AN NCS PREMIERE: GAEREA — “ENDLESS LAPSE”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

Last November Everlasting Spew Records released one of 2016’s best EPs, the self-titled debut release by a Portuguese black metal band named Gaerea. We featured music from that EP repeatedly at our site, both before and after its release (including a post in which we named “Void of Numbness” to our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“).

As promised last fall, Everlasting Spew is now releasing Gaerea in a vinyl edition — and the vinyl includes a bonus track that doesn’t appear on the earlier CD and digital versions. That track is “Endless Lapse“, and it’s our privilege to premiere not only the song but also a riveting video through which the music is presented. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXOCYTOSIS — “A LABORIOUS DIGESTION (MORSEL 1)”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

If you don’t know (and I certainly didn’t), exocytosis is a process by which cells expel certain molecular substances outside the cell membrane and into the extracellular environment. Exocytosis is also the name chosen by a band of miscreants from Höör, Sweden, as the vehicle by which they expel their own twisted conceptions into the auditory canals of unsuspecting and ill-prepared listeners.

The band’s new EP is named Endogenous Organism. It will be excreted into the world on August 25, and we are aiding in the transmission of the disease through a premiere of the EP’s opening track, a mad piece called “A Laborious Digestion (Morsel 1)“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS — “LICKING A LANDMINE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 032017
 

 

There’s a particular alignment of talents on display in the song you’re about to hear, and the successful execution of a strategy that usually attracts fans of metal extremity like iron filings to a magnet, but seems to repel (or at least mystify) more tender listeners: “Licking A Landmine” combines a staggering level of brute-force destructiveness with a brain-twisting brand of freakishness, and yet it manages to be catchy. At least to people like us, even after this landmine goes off and converts the listener’s head to smoking rubble, you want to lick it again.

“Licking A Landmine” is a track from Modern Adoxography, the second album by New Zealand’s Blindfolded And Led To The Woods. It’s set for release on Friday the 13th of October, timed to closely precede the band’s performances in Wellington on October 24th and Auckland on October 25th in support of the final New Zealand tour by The Dillinger Escape Plan. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ARALLU — “ADONAY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 032017
 

 

It’s not uncommon to hear wisps of traditional Middle Eastern music in extreme metal — or at least what most of us in the West would identify as Middle Eastern music based on some kind of passing experience (putting to one side that Middle Eastern music spans an enormous breadth of territory and cultures, from Morocco to Iran).

In many instances, the incorporation of such melodies by Western bands seems intended to create an exotic atmosphere (or at least exotic to Western ears), or in some cases a sense of ancient demonic forces looming in the shadows, or a feeling that the listener is in the presence of pagan rituals or arcane forms of mysticism that pre-date today’s dominant forms of monotheism by millennia.

But very few metal bands go as far as Arallu in making Middle Eastern musical traditions the beating heart of their compositions. You will hear the extent of their dedication in the song we’re premiering today, the third track from their new album, Six, a song called “Adonay“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COLOSSO — “IN MEMORIAM”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 022017
 

 

Last September the Portuguese death metal band Colosso released their second album under the title Obnoxious, which refers not to the sound of the music but to the lyrical focus of the songs — “the extreme void of society, a black hole created by egos, profit and chaos.” In advance of that release we premiered a lyric video for the album’s second track, “The Unrepentant“, and today it’s our pleasure to premiere yet another Colosso video. This one is for the album’s opening song, “In Memoriam“.

When we debuted “The Unrepentent”, I asked you to imagine the combined, coordinated sounds of a giant threshing machine applying its ministrations to a packed mass of fleeing bodies, a titanic rock crusher operating at tumultuous speed in a smoking quarry, and swarms of mechanical xenomorphs at war in an uncomfortably near-Earth orbit — because those were the visions that the song spawned in my own head. I have some different mental pictures this time. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RESURGENCE — “BESIEGED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Aug 012017
 

 

When I listened to Besieged for the first time I was left wide-eyed and slack-jawed by the end of just the first track, with a spike in my pulse rate that would have made my doctor anxious, and already wondering how to describe what I was hearing — and already thinking about fireworks displays. By the album’s end I was shaking my head, fairly astonished at this tour de force — and still thinking about fireworks, but also about large-scale demolition jobs and rousing anthems.

Besieged is the remarkable debut album by a group of evil geniuses who dwell in the vicinity of Vancouver, BC. They call themselves Resurgence. The album has been released today — August 1 — and you can listen to it below, preceded by more than a few words of wonderment and genuine appreciation for what these dudes have done. Feel free to skip ahead and press play, I can handle it. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARSANTIQVA — “HELLWHORE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 312017
 

 

 

The Brooklyn-based black metal band Arsantiqva took their name from a conjunction of Latin words meaning “ancient art”, referring to European music from the late Middle Ages, perhaps in part because their key members are transplants from France and Russia. But there is nothing antiquated or time-worn about their music, as you’re about to discover through our premiere of a lyric video for “Hellwhore“, a track from the band’s forthcoming debut album, Scavengers.

Thematically, Scavengers explores a post-apocalyptic concept, “a metaphorical expression of a destroyed civilization taken to its primitive state of existence” — and “Hellwhore” is indeed a nasty, boisterous, and primally appealing romp through the wasteland. A big part of its appeal comes from the band’s success in pulling together a diverse array of stylistic elements, making them work in harness together, pulling in the same direction in the service of the song rather than scattering apart like a flock of startled ravens. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: MORDENIAL — “THE PLAGUE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 272017
 

 

The crushing melodic death metal band Mordenial began life in early 2000 in Västervik, Sweden, eventually releasing their debut album, Where the Angels Fall, in early 2015. In just a handful of days they will return with their second full-length, The Plague, via Black Lion Records — but we have a full stream for your listening pleasure today.

The album is a 10-track, 44-minute affair, with all of the songs thematically linked to concepts of “plague”, ranging from the pestilential vectors of the distant past to futuristic scenarios, and the terrors perpetrated by human beings in the name of god or gods. Consistent with this thematic focus, the music is cloaked in darkness, with death looming like a specter in the atmosphere of the melodies.

The music is also immensely powerful in its sound, and immensely punishing in its impact, and those grim melodies prove to be as infectious as the contagions that have inspired the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RIFTWALKER — “ENGINEER THEIR CONSENT” (DRUM PLAYTHROUGH)

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 272017
 

 

The Canadian trio Riftwalker have received quite a bit of well-deserved attention at our site this year, with Andy Synn lavishing praise on their late-2016 album Green & Black, and then following that review more recently with an interview of the band. Now it’s our pleasure to host the premiere of a drum play-through video for one of the many outstanding tracks off Green & Black — “Engineer Their Consent“.

The video was filmed by Dean Lamb of Archspire, with audio recorded by Dylan Charles of Apprentice.

As Andy explained in his review, Riftwalker’s music is “complex, catchy, and occasionally rather crushing”, the result of “an eclectic fusion of Progressive Death and Thrash Metal in the vein of Sadus/Atheist/Coroner, with a heavy focus on intricate compositions, impeccable musicianship, and refined, focussed intensity”. And I’ll further quote his specific comments about the song featured in this video: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PLANET EATER — “COLD CONFINES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 272017
 

 

Not long ago I happened upon a song named “The Boats” that hooked me right in the gills, and I included it in a round-up here at our site. It’s the opening track on Blackness From the Stars, the debut album by Planet Eater from Regina in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, who based their name on that destroyer of worlds out of the Marvel universe, Galactus. And now we get to bring you the premiere of another track from the album in advance of its August 4 release. This one is “Cold Confines“.

There is a bit of a chill in the song, thanks to the spooky, cosmic ambient sounds that accompany a syncopated percussive beat at the outset and reappear again near the end, as the song ascends into darkness before a final bout of brute-force hammering. But there’s a lot more heat in this track than sensations of cold, the heat thrown off by a big turbocharged engine with the throttle wide open. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries