AN NCS PREMIERE: INTO DARKNESS — “URANUS”

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Jun 032026
 

(written by Islander)

We’ve been following the Italian death metal band Into Darkness for a long time — nearly 14 years, to be more precise. Beginning with a demo they released in 2012, we’ve written about their records eight times, most recently praising their 2023 EP, Cassini-Huygens. Those releases all took the shape of EPs and splits, but now Into Darkness finally have a debut album set for release on July 24th by Dying Victims Productions.

The name of the album is Route to the Other Side. Like previous releases, it was inspired by divulgative (popular) astronomy. In this case it is a concept record about the outer solar system.

The album’s song titles map a journey through those far reaches, beginning with “Jupiter“, moving on to “Saturn” and “Uranus” (the song we’re about to premiere), and eventually passing through the “Kuiper Belt” and onward to “Pluto“, and ending with the title song “Route to the Other Side“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NOTHINGNESS — “SKULL EVULSION”

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Jun 022026
 

(written by Islander)

Once again we find ourselves in the fortunate position of helping Everlasting Spew Records announce their release of a jaw-dropping new album. This time it’s the third full-length from the Minnesota-based purveyors of “Digressive Death”, Nothingness.

The name of the new album is Godslaughter, and it follows Hollow Gaze of Death (2019, Independent) and Supraliminal (2023, Everlasting Spew Records). Our friend Gonzo reviewed that second album for us, summing it up as “a dizzying, uncomfortable, and overall suffocating experience in interdimensional sonic terror.”

You could guess from the name of the new album (and the cover art) that Nothingness haven’t backed away from the nightmarish hostility of their musical conceptions. If anything, they have doubled-down. Here’s how Everlasting Spew previews the experience: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ILLWIND — “LUCIFER’S MULE”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 022026
 

(written by Islander)

Ill winds usually blow no one any good, or so the old saying goes, though in its earliest expression (before the meaning morphed) the writer John Heywood actually suggested that a wind unlucky for one person would bring good fortune to another. In the case of the Peruvian band Illwind, they have brought good fortune indeed through their debut album The Unfolding at the End of Light, which will be released on July 3rd by Personal Records.

Almost anyone who has come across the circulating press materials for the album is bound to be intrigued. For one thing, they disclose that the Illwind quartet includes members of such bands as Reino Ermitaño, Cobra, Arcada, and Argul. For another thing, the music is described as having an “idiosyncratic personality”, one steeped in aspects of traditional doom but also branching out in unexpected directions — such as closing the record with a cover of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”.

And then there’s this: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASTRIFEROUS — “DISSOLUTION OF ETERNITY”

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Jun 012026
 

(written by Islander)

No one in their right mind would leap headfirst into a broad pool of water without knowing whether the landing spot is shallow or deep, toxic or pure, devoid of swimming creatures or loaded with toothsome things that would attack out of sheer vicious reflex.

But that’s what we invite you to do now, without a moment’s careful reflection — to leap headfirst into a song off Atavistic Unraveling, the second album by Costa Rica’s Astriferous that’s now set for co-release by Me Saco Un Ojo and Pulverised Records on June 26th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE CONFLUX COLLECTIVE — “DEVOURING LIGHT”

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Jun 012026
 

(written by Islander)

You might see the band whose music is the subject of this premiere identified as Conflux. But the complete name is The Conflux Collective, so-named mainly because the two musicians who initiated the project wanted to bring in a diverse group of extreme vocalists to accompany their compositions.

Those two musicians — drummer, composer, and producer Tommy McKinnon (Derelict, Akurion, ex‑Neuraxis, ex‑Augury) and guitarist Chase Fraser (Continuum, ex‑Decrepit Birth, ex‑Animosity) — conceived the band after a chance reunion in a Montreal fast‑food joint following a King Diamond show on 2016. In fairly short order they wrote and recorded a debut EP named The Inception, which included a different well-known Canadian death metal vocalist on each song, utilizing the talents of Cryptopsy vocalist Matt McGachy, Beneath The Massacre vocalist Elliot Desgagnés, and Mike Disalvo of Coma Cluster Void, Akurion, and ex-Cryptopsy.

The Inception received an enthusiastic response around various corners of the web (including here at NCS), but various life circumstances led to a long period of dormancy for the project. However, Tommy McKinnon made the wise decision to revive it, the results now encompassed on a debut album titled In the Wake of Saturn that’s set for release on June 19th.

As press materials describe it: “Armed with unreleased material from Fraser and a determination to finish what they started, [McKinnon] rebuilt the album from the ground up, writing new songs, reconstructing arrangements, recording all bass tracks by ear, and crafting lyrics drawn from deeply personal turmoil, transformation, and catharsis.”

And of course McKinnon also revived the idea of including different vocalists on the songs. It’s a hell of a collective: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TEMPLE OV AHRIMAN — “WHITE DEATH”

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May 292026
 

(written by Islander)

The worst years of the covid pandemic were in many ways a truly terrible time, although it often seems like for many people it has already become a distant memory. But that’s often the way memory works, when forgetting bad times becomes a survival mechanism, or at least eases the way forward.

But it’s equally true that the pandemic years yielded unexpected opportunities for creative activity that otherwise wouldn’t have existed, or would have existed in very different forms. The band we’re focused on in this article is one such example of that.

Temple ov Ahriman is a one-man black metal band hailing from Austin, Texas that was conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic. Its mastermind Thornicator explains what happened: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KA’APER — “A REASON TO GO INSANE”

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May 292026
 

(written by Islander)

For the second year in a row we’re premiering a song by Ka’aper, a collective of musicians who now call Cyprus their home. It is happening for a second year in a row because Ka’aper have quickly followed their 2025 debut album While Flows the Nile with a second album titled When Gods Walked the Earth that’s set for release on June 12th by Satanath Records.

As described by the label, the new album encompasses “ten heavy and melodic stories about life and death, love and betrayal, the fleeting and the eternal,” moving “between visions of ancient mythology and reflections on the present day seen through its prism.”

For those visitors here who are familiar with While Flows the Nile, the new album includes similar musical ingredients, but with further variations and iterations. Some might call it melodic death metal, some might use the more amorphous term “dark metal”, but it’s probably better for us to use the song we’re premiering today as a more concrete representation of Ka’aper’s musical proclivities. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROCELL — “SWARM OF INSECTS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
May 272026
 

(written by Islander)

Nearly 20 years into their career, which in the context of metal is akin to a geologic epoch, the Danish band Crocell prove through their latest album that they are at the peak of their powers rather than on a downhill slide. They have used their accumulated experience to create a harrowing adventure, equal parts furiously violent, oppressively crushing, and deeply haunting — an adventure threaded with dark melodies that are just as vital as Crocell’s ability to hammer hearts and fracture spines.

The name of the album (Crocell’s seventh full-length) is Swarm of Insects, and it will be released on May 29th through Emanzipation Productions. As the label’s texts explain, “The album title evokes images of biblical plagues, but may just as well reflect a humanity blindly swarming and feeding on whatever scraps are thrown its way.” And thus “the lyrics explore tyranny, oppression, betrayal and demagoguery.”

As for the music, Crocell’s evolved hybrid of death and black metal often does sound like audio portrayals of plague, but it drives a listener’s imagination toward other visions as well — which you can now experience for yourselves through our full streaming premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND REVIEW): GALVANIST – THE SILENCE BETWEEN STARS

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May 252026
 

(Andy Synn, who spent the whole weekend at MDF, still found time to handle today’s premiere)

In my opinion, the job of an article like this – one that’s simultaneously both a premiere and a review (you might even call it a preview) – is not so much to tell you what to think as it is to shape your expectations, so that those thoughts can proceed and develop free of any incorrect assumptions or misconceptions about the music.

This is particularly relevant in this case, as while Montana-based quartet Galvanist are often billed as “Experimental Doom/Death Metal” I feel that this has the potential to be misleading, even counterproductive, going into their upcoming new album, The Silence Between Stars, which has more in common – to my ears at least – with the more progressively structured, esoterically atmospheric end of the Black Metal spectrum.

That’s not to say there aren’t some deliciously doomy moments to be found – elements like the sundered atmospheric synthscapes underpinning “Dreich” and the gloom-laden, grand guignol climax of “Spiorad” recall the bleakest (albeit still “blackened”) moments of Mizmor and Bethlehem (especially the former) – but there’s also a clear debt owed here to the likes of Leviathan and Blut Aus Nord (particularly the latter’s more cosmically-inclined compositions), and it’s in this context that the album is best approached.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KUR•NU•GI•A — “CARMINA INFERORUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
May 192026
 

(written by Islander)

Prepare to jump off your usual beaten tracks, indeed off the tracks of the world altogether, as we present Carmina Inferorum — Latin for “Songs of he Underworld”. This is the debut album of the mysterious Polish avant-black-death-metal band KUR•NU•GI•A (not to be confused with the Ohio death metal band Kurnugia or the Finnish black metal band Kurnugia). It will be released by Godz Ov War Productions on May 22nd.

Curious about the band’s rendering of the name and what it refers to, I found a source (here) that includes this description:

Kurnugi, also called Kur-nu-gi-a, was the Sumerian underworld. It was dark, vast, and final. It lay beneath the earth, beyond the Mountains of Sunset. Souls descended here after death, stripped of light and joy. The dead ate dust, drank from mud, and lived in shadows…. Kurnugi was not punishment; it was fate.

Those words increased my curiosity about the music before hearing a single note, as did a Lovecraftian chant that appeared in the announcement of the album by Godz Ov War on social media (a chant that’s interpreted to mean “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”):

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

But the album’s cover image and KUR•NU•GI•A’s band photos made me even more curious. Continue reading »

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