AN NCS EP PREMIERE: TOMBSTALKER — “CHAOTIC DEVOTION”

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Sep 122017
 

 

We have some history with Tombstalker, starting with a post back in 2012 about metal in Kentucky (here), following that the next year (here) with a review of their self-titled EP, and then including some commentary in 2015 about their fine and ferocious debut album Black Crusades. And here we are, two years later, gleefully helping spread the word about a new Tombstalker EP named Chaotic Devotion.

This latest offering is a two-track electrocution set for release by Boris Records on September 19 as a 7″ vinyl and as a digital download, and it’s a hell of a ride. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HADES ARCHER — “UNUS CANTUS BESTIAE”

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Sep 122017
 

 

Fans of extreme metal and those of us who choose to write about it throw around words like “savage”, “ferocious”, and “bestial” as if they were beads at a Mardi Gras parade. Perhaps we throw them around so often and in so many directions that their currency becomes devalued. But in the case of Hades Archer, those words are really understatements. We need some kind of new terminology.

This Chilean band’s new album Temple of the Impure as been alliteratively described by agents of Hells Headbangers (who will release it in October) as “a fucking firestorm of filth and foulness, a forever-flowing fount of unnervingly hypnotic ultra violence”. That’s some good terminology, vivid and bullseye-accurate. But of course I’d like to try my own hand at describing the truly remarkable slaughtering impact of this music. In fact, I already have. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE WALKING DEAD ORCHESTRA — “VENGEFUL FLAVORS”

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Sep 112017
 

 

Flames play a prominent role in the eye-catching video you’re about to see, along with vistas of smoke-belching factories and pine-shrouded mountainsides. But given the nature of the music, you might expect to see those factories battered into rubble, the mountains fragmented into gravel, and the timber scythed to the ground like stalks of wheat.

The video (directed by Mehdi Khadouj) is for a track named “Vengeful Flavors” off the second album by the French death metal band The Walking Dead Orchestra. With the title of Resurrect, it will be detonated by Unique Leader Records on October 13th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WOE UNTO ME — “A YEAR-LONG WAITING”

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Sep 112017
 

 

I learned of the new album Among The Lightened Skies The Voidness Flashed by the Belarusian band Woe Unto Me through the recent premiere of a very impressive track named “Triptych: Shiver, Shelter, Shatter“, which includes excellent guest vocal appearances by Daniel Neagoe (Clouds, Eye of Solitude, Shape of Despair), Patryk Zwoliński (Proghma-C, ex-Blindead, ex-Neolithic, ex-Antigama) and Jón Aldará (Hamferd, Barren Earth, Clouds). If you missed the song, and the 360° lyric video that accompanied it, you’ll have a second chance at the end of this post.

But the main feature today is our premiere of another track from the album called “A Year-Long Waiting“. As you will discover, it reveals a very different side of the new album — literally, a different disc, because Among The Lightened Skies The Voidness Flashed is a double album, and on the second record in this collection Woe Unto Me deliver music that features significant acoustic instrumental contributions. One of those tracks on the second disc is the song you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MINDKULT — “INFERNALS”

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Sep 082017
 

 

Time to confuse people… again. I’m speaking mainly of newcomers who take our site’s name literally and view divergences from it as some kind of fraud or traitorous misconduct, when in fact we’ve always disclosed that we would make exceptions to our rule, rare though they may be, when they’re well-earned. And Mindkult is a well-earned exception.

This band, the alter ego of a Virginia solo artist whose moniker is Fowst, first grabbed my attention more than a year ago when I heard (and wrote about) a single named “Witch’s Oath” that later became part of an EP bearing the same name. Later that same year Mindkult released an excellent two-track single consisting of Misfits covers, but all of this proved to be prelude to the main show — a debut album named Lucifer’s Dream, which Transcending Obscurity Records will release on September 20. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: SLAUGHTBBATH — “CONTEMPT, WAR AND DAMNATION”

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Sep 082017
 

 

In 2013 the Chilean black/death desecrators Slaughtbbath released their debut album, Hail To Fire, after a lengthy series of shorter releases dating back to 2003 — and the album was itself widely hailed as an unrelenting assault of incinerating extremity. Since then the band have gone on to join forces in four splits — with Grave Desecrator, Ill Omen, Kill, and Hades Archer, as well as releasing a 2015 compilation entitled Further Down To the Depths that itself included a new track.

Now, in anticipation of Slaughtbbath’s first North American tour beginning this month, Hells Headbangers is today releasing a special compilation CD fittingly entitled Contempt, War and Damnation, with artwork by Daniel Corcuera. It includes seven tracks consisting of each of the Slaughtbbath songs on those post-Hail To Fire splits, the track recorded for the 2015 compilation… and one brand new song recorded this past May — “Astral Rape”. And it’s now our pleasure to bring you a stream of the new album in its entirety here on release day. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROVOROUS — “CHERISH THE SEPULTURE”

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Sep 082017
 

 

The monstrous Greek purveyors of death and destruction in Necrovorous have gouged their way back to the surface from some undoubtedly festering pit of depravity where they’ve been conjuring the sounds of a new album. Fittingly entitled Plains of Decay, this new full-length will be discharged on September 29th by their allies in depravity, Dark Descent Records. We’ve previously expressed shivering enthusiasm about a track from the album that was included in Dark Descent’s stupendous summer sampler, and now it’s our privilege to bring you the premiere of another track named “Cherish the Sepulture“.

Four years on from their last release, a split with Anatomia, the band’s resurrection from the crypt couldn’t come at a better time (because the waiting has become painful). And while it’s not always true that all good things come to those who wait, that has certainly proved to be true in this instance. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UBIQUITY — “LOST PT. I”

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Sep 082017
 

 

Pain and the torment of lost hopes have always fueled heavy music, a feedstock that has found expression in a multitude of ways, sometimes alloyed with rage, sometimes tinged with glimmers of resilience, sometimes simply plumbing the depths of pure desolation. It’s not surprising; those emotions are ever-present in the human condition, and maybe that’s why music that channels such feelings with special intensity exerts such a strong attraction, particularly in metal, where happiness and optimism have rarely been the order of the day.

The Italian band Ubiquity have summoned these sensations with impressive conviction and enthralling power in the song we’re premiering today off their new album Forever/Denied, which is set for release by Third I Rex on October 29th. The song is “Lost Pt. I“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ACEPHALIX — “EXCREMENTAL OFFERINGS”

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Sep 072017
 

 

I latched on to the music of Acephalix back in 2010 after discovering their Interminable Night demo and have been greedily following their output ever since, though I began fretting over the years of silence that followed 2012’s masterful Deathless Master. But then they reappeared on stage in the summer of 2015, and I eagerly made the trip to Portland the following February to see them perform at Famine Fest.

I had some inkling of what I was in for before Acephalix played, but I’m not sure anything could have prepared me for the reality of it. It was like being caught up in the midst of a tumultuous force of nature. I transformed from a merely drooling fan to a rabid fanatic, with the rabies strengthening to poisonous dominance in my organs after witnessing their explosive stage show twice more since then.

And so I confess I’ve been panting hard over the prospect of their new album, Decreation, which will soon be released by 20 Buck Spin. And while it’s conceivable that I’ve thrown my own objectivity into serious question already, I must say… it’s the best of Acephalix yet… and that puts it very high on the list of the best death metal albums you’ll find this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLOODWAY — “MIDLIGHT SCOUT”

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Sep 072017
 

 

in 2014 the Romanian band Bloodway launched a conceptual trilogy of planned releases with an EP named Sunstone Voyager And The Clandestine Horizon and then continued the story the following year with the band’s debut album, Mapping The Moment With The Logic Of Dreams. In early November, with assistance from the esteemed I, Voidhanger Records, Bloodway will draw the trilogy to a close with their new album, A Fragile Riddle Crypting Clues.

The names of each of these three releases are signs themselves that the music is off the most well-beaten of metal pathways, and the song “Midlight Scout” that we’re premiering today (along with an accompanying video) gives us no reason to believe that Bloodway had any intention of altering their own idiosyncratic course and suddenly embracing convention when they wrote and recorded this new album.

To the contrary, the music challenges the listener, will throw you off-balance, yet pin you in place, eyes wide, shaken by the strange, head-spinning intensity of the experience. Continue reading »

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