AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MORDBRAND — “DÖDEN / EFTER DÖDEN”

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May 132019
 

 

Gustaf Fröding, who died in 1911, is considered “one of the greatest poets of verse that Sweden has ever produced”. In his own life he struggled with alcoholism and mental illness, and according to the same source just quoted, “His poetry combines formal virtuosity with a sympathy for the ordinary, the neglected and the down-trodden, sometimes written with his own dialect. It is highly musical and lends itself to musical setting….”

While musical adaptations of Fröding’s verse have been wide-ranging, the range is even wider now because the Swedish death metal band Mordbrand have made two of Fröding’s poems the lyrical subject of songs that will be released digitally and in a 7″ vinyl format on May 15th, via De:Nihil Records — and today it’s our pleasure to present streams of both tracks: “Döden” and “Efter Döden“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UNGOLIANTHA — “THE HOWL IN THE WASTE”

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May 102019
 

 

Much could be written (and has been written) about Ungoliant, the dark spider queen “from before the world” who played a role in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Silmarillion and was mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. Also known as Gloomweaver (because she was capable of generating impenetrable darkness), she gave birth to a race of giant spiders, and her own unremitting hunger was so great that she consumed herself.

With that bit of background, it becomes apparent from the music of the Ukrainian symphonic black metal band Ungoliantha why they based their name on that giant dark spider. One might find other clues to the music from the spooky cover art of their new EP, The Howl in the Waste — a collage of black cats, skulls, and Gothic spires. There is indeed an atmosphere of supernatural horror and terrible grandeur that pervades the EP, manifested in different ways across its five tracks — all of which we’re streaming today in this exclusive premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ETERNAL REST — “THE WILL OF DEATH”

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May 092019
 

 

Ten years after the release of their first EP, Seize of Anubis, the Australian death metal band Eternal Rest will be releasing their third album on June 7th through Gore House Productions. The title is Picture of Hatred. Dan Swanö mixed and mastered it. Remy Cooper created the cover art. Good names to have on your side, especially when you’ve created music as powerful as this.

The album title is no exaggeration. Most extreme metal is aggressive, but Picture of Hatred genuinely comes for your throat… and your bones and internal organs. It’s fierce and punishing in a way that knocks you back on your heels, with enough electricity to power a decent-sized city.

It’s also clear that the band didn’t spend the ten years since their first record treading water — they’ve become quite skilled in writing songs that mercilessly dig their hooks into a listener’s head at the same time as they’re cracking it open like an egg. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROSEXUAL — “THE LAIR WHERE NO LIGHT ENTERS”

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May 082019
 

 

Wild guess: Especially among the more grim and cold-eyed consumers of metal extremity, the music of Philadelphia’s Necrosexual might be received with a certain degree of… skepticism. The PR comparison of “Gwar meets Venom“; the combination of corpse paint, sneering countenance, and tight, striped leggings; a record title like The Gory Hole Overture In F#; and of course the band’s name — all that might provoke a bit of mental push-back in certain quarters. One answer might be to just say, “lighten the fuck up”, and a better answer might be, “listen to ‘The Lair Where No Light Enters‘, which is the song we’re presenting today — because it’s hellishly good..

Actually, a still-better answer would be, “listen to all three songs from this new EP that have debuted so far”, and then make your mind up — and we’ll give you a chance to do that, too. But first, let’s focus on “The Lair Where No Light Enters“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONGS FROM A SPLIT BY ALBANACH AR DHEIS AND NIHTWINTRE

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May 072019
 

 

On May 14th a pair of black metal bands whose music seems to be the emanations of kindred spirits — Calgary’s Albanach ar Dheis and Seattle’s Nihtwintre — will release a new split EP. It includes two tracks by the former and three by the latter, and todays it’s our pleasure to premiere a song by each band.

When you hear these songs, you may have the feeling (as this writer did) that they’re not completely of our world, that they have more in common with ancient times than with modernity, or perhaps channel expressions from spirit realms rather than the habitations of flesh and bone. They’re also both intense and immersive, capable of taking you out of yourself for as long as they last. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEIGE MORTE — “NIQUEZ BIEN TOUS VOS MÈRES”

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May 072019
 

 

Seventeen months ago, when DECIBEL premiered a full stream of the latest record by Neige Morte, they wrote that the band “play black metal, but they do it with death metal sensibilities, hammering the listener with a torrent of noisy, cacophonous riffs and blast beats, almost painful in its intensity at times on their new album, TRINNT…. [I]t seems that over the course of three records, they’ve turned dense, punishing black metal into an art form they’ve mastered”.

As a reminder of the truth of those words, today we’re premiering a video of these part-French, part-Swedish nihilists performing a track from TRINNT, the name of which is “Niquez Bien Tous Vos Mères”, filmed by Sergey Ulyanov at the band’s release show in Lausanne a bit more than one year ago. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEORC ABSIS — “STASIS” (A PORTION OF “THE NOTHINGNESS TRANSFIGURATION”)

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May 062019
 

 

“For fans of Deathspell Omega, Dodecahedron, Fleshgod Apocalypse“. I confess that when I saw those references in the promotional materials for the debut EP by Deorc Absis, I was a bit confused, but also more than a little intrigued. After listening to The Nothingness Transfiguration, the comparisons made more sense, but it’s still very difficult to find comparisons to this music.

The Nothingness Transfiguration is instrumentally intricate, technically extravagant, frequently unhinged in its ferocity, and just as frequently eerie and ethereal. It has an experimental, near-improvisational quality that proves to be mentally and emotionally discombobulating, and the connections that tie it together seem to be established almost subconsciously. In a word (though more words will come), it’s fascinating.

Fortunately, because the music is difficult to pin down in words, we have an excerpt from the EP that you can stream today. Bear in mind that “Stasis” isn’t really a separate and distinct track, but just the first four minutes of a single composition that lasts nearly 14 minutes. And what a wild 14-minute trip it is. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UIVO BASTARDO — “FUGA MUNDI”

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May 062019
 

 

The song we’re about to present displays appealing dualities, marrying viscerally powerful, physically compulsive rhythms and an eerie atmosphere of doom and damnation, and combining divergent vocals as well. The results are both intriguing and quite capable of leaving you bludgeoned and bruised (figuratively speaking of course, though sore-neck syndrome is a real-world risk).

The song is “Fuga Mundi” and it comes from the debut album of the Portuguese band Uivo Bastardo. Entitled Clepsydra, it which will be released on May 13th by Ethereal Sound Works. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MUTILATE — “DECAPITATOR”

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May 032019
 

 

There’s a cold, cruel, primitive quality in the music of New York-based Mutilate, like the death-metal parallel to some massive night-stalking predator that can’t be escaped and can’t be reasoned with, and then there’s the added fear factor that the red eyes you see just before being mauled aren’t a product of the natural world.

The band’s new album, Contagium, follows hot on the heels of their 2018 full-length Tormentium, and is set for release on June 7th by Iron Bonehead Productions. A couple of songs from Contagium have surfaced so far, and we have one more today — “Decapitator” — which is a prime example of the primeval monstrousness that dwells within Mutilate’s music. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BOTANIST — “HAMMER OF BOTANY + OPLOPANAX HORRIDUS”

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May 032019
 

 

I concede that I’m stretching the definition of “premiere” in this post: The first five tracks on this new album by Botanist were previously released in 2015 as EP2: Hammer of Botany (in a limited CD edition sold during a European tour), and the new sixth track (“Oplopanax Horridus“) was out in the world for a time when Bandcamp pre-orders for the album were launched.

On the other hand, today really is the first day when you can listen to all six tracks straight through, from beginning to end, in advance of the album’s official release in vinyl and CD editions on May 10th, and that’s what you’ll have the opportunity to do at the end of this post.

In addition, because the artist here is Otrebor, bending the rules seems entirely appropriate, because bending the rules (and breaking them) has been Botanist’s forte for many years. Continue reading »

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