AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NEBULA ORIONIS — “STARTHRONE”

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Jan 222019
 

 

Today is the day when Casus Belli Musica and Beverina release Starthrone, the new album by the Russian solo music project Nebula Orionis, and to help spread the word we’re featuring a full stream of the recording.

The album is recommended for fans of Midnight Odyssey, Mesarthim, and Ison. It is dedicated to explorers of the universe, and in its own sounds it casts the listener’s mind out into the far reaches of the cosmos, guiding us on our way in an imagined exploration that’s full of mystery and wonder, and also the exposure to compulsive physical power. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: APES OF GOD — “DYING BREED”

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Jan 212019
 

 

Death metal addicts with a slavering taste for the foul and the ferocious, pay attention, because we’ve got just the thing to feed your need.

What we’re presenting today is a track named “Dying Breed” by the thrashing death metal band Apes of God from El Salvador. It will appear on the band’s gruesome and slaughtering new EP, Procession of Death, which will be released on February 25th by Death In Pieces Records.

This new EP, which consists of four new studio tracks and two live tracks recorded at Megarock Fest 2018, is the fifth entry in the group’s discography, which also includes the 2018 debut album Misanthropy. For this recording, the band’s line-up includes vocalist Cesar Canales, guitarist Rodrigo Salguero, bassist Rob Malcoms, and drummer Gabriel Puente. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBZERV — “PLOT TWIST”

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Jan 212019
 

 

As trained medical professionals it is our strenuous advice that you engage in extended neck exercises before listening to the Obzerv song that we’re presenting today. Failure to follow this directive could result in muscle sprain and vertebral trauma.

Actually, we’re not trained medical professionals, but we do have extensive experience with headbang-related physical damage, and we do know massive grooves when we hear them. You’ll hear them, and we predict you’ll be moved by them in extravagant fashion, from the very first seconds of Obzerv’s “Plot Twist“. But as the song’s title suggests, there’s more to the music than physically compulsive grooves. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HATH — “USURPATION”

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Jan 182019
 

 

The New Jersey blackened death metal band Hath made an impressive advent in 2015 with an EP named Hive, but their debut album Of Rot and Ruin is nevertheless an enormous (and enormously good) surprise, not a step forward but an extravagant leap ahead. The news that Willowtip Records will release the album on April 12th is being announced today, and to help spread the word we’re premiering the first advance song from the album, the name of which is “Usurpation“.

This new track is a powerful preview of Hath’s songwriting approach on the new record, which turns these songs into richly dynamic and emotionally intense experiences. “Usurpation“, in particular, is an ever-changing yet completely electrifying rush that, by turns, is pulverizing, incendiary, gloom-drenched, and glorious. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NUISIBLE — “EVIL STILL”

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Jan 182019
 

 

In September of last year we reviewed and premiered Slaves & Snakes, the new album by the French band Nuisible, which was released later that month by Deadlight Records. In describing their brand of brutalizing heaviness the band make references to Tragedy, Darkthrone, and Entombed. Crust and hardcore form the backbone of their assaults, which are undergirded by massive low-end weight and driven to heights of murderous blackened frenzy. The music is as merciless as the open mouth of Hell and meaner than a pack of rabid dogs, and yet on this album the band display a knack for embedding both rhythmic and melodic hooks in its ten mauling tracks, and of switching gears often enough to keep you in harness for the whole bruising ride.

In attempting to describe the album’s crippling physicality, I wrote: “Delivered in different ways, it’s a bone-breaking, body-mangling demolition job. The drumwork is punishing; the bass lines sound like the gnashing of granite teeth; the rhythm guitar is tuned to a gritty, bruising tone; the sounds of the lead guitar are almost always unnerving, And the jugular-ripping vocals are raw, berserker manifestations of unbridled rage.”

Slaves & Snakes is definitely a demolition job, but one that doesn’t wear out its welcome despite the music’s unvarnished and often painful intensity. And in case you missed it, today we have an excellent reminder of why you should fix that oversight, because we’re premiering an engrossing music video for the album’s third track, “Evil Still“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EVILOSITY — “EVILUTION”

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Jan 172019
 

 

The Canadian death metal band Evilosity, who hail from Vancouver Island, aren’t wet-behind-the-ears newcomers, though their recorded output hasn’t been hurried or prolific. They first came together around 2002, released an EP named Snuff in 2006, and then a debut album entitled Sickening Display of Redemption in 2008. But while the band have been active in performing live since that time, a decade has passed without a new release. That’s about to change.

Evilosity have now completed work on a new EP named Sterile Existence that was recorded with veteran metal producer and engineer Rob Shallcross and includes four previously unreleased songs and a re-recording of the title track from that previous full-length. As a sign of what the new EP holds in store, today we’re presenting a lyric video (which sets the EP’s eye-catching cover art in motion) for the new song “Evilution“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KALEIKR — “NEURODELIRIUM”

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Jan 172019
 

 

In extreme metal circles these days, when one thinks of Iceland one thinks of black metal. Draugsól was one of many Icelandic black metal bands who proved their worth, with a fine 2017 debut album named Volaða land (we learned more about the band and that album in a 2017 NCS interview). Subsequently, two of Draugsól’s three members (guitarist/bassist/vocalist Maximilian Klimko and drummer Kjartan Harðarson) chose to forge ahead under a new name — Kaleikr — and their first album Heart of Lead will be released on February 15th by Debemur Morti Productions.

The album is described as “a journey from sadness through despair to total mental collapse”. In mid-December DMP released a song from the album named “The Descent“, one of three tracks on the record that includes a guest performance by Árni Bergur Zoëga on viola. It appears second in the running order, following the opener “Beheld At Sunrise”, in which the viola also figures prominently before the album’s musical descent begins.

Through each successive track, the journey becomes more strange, dark, and unnerving as Kaleikr draw upon an array of stylistic tools as they see fit to portray their narrative in sound, without being constrained by the conventions of any one genre. Where the album begins at sunrise, it ends in perpetual sunset, with the record’s seventh track. But before reaching that striking culmination, the music surges to an apotheosis of intensity in the song we’re helping premiere today — “Neurodelirium“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZOHAMAH — “BLACK CLOUD”

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Jan 172019
 

 

In the esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah, evil exists in multiple forms, and must be understood in different ways. We are told that one of the evil forces identified in Kabbalist mysticism is Zohamah, which means “darkness” or “pollution”, a form of evil that results in kilkul (or spiritual damage). Zohamah is also the name taken by a mysterious Israeli band, the work of a single individual whose initials are H.M. (although a full line-up has been assembled in preparation for live performances).

Zohamah’s first recorded output was a 2017 EP named Manic Depression, and now there’s a debut album. Entitled Spread My Ashes, it will be released by Redefining Darkness Records on February 1st. “Emptiness“, a single that is now included on the album, was first released in 2017, and today we present a second track from the album — “Black Cloud“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CRYPTERIA — “CORRUPTED TEXT”

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Jan 162019
 

 

We have an out-of-the-ordinary lyric video to present today. The subject matter will be familiar to fans of extreme metal, since at a very high level it concerns the deluding and damaging effects of religious teachings, but the inspirations for the lyrics and their approach to the subject matter isn’t run-of-the-mill at all.

The song that’s presented through the video is “Corrupted Text“, and it appears on the self-titled debut album by the Floridian death metal band Crypteria, which was released last fall and is recommended for fans of Decapitated, Morbid Angel, Soreption, Dyscarnate, and Aborted.

The band’s name is itself thought-provoking, since it refers to the Spartan secret police, a state institution that (as the band explain) “suppressed opposition and controlled the servile Helot population of Sparta”, maintaining order through brutal means. And while Crypteria (the band) didn’t choose the name as an endorsement of merciless repression, their music is undeniably brutal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HORRISONOUS — “NOURISHMENT THROUGH EXCREMENT”

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Jan 152019
 

 

Gaze upon the grotesque, brain-eating monstrosity depicted in the cover art. Reflect upon the name of the album, A Culinary Cacophony, as well as some of the song titles — such amusing formulations as “Perpetual Mincing”, “Flesh Presented For Orgasmic Torment”, “Crispy Chunks of the Obese”, “The Number of the Feast”, and the delectable “Nourishment Through Excrement“, which is the track we’re presenting today.

It’s all so over-the-top that it might make you wonder just how serious Horrisonous are about what they’re doing, or conceivably might lead you to suspect that their music is some kind of gore-fetished brutal death metal.

So, let’s be clear: There is indeed a grotesque, macabre atmosphere to the brand of death metal that this Australian band have crafted, but the music is apocalyptically doomed, remorselessly destructive, and no joke at all. The fact that the line-up consists of current or former members of such bands as Temple Nightside, Backyard Mortuary, The Slow Death, Illimitable Dolor, and Pestilential Shadows might be enough to clue you in, but of course the best evidence is the music itself. Continue reading »

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