Hell, a fallen angel second only to Satan, with forty legions of demons under his command. According to the lore, he was the 39th of the 72 Spirits imprisoned by King Solomon — but mistakenly freed by the Babylonians. He is a builder of great citadels, and deceives those who sacrifice to him in hopes of obtaining his intervention on their behalf. He is accompanied by crows and sometimes appears as a raven himself.

That information seems relevant in interpreting what you will see in the animated lyric video from the band Malphas that we’re presenting today, a video for the song “Floods (An Act of God)“, which is the third track on this Philadelphia band’s debut album The 39th Spirit, released last October by Via Nocturna. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK ANVIL — “MILES”

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Feb 262019
 

 

On March 4, 2014, Selim Lemouchi took his own life at the age of 33. As the founding member and guitarist of The Devil’s Blood, in which he was joined by his sister Farida, Lemouchi created emotionally powerful occult rock music that was beautifully evil and haunting, a combination of darkness and grandeur that reflected and channeled Lemouchi‘s Satanic spiritualism. The music made strong and lasting connections with many listeners, and led to friendships among fellow musicians, among them, members of New York City’s Black Anvil. Their new EP, Miles, was created as a tribute to him.

Initially, Miles consisted of just the title track and a cover of Mercyful Fate‘s “A Corpse Without Soul”. Work on it was put aside for a time while Black Anvil focused their efforts on their 2017 album, As Was. After returning to Miles, the band wrote and recorded one more original song, the opener “Iron Sharpens Iron”, and recorded a cover of The Devil’s Blood‘s “Everlasting Saturnalia” to round out the EP. Working with their friend Steve Macioci of STB Records, the band have readied Miles for release in March, in remembrance of, and dedication to, their lost friend Selim Lemouchi. We have a full stream of the EP for you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ANOMALISM — “VICIOUS FICTION”

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Feb 262019
 

 

The cover art created by Erskine Designs for the debut EP by the Canadian tech-death band Anomalism would seem tailor-made as the backdrop for a lyric video about a song devoted to horrifying nightmares, and that’s exactly what we have here today. The name of the song featured in the video we’re premiering is “Vicious Fiction“, a full-throttle yet creepy dose of viciousness off Anomalism‘s EP Parasitic Spawn, which was released on January 4th.

Anomalism is a fairly new band, having coalesced only last year in the frigid wasteland of Winnipeg, Canada, with the evident aim of combining mauling brutality, head-spinning instrumental dexterity, insidious melody, and a taste for otherworldly horror — qualities that are displayed quite effectively through “Vicious Fiction“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ILLIMITABLE DOLOR — “HORSES PALE AND FOUR”

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Feb 252019
 

 

Illimitable:  without limits or an end

Dolor: a state of great sorrow or distress

In choosing the name Illimitable Dolor, this Australian quartet made their mission statement unmistakable, and their music lives up to the name, creating sensations of devastating loss in vast tides of sound that sweep toward horizons we’ll never reach. The title of their new album, Leaden Light, is almost equally evocative of what they’ve brought into being, a manifestation of funeral doom and death metal that’s crushingly heavy and ashen in its colors — not lightless by any means, but veiled by haunting vapors.

On the other hand, the album’s title is only partially evocative of the music’s moods, and perhaps a bit misleading, too — because there is nothing drab about it. To the contrary, its emotional power is immense, and it proves to be an immersive and completely enthralling experience. You’ll get a powerfully good sense of those qualities through the song we’re premiering today, in advance of the album’s March 20 release by Transcending Obscurity Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOATKRAFT — “GOATKRAFT’S COMMAND”

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Feb 222019
 

 

Sometimes the wishes we send into the void are granted. Last month, after hearing the first advance track off the debut album of the Norwegian deviants in Goatkraft, I publicly proclaimed that such a sulphurous spell of black pestilence had left me hungering for more, and since then my hunger has been fed by a chance to hear the album as a whole. What’s more, I have the opportunity to infect your mind with another new song from the same record (spreading infection is such a rewarding experience).

The song we present today is “Goatkraft’s Command“, and it further confirms Goatkraft’s command over the weaponry of bestial black metal, as fully and ferociously revealed on Sulphurous Northern Bestiality, which will be released by Iron Bonehead Productions on March 22nd. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LUCIFERA — “LA CACERIA DE BRUJAS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Feb 212019
 

 

It wouldn’t be wrong-headed to label the music of La Caceria De Brujas as “black thrash”, but that label really doesn’t do it justice. For most of its 39-minute duration, this fourth album by Colombia’s Lucifera is a brazen race, fueled by the kind of feral ferocity that most people have come to expect from South American devil-thrash, but there’s uncommon depth to this music. As fierce and scorching as the music is, it’s also loaded with melodic hooks, and it achieves a feeling of divine Bacchanalian glory — summoning visions of wild exultation, of spirits set free by sorcerous conjurations.

La Caceria De Brujas will be released by the German label Dunkelheit Produktionen on February 25th (with a vinyl edition coming the next month), and today we’re presenting a full stream of this remarkable album. Continue reading »

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