AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DOWNCROSS — “MYSTERIES OF LEFT PATH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Feb 202019
 

 

Sometimes the opportunities presented to us for premiering new music leads to the discovery of enormously good surprises — to become captivated by music we might never have otherwise found. And this is one of those startling instances.

Downcross are a duo from Belarus — vocalist/drummer Ldzmr and guitarist Dzmtr — and what we’re presenting today (only one day away from its release by Saturn Sector Rex) is their debut album Mysteries Of Left Path. The only description of the music we had before exploring it was “anticosmic”, plus whatever might be inferred from their ominous masked and torch-bearing visages on the album’s cover. This led to a few guesses about the music — which turned out to be largely incorrect. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEATHSWARM — “SHADOWLANDS OF DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 192019
 

 

Musicians who are passionate about the ravaging sounds of gruesome old school death metal face a constant challenge when they try to create such sounds themselves: How do you wade into such familiar territory, well-guarded by devoted fans of those traditions, and emerge with something that’s still really worth hearing? If we think we’ve heard it all before, what’s required to give us a fresh jolt of electricity, rather than just another formulaic emulation?

The Swedish band Deathswarm have compelling answers to those questions. To surmount the challenges requires (first and foremost) top-shelf song-writing, plus veteran performance skill matched with authentic spirit, and a grasp of tone and production technique that makes the music sound truly monstrous. And those are the answers that Deathswarm deliver through their fantastic debut album, Shadowlands of Darkness, which will be released on February 25th by Chaos Records — and which you can hear in its entirety below. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VESPERINE — “NOUS, SI PHOTOSENSIBLES”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 192019
 

 

Torment, turmoil, and tumult flow through the music of Vesperine, a sense of defiance and desperation, and glimpses of hope that are too often revealed as phantom dreams.

Vesperine have located themselves within a long lineage of French storytellers and poets, fueled by the spirit of such imposing national figures as Hugo, Lamartine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, taking up “the eternal mantra of France and its passions”: “to hope, to sink”.

Musically, the sounds can be located within the darker spheres of post-hardcore and post-metal, with progressive and noise elements in the mix. References might be made to the likes of Amenra, Cult of Luna, Impure Wilhelmina, Neurosis, and Rosetta — but better than references, we have the music itself, one excerpt from their debut album Espérer Sombrer in advance of its March 22nd release through Apathia Records. The song we present today is “Nous, si photosensibles“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LEATHER GLOVE — “REFLECTIONS OF DESPAIR”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Feb 182019
 

 

Expectations for Perpetual Animation, the debut album by Leather Glove (which will be released on March 8 by Sentient Ruin and Dawnbreed Records), have run very high in these quarters, based on nothing more than the descriptions of the people involved in its creation, and of the musical conceptions manifested through its eight tracks.

As for the people, Leather Glove is principally the musical vehicle of Greg Wilkinson, owner of the famed Earhammer Studios in Oakland, CA, known for his engineering work with such bands as Noothgrush, Necrot, Autopsy, Vastum, Acephalix, Mortuous, Undergang, and many, many others; a member of Brainoil, and Deathgrave; and a former member of Laudanum and Graves at Sea.

For this new album, he was aided aided by drummers Chad Gailey (Necrot, Vastum, Mortuous, Atrament, etc) and Dustin Ferris (Apraxic, Pleasure Cross, Engorged, etc), with guest guitar solos performed by Sean McGrath (Ghoul, Impaled), Shelby Lermo (Vastum, Ulthar, Extremity), Eric Cutler (Autopsy), and Danny Corrales (Autopsy, Abcess). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSIC — “HIGH THE MEMORY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 182019
 

 

At almost 80 minutes in length, Abyssic’s new album High the Memory is a demanding experience. And the demands it places on listeners go beyond the magnitude of the minutes. It is emotionally devastating — and uplifting — in ways that less intensely powerful music, and music less intensely devoted to darkness in its varying dimensions, can’t achieve.

In these complex and richly textured compositions, which draw upon ingredients of funeral death/doom, black metal, and prog, augmented by classical orchestration (and the use of Mellotron, Minimoog, and upright bass), Abyssic create combinations of crushing power and mystical evanescence, of oppressive gloom and fragile, gleaming beauty. Dread and devastation stalk this vast musical landscape, furrowing the earth with great troughs of misery and despair, while brilliant stars wink overhead, blazing comets streak the night sky, and the borealis shimmers in unearthly brilliance. The effect of these juxtapositions is harrowing and hypnotic, magisterial and monstrous. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: OPHIDIAN COIL AND SEPTUAGINT — “VORTEX”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 152019
 

 

In the most rudimentary sense, split releases provide a vehicle for the participating bands to each release new songs in between more extensive releases of their own music, while allowing listeners the chance to sample the works of more than one band at a time. But of course there’s no assurance that the combination of songs from different projects in a single release will do any more than that. Whether the songs actually complement each other, and combine in a way that creates a holistic listening experience that’s greater than the sum of its parts, is a very different issue.

The split release we’re premiering today, entitled Vortex, is one that does go beyond a mere bolting together of singles from more than one group. The two up-and-coming black metal bands who are involved — Ophidian Coil from Serbia and Septuagint from Greece — do not follow identical paths in the music you’ll find here, but there is a “chemistry” between them. The songs of each band, though different in their strategies, exhibit a kind of “spiritual” union in which the different dimensions of Luciferian sound combine in a way that creates a near-30-minute experience that’s immersive — and chilling.

We invite you to listen to these four songs below, an opportunity that coincides with the release of Vortex by Deathhammer Records. And of course we have some thoughts about the music to share as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CÉNOTAPHE — “EMPYRÉE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  7 Responses »
Feb 142019
 

 

When we encounter new music, it is the quality of the compositions and performances that always comes first, and remains paramount, but when a new release has been conceived and crafted with a deep guiding aesthetic that permeates the spirit of the music and the lyrics in a heartfelt way, especially when that aesthetic is an unusual one, it inspires even greater admiration. That’s what we have before us in Empyrée, the superb new EP by the French black metal duo Cénotaphe (multi-instrumentalist Fog and vocalist Khaosgott).

We have learned that in creating this new work, Cénotaphe drew inspiration from “a constellation of 19th-century French literary and artistic figures, such as Aloysius Bertrand, Théophile Gautier, Charles Beaudelaire, and the painter Odilon Redon,” but most especially from the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. As I am unfamiliar with Mallarmé’s writing, I’ll quote from the press materials announcing this new EP: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WIRED ANXIETY — “HEAVILY SEDATED”

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Feb 142019
 

 

On a superficial level, the title of Wired Anxiety‘s song “Heavily Sedated” is ironic, because, as you’ll soon discover if you haven’t heard the song before, there’s nothing sedated about the music or about the effect it will produce on your nervous system. In fact, the opposite is true. Among the antonyms for “sedated” are “aggravated”, “agitated”, “disturbed”, and “excited”. Some or all of those adjectives would be suitable.

And so, while the title of the song makes sense in the context of the narrative portrayed by Wired Anxiety‘s EP, The Delirium of Negation — which revolves around the concept of mind-controlling monsters who develop a race of subservient humans — as a piece of death metal the track might have been more accurately titled “Heavily Excited” (or any of those other words, but “heavily” definitely belongs as well).

The Delirium of Negation, which includes this song as one of four, was released in 2016, but to help spread the word about it and about Wired Anxiety, today we’re premiering, as a Valentine’s Day present for lovers of death metal, a guitar playthrough video of the track that features the performance of guitarist Naval Katoch. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VÉHÉMENCE — “PAR LE SANG VERSÉ”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  19 Responses »
Feb 132019
 

 

Par le Sang Versé is one of the most thoroughly entrancing and gloriously vibrant metal albums I’ve heard in years, regardless of sub-genre. It seizes ancient folk traditions and hurls them forward into the modern age, but without letting go of the intense devotion to the centuries-old well-springs of inspiration that gave birth to this record. I do think it’s impossible not to be moved in some significant degree by this fervent music, and likely that most listeners will simply be swept aloft and carried away, as I’ve been.

I wrote the preceding paragraph as part of an introduction to our premiere two weeks ago of a single song from this new album by the French medieval black metal band Véhémence. Since then, my conviction has only grown stronger that this record is a rare and marvelously multi-faceted achievement. At the time of that previous premiere, three other tracks were also available for listening, but today it’s our great pleasure to present a stream of all the music in advance of its February 18th release by the French label Antiq Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OLDD WVRMS — “CODEX TENEBRIS”

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Feb 122019
 

 

As the title of Oldd Wvrm‘s new album suggests, the music is an exploration of dark and obscure dimensions, dimensions that seem beyond the perception of a mundane mind grounded in what passes for “reality”. It carries our imaginations into a desolate and haunted dream world where shape-shifting avatars of misery dwell, in the company of wraiths that have lost their memories, and any path that might lead them to another, more welcoming, place.

The album is composed of five unusually long tracks, and as might be expected of such extensive journeys, the feelings in the music change over their courses, revealing both moodiness and mounting tension, inconsolable grief and aimless anger, glimmering wistfulness and extravagant, even magisterial, anguish. The power (and volume) of the sound also ebbs and flows — dramatically, but fluidly — but never really shows you a way back to the waking world.

Codex Tenebris will soon be released (on February 15th) the Irish label Cursed Monk Records, but you won’t have to wait ’til then to become ensorceled by the album, because we have a full stream for you now. Continue reading »

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