AN NCS PREMIERE: THE SCALAR PROCESS — “FAR FROM THE FLESH”

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Apr 132026
 

(written by Islander)

“Seductive”, “surreal”, “spellbinding” and “sublime” aren’t words usually deployed in describing the music of a band whose principle genre partition is technical death metal, even for an alliteration-addicted writer such as me. But those aspects of the song we’re about to premiere are precisely what make it stand out so memorably.

Those are also among the aspects of The Scalar Process’s new album Agnomysticism that led their label Transcending Obscurity Records to describe it as reflecting “simply staggering” progress beyond the band’s debut full-length Coagulative Matter five years ago.

To be clear, progressive tendencies and a penchant for creating mysterious and meditative moods were already evident on the band’s debut, and to be further clear, the new album still often includes instrumental performances of fast-paced, eye-popping dexterity, but the new one is far away from a non-stop thundering waterfall of notes and beats, and you need look no further than “Far From the Flesh” to find convincing proof of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOROTH — “REMNANTS OF A FORMER FORM”

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Apr 132026
 

(written by Islander)

We’re at the start of a new week here at NCS and it’s usually a good idea to get a running start unless you’re running into a throng of heavy traffic, so let’s rush right into the Voroth song we’re about to premiere and fill in the details once we’re on the other side, assuming we get to the other side unscathed.

Getting to the other side of “Остатки прежней формы” (Remnants of a Former Form) unscathed isn’t a foregone conclusion, because it’s as vibrantly wild as the cover art on the album that includes it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUICIDE FOREST — “CRUSHING WAVES OF GRIEF”

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Apr 102026
 

(written by Islander)

The Arizona atmospheric/depressive black metal band Suicide Forest began life in 2016 as the solo project of A. Kruger. Following a sequence of demos and a live recording, the band released its self-titled debut album in 2018 and a second album (Reluctantly) in 2021, as well as splits and an EP.

The third album, 2025’s IX of Swords, marked Suicide Forest’s studio debut as a more complete lineup. It included a revisiting of demo-era material as well as a new instrumental piece and a cover of Ceremonial Castings’ “Sweet Misery I Foresee”.

With their creatives fires still blazing, the band have now completed work on a fourth album. Titled World of Decay, it’s set for release on June 5th. The band tell us: “World of Decay is a bit of a new beginning for Suicide Forest as it is the first full-length recorded as a three-piece. Though still building on the sound and themes explored in the ‘solo era’ material.”

Today we’re bringing you the premiere of the album’s monumental opening song, a stunner called “Crushing Waves of Grief“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INSANIA.11 — “ABYSSUS”

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Apr 102026
 

(written by Islander)

As another largely abysmal week in global events draws to a close, we’re premiering an animated lyric video for “Abyssus“, a song by the Italian extremists Insania.11 that draws its inspiration from Nietzsche’s famous quotation about what happens if we stare for too long into an abyss.

More specifically, the song “stares at the concept of Cupio Dissolvi, the fierce desire of self-destruction”. The lyrics, mostly in Italian, “are archaic and primordial invocations directed towards an Immortal Mother whose embrace is hard-edged.” To quote further from publicist materials we’ve received:

She’s the primigenial entity who’s ready to tear apart “questa prigione di carne” (this prison of flesh) with her “falce affilata” (sharp sickle)…. According to Insania.11’s protestation, this is the process of self-destruction necessary to be thrown again into the endless spiral of reincarnation.

The song progresses heavily step by step like an unstable, tortuous, dissonant and lacerating organism to harvest and transfigure the lessons tought by “Bardo Thodol – The Tibetan Book of the Dead” and extract from it a corrosive essence of sounds and images. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): URLUK — “MEMORIES IN FADE”

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Apr 092026
 

(written by Islander)

Last month we published an interview by our Comrade Aleks with the two members (U. and M.) of the Italian band Urluk, focusing on their new album Memories In Fade. Aleks introduced it with an explanation that although the band had remained true to their haunted lyrical themes, the music has changed direction significantly as compared to their last album More. Urluk’s U. acknowledged the change, commenting in the interview that “[t]he atmosphere surrounding Urluk today is less about aggression and more about reflection, decay, and memory — things slowly dissolving rather than burning violently.”

In the interview, the band’s members provided further insights into their music’s evolution from the doomed black metal of their last album. As U. described, “Memories In Fade draws from a broad palette: Post Black, Gothic Rock, post-punk atmospheres, touches of Dream Pop, and even hints of 60s folk-blues. Keyboards play a larger role this time, sometimes creating that bittersweet, almost life-affirming melancholy reminiscent of Type O Negative.”

What we have for you today is a full stream of this very interesting new album in advance of its April 10 release by Pest Records. Before we get to our own thoughts about it, let’s share one more excerpt from the interview which compares the new album with the one before it:

Conceptually, the albums are connected, but musically they stand quite far apart. More was still deeply rooted in black metal — dense, abrasive, and very direct in its emotional expression. Memories in Fade feels like the aftermath. If More was about the weight of experience, this new record is about the residue it leaves behind: fading memories, nostalgia, and the strange calm that follows turmoil. The sound has become softer in some ways, yet more vulnerable. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOHOLOR — “DIVINE BLOOD INVOCATION”

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Apr 082026
 

(written by Islander)

Gaze upon the daunting cover art above for Locus Damnatorum, the debut album from the diabolical Slovakian band Goholor — whose name is an Enochian word for “ascend” and begin to imagine what primordial terrors it holds in store. The album follows by a decade the band’s debut EP In Saeculis Obscuris, and it seized the attention of the esteemed Personal Records, which will release the album on May 8th.

On behalf of the label, the press materials describe the album’s music by invoking such names as Unanimated, Necrophobic, Sacramentum, Gates of Ishtar, and Sweden’s Sacrilege, and more general references to “black/death’s late ’90s heyday”. They also divulge that the album’s themes “focus on the dark and demonic side of society, such as hypocrisy, perversion, insensitivity, and obsession with religion.”

To delve further into the album’s marauding madness, what we have for you today is the premiere of its second single, “Divine Blood Invocation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COGNIZANCE — “THE ZONE”

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Apr 082026
 

(written by Islander)

We’ve been avidly following the evolving adventures of Cognizance for quite a while now. When Willowtip Records released the band’s Phantazein album in early 2024, our DGR wrote: “[W]hile Cognizance have remained a sleek and ultra-precise machine for over a decade since the release of their first full length – after having subsisted on a series of singles and EPs – they’ve also slowly hammered and forged their sound into something as fiercely creative and memorably groove-ridden as it is terrifyingly technically proficient.”

And so it’s no surprise that we’ve been greedily rubbing our hands over the prospect of getting the follow-up to Phantazein. Lo and behold, it will arrive on May 1st (again via Willowtip) in the shape of In Light, No Shape.

As DGR further observed in that previous review, Cognizance “always seem to be finding new twists on their particular style of Tech-Death – while still sounding like an absolute hurricane of riffs.” What twists might this new album bring us?

We’ve had a couple of signs so far, two songs from the new album that have already debuted, and today we present an official video for a third one — “The Zone“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VEILCASTE — “EMBEDDED”

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Apr 082026
 

(written by Todd Manning)

“If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”- Charles Fort

The Midwest’s best-kept secret is Indianapolis’s doom/sludge juggernaut, Veilcaste. Every time they hit the studio, their sound grows, the space between the stars grows darker, the universe gets a bit heavier. Their latest single, “Embedded”, marks the current apex of their enormity.

These guys sound like a sentient black hole, with guitars that exert an unfathomable gravitational pressure, and the vocals sound like a god, both divine and unhinged. This is just a small preview of their forthcoming album Hellward, due out on August 7th courtesy of Third House Communications.

Now if only a universal mind, sane or insane, could take control of this world… Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TELOCH VOVIN — “PANZER FIST”

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Apr 072026
 

(written by Islander)

We are about to present an ultra-long song, one that extends for nearly 17 minutes. However, it is not one that allows attention to wander, not even for a moment. It is instead an astonishing sonic spectacle that creates scenes of cataclysmic destruction and unchained madness, but also includes elegant, exotic, and unearthly melodic sensations that transport listeners into occult experiences. It presents chaos on a truly devastating scale but also becomes strangely spellbinding.

The song is a four-part suite named “Panzer First“, and it’s the closing opus on a new album titled Towards The Inevitable by the Long Island band Teloch Vovin. It will be co-released on May 8th by Thus Spake Qayin Records in conjunction with the band’s new An Eastern Temple Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATPSALM — “BENEATH”

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Apr 062026
 

(written by Islander)

The Russian band Goatpsalm first caught our attention almost a full decade ago, when we reviewed their third album Downstream a few months before its February 2016 release by the UK’s Aesthetic Death label. Back then I wrote (in part):

The music of Goatpsalm is spacious, mystical, shamanic. It conjures images of aboriginal rituals, as if holding the keys to dark communions with nature and with spirits that have been long lost to time. Some of this effect comes from the band’s frequent use of sounds from the natural world — rain, wind, waves breaking on a shore, bird song — and some derives from unusual instruments….

While all of the songs on Downstream make significant use of dark ambient and electronic music, sometimes touching the edge of industrial music, that’s only one aspect of the album. Yes, there is a meditative, and even narcotic, quality to the album, but it’s often heavy as hell and chilling, too….

[I]t’s the kind of album that really will carry you away. In your head, you’ll be far downstream from where you started by the time it ends — and for me it has been a trip worth repeating. I haven’t heard anything else quite like it this year.

And now here we are, a decade later, and Aesthetic Death will be releasing Goatpsalm’s fourth album, Beneath, at the end of this week. There’s an interesting story about how the album came to exist and why its completion took so long, and we’ll share that with you later in this article, but first we’ll give you a chance to hear Beneath in its entirety. Continue reading »

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