WOLFPACK 44: “IRON DREAM”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Nov 112015
 

Wolfpack 44-Iron Dream

 

In mid-September I was fortunate to premiere a song called “Dark Mountain” from The Scourge, which is the forthcoming debut album by Wolfpack 44, a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Ricktor Ravensbrück from The Electric Hellfire Club and vocalist/guitarist Julian Xes from Kult ov Azazel. Today, we get the chance to share with you a second track from the album — a beast named “Iron Dream” — along with info about pre-ordering the album.

When I premiered “Dark Mountain” in September, I also included a review of the entire album — which is due for release by Deadlight Entertainment on January 20. It defies easy genre classification, in part because there’s so much variety among the different songs, as well as lots of multi-layered textures within most of them. Wolfpack 44 have described the music as “Satanic, industrial/black/death/psychotic/evil-as-fuck metal with a sardonic edge”, and that’s actually a pretty accurate description. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KULT MOGIŁ — “SERENE PONDS”

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Nov 102015
 

Kult Mogil album cover final

 

December 24 is the date Pagan Records has set for the release of Anxiety Never Descending, the debut album by the Polish death metal band Kult Mogił. In advance of the album’s release, today we bring a sample of what lies within it through our premiere of the third track, “Serene Ponds”.

The band have explained that their name does not translate to “sepulchral cult”, but is instead better understood as “cult of graves” — and as you will discover, it’s a fitting name. Because there is nothing serene about “Serene Ponds”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VORNA — “YKSIN”

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Nov 102015
 

Vorna-Ei Valo Minua Seuraa

 

You’re about to hear and see something that I think you will find beautiful, moving, dark, and heavy — the kind of audiovisual experience that’s capable of carrying you away from wherever your head happens to be before you press “play”, even though the experience lasts less than seven minutes.

The music is a song called “Yksin” by a six-man band from Tampere, Finland, named Vorna. It will appear on the band’s second album Ei valo minus seuraa (No Light Follows Me), which will be released on December 4 by Inverse Records — and we are privileged to premiere the song and the striking video that accompanies it for North American audiences. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AWE — “PROVIDENTIA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  8 Responses »
Nov 062015
 

Print

 

One of the best split releases of 2015 is an album entitled Moerae (reviewed here) that was released last spring by three Greek black metal bands — Vacantfield, End, and AWE. It’s a concept album taking as its inspiration the three Fates of Greek mythology (the Moerae), with each band contributing a song about one of the Fates. Apart from a short song on the compilation album Mono Maniac vol.4 released by Blast Beat Mail Murder in 2014, Moerae marked AWE’s recording debut.

AWE have now recorded a debut album, Providentia, that’s set for release on November 13 by Pulverised Records. It’s a hugely ambitious, visionary album, and a brilliantly successful one. And we’re giving you the chance to hear all of it today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CAECUS — “AFFLICTION”

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Nov 042015
 

caecus_affliction cover

 

Affliction is the title of the debut EP by a Scottish trio named Caecus. You listen to the music, and it seems born of affliction, and it expresses affliction — among other powerful emotions. It will take you less than 10 minutes to hear the three unnamed songs on the EP from start to finish, but it’s still an all-consuming experience.

If you’re like me, the first thing you’ll want to do at the end, while your head is still spinning, is go back to the beginning and launch it again so you can try to understand better what just happened to you. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: SERPENTS LAIR — “CIRCUMAMBULATING THE STILLBORN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Nov 032015
 

Serpents Lair-Circumnambulating the Stillborn

 

Last year I reviewed an impressive first demo by a mysterious hooded group from Sjælland, Denmark, named Serpents Lair. Now the band have completed their debut full-length, a seven-track, 43-minute album entitled Circumambulating the Stillborn that becomes available for download and physical pre-order today. In this post you’ll have a chance to stream the entire album for the first time. And if you’d like a preview of what you’re getting yourselves into, read on.

Following an introductory track consisting of beautiful choral voices and the slow, muffled pounding of timpani, Serpents Lair deliver five mostly long songs and an instrumental interlude. The songs are richly textured, dynamic in their pacing, and wholly unsettling. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVOCATION SPELLS — “DESCENDENT THE BLACK THRONE”

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Nov 032015
 

invocation spells - descendent the black throne cover

 

Descendent the Black Throne is the name of the second album by the Chilean black metal band Invocation Spells. It’s set for release next month by the mighty Hells Headbangers, and today we’re presenting a stream of the album’s ripping title track.

South American black metal tends to mix savagery with speed, and Invocation Spells deliver that experience in spades. “Descendent the Black Throne” is a galloping romp of speed metal riffs and gut-punching percussion trailing clouds of sulfurous smoke in its wake, capped by venomous vocals nasty enough to wake demons from their slumber. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COMA CLUSTER VOID — “MIND CEMETERIES”

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Nov 022015
 

Coma Cluster Void-mind cemeteries song premiere artwork

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of the title track to the new album by the multinational group Coma Cluster Void.)

In a way it’s very fitting that I’m here today writing about the premiere of the first full Coma Cluster Void song. Because it was Islander himself who first tipped me off to this multinational atonal 10-string death metal band in the first place. At the time he alerted me to them over a year ago, the band only had some very short song snippet clips up. But even those were strong enough to make me realize this band was going to be something special. So as I said, being here today to help premiere the title track from their forthcoming debut album Mind Cemeteries definitely feels like things have come full circle.

As for what the song “Mind Cemeteries” offers your ears, it’s a massive rumbling from the abyss right from the start, heaving with a mechanical, uneven gait that easily induces vertigo. There is a suffocating heaviness to “Mind Cemeteries”, which mercilessly strikes and jabs at you in shrill volleys of noise and disturbing dissonance. Continue reading »

KRODA: “Навій Схрон (NAVIJ SKHRON)”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 312015
 

KRODA-Navij Skhron

 

We wish all of you a glorious Samhain. It is the most metal of festival nights, the ancient day marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, a day for the remembrance of the dead, a day when the veil between this world and the realm of death is as thin as tissue, and for many the first day of a spiritual new year.

In our den of thieves there was some loose talk about compiling a Halloween play list for the site, but this talk came to naught. It matters not, because we have something better. We have a stream of the new album by HelCarpathian Kroda, just released via Bandcamp on this blessed day — and like nothing you’ve heard from Kroda before.

I’m only human. When I have intensely strong feelings for the past creations of an artist, I tend to be predisposed to admire whatever comes next, to the point of overlooking flaws and focusing on the gifts when necessary. But most of the music on this new Kroda album, Navij Skhron, turned my expectations upside down, as if someone erased almost everything familiar on the chalkboard and began writing a new verse. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KVLTIST — “THE DEVIL’S CATECHUMEN”

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Oct 302015
 

Kvltist.Catechesis

 

As the dark chill of winter looms ahead of us, W.T.C. Productions prepares for the release of Catechesis, the debut album by Germany’s Kvltist — an album that is the final realization of a vision in the making for a decade. Today we spread before you the premiere of the album’s opening track: “The Devil’s Catechumen”.

Through this song, Kvltist throw open obsidian gates revealing sounds that seem to emanate from a different plane of existence. It’s a Luciferian black metal devotional that’s intricate, multifaceted, and constantly changing. With dissonant riffs and arcane melodies that writhe and spiral like phosphorescent lights beneath the surface of a black surging sea, the song spawns imaginings of a great and ominous power rising to the surface in triumph, illuminated with flickering tendrils of unholy fire. Continue reading »

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