AN NCS PREMIERE: PHOBIA — “IMBECILE”

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Jul 122019
 

 

The line-up of Phobia has been in flux. As compared to the crew that pumped out 2017’s Lifeless God tirade, vocalist Shane “the Pain” Mclachlan, guitarist Bruce Reeves (who was there at the beginning along with Shane), and bassist Calum Mackenzie have now been joined on their new album by guitarist Jason Robert and drummer Ray Banda (who also performed on various Phobia recordings in the 2000s).

But it’s not like anyone should expect these changes to throw Phobia off-course, and they clearly haven’t. It’s hard to imagine that anything could do that, except maybe a massive asteroid strike on southern California, and you wouldn’t even want to bet on that derailing these “undisputed kings of the grindcore underworld” (PR verbiage, but not an exaggeration).

Phobia’s fury has never been in doubt, and the current sociopolitical environment of course provides zero reason for them (or anyone else with a functioning brain) to calm down. There’s certainly no retrenchment in the band’s explosive power and brutality on their new album, Generation Coward, which is now set for an August 9 release by Willowtip Records. As proof of that, just listen to this song we’re premiering: Continue reading »

AN NCS DUAL PREMIERE: DECEITOME AND SWARN (INVASION OF EXTREMITY SERIES : EASTERN EUROPE)

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Jul 112019
 

 

The U.S. label Redefining Darkness Records (Ohio) and the European label Raw Skull Recordz (Netherlands) have embarked on a collaborative venture born of their shared love for different breeds of old school death metal. The name of the project is Invasion of Extremity, and under that banner the labels will be jointly releasing select albums on both sides of the Atlantic, beginning with two new records by bands based in Eastern Europe — the Estonian extremists Deceitome and Swarn.

Deceitome’s new EP is Flux of Ruin, and Swarn’s is entitled Black Flame Order. Both records will be simultaneously released on August 2nd, and today we’re premiering a track from each one. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LIFETIME SHITLIST — “NOT YET”

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Jul 112019
 

 

Lifetime Shitlist confronted a significant challenge in following up their deceptively titled 2017 album, Slow March, but that was no one’s fault but their own. As we recounted in a review accompanying the stream premiere of that record, “Slow March will punch you in the kidneys and treat your head like a piece of sheetrock ready for the nail gun, but man, it’s a ton of battering fun — the kind of fun that leaves you with loose teeth the next morning and the kind of bruising that goes beyond black and blue and into that shade of yellow that makes you queasy to look at it”.

How would these Baltimore brawlers be able to exceed, or even match, the pure viscerally appealing momentum of that album? As bleak and bludgeoning as the songs often were, the riffs and crowbar-hard grooves were lined with razor-sharp hooks. Every song was catchy, every one of them made you want to move. Most of them might also have made you want to body-check the person next to you.

We’re beginning to get the answers to these questions. They’ve got a new album set up for release on August 16th through Grimoire Records, once again recording it with label boss Noel Mueller (who also mixed and mastered it). This one is more accurately named Bad Blood. Not long ago The Obelisk premiered the title track, which is a massive neck-wrecker — part punk anthem, part psychoactive squall, part pile-driving pavement-buster — and now we’ve got another track to reveal. This new one is named “Not Yet“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERPENTS ATHIRST — “POISONING THE SEVEN”

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Jul 102019
 

 

Dictionaries define “catharsis” as the purification, purgation, or cleansing of emotions, primarily through art — a process that results in renewal and restoration, or perhaps merely  a release of tension. Although those references usually refer to pity, fear, or grief as emotions purged through artistic catharsis, fans of extreme metal know that rage is also a subject of catharsis — and that rage is itself often the driving force in the creation of violent cathartic music.

Which brings us to Serpents Athirst, a decimating Sri Lankan black metal band whose music we’ve recommended in the past and whose discography consists of a 2011 split, a 2012 demo named Prevail, an EP entitled Heralding Ceremonial Mass Obliteration, and the new song we’re presenting today — “Poisoning the Seven“.

This new track appears on a punishing new split set for release by Cyclopean Eye Productions on July 26th. On this split, Scorn Coalescence, Serpent Adrift are joined by three other ferocious trans-continental groups, all of whom specially recorded the songs for this split — Genocide Shrines (also from Sri Lanka) and the New Zealand bands Trepanation and Heresiarch. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WHISPERS IN THE MAZE — “REWOVEN”

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Jul 092019
 

 

The Canadian group Whispers In the Maze pride themselves on being “a metal band without borders”, which has a dual meaning. The band’s members (who are currently split between Ottawa and Gatineau) come from different places around the world, but when you listen to their music you realize the second meaning of that phrase, because the songs themselves reveal different stylistic influences, integrated in ways that aren’t rigidly confined by genre borders.

Whispers In the Maze have completed a debut, four-song EP named Threads Unbind, which will be digitally released on July 25th, with a CD edition expected on August 1st. It will provide a great introduction to the band’s multi-faceted talents, and today we’re happy to present a beautifully made lyric video for a song from the EP called “Rewoven“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WAIT — “WE ARE IN TRANSIT”

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Jul 082019
 

 

Sometime around 2011, we are told, guitarist and composer Charlie Eron burned a CD with a couple of demo tracks on it and handed it to vocalist Max Phelps (Exist, Death To All, Defeated Sanity, ex-Cynic) and bassist Alex Weber (Exist, Defeated Sanity) at a metal show in Frederick, Maryland. They apparently thought it was pretty cool, and things evolved from there. We are further told that many song iterations, revisions, and years later, the concept that “time is starkly linear and unrecoverable” came to Charlie Eron while working at a desk job “staring vacantly into a computer screen”. And thus, WAIT was born — rounded out by the participation of drummer extraordinaire Anup Sastry (Jeff Loomis, ex-Intervals, ex-Monuments, ex-Skyharbor).

Actually, all the members of WAIT are extraordinary at what they do, and their first release as a progressive death metal unit — the three-track EP We Are In Transit — is, in a word, a marvel. And we present the chance for you to hear it in advance of its July 12 release by The Artisan Era. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRINDEAD — “TURN BLACK”

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Jul 082019
 

 

Once upon a time (in 1990 to be precise) a band named Genocide began to claw and gouge a mark in the fabric of Portuguese metal history by becoming one of the first death/grind bands in that beautiful land. By 1999 they had released a trio of demos and two full-length albums (Genocide and Breaking Point), but their second album in 1999 was to be their last release, as the band split up.

In the years that followed, Genocide‘s members participated in other groups, including Web, Raising Fear, Agnosia, Lost Gorbachevs, Hospital Psiquiátrico, Bal-Onirique, and Assassiner, among many others. But recently these Portuguese metal veterans of the original Genocide have reunited under the name Grindead. In March of this year Larvae Records released the first fruits of this reunion, a six-track self-titled demo, in a now sold-out tape edition (but still available digitally at Bandcamp). And today we proudly present an official video for the first of those tracks (following a bludgeoning, battering, swarming Intro) — “Turn Black“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LORD GORE — “DAUDISKEGG”

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Jul 052019
 

 

When DECIBEL premiered the first advance track off the first Lord Gore album in 15 years, the band introduced themselves to people who might still have been in diapers at the time of that last record: “Lord Gore is a pathogenic, mutated amalgam of deranged individuals who have produced grind and death metal in many bands from the Pacific Northwest since the mid-90s”. And who are these people? Gaze upon the line-up if you don’t already know:

Gurge – Eschatonic Ululations & Fugue-state strangulation inhales
Maniac Neil – 6 tentacles capable of inducing auditory convulsions & 4 rusty chains dripping gangrenous adipocere
Colon Bowel – Blunt Force Trauma & various Meat Beatings
Putrid Pierce – Barbed Wire Lacerations
Jesus H. Dump – Live Summoner of Sub-sonic Bowel Chowder

In addition to provoking chuckles, those descriptions will tell newcomers something about the music, and so will the new album’s spectacular cover art, rendered by Alex Tartsus. Even the album title provides a further clue: Scalpels For Blind Surgeons. We have an even better clue down below, because we’re premiering the stream of a second track from the record, this one named “Daudiskegg“, in the run-up to its August 19 release by Everlasting Spew Records. But before we get to that song, peep this shirt: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ADVENT OF BEDLAM — “A LIAR’S SPIT”

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Jul 032019
 

 

Last year we had the pleasure of premiering a video for “The Ever Watchful Eye“, a track off the third album by the Costa Rican extreme metal band Advent of Bedlam, which was then set for release in May 2018 by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions. Today we have the happy opportunity to remind you of that album — Human Portal Phenomenon — by premiering yet another video for yet another killer track off the album. This one is “A Liar’s Spit”

For those of you who might have overlooked it, this latest Advent of Bedlam record is recommended for fans of Belphegor, Dead Congregation, Hate Eternal, Immolation, Incantation, and Morbid Angel. As those names might suggest, it delivers a brand of death metal that’s ferocious and technically impressive, augmented by progressive instrumental flourishes, flashes of blackened barbarism, and a welcome attention to melody. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CURSE OF DENIAL — “TO CARRY MY SINS”

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Jul 032019
 

 

In deciding how to introduce their new album, Coming For Your Soul, Cleveland’s Curse of Denial and their label Redefining Darkness Records made a brilliant choice for a first single in advance of the album’s July 26 release. “To Carry My Sins” proves to be a wonderfully dynamic song. Over the span of its changing course it’s physically jolting, explosively powerful, emotionally cathartic, technically impressive, and melodically mesmerizing. If you’re looking for full-throttle annihilation, you’ll get that, and if you want your head pulled back to the skies by sensations of bleak heavy-metal grandeur, you’ll get that too.

It really is a hell of a song, one that not only makes an electrifying first impression but also has staying power. What more could you ask for in setting the hook for the album as a whole?

Well, how about all those eye-balls emanating from that creepy soul-sucker on the album cover? That’s a pretty good lure too, isn’t it? Continue reading »

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