AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): COEXISTENCE — “CONTACT WITH THE ENTITY”

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May 182018
 

 

Contact with the Entity is the debut EP by the Italian progressive death metal band Coexistence, and it’s an enormously impressive first foot forward, displaying the kind of song-writing assurance, creative exuberance, and striking performance skill that one would expect from a band much further into their career. We’re very happy to be the bearer of a full stream of the music today, in advance of its release on May 21st.

The EP consists of four tracks, including a brief but disturbing interlude after the head-spinning rush of the first two songs. And those first two tracks, as well as the last one, really are the kind of kaleidoscopic experiences that open eyes wide. All the performers are technically adept; the music is atmospherically rich and wonderfully dynamic; it’s compulsively physical; and it’s loaded with wide-ranging progressive flourishes that include ventures into jazz-fusion-like mind-bending. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE FLESH — “SIREN’S CALL”

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May 182018
 

 

The Flesh don’t try to gild the lily in what they’re created through their debut EP, Dweller — or more accurately, gild the thorns and the meat cleavers.  From the putrescent, rotting abomination crafted by Mattias Frisk for the cover to the band’s proclamation that the songs were created “in praise of spiritual, physical and emotional erosion”, they put their motivations right up-front, without pretension: this is black-hearted, fury-pitched, bone-breaking music.

The members of this Dutch group come from the ranks of such other notable bands as Herder, Verwoed, and Blood Diamond. They allegedly joined forces after a night of heavy drinking; they drew the lyrics from themes that dwell on “the destructive drives of lust, disgust and (self)annihiliation”; they tracked these seven songs live; and they pulled no punches. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FIRTAN — “SEEGANG”

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May 172018
 

 

The German black metal band Firtan will soon be adding to a discography that already includes a well-received debut album (2014’s Niedergang) and two powerful EPs (2013’s Wogen der Trauer and the band’s most recent release, 2016’s Innenwelt). On July 13th, AOP Records will release Firtan’s second album, Okeanos — a title that brings to mind the Titan god of the great world-encircling sea.

The new album includes six substantial tracks, and today it’s our pleasure to bring you the premiere of its opening song, “Seegang“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONSTRUCT OF LETHE — “ROT OF AUGURY”

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May 172018
 

 

The 1898 painting by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl that Construct of Lethe chose for their intense new album, Exiler, was an inspired selection. It depicts Hermes Necropompos on the banks of the Acheron, the “river of woe”, conducting the shades of the dead from the upper to the lower world and their rendezvous with the boatman Charon. You gaze upon this work, and you can imagine the beseeching cries of the newly dead, hoping for some reprieve from their fate, anguished at the thought of leaving the lives they knew. But the god inexorably walks on among them, perhaps not entirely immune to those chaotic cries of pain and terror as these souls see the boatman approach, but nevertheless determined to shepherd them to their eternal doom.

And like the painting (a complete version of which you can view here), the music of Exiler summons chaos, doom, terrible grandeur, and the eeriness of a subterranean realm terrifyingly different from the sunlit plane of existence in the world above. Or to put it more plainly, it’s a head-spinning brand of death metal that succeeds in creating ominous and otherworldly atmosphere while also putting megawatt jolts of power straight into your spine.

One riveting track from Exiler (“The Clot”) has already been revealed via Toilet Ov Hell, and we’ve got another one for you today in advance of the album’s release by Everlasting Spew on June 20th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AKHENATEN — “ERISHKIGAL: KINGDOM OF DEATH”

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May 162018
 

 

We’ve devoted significant attention over the years to the musical creations of Wyatt and Jerred Houseman through their band Helleborus, but the brothers Houseman have another project named Akhenaten, and it’s Akhenaten that’s the subject of the following premiere.

Through this project, the Housemans have drawn inspiration from the mythology and mysticism of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, interweaving exotic melodies into a framework of blackened death metal. The new Akhenaten album, Golden Serpent God, revisits these ancient deities and occult mysteries over the course of 11 tracks, and the one we bring you today in advance of the album’s May 31 release by the triumvirate of Satanath Records (Russia), Cimmerian Shade Recordings (USA), and Murdher Records (Italy) is named for the Mesopotamian goddess Erishkigal, queen of the underworld Irkalla and sister to Inanna, the goddess of heaven, whom she destroys (at least temporarily). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CULT OF OCCULT — “NI”

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May 162018
 

 

On the first day of June, Music Fear Satan will release a new album by the formidable French Sludge Doom band Cult of Occult. Accurately entitled Anti Life, it is a single opus of soul-devouring music spanning more than 50 minutes. To facilitate the album’s release on vinyl, it has been “cut” into four segments, each of which is identified by letters that seem to be extracted and rearranged from the album’s title. This division of Anti Life into four parts enables us to bring you an excerpt from the record today. The segment you’re about to hear is identified as “NI” and is the second of the album’s four “tracks”.

This extract from Anti Life is skull-splitting in its power, torturous in its intensity, and pitch-black in its atmosphere of doom and destructiveness. It is definitely not for the faint-hearted, but it makes a deep and disturbing impression that can’t be ignored. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERBERIS — “VORANT GNOSIS”

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May 162018
 

Our New Zealand friend Craig Hayes introduced us and our readers to the enigmatic Verberis through his review of their 2016 album Vexamen. As he noted then, Vexamen represented a change from the “choking mix of black and death metal” represented on the band’s 2014 demo Vasitas, “making significant strides in both compositional and production terms”. “Vexamen,” he wrote, “is a bold debut, a huge step up from Verberis’ demo, and that bodes well for the band’s future endeavors.”

And now the future is present. Verberis have recorded a new EP named Vorant Gnosis, which will be released by Pulverised Records on May 18th, a full stream of which we’re presenting today. And it’s fair to say that with this new release Verberis have stretched their creative wings even further, continuing to push ahead into more ambitious territories — still immensely hostile and desperate territories, to be sure, but these are changed soundscapes compared to those Verberis have explored before. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE: INVERSER

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May 152018
 

 

It’s not unusual for us to receive written presentations of new music that take almost as long to read as it takes to listen to the music, with so much background detail about the history of the bands, their endless line-up changes, the dispiriting obstacles they overcame with Herculean perseverance, and the deep thought and arduous work that went into the crafting of the (allegedly) momentous lyrics and the (allegedly) ground-breaking music that you feel tired before ever pressing play.

And then sometimes there’s nothing at all but the music. And sometimes the music strikes like lightening from the clear blue sky. That’s what happened in the case of the debut demo of Inverser, which we present to you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DISLOYAL — “ON THE ASHES OF THE WORLD”

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May 142018
 

 

Almost three years ago we had the pleasure of premiering a full stream of Godless, the fourth album by the Polish death metal destroyers in Disloyal, which held intrinsic appeal for fans of classic Morbid Angel, as well as Hate Eternal, Immolation, Death, and Gojira. We now have the opportunity to provide a reminder of Godless, and to introduce new listeners to Disloyal, through our premiere of a video for a Godless track named “On the Ashes of the World“.

As we observed when we premiered the full stream of Godless, Disloyal revel in creating songs that keep you off-balance, with tempos that turn on a dime and changes in mood that are equally variable, switching from absolute decimation to eerie atmospherics without warning. And that’s really what made the album such a stand-out — the technical skill of the musicians is abundantly evident, but they harnessed that talent within the structures of songs that were creatively written to take your mind on an exhilarating roller-coaster ride.

The songs also include thoroughly bestial vocal vehemence and a collection of mind-bending guitar solos that often contrast with the surrounding savagery of the music, not to mention a big helping of bone-breaking grooves and morbid melodies.
Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IN TENEBRIZ — “WINTERNIGHT POETRY III”

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May 142018
 

 

In a recording career that now spans more than a decade, the Russian band In Tenebriz has released nine albums and an even greater number of EPs and splits. Beginning with the Autumn Constellation album in 2015, In Tenebriz has pursued themes that use that the natural phenomena of the seasons as a way of reflecting the inner experiences of the lyrical protagonists, while drawing upon the elements of atmospheric black metal, doom, ambient music, and post-metal to give musical shape to these external changes and internal moods.

The newest album in this sequence is Winternight Poetry, and on this album the principal creator of In Tenebriz, Wolfir, has done everything, including the vocals. Conceptually the album is an interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s seven-part tale The Snow Queen, but with a dark twist: in the tale of Winternight Poetry, the protagonist Kai fails to spell the word on the frozen lake that will free him from the Snow Queen’s enchantment, and must therefore remain a prisoner in the kingdom of permafrost forever. Continue reading »

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