AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEX — “WHERE GODS SHALL NOT REIGN”

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Jul 222019
 

 

On July 5th Transcending Obscurity Records released the second album by the Spanish death/doom band Hex, the defiant title of which is God Has No Name. In June we presented the premiere of the album’s second advance track, “All Those Lies That Dwells…”, and today it’s our pleasure to present an official music video for the album’s fifth track in the running order, “Where Gods Shall Not Reign“.

At the time of our previous premiere we observed that the musical approach of Hex is different from many bands who have been branded with the death/doom label. Rather than craggy, lumbering, and crushing, the music of Hex tends to be more animated, more exotic, and more surprising. The gloominess of doom does rear its head, albeit in unexpected ways, but Hex are just as liable to attack with frightening ferocity. The song that’s today’s focus reveals many facets of the band’s variable style of extremity — and the dark, beautifully made video is just as sinister and supernatural as elements of the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD SHELL OF UNIVERSE — “EX NIHILO”

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Jul 222019
 

 

Dead Shell of Universe is a Serbian black metal project spawned more than a decade ago from the mind of V., whose other musical endeavors include All My Sins and Terrörhammer, as well as past participation in many other groups, including Kawir and Triumfall. The lone release by Dead Shell of Universe was a 2008, 34-minute EP named Tamo gde pupoljak vene… tamo je moje seme.

With All My Sins‘ debut album Pra sila – Vukov totem having been released last year, V. chose to reactivate Dead Shell of Universe after a decade of silence. Tamo gde pupoljak vene… tamo je moje seme has now been re-mastered, and it will be reissued on digipack CD by Death Knell Productions in the autumn of this year. This new edition will also include a brand new track recorded as a bonus for the new edition, with a five-man line-up that includes current or former members of such bands as Crimson Moon, Melechesh, and Obscured. The new track is “Ex Nihilo“, and it’s our pleasure to present it today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DETHEROUS — “RIDDEN”

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Jul 182019
 

 

With an album named Hacked To Death and blood-spattered, head-cleaving cover art, you would expect the music to be… slaughtering. And this debut full-length by the death/thrashing Detherous is indeed packed with full-throttle rampages and fueled by a riotous, take-no-prisoners spirit. But this fearsome foursome from Calgary, Alberta, Canada do a whole lot more with their music than slash and burn. They’re adept at creating sensations of mania and mayhem, but the music is also adventurous, and full of surprising twists and turns.

We’ve got a  prime example of these qualities in the song we’re premiering today from Hacked To Death in advance of the album’s release on August 16th by Redefining Darkness Records. The name of the song is “Ridden“, and the band’s rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist Damon MacDonald describes its subject matter in these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VICTUS — “DEMON”

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Jul 182019
 

 

Last year Victus made their recording debut with a well-received EP entitled Sacrifice, and have followed that with hard-charging live performances in support of such bands as Crowbar, Monolord, Conjurer, Raging Speedhorn, and Ingested — and will soon include their appearance at Bloodstock Open Air in the UK next month.

Meanwhile, this quartet from Southern England have also been working on a debut album that will showcase their addictive blend of doom, sludge, and Southern Blues. As a sign of what’s coming, today we’re presenting a stream of a new Victus single the day before its official release — a head-moving bone-bruiser named “Demon“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REIGN IN BLOOD — “DOMUS MORTUORUM”

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Jul 172019
 

A decade after the release of their debut album Diabolical Katharsis, the German black metal band Reign In Blood have revived and triumphantly returned with a new release. While personnel departures led the band’s founding vocalist/guitarist Demon Raise to discontinue operations following that initial full-length, he resurrected Reign In Blood in 2016 and the results are captured in a new album named Missa Pro Defunctis, on which he is joined by lead guitarist/bassist Malus Deus.

Iron Bonehead Productions will release this new full-length on August 16th. One advance track (“Dawn Of A Dying Soul“) was released for listening last month, and now we present the stream of a second one — “Domus Mortuorum“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BONES — “STENCH OF THE DECEASED”

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Jul 172019
 

 

Hellfire and damnation, it’s good to have Bones back! Here at our putrid site we devoted attention to both of their previous albums — the self-titled debut in 2011 and Sons of Sleaze in 2013 (“It’s a monster of an album”, we wrote, “but the kind of monster you’ll want to curl up with on those long, lonely nights when having something’s teeth in your neck is what you need”). That second album was also the source of a song (“13”) we named to our list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, which we described as follows: “It’s got that ugly, corrosive guitar tone — so thick, murky, and radioactive that you’ll feel like showering after hearing the song, even though you know all your skin will come off and wash down the drain. Great vocal disgorgement, too, and the riffs… just murderous”.

But wow, 2013 was a long time ago, so long ago that Bones might have fallen prey to “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome were it not for the fact that those first two albums didn’t wear out their welcome. But after those six long years these crusty death metal barbarians from Chicago have returned at last with a new album — and it’s fantastic (that’s not a shock, but it is a relief to know that they haven’t lost a step, and have instead taken some steps forward). The album’s name is Diseased, and it will be released on September 20 by Transcending Obscurity Records.

All of that is a long-winded way of explaining that we are damned happy to be presenting the premiere of a song from the new album, and it’s a great example of what makes the music of Bones stand out. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VHS — “DEATH AND CARNAGE COMING IN WAVES”

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Jul 162019
 

 

Thunder Bay, in the northwest of Ontario and across Lake Superior from the northern coast of Wisconsin, is home to the metal band VHS. So far as we know, Lake Superior is devoid of deviant sea monsters, killer whales, and ravenous giant sharks, but perhaps the band’s proximity to vast waters had something to do with their attraction to such submarine killers. Whatever the cause, VHS have fully embraced their attraction to ’80s films devoted to seaborne horror and their love of punk and death metal (among other musical interests, as you will soon discover) on their new album, We’re Gonna Need Some Bigger Riffs (get it?).

The new album is set for release on July 26th by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions (U.S.) and Rotten Roll Rex (Europe). The album features guest appearances on two of the songs. Trevor Strnad of The Black Dahlia Murder lends his snarl to the previously premiered “Rooting For the Villain“, and the song we’re presenting today through a lyric video — “Death and Carnage Coming in Waves” — includes guest vocals by none other than Exhumed’s Matt Harvey. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SOLACE OF THE VOID — “THE FATED PROPHECY”

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Jul 162019
 

 

There are places in music, as there are places in the world around us, where we are surrounded by visions that are both glorious and cloaked in air almost too cold to breathe, where the ice shines magnificently like a blanket of crystal across endless, hostile expanses. In the night skies above, in the cascades of an aurora or in the brilliance of compass stars shining in the unimaginable vastness of the void, we might experience a similar feeling of magical wonder and daunting isolation, and there are places like that in music, too.

Canada’s Solace of the Void aren’t the only band who’ve sought to create such sensations in their music, but in the song we’re presenting today (and in their new self-titled album as a whole, which is set for a July 26 release by CDN Records)) they’ve really nailed it beautifully. They’ve located their sound beneath Polaris, creating a fusion of cold atmosphere, symphonic grandeur, blackened ferocity, and mystical folk-influenced melodies to create music that (in the accurate words of their advance press) is “northern, luminous, and majestic” — “rooted in the permafrost of creation”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE NEGATIVE BIAS — “NARCISSUS RISING (A METAMORPHOSIS IN THREE ACTS)”

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Jul 162019
 

 

The new album by the Austrian alchemists The Negative Bias is so ambitious in its conception, so extravagant in its composition, and so tremendously powerful in its execution that it merits the often-overused term “visionary”. It becomes a form of breathtakingly dramatic musical theater that seems calculated to create shock and awe, to assault and bedazzle the senses, forcibly shattering commonplace perceptions in order to make the mind more receptive to new and unexpected visions.

The name of this monumental work is Narcissus Rising (A Metamorphosis In Three Acts). It follows the band’s debut album Lamentation of the Chaos Omega (2017) and a 2018 split with Golden Dawn. It will be released on July 26th by ATMF, and today we premiere a full stream, preceded by further thoughts about this stunning experience. Continue reading »

AN NCS TRIPLE PREMIERE — “DEMO DAZE OF SUMMER”: EFFIGY, SCULPTED HORROR, MORBUS GRAVE

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Jul 152019
 

 

On July 26th Redefining Darkness Records will release a trio of demos that feature recordings both old and new by three death metal bands, grouping them together under the banner “Demo Daze of Summer“. To help spread the word we’re presenting premieres of music from all three.

The first is a never-before-heard demo of songs originally written in 1992 by the Kentucky band Effigy. The second is a re-press (with a bonus instrumental track) of a demo originally self-released in 2018 by Sculpted Horror from Athens, Georgia. And the third is a brand new EP from the Italian death-mongers Morbus Grave.

EFFIGY

The back-story about Effigy begins in 1992, when Craig Netto and Dillard Logsdon (formerly of Sarcoma) first traded musical ideas at a mutual friend’s home in Kentucky and formed Effigy. As Redefining Darkness explains: “Effigy completed four songs within a few months before getting the offer for their first and only show. Not long after the show two of the members joined Abominant and went on to release a number of albums with the band. While a few of the guys had some underground success in Abominant, Dillard Logsdon didn’t pursue a band after Effigy’s early demise.”

“In mid-2016 the core of the band re-connected and decided to resurrect Effigy with the intention of giving their original songs from 1992 a chance to be heard and, if all went well, continue to play together and maybe even write new material”. Continue reading »

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