AN NCS PREMIERE: MOONFALL — “ODE TO THE RITUAL HILLS”

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Mar 142025
 

(Written by Islander)

The Finnish black metal band Moonfall trace their origins back to 2008, and their first demo to 2010. But there things ended for a decade until the duo reunited, releasing a new demo in 2020 and a split with Regere Sinister the following year. Now, at last, they’ve made a debut album named Odes to the Ritual Hills that’s set for an April 11 release by Iron Bonehead Productions.

Much could be said about the activities of the two performers (Goatprayer and Black Moon Necromancer) because both have been active over many years in a multitude of other bands, including Witchcraft, Ceremonial Torture, and Beherit. But rather than detail those histories and find linkages between them and what’s about to be available on the new album, let’s instead turn immediately to the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CLACTONIAN — “EVERLASTING PALEOLITHIC”

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Mar 142025
 

(written by Islander)

We have written frequently over the last seven years about the music of the Italian band Thecodontion, whose primeval and prehistoric thematic interests have been as interesting and erudite as their guitar-less but ever-evolving formulations of death metal. And so we were highly intrigued to learn last year that Thecodontion vocalist G.E.F. had started a new band named Clactonian, joined by Thecodontion drummer V.P. (also in SVNTH), Finnish bassist K.H.P.K. (from Ashen Tomb), and Italian guitarist B.Z. (Spell of Decay).

Like Thecodontion, the thematic interests of Clactonian are rooted in prehistory, and particularly the Paleolithic Age. The name itself is a term given by archaeologists to an industry of European flint tools made by an extinct species of archaic humans who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. (You can find more about here.)

Last summer we premiered Clactonian‘s debut demo, Dea Madre, whose cover art you won’t have forgotten if you saw it. The music followed a path of early bestial black/death metal that drew strong influence from Beherit but also should appeal to fans of Archgoat, early Bathory, and some bass-driven bands like Barathrum or early Necromantia for the slower sections.

And now we’re bringing you Clactonian‘s second demo, Everlasting Paleolithic, in advance of its official release on March 28th. Prepare for… PALEOLITHIC BLACK METAL OF DEATH! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALZHAGOTH — “AD FINEM”

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Mar 132025
 

(written by Islander)

What is “pagan death metal”? It might be death metal that lyrically honors and celebrates old pre-Christian mystical belief systems, or current non-theistic ones, without much other connection between the music and what inspires the lyrics. Or the connection might be deeper than the words. Or the words might open doors to an imaginary cosmos of recent origin but ancient trappings, accompanied by music designed to reveal what lies beyond the door.

Which brings us to the Italian “pagan death metal” band Alzhagoth. Thematically, they have created their own cosmogony, a vast cosmogony of chaos and even monstrosity, and a cult devoted to the dark god whose name is the name of the band. As for the music, they’ve explained in a recent interview:

“For us, chaos isn’t merely random, but filled with potential. Each element can become part of a subtle order, crystallizing into a track that reflects the darkness of Alzhagoth. In this way, the music becomes an attempt to capture eternity in a single moment, transforming turmoil into something sublime, in the romantic sense of the word.”

What this means in more concrete terms is revealed in Alzhagoth‘s debut album Ad Finem, which will be released tomorrow through Inertial Music, and which we’re now revealing in its entirety. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WOMBBATH — “BEYOND THE ABYSS”

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Mar 122025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to premiere the entirety of a stunning new Wombbath album, which will take listeners Beyond the Abyss.

Our French contributor Zoltar (Olivier Badin) has quite a history of writing about metal, and considerable familiarity with both Wombbath‘s previous works and some of the band’s members. Putting that knowledge to good use, he wrote an extensive introduction to the album which can be found on its Bandcamp page. If we were smart we would just cut and paste that mini-essay here instead of just leaving a link to it, and then embed the album stream to let the music speak for itself.

But being smart and having fun aren’t always the same thing. And so to have our own fun, here are some further elaborate thoughts about what you’ll encounter on this new album today, just a couple days away from its March 14 release by Pulverised Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VAMPYRIIYA — “GHOST OF MOON AND COSMIC NEBULA”

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Mar 112025
 

(written by Islander)

Vampyriia is the solo project of the Italian musician S. N. Nosfer. Even people unfamiliar with the project’s past works, which include a pair of demos, a debut album, and an EP, would take their clues from those names and the night-dwelling and bloodthirsty mythologies they invoke.

But the music of Vampyriia also seems to contemplate other more haunting and tortured sides of undead immortality, as reflected in the name of a new four-song EP — The Melancholic Charm Of The Moon — which will be released on April 24th by Void Wanderer Productions.

What we have for you today is the premiere of one of those songs, and its name is also evocative: “Ghost of Moon and Cosmic Nebula“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE INFERNAL DECEIT — “SCHWARZ”

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Mar 112025
 

(written by Islander)

Next month the always interesting Personal Records will release a new album by The Infernal Deceit, a German duo consisting of guitarist/bassist C and vocalist R, ably aided on the album by session drummer Jörg Uken. This new full-length, The True Harmful Black, is the successor to the band’s independently released 2021 album debut The Formless Graves (a vinyl release followed via Idiots Records in 2022).

Having overlooked that debut, the new album has provided our own introduction to The Infernal Deceit‘s talents, and it is (to put it mildly) a wonderfully eye-opening discovery. The “elevator pitch” is that the band have drawn inspiration from melodic blackened death metal from the mid-to-late ’90s. Delving deeper, the PR materials make comparative references to “prime Unanimated, second- or third-album Sacramentum, Darkside-era Necrophobic, the lone Vinterland album, ’90s Naglfar or Ebony Tears or Sweden’s Eucharist, or even In Flames‘ never-sullied The Jester Race.”

All of that is very enticing to people like us who found our way into extreme metal through bands such as those, but even more enticing is the immediate experience of The Infernal Deceit‘s new music, which is equal parts thrilling and chilling, ferocious and epic. We have a great example in the album track “Schwarz” that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOMADIC RITUALS — “FUST”

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Mar 102025
 

(written by Islander)

It often happens that we, like everyone else, find our first exposure to an album in a single song provided in advance of the album release, even when we later find ourselves premiering the entire record. That is what happened here in the case of Fust, the apocalyptic fourth album by the sludge/doom band Nomadic Rituals from Northern Ireland that will soon be released by our friends at Cursed Monk Records.

One of their early singles from the album was “Change“. It greeted our ears with clobbering beats and demonic snarls, with vicious sizzling tones and shrill demented decibels. The song’s mangling low-frequencies lurch like some enormous primeval beast; the vocals scream and bay at the moon; the beats crack and tumble.

The music also pounds like a sledgehammer and seems to moan in agony, and the beasts come out in the doubled vocals too. It might have ended there, but doesn’t: the drums vividly clatter; the guitars go off like sirens; the low end brutally gouges with gruesome claws; the voices scream bloody murder.

As a welcome sign placed before listeners, “Change” was very fucking intense, an experience in rage and ruin, like a welcome sign made of skull and crossbones. How indicative was it of the album as a whole? You’re about to find out. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RITUALMORD — “THIS IS NOT LIFELOVER”

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Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Few long-gone bands from the underground still have as passionately devoted a following as the Swedish group Lifelover. Two of that band’s surviving members have worked together under the name Ritualmord to create a debut album that will be released tomorrow by Unjoy – Art & Ritualia. That pedigree alone would attract Lifelover fans to the album like iron filings to a magnet, but almost like a rebuff of an old lover, Ritualmord named their album This Is Not Lifelover.

And the album’s name is mostly true, but not entirely true. It isn’t Lifelover, but to use a cliché, there are some Lifelover nucleotides in Ritualmord‘s DNA — though indeed it’s true that the other ingredients of their musical polymer are quite different from what a Lifelover fan would expect and possibly hope for — though it may reflect where Lifelover would have gone (to more vast and mind-bending places), had it lived.

In lieu of typical PR promotional texts, the two people behind the album, ( ) (Kim Carlsson) and 1853 (Johan Gabrielson) have crafted a different kind of introduction, and we ought to begin there in presenting today’s album premiere: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LISTLESS — “DEVOID”

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Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Listless is a new depressive black metal project born from the mind of Aidan Crossley, the guitarist and vocalist of the atmospheric black metal band Liminal Shroud from Victoria, BC in the Canadian West.

Those familiar with Liminal Shroud will detect some kinship in the music of that band and Listless, but in the case of this new project, Aidan has drawn inspiration from the likes of Austere, Woods of Desolation, Coldworld, None, and Gris, as well as depressive rock elements from bands like Lifelover and Psychonaut 4.

On April 25th, Hypnotic Dirge Records will release the self-titled debut album of Listless, and what we have for you today is a video for the first haunting and harrowing song revealed from the album. Its name is “Devoid“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NECRAMBULANT — “UPHEAVAL OF MALIGNANT NECRAMBULANCE”

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Mar 062025
 

(written by Islander)

The Arizona band Necrambulant have a new album coming out tomorrow on Gore House Productions. Ever-interested in improving my vocabulary, I tried to look up the meaning of “necrambulant”, especially because a variant of the word also appears in the album title: Upheaval of Malignant Necrambulance.

Turns out it’s not in any dictionary (not yet). According to an 11-year-old interview of Necrambulant guitarist Ron Clark at Teeth of the Divine, it’s a word the band made up by combining the prefix “Necro” with “Ambulant” — “just a fancy way to say ‘Zombie.'”

At the time of that interview Necrambulant were about 9 months beyond the release of their debut album Infernal Infectious Necro-Ambulatory Pandemic. It might be time for another interview to figure out why it took the band so long to release more music, with 9 years passing by until their 2022 EP A Feast of Festering Flesh, and then 3 more years until this new second full-length, coming out a chunky dozen years after the first one. (I did find a quartet of more recent interviews, but they were all just the kind of stock questions that could be doled out to any band, and none of them delved into that question.)

But really, the answer is just a matter of bystander curiosity. It’s irrelevant to whether anyone should be paying attention to the band’s new album. Whether attention should be paid, of course, is a function of the music and the tastes of the listener. You’ll get to taste the whole thing — and it will get to taste you raw, without benefit of cooking or seasoning — because we’re providing a full stream today. Continue reading »

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