AN NCS PREMIERE: FRAGARAK — “THE PHANERON ECLIPSED”

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Aug 142017
 

 

You may wonder about the meaning of the Greek word “phaneron“, as I did when I saw it in the title of the song we’re about to premiere. As one writer has put it, “The phaneron is essentially the real world filtered by our sensory input (sight, hearing, touch, etc)… the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not.” You might then further ponder what it might mean for the phaneron to be eclipsed.

While you think on that question, listen to the song, which is quite a mind-bender in its own right. It’s by a band from New Delhi, India, named Fragarak and it comes from their imposing new double-album A Spectral Oblivion, which will be released by Transcending Obscurity India on October 30. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SECOND TO SUN — “THE FIRST CHAPTER (VOCAL EDITION)”

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Aug 142017
 

 

We discovered the Russian band Second To Sun almost two years ago through their release of advance tracks that would appear on a new album named The First Chapter, and we’ve been following them ever since. Since then they’ve released another album (2016’s Blackbound) and a half dozen singles, most of which were covers of songs by such bands as Darkthrone, Behemoth, Emperor, and Immortal, and those (along with other new recordings) were included in an album named Miscellaneous Covers: Volume I released at the end of last month.

Second To Sun’s music has evolved over time. It was started by guitarist Vladimir Lehtinen after leaving his previous black metal project Utenomjordisk Hull. Although some of the band’s singles have included vocals, their music is predominantly instrumental metal — and their integration of differing stylistic elements has led to them being branded with a variety of genre labels, some of them peculiar, perhaps in part because their focus is instrumental music.

Second To Sun is now embarking on a reimagining of their own previous work. While the band will continue to record instrumental music, they now plan to also release alternate versions of their albums with vocals included, beginning with a new edition of The First Chapter that we’re presenting in a full stream today.

This new version of The First Chapter is more than simply the original instrumental recordings with vocal tracking added. They recorded additional parts, rearranged some of the song’s elements, and remixed and remastered everything, with the aim of presenting the music in a way that more clearly presents their ideas, and perhaps also as a way of escaping some of the more peculiar genre pigeonholes in which some people have put them. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INCONCESSUS LUX LUCIS — “THE CROWNING QUIETUS”

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Aug 112017
 

 

I’d wager that you haven’t heard a song like “The Crowning Quietus” this week. Or this month. Or this year. Or maybe even since the last record by Inconcessus Lux Lucis back in 2014, the Crux Lupus Corona EP from which we also premiered a song. This new one is an out-and-out romp, such a high-energy bast of distinctively hellish fun that it could wake the dead and get them on their feet and moving.

“The Crowning Quietus” is the title track to this British duo’s new album (their second), and it will be jointly released on October 31 by I, Voidhanger Records (CD) and Invictus Productions (vinyl), who are a fine pair of carriers for this untreatable plague of Saturnian Black Magick. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): POISON BLOOD — “POISON BLOOD”

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Aug 102017
 

 

(Tomorrow — August 11 — Relapse Records will release the debut EP of Poison Blood, a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Jenks Miller (Horseback) and vocalist Neill Jameson (Krieg). On the eve of that release we’re fortunate to host the premiere of a full music stream, introduced by this review from our editor.)

1993 was a remarkable year in which the landscape of second-wave black was being shaped by the likes of Darkthrone’s Under a Funeral Moon, Enslaved’s Víkínglígr Veldí, Immortal’s Pure Holocaust, Burzum’s Det Som Engang Var, Dissection’s The Somberlain, Ulver’s Vargnatt, Varathron’s His Majesty At the Swamp, Emperor’s first (self-titled) EP, and Strid’s End of Life. In the midst of all that, Beherit released Drawing Down the Moon.

That album seems to have come from a blood-freezing netherworld different from everything else around it in those halcyon days of creative upheaval. Even heard today, it still sounds unlike almost everything else that claims the increasingly amorphous (and often abused) label of “black metal”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ATRIARCH — “DEAD AS TRUTH”

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Aug 102017
 

 

(Atriarch’s new album Dead As Truth will be released by Relapse Records tomorrow — August 11 — and today we present the debut of a full music stream, preceded by an introductory review from our Andy Synn.)

Here’s a fun story for you.

Not long ago, for whatever reason, I found myself attending a Goth club night, which afforded me an opportunity to observe some of our most unfairly maligned brothers and sisters strutting their funky stuff in their natural habitat.

What surprised me, however, was that, in amongst the expected medley of Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy, I heard an awful lot of generic chart fodder as well.

Could it be that our infamously black-dyed brethren (and sistren) are actually just pop fans with a very specific taste in wardrobe?

Maybe so. Maybe not. What’s clear is that I’ll never fully understand what it means to be a Goth (not a judgement by the way, just a statement of fact).

But when it comes to music that inclines towards the darker side of things?

That’s something I can definitely get into. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLK OPS — “TRUTH FUCKERY”

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Aug 092017
 

 

BLK OPS couldn’t have known that their new song “Truth Fuckery” would be premiering on the day after the U.S. president bombastically threatened to broil North Korea with “fire and fury”. Sometimes you’re just in the right place at the right time.

“Truth Fuckery” is one of four BLK OPS tracks on their side of a new split with San Diego’s Cave Bastard that will be released on August 25 by Accident Prone Records (from Portland, Oregon). It’s the second of the tracks by this Austin band (whose lineup includes members of Kill the Client, Clrvoyant, and Pornohelmüt) to be revealed from the split, the first of which (“Hallucinogenic Bomb Vest”) we described as “explosively battering”, yet with “memorable strands of desolate melody” that “have an un-real quality, like the soundtrack to a waking nightmare”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CORMORANT

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Aug 092017
 

 

On August 11, Cormorant will release their new album Disapora. We are fortunate to bring you the premiere of a full album stream today, preceded by a review of the album by Andy Synn.

 

Let’s begin this review with a quick history lesson, shall we?

Back in 2012, shortly after the release of the band’s stunning second album, Dwellings, long-time Cormorant bassist/vocalist Arthur von Nagel elected to leave the band to pursue a career in video-game design.

Although this parting of ways was entirely amicable, many fans were understandably concerned that the loss of von Nagel’s distinctive voice and signature bass sound would undercut the band’s growing momentum and still-burgeoning creative potential.

Thankfully, 2014’s Earth Diver – which saw the debut of new frontman Marcus Luscombe – quickly put to rest any lingering doubts and fears about the band’s future, repositioning the group as a much more overtly “blackened” affair, and proving that change doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.

Now, three years later, it seems the quartet are set to raise the bar even further with what is, quite possibly, their most extravagant and ambitious album yet. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GEIST — “DEAR WORLD”

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Aug 092017
 

 

The British band Geist (from Durham and Newcastle) describe their music as “too metal for the punks and too punk for metalheads”. Undaunted, and perhaps even more furiously energized, Geist have nevertheless continued to gouge and scar the landscape of the northeast of England, and their latest concussive assault is a release named Disrepair. It will be discharged on September 22nd by a consortium of labels led by WOOAAARGH, and we have the premiere of teeth-loosening track named “Dear World“, packaged in an official video.

“Dear World” is not too punk for this metalhead, but since I’m an old former punk, maybe my opinion is suspect. It’s definitely heavy enough that it should appeal to metalheads — and it’s grim and murderous enough that it ought to appeal to both camps. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OCCASVS — “UNDER HUMAN EYES”

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Aug 082017
 

 

The track you’re about to hear from the Chilean black metal band Occasvs proved to be an astonishing surprise to this listener. In part, that’s because I had been conditioned by listening to other Chilean extreme metal bands to expect a heavy dose of raw, scalding ferocity and headlong speed. And while this song is definitely fierce and ferociously destructive, those adjectives barely scratch the surface of what happens during the track.

But the song was surprising for other reasons, which I’ll come to. In fact, while listening I found myself rooted in place as if turned to stone under the gaze of a medusa, except for the smile on my face and the eyes in my head, which grew wider and wider the more I listened.

The song is “Under Human Eyes” and it comes from the new Occasvs album Nocturnal Majestic Mysteria, which will be released by Unspeakable Axe Records on September 29th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PROTOSEQUENCE — “SHEPHERD”

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Aug 082017
 

 

Edmonton’s Protosequence perform an agile balancing act on the new song we’re bringing you from their forthcoming EP, Biophagus, a high-wire performance that deftly straddles a stylistic divide without ever losing their path forward.

Biophagus is the band’s second release, following their 2016 debut Schizophrene, and it’s set for release on August 18. The song you’re about to hear is “Shepherd“. Continue reading »

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