AN NCS PREMIERE: HAXPROCESS — “SEPULCHRAL VOID”

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Jun 252025
 

(written by Islander)

“Haxprocess are playing incredibly heavy death metal music – leaden, thick and dark, and are somehow attempting to go progressive wielding that sound. It’s like Morbid Angel covering The Chasm songs under the influence of Blood Incantation.”

That’s part of how Transcending Obscurity Records pitches Beyond What Eyes Can See, the forthcoming second album by the Floridian quartet Haxprocess. They also mention that the album includes only four songs that average 10 minutes per track — epic in length, and allegedly epic in impact.

Well, to say the least, expectations have been raised. How well does the reality conform to them? Discerning listeners already have half the answer, because T.O. has already streamed the album’s opening two songs — “Where Even Stars Die” and “The Confines of the Flesh“. Now you’ll get three-quarters of the answer because we’re about to premiere the album’s closing track, “Sepulchral Void“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE BLEAK PICTURE — “SHADES OF LIFE”

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Jun 242025
 

(written by Islander)

“There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.”
– Oscar Wilde, “De Profundis”

Those words feature prominently in The Bleak Picture‘s previews of their second album Shades of Life, which will be released by Ardua Music on June 27th. The music will remind you of them, but the music will also inspire other moods and other visions.

The album is a formulation of melodic death-doom metal that is at once earthy and astral, immensely heavy and gossamer light, stricken by sorrow but elevated by expansive visions of splendor, a powerfully immersive, emotionally moving, and often spine-shaking experience from beginning to end. And we are very fortunate to premiere its full stream today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INDESIDERIUM — “APOCALYPTIC FUNERAL MARCH”

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Jun 232025
 

(written by Islander)

Indesiderium is a Los Angeles based black metal duo founded by vocalist, guitarist, and bassist Atrum Lorde and now accompanied by drummer Warhead. Indesiderium has released two albums so far, Wanderer of the Abyssal Plains (2015) and Of Twilight and Evenfall​.​.​. (2018), and now a third one, The Nocturnal Seance Of Lucifer, is set for co-release later this week by Satanath Records (Georgia) and WP And RO Productions (Netherlands).

From the beginning, the band’s mission has been to channel in uncompromising terms the bleakness, the cold majesty, and the evil of second-wave black metal in its golden age, paying homage to the influence of such bands as Dawn, Dark Funeral, Dissection, Immortal, and Emperor. As a sign of where the band now stand in that mission, we’re premiering today a song from their new album named “Apocalyptic Funeral March“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISEMBODIMENT — “INFECTED TO ROT”

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Jun 232025
 

(written by Islander)

About five weeks ago we premiered a song from Spiral Crypts, the forthcoming debut album of Disembodiment from Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. We preceded it with a warning:

You are about to be stomped and gouged, bounced off the walls and lacerated, dragged into foul and choking cesspools and made witness to violent charnel-house abominations. Your pulse will pound, your head will move, your guts will churn. And you will smile broadly at every abuse to which you will be subjected!

Five weeks might have been long enough for physical and mental therapy to have had some beneficial recuperative effect on listeners who heard that song, “Stygian Overture“. It’s possible listeners have stopped smiling now too (smiling takes extra effort when your jaw’s wired shut). And so the time is right to bring you another helping of death metal trauma straight from the Spiral Crypts, through a song whose title describes some of its own consequences: “Infected To Rot“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MROME — “BONEYARD TWIST”

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Jun 202025
 

(written by Islander)

The Polish band MROME have been making music since the mid-’90s, first under the name Kingdom and then as MROME. Under the latter name they’ve released four albums so far, most of which we’ve paid attention to (as you can see here), and on June 23rd they’ll release a fifth one.

Entitled Boneyard Twist, the new one includes 9 tracks recorded live in the studio, and the band have described it to us as “a kind of return to our dark roots from the early ’90s, inspired deeply by the first wave black metal.” Lyrically, they tell us, the songs deal “with grave residents, disabilities of body and mind, necromancy and… monks exploding!”

What we have for you today is a full stream of the new record, preceded (of course) by some thoughts about it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DÉCRYPTAL — “HORDE D’INVERTÉBRÉS”

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Jun 202025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to present a song that should make even the most hardened and hard-to-please death metal fans sit up and pay close attention. It’s a track called “Horde d’invertébrés” off the debut album Simulacre from Quebec’s Décryptal, which will be co-released on July 11th by Me Saco Un Ojo and Rotted Life.

In the space of just this one song Décryptal lead listeners through a musical house of horrors, pulling us forward from one ghastly room to the next, with enough return trips among them to embed their hideous visions in a listener’s head (and providing a time to bang our heads as well). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OSKOREIEN — “PRISMATIC REASON”

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Jun 192025
 

(written by Islander)

Oskoreien is back!

For people with discerning musical tastes and long memories, that will be a very happy piece of news. For people who may be encountering the Oskoreien name for the first time, it’s a project formed in Los Angeles in 2003 by multi-instrumentalist Jay Valena. As his solo endeavor, Oskoreien released a pair of demos and then a self-titled debut album in 2011, followed by a split with Botanist five years later and then a second album, All Too Human, in 2016 — but nothing since then.

If you haven’t explored those previous releases, they are well worth your time, especially if you’re a fan of multi-faceted melodic black metal (and you can learn more about some of them, and about Jay Valena‘s very interesting inspirations, through the reviews and an interview we published in those earlier years). Oskoreien‘s forthcoming third album, Hollow Fangs, will also be well worth your time. It’s set for release on July 18th, and today we’re premiering its opening track “Prismatic Reason“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RAHVIRA — “ONLY FORWARD”

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Jun 192025
 

(written by Islander)

The history of the Armenian people is a long tale of subjugation and sorrow. As one source explains, between the 16th and 19th centuries the traditional Armenian homeland came under the rule of the Ottoman and Persian empires, and by the 19th century the eastern part of it had been conquered by the Russian empire. During World War I, up to 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian genocide. And after the Russian empire ceased to exist, the First Republic of Armenia was absorbed by the Soviet Union. The Republic of Armenia, as it now exists, became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, landlocked and surrounded by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

In April of this year the Armenian black metal band Rahvira (the duo of vocalist Aleksandr “Arson” Muradyan and songwriter/instrumentalist Tigran Rahvira) released an album named Ghosts Of Darkness through Holy Mountains Music (Yerevan, Armenia) and Wine And Fog Productions (Italy). As the band describe, the album “presents the struggles and sorrows of the Armenian people, dedicated entirely to the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide”.

“These songs emphasize the experiences, losses, and hopes of the Armenian people” and represent “the determination of the Armenian people to persevere despite the pain and suffering they have endured…. This album is not only a tribute to a critical chapter of Armenian history but also a spiritual journey — from pain to rebirth — that calls upon us to never forget, while urging us to continue living and triumphing, drawing strength from the past.”

What we have for you today is Rahvira‘s official video for a song from Ghosts of Darkness called “Only Forward“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MORTALHA NEGRA — “NECROMANTE”

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Jun 182025
 

(written by Islander)

Helldprod Records has marked June 18th as the release date for Mortalha Negra‘s debut EP, Necromante. While Mortalha Negra is a new name, the person behind it is well-known: Armando Exekutor has led Flagedör for more than two decades and is also a fixture in Gravedancer, whose debut album was released in 2023 (and those are just two aspects of an extensive musical resume within the Brazilian scene, and elsewhere).

Under the banner of Mortalha Negra, A. Exekutor has joined forces with drummer J. Ferrante to create sulfurous black thrash with a powerfully occult atmosphere. Helldprod previews the EP with these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MORBYDA — “UNDER THE SPELL”

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Jun 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The Leipzig-based band Morbyda will have their debut album Under the Spell released on June 20th by Dying Victims Productions. If enough people find it, we predict it will bring throngs of people under its spell, people across a wide range of ages who relish the glories of devil-horned heavy metal. This quartet may be fairly new to the scene, but they sound like they’ve been at this for decades.

“Blackened speed metal” is the high-level descriptor of the music, and it’s not off-base, but it doesn’t fully capture all the traditions Morbyda pull from, or the absolutely electrifying and fist-pumping results they’ve achieved. With this album, they become a band worth watching very closely Continue reading »

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