AN NCS PREMIERE: ROTTING GRAVE — “ROTTING GRAVE”

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Mar 192019
 

 

In the month of June, 2018, Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, gave birth to a monster. Inspired by the horrific atmosphere and cadaverous sound of especially gruesome strains of death metal from the ’90s, guitarist Roberto Trejo, guitarist/vocalist Pablo Aceves, bassist Néstor Márquez, and drummer Saúl Anzaldo joined forces to spawn this ghastly entity known as Rotting Grave.

Rotting Grave wasn’t the first fruits of their labors within the fetid spawning grounds of extreme metal. Those four had sharpened their skills in such other bands as Morbid Messiah, Ictiosis, Worthless, Condemnation, Portrait of Ruin, and Human Trash. But with Rotting Grave they’ve clearly created something that puts their talents to very good use — as you’re about to discover.

Rotting Grave’s first EP, Horrid Pestilence of Death, will be released on April 29th in a CD edition by Death In Pieces Records, and what we have for you today is one of its six tracks, one that shares the band’s name, one that’s hideous and thrilling, repellent and addictive. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ARCHAIC DECAPITATOR — “CRUELTY OF THE HOST STAR”

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Mar 182019
 

 

On Friday, April 19th,  the Connecticut-based melodic death metal band Archaic Decapitator will release a new five-song EP entitled The Apothecary. It follows their well-received 2016 EP, Light of a Different Sun, which featured performances by session drummer extraordinaire Kevin Talley. But while Kevin Talley isn’t featured on this new EP, Archaic Decapitator have enlisted another tremendously talented skins-man in Gary Marotta from Xenosis, and new rhythm guitarist Chris Ridley has also joined the band as a permanent member.

Those two round out a group that also includes vocalist Kyle Quintin (Fires in the Distance, ex-Formless), lead guitarist Yegor Savonin (Fires in the Distance), and bassist/backing-vocalist Craig Breitsprecher (Fires in the Distance, ex-Formless).

Today, through a lyric video, we present a second single from the EP, “Cruelty of the Host Star“, a song that vividly reveals the dynamism of The Apothecary as the band accent their bracing rush of melodic death metal with progressive flourishes, elements of black metal and thrash, and even a few symphonic touches. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EVERGREEN REFUGE — “SKYWARD”

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Mar 182019
 

 

Over the course of nine albums, two splits, and one live recorded album, Evergreen Refuge (the solo instrumental project of Colorado musician Dylan Rupe) has created music of varying styles, ranging from atmospheric black metal with post-rock and acoustic elements to blackened folk. In all these variations, however, Evergreen Refuge has drawn from experiences in the wild and a deep reverence for nature as sources of inspiration for creating music designed to foster self-reflection.

But in the newest album by Evergreen Refuge, which its our pleasure to premiere in full today, Dylan Rupe has turned his attention to the stars, to the vast reach of the cosmos that surrounds our own tiny home. Entitled Skyward, the album is a single 66-minute composition, and it will be released on March 20 by A Moment of Clarity Recordings. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: GRAFJAMMER AND WRANG — “KOUDE GRACHT / GRAMME WERF”

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Mar 152019
 

 

I wonder what’s in the water in Utrecht, or whether the taps only stream some combination of alcohol and paint stripper. I wonder whether it will be possible to play this 7″ vinyl more than once, or whether it will simply ignite and melt down on the first spin. I wonder whether there’s any way I can teleport into Utrecht the next time Grafjammer and Wrang take the stage to destroy some local venue. Questions, questions, so many questions.

Any questions, or any other thoughts, will only come after listening to this new split we’re premiering today. While the songs are streaming, it’s hard to think at all. The music on these two tracks is such a wild, raucous, riotous experience, so full of blazing carnal vigor and blood-lusting ferocity, so supercharged with neck-wrecking rhythms and contagious riffs, that pumping your head like a piston or picturing yourself careening into other human beings in some sweat-soaked mosh pit become the immediate instinctive reactions. There’s no room left for rational thought.

The two bands on this split, Grafjammer and Wrang, are indeed both located in Utrecht, that ancient city in the center of the Netherlands. They share a drummer, and also a strong taste for sordid, filthy black metal. They recorded these two songs in a live setting at dB’s, which seems to be a combination bar, music venue, and practice space, and the energy of a live performance certainly emanates from these recordings. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THESE BEASTS — “SHIRILLA IN A TUB”

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Mar 142019
 

 

The members of Chicago-based These Beasts have a friend named Greg Shirilla. They say he loves a good bath. When the band worked out the song you’re about to hear in a practice-night jam session, they named it “Shirilla in a Tub“, as a kind of placeholder for something else that would be developed after the lyrics were written. As the band have told us, the song “actually has nothing to do with Greg, but we tend to give songs names before the lyrics are written and sometimes those names just stick”.

The name obviously stuck here. Funny name. But there’s nothing funny about the music. It will tear you a new one, and won’t apologize for doing so. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SÜHNOPFER — “L’HOIRIE DE MES ANCESTRES”

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Mar 142019
 

 

It might be a good idea for you to take many deep breaths before you begin listening to the song we’re streaming below — because for more than 10 minutes you’ll be breathless. Eye drops wouldn’t be a bad idea either, because the music is also capable of leaving a listener wide-eyed and unblinking for just as long.

The song in question is “L’Hoirie de mes Ancestres“, and it comes from the stunning new album by the French black metal band Sühnopfer, which is the sole creation of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ardraos. Entitled Hic Regnant Borbonii Manes, it will be released on May 10th by by Debemur Morti Productions, which describes the music (quite accurately) as an amalgamation of “regal Bourbon madness with quintessential black metal fury”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AMONG VULTURES — “COFFIN OF THE UNIVERSE”

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Mar 132019
 

 

After 20 years and more than 300 live performances operating under the name Attack Vertical, the Swiss quintet who are the subject of this premiere began 2019 by adopting a new name — Among Vultures — and readying the release of a new album which shares that name. It will hit the streets on March 29th via Tenacity Music, and today we’re presenting a video for the record’s hard-hitting opening track, “Coffin Of The Universe“.

Over those two decades of work, the music of Among Vultures has evolved, now manifesting itself as a ferocious amalgam of hardcore and death metal that’s bruising, battering, and guaranteed to put a high-voltage charge straight down your spine. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TOTALITARIAN — “LIBERATORS”

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Mar 122019
 

 

Between about 1930 and 1945, in an area of Europe that included eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic republics, approximately 14 million innocent people were shot, gassed, or intentionally starved to death. As if in the most grotesque competition imaginable, Stalin and Hitler shared responsibility for the mass slaughter, and more than half of it occurred outside the Nazi gas chambers and death camps, often in more obscure circumstances, in villages and the countryside. Both Jews and non-Jews were shot to death by the millions, simply penned like animals and deprived of food, or otherwise forced into famine. The scale is unimaginable; in Belarus alone, one quarter of its population were killed as a result of the convergence of these two brutal, totalitarian regimes.

The details of these mass  exterminations were gathered together by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in a well-reviewed and award-winning 2010 book named Bloodlands – Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. To write it, he assembled an enormous mass of fresh research on Soviet and Nazi murder, much of it emerging from archives once sealed behind the Iron Curtain, and some of it his own, in order to produce, as one reviewer put it, “something like a final and definitive account” of these terrors. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PUTREVORE AND GRIM FATE

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Mar 122019
 

 

The corroded iron gates of a cavernous stinking crypt have been wrenched open, releasing into our world a hideous spectacle of shambling ghouls and hungering horrors, revealing visions of suppurating decay and blood-lusting mayhem. Ancient avatars of death metal darkness have been given new life again, and this time we have Putrevore and Grim Fate to thank for a renewal of our odious pleasures.

The first of those names has been reverberating in the dank caverns of the underground for more than a decade, combining the talents of people whose fame is older still, while the second name is new but destined to spread quickly by word of mouth. They have joined forces in a new 7″ split release that Dawnbreed Records and Seed of Doom Records will discharge on March 15th, and it would be hard to think of a better gift on the Ides of March for addicts of monstrous death metal. You’ll discover that for yourselves right now, because we have a stream of both tracks below. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASHEN HORDE — “PARITY LOST”

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Mar 082019
 

 

The last time we featured the music of Ashen Horde in these pages was almost exactly two years ago when we premiered the band’s two-track EP, The Alchemist, which was intended to pave the way to the band’s third album. Now, that album has been completed, with the title of Fallen Cathedrals — and today we’re hosting another Ashen Horde premiere, a breathtaking track off that new record named “Parity Lost“.

For those who might be encountering Ashen Horde for the first time, it began as the solo project of Los Angeles-based musician Trevor Portz. Working alone, he released a handful of EPs and two albums since 2013. Beginning with The Alchemist, he joined forces with vocalist Stevie Boiser, known for his work with such tech-death heavyweights as Vale of Pnath, Inferi, and Equipoise, and both are in harness again for Fallen Cathedrals. Continue reading »

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