AN NCS PREMIERE: BELOW THE SUN — “IN MEMORIES”

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Apr 122017
 

 

We began following Below the Sun in 2014, with the discovery of a video for a song from their then-forthcoming debut album Envoy, and were then fortunate to premiere the album the next year. Envoy took as its inspiration the journey of the Voyager I spacecraft into interstellar vacuum, farther than anything touched by human hand. As we wrote then, “Envoy is a deeply atmospheric, irresistibly immersive work, a cosmic version of funeral doom that’s icy and vast and immensely powerful in its hypnotic appeal”.

At last, this enigmatic band from Krasnoyarsk in Siberian Russia are returning with a new album that bears the name Alien World. It will be released by Temple of Torturous Records on May 26. And on this 12th day of April — which is The International Day of Human Space Flight — we bring you the premiere of a video for one of the new songs: “In Memories“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SEER — “THEY USED DARK FORCES”

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Apr 112017
 

 

In 2015, Seer from Vancouver, British Columbia, made their first mark on the musical landscape with an EP entitled Vol. 1 and followed that in 2016 with a second EP, Vol. 2. That same year, Art of Propaganda released a compilation (Vol. 1 & 2) that combined both EPs. And now Art of Propaganda is preparing to release Seer‘s first full-length album, a 45-minute monolith called Vol. III & IV: Cult of the Void. Today we have for you one of the void-faring offerings from the new album in the form of a surreal music video — “They Used Dark Forces“.

Seer‘s choice of titles for their releases reflects the evolving narrative concept that runs through the lyrics of their material, just as the band’s name meshes with the mystical nature of their music; it calls the mind to venture beyond the bounds of what we can see and touch around us, just as its narrative arc crosses limitless primordial landscapes and moves into celestial realms, while the sanity of its protagonists is tested to the breaking point. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNGRAVED APPARITION — “ГНИЛОСТНЫЕ БАКТЕРИИ” (THE PUTREFACTIVE BACTERIA)

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Apr 112017
 

 

Ungraved Apparition come to us from the Russian city of Ekaterinburg on the border of Europe and Asia. With their new concept album PULSE_0, they explore “the inner world of a person and his desperate struggle for every minute of life”, while merging two worlds: “the world of depression and despair from incurable diseases, the sadism of bloody surgery experiments; and the afterlife, inhabited by the suffering souls of the dead people, the chilling horror of which is squeezed by convulsive cries in the throat”.

PULSE_0 will be released by GrimmDistribution (Belarus) on April 23rd. Two songs from the album have appeared so far, and we bring you the premiere of a third one, “Гнилостные бактерии“, which translates to English as “Putrefactive Bacteria”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLOSON — “CRINGE”

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Apr 102017
 


Photo by Jari Välitalo

 

We loved Grimen, the debut album by the Swedish sludge/post-metal titans who call themselves Gloson, released earlier this year by Art of Propaganda. To borrow a few words from Andy Synn’s review at our site, “Grimen is an album with, for want of a better word, real presence. Something which makes it impossible to ignore, and impossible to forget…. There’s just something about this music, something so uniquely dynamic and utterly overpowering, that I find myself irresistibly drawn to it again and again, as if it has its own inescapable gravity…. [A]lthough it’s only February, I think I’ve already found one of my albums of the year.”

Early last fall, five months before the album’s release, Gloson delivered its first single, a stunning song called “Cringe“. And now we have the good fortune to be the bearers of an amazing new live video for that very song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EVOKE THY LORDS — “HEAVY WEATHER”

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Apr 102017
 

 

One of the best things you can say about a song that’s nearly 12 minutes long is that it ends too soon. “Heavy Weather” is so tremendously good that even at that length, you lose a sense of time passing until the song reaches its conclusion. If you’re like me, your first thought after this long, transfixing trip is over will be that it’s still not enough.

“Heavy Weather” is a new single by the Siberian doom band Evoke Thy Lords. We’ve paid attention to the band before, publishing not one but three different interviews of their vocalist/bassist Alexey Kozlov conducted by Comrade Aleks over the space of several years (collected here). But this is my own first occasion to lavish praise on their talents. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COLDBLOOD — “SULPHUR”

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Apr 102017
 

 

Ten months ago we had the pleasure of premiering a full stream of Indescribable Physiognomy Of The Devil, the most recent album by the Brazilian death metal band Coldblood. And today we get to bring you a video for the seventh track from that album, a chilling blast of hellfire appropriately named “Sulphur“.

The release of  a video like this one serves several purposes, one of which is to turn people on to an album they might have missed — and Indescribable Physiognomy is one that shouldn’t be missed if you’re a fan of barbaric, pulse-pounding death metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AMENTIA — “SENTENCE EXECUTIONER”

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Apr 092017
 

 

On May 8, Satanath Records (Russia) and Amputated Vein Records (Japan) will release Scourge, the new third album by Amentia from Belarus. We’re fortunate to bring you the premiere of one of the new songs, “Sentence Executioner“, along with a previously released track named “Slow Decay“.

Amentia began as a studio project more than a dozen years ago and the veteran line-up includes members of Deathbringer, Thy Disease, and Disloyal, and former members of Posthumous Blasphemer. The labels recommend the album to fans of Blotted Science, Suffocation, Decrepit Birth, Misery Index, and The Faceless, among others. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CONNOISEUR — “OVER THE EDGE”

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Apr 072017
 

 

Based on past experience with Connoisseur, I had an inkling of what was coming when I first listened to their new album, Over the Edge, but you may not. I’ll tell you up-front that Connoisseur are one of the biggest musical head-fakes on the planet. There’s so much weed in their song titles that you can get a contact high just from reading them; along with the cover art, they all just giggle “droopy-lidded stoner metal” at you. But if you’re expecting music to get hazy with, you’re in for a big surprise.

Over the Edge is being released today by Tankcrimes, and we’ve got a full stream of the album for you… along with a few words of preparation for the unsuspecting listener. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GALARE — “ECHOES OF MYSTIC SOLITUDE”

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Apr 072017
 

 

One month ago we premiered a track from a new EP by a black metal band from Elizabeth, New Jersey, named Galare. That song — “Thy Dying Light” — was both explosive and chilling, unnerving and unpredictable, predatory and poisonous. When the band asked if we would host the premiere of yet another track from the EP, it was an easy yes on this end. This new track is “Echoes of Mystic Solitude“, and we present it in the form of a music video.

The song is… unbalancing… dedicated not only to burning off the flesh from your face but scrambling your thoughts and injecting a dose of fear into your emotional state. And it does this by amalgamating stylistic ingredients in ways that you probably wouldn’t expect from a young band, bending the normal conventions of black metal rather than simply copying them. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LEGACY OF EMPTINESS — “DESPAIR”

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Apr 072017
 

 

Time passes, and the spark of musical creativity that may have flared in the springtime of our lives often dies out, never to be revived. And sometimes it begins to burn again — not always with good results, mind you. In the case of Legacy of Emptiness, the smoldering embers began to glow again, and have now fully caught fire in their new album Over the Past. In advance of the album’s June 12 release by Black Lion Records, we have one of the new songs for you, a wonderful track called “Despair“.

We’re told that the band was started in 1995 by Eddie Risdal and Kjell-Ivar Aarli as “a tongue in cheek BM-project called Permafrost“. They recorded a couple of demos for their own amusement, and a few years later were joined by keyboardist Øyvind Rosseland — and began to take their music more seriously. But after a couple more demos, the project went cold… yet was revived in 2010. As the band explain: Continue reading »

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