AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: TANNÖD, RAUHNACHT, HANTERNOZ

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Nov 302017
 

 

The underground French label Antiq Records has recently released an hour-long concept split about legends of the Alps by three black metal bands from different countries that share that famous range — Tannöd from Germany, Rauhnåcht from Austria, and Hanternoz from France. The title is Spukgeschichten – Anciennes légendes des Alpes.

A few of these ten songs have previously been released for streaming, but today, as the album is being released digitally through Bandcamp, we have the full album stream in its entirety — preceded by a few remarks about the musical contributions of each band.

TANNÖD

The five tracks by the Bavarian band Tannöd that begin this new split are the band’s first publicly released output, and they make for an auspicious debut. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXALTER — “SLAUGHTER CLEANSE REPEAT”

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Nov 302017
 

 

I must say, I really like the name of the Exalter song we’re premiering today — “Slaughter Cleanse Repeat” — because it’s so close to what I do in my listening every day, except I never really feel clean. I certainly feel more slaughtered than clean when I listen to this song, but it’s also very, very easy to repeat the experience, because it’s so damned invigorating.

Exalter’s brand of thrash, as revealed through this song, is not only catchy as hell, it’s also a vicious, jolting, galloping, hard-punching, skull-cracking rush, and the raw, rabid vocals sound like a big angry mastiff eager to taste your jugular blood. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBSCURE BURIAL — “DAWN OF ESCHATON”

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Nov 302017
 

 

For those who have supped from the hideous potions of death concocted by the Finnish band Obscure Burial in their two previous demos — 2012’s God’s Abomination and 2014’s Epiphany — the prospect of a debut album has provoked a mixture of fear and relish, and that frightful hungering only intensified when the band released a single from the album named “Imago Mortis” last summer, and a further sonic abomination named “Necrophagous Ritual” more recently.

We don’t have long to wait for the album. Self-titled, it will be released by Invictus Productions (who also brought us those demos) on December 15. And you don’t have long to wait for further signs of the album’s mind-mangling black/death sorcery, because we have a third track for you today: “Dawn of Eschaton“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MANIPULATION — “CONFESSION”

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Nov 302017
 

 

It’s our pleasure to ruin your eardrums, splinter your spine, and leave your mouth open in a ghoulish, drooling smile with our premiere of a track by the Polish death metal band Manipulation.

The band have been around since 2001. Their debut album The Future of Immortality was released a decade ago… but it is now getting a facelift and a reissue, courtesy of the Belarusian label GrimmDistribution. And by “facelift”, I mean that it has been remastered, with new artwork and fresh vocal insanity by the band’s new frontman. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE STONE — “GAVRANOVO”

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Nov 292017
 

 

Serbia’s The Stone is one of the longest-running, still-active extreme metal bands in the Balkans. Originally launched in the old Yugoslavia in 1996 under the name Stone To Flesh, the band have pursued their musical inspirations for two tumultuous decades that saw the re-establishment of an independent Serbia, brutal conflict in neighboring Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and cycles of political upheaval within the country as well. Dating back to their days as Stone to Flesh, the band have released eight albums, and their ninth one, Teatar apsurda is now set for release on December 9th by Mizantropeon Records.

Despite their longevity, I didn’t discover The Stone until 2014, in the run-up to the release of their last album, the brilliant Nekroza, and since then I’ve also become a fan of Kozeljnik, the eponymous side project of one of The Stone’s founding and continuing members (a two-part interview of him that we published this past May — here and here — provides a fascinating history of these bands, as well as metal in the Balkans).

Perhaps needless to say, I’ve been eager for this new album, and not surprisingly, it’s fantastic. We’re very happy to give you a taste of what makes it so good through our premiere of a song named “Gavranovo“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BEASTIALITY — “RIDERS OF IMMINENT DEATH”

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Nov 292017
 

 

As you gaze upon that macabre artwork above, which so vividly renders a boiling eruption of demonic forms and other unspeakable abominations from an unsealed crypt, imagine if you will a soundtrack to such a foul and frenzied orgy. But don’t overtax your imaginations, because we have a perfect soundtrack already, one extracted from the album adorned by that hellish image.

The album has the entirely appropriate title Worshippers of Unearthly Perversions, and it is the deviant work of a band from Stockholm with the entirely appropriate name Beastiality. This is the band’s first full-length album, and it will be discharged by Invictus Productions on December 15, with the apparent aim of bringing 2017 to a premature end under a toxic pyroclastic flow of black speed metal. The excerpt we have for you is a track called “Riders of Imminent Death“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WINGS OF DAHAK — “UNHOLY WINGS”

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Nov 282017
 

 

On September 30th, Via Nocturna released the debut album by the Texas black/doom band Wings of Dahak. In the run-up to the release I wrote twice about individual songs from the album, which together displayed the diversity of the music created by this talented trio — guitarist/vocalist Dave Tillery (Embalmed, Gruesome Fate), lead guitarist Cody Daniels (Giant of the Mountain), and drummer Matt Thompson (King Diamond). Now it’s my pleasure to present the premiere of a new music video for the album’s strikingly powerful title track.

The album is conceptually based on the horrifying tale of Azhi-Dahaka, an unstoppable three-headed dragon “created by the Spirit of Destruction”, who brings ruin to the earth. As the band further explain: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: FUNERAL CHANT — “FUNERAL CHANT”

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Nov 272017
 

 

In the early weeks of this now-waning year the Oakland-based black/death band Funeral Chant self-released their first cacophonous chants of total death on tape and digitally. It took little time for that self-titled album to produce a clamoring in the unwashed hordes of the underground for a vinyl and a CD edition, and now those wishes are about to be granted:

On November 30, Caverna Abismal Records (Portugal) and Duplicate Records (Norway) will release Funeral Chant’s enormously impressive debut in LP and CD formats, and to help spread the word we’re fiendishly pleased to present a full stream of the album for those who may have missed it before. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRETHOR — “EMBRACING OBLIVION”

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Nov 272017
 

 

The quality of the music is obviously the most important criterion for assessing a new release, but there is added value when the concept and inspiration for an album teaches you something interesting that you never knew before, and when it features artwork that catches the eye. And the new album by Virginia’s Grethor that’s the source of the song we’re about to premiere scores high in all of those respects.

The album’s name is Damnatio Memoriae, which is Latin for “condemnation of memory“. We’re told that “the Roman Senate adopted this as a form of dishonorable punishment against traitors and criminals who brought shame to the Empire” — a form of punishment which stipulated “that a person must not be remembered”, and one that was “regarded as a fate worse than death”. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BARSHASKETH AND OUTRE — “SEIN ZEIT”

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Nov 262017
 

 

At this site we don’t often publicize mere announcements of new releases without accompanying music, but a few weeks ago I did because the announcement got me so excited that I couldn’t resist. The subject was a forthcoming split by Barshasketh (formerly based in New Zealand, now located in Edinburgh, Scotland) and the Polish band Outre. Entitled Sein / Zeit, the split is scheduled for released on November 27th by Third Eye Temple and Blut & Eisen Productions.

Both of these bands have released some stunningly good music in the past, and that alone would have been reason enough to cause excitement about this split, but the conceptual focus of the music described in the announcement made the prospect even more intriguing. And now we’ve heard the split — and today you may do the same — and it is every bit as exciting as we thought it might be. Continue reading »

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