AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AETRANOK — “OV PRECIPICE AND BESTIAL PURITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 232018
 

 

The black metal band Aetranok was spawned in the high desert of New Mexico in the small town of Aztec, but from the sound of their music you’d think they dwell in one of the lower levels of Hell. Their second album, Kingdoms of The Black Sepulcher, is set for release on April 26th by Symbol of Domination (Belarus) and Death Portal Studio (U.S.), and today we present the premiere of a lyric video for the song “Ov Precipice and Bestial Purity“.

The lyrics of the song proclaim that “the mantra of ruined angels vibrates the heavens to rubble,” and they celebrate the advent of an immaculate oblivion. “Here lies the abyss,” the vocalist shrieks in scorching tones, and the music matches all these words. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MONOTHEIST — “MARK OF THE BEAST PT. 2: SCION OF DARKNESS”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Feb 222018
 

 

We first encountered the Orlando-based progressive death metal band Monotheist through their impressive 2013 EP, Genesis of Perdition, which followed an hour-long debut album (Unforsaken) that had first appeared roughly six years earlier. The band delivered a single in 2016, and at last a second album has now been completed. Entitled Scourge, it will be released through Prosthetic Records on March 16th.

The new album continues to feature the eclectic interests and creative guitar performances of founder Michael “Prophet” Moore as well as the vocal ravages of JJ “Shiv” Polachek IV (7 Horns 7 Eyes, ex-Ovid’s Withering) and the drumming of Cooper Bates, but the line-up also now includes new participants: bassist Jose Figueroa (who we’re told is a rising star of the Orlando jazz scene) and second guitarist/vocalist Tyler McDaniel (ex-Gigan) from DeLand, Florida.

The first side of Scourge begins with “The Grey King” (which premiered here and includes a guest appearance by Christian Älvestam) and “The Great Chain At the Neck of the Earth”, and then it moves into a two-part composition. The first part, “Mark of the Beast I: The Image” functions as a two-minute prelude to the song we’re premiering today: “Mark of the Beast II: Scion of Darkness“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ESOCTRILIHUM — “PANDAEMORTHIUM (FORBIDDEN FORMULAS TO AWAKEN THE BLIND SOVEREIGN OF NOTHINGNESS)”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Feb 222018
 

 

The yearning for death on a mass scale horrifies most people, and these days that yearning is for most people probably associated with the kind of psychosis that leads to the detonation of suicide vests, the use of delivery trucks as guided missiles plowing through packed bodies out for an evening stroll, the massacre of children in their schools with easily bought weapons of war. We can, of course, remember instances of human slaughter on unimaginably larger scales; it’s probably happening again somewhere on earth right now.

But the desire for death made real in instances such as these pales in their scope when compared to the extinction-scale invocations of anti-cosmic extreme metal. Only a tiny sliver of humanity outside such circles would comprehend the attraction of such philosophies. The fraction is probably only slightly larger even within the ranks of metaldom. Yet the concept of vast, terrifying forces entering our dimension from nightmarish shadow realms and consuming all life — and being invited to do so — has animated powerful forms of death and black metal, challenging their creators to attempt to capture such daunting conceptions in sound, with results that have attracted the allegiance of many thousands of listeners. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SCUMPULSE — “ROTTEN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Feb 212018
 

 

When you listen to the new Scumpulse album — and you damned well should — you won’t have time for any deep breaths. But the music is such a high-powered, adrenaline-triggering rush that you won’t miss the oxygen. Hyperventilation will take care of that for you. You can rest later.

The name of the album is Rotten, and it will be released by Gore House Productions in just two days, but you can listen to it today. You will find this Scottish band’s attack to be relentlessly pulse-pounding, but although its feral ferocity is indeed capable of taking a listener’s breath away, the band have packed the music with turn-on-a-dime changes, creating a genre-hybrid that’s a serious eye-opener. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SIGNS OF THE SWARM — “NIGHTCRAWLER”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 202018
 

 

Last November, Unique Leader released the latest album by Pittsburgh’s Signs of the Swarm, whose musical concoctions straddle intersecting lines of brutal death metal, slam, and deathcore. The seventh track on that 10-track release was “Nightcrawler“, and that song is the subject of the music video we’re premiering in this post.

There are chiming notes in this song that surface here and there. They sound like a child’s music box, one that has somehow continued to play in a mechanized war zone. It’s an eerie sensation, one haunting remnant of innocence in a landscape given over to violence. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WHEN BLOOD FALLS DOWN — “SERPENS CIRCULUM ALBIDUS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 192018
 

 

The wolven brotherhood When Blood Falls Down come our way from the city of León in Guanajuato, Mexico. Their debut album P A N D AE M O N I U M will be released later this year by Transcending Records, and today we have for you an official video for a song from the album called “Serpens Circulum Albidus“.

The song could be thought of as a manifestation of satanic blackened deathcore. While creating an atmosphere that’s persistently ominous and arcane — a feeling that’s enhanced by the shadowy, occult-themed video — the band mete out a serious beating capable of leaving welts, bruises, and more than a few loose teeth. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SENTIENT HORROR — “BLED DRY BY THE NIGHT”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 192018
 

 

The cover art of the great Juanjo Castellano heralds the return of Sentient Horror from the crypts below, where they have been at work creating a ghoulish new five-track EP named… The Crypts Below. The vault will be opened wide on March 30, when the EP will be released through the conspiracy of Redefining Darkness Records (North America) and Testimony Records (Europe), but something abominable is escaping into our world today… a new song named “Bled Dry By the Night“.

Those of you who are familiar with this death metal band’s 2016 debut album, Ungodly Forms, will have a good idea what to expect, but may still not be fully prepared for the new terrors on this EP, which includes a cover of Edge of Sanity’s “Darkday” (from 1993’s The Spectral Sorrows) and four new original songs. As guitarist/vocalist Matt Moliti explains: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABOMINATIONS — “INVASION OF UNEARTHLY BEINGS”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Feb 182018
 

 

The German band Imperceptum (from Bremen), has released two EPs and three albums. I’ve reviewed all of them excerpt the first EP. At the risk of oversimplifying the experience of Imperceptum’s music, it combines elements of atmospheric black metal, funeral doom, ambient music, and post-metal to create long void-faring journeys that are both terrifying and beautiful.

The richly textured music moves from immense hurricanes of cataclysmic fury to slower, earth-shattering, and crushingly bleak expositions of doom, to illuminating drifts through astral planes or across the yawning maw of deep space. Sweeping and soaring movements of vast and alien grandeur are juxtaposed against harrowing, blood-freezing storms of shock and awe. All of the releases are immersive; the songs are long, but for this listener the minutes seem to pass without any consciousness that time is passing.

I provide that prelude to explain the thrill I felt when I learned that Imperceptum’s sole creator (who goes by the nom de guerre Void) has another project, a death metal operation named Abominations. Abominations released two demos in 2016 — Realms of Horror and Darkness and Insanity — and a debut album, Summoning Death, will be released in March. Today we bring you a stream of its first single, “Invasion of Unearthly Beings“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PUREST OF PAIN — “THE SOLIPSIST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 162018
 

 

Purest of Pain is a Dutch melodic death metal band led by guitarist and principal songwriter Merel Bechtold of Delain (and also a member of MaYaN and The Gentle Storm, with Anneke van Giersbergen and Arjen Anthony Lucassen). In Purest of Pain, her bandmates now include Delain drummer Joey de Boer, guitarist Michael van Eck, vocalist J.D. Kaye, and bassist Frank van Leeuwen.

Purest of Pain’s debut album, Solipsis, will be released on March 1st, building on the band’s 2013 single, “Momentum”, and their 2011 EP, Revelations In Obscurity. Today we present a lyric video for a song from the album called “The Solipsist“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SSANAHTES — “LET DOWN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 162018
 

 

Let’s begin with the name of this band from Bordeaux, which for someone like me is best copy-pasted to avoid the misspelling that would otherwise inevitably result: It is the Romanian word for Satan — spelled backwards. And there is indeed something about the music of Ssanahtes on their self-titled debut album that is both up-ending and devilish. A couple of songs from the album have emerged so far in the run-up to its March 22 release, and now we present another, the name of which is “Let Down“.

That’s the song’s name, but it will definitely not let you down. A composition that might be thought of as an intersection of post-metal and sludge, it manages simultaneously to be bleak, bone-breaking, and astral (or perhaps “spectral” would be an equally good word). But perhaps above all else, “Let Down” delivers immense, pavement-cracking rhythmic power. In the end, you might feel transported, lifted off your feet, but also battered by the vigorous application of a crowbar to the back of your neck. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries