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AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: INVOKER — “AEON”

Oct 302015

Today is the official release date for Aeon, the second album by Germany’s Invoker, which will be brought to discerning metal lovers by Non Serviam Records. It is adorned by a wonderful album cover created by Misanthropic Art. It’s likely that you have seen this artwork at our site previously, because it has been our pleasure to bring you the premiere of three songs from the album. And now we bring you the premiere of a full album stream.

The music on the album encompasses a variety of moods, but it’s consistently intense, powerful, and dark. Produced in a way that provides both clarity and massive force, and featuring individual performances that really shine, Aeon’s greatest strength is nevertheless revealed in the songwriting. The song’s have individual character, each one marked by distinctive melodies that get their hooks in your head right away, and there is renewed pleasure when you come back to them. It’s the kind of album that can stay in your playlist a long time, without losing its interest. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: INTEGRITY — “HUMANITY IS THE DEVIL” (20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

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Oct 272015

I heard about Cleveland’s Integrity long before I heard them. Other bands across a wide range of genres have dropped their name as an influence like I drop cigarette butts on the sidewalk. To this day, I get press releases pushing new bands because they sound (something) like Integrity. Integrity broke ground, and they broke minds.

Almost twenty years on from the release of the band’s landmark Humanity Is the Devil, Magic Bullet Records is releasing an anniversary edition of the EP. This edition features a new treatment of Pushead’s original album cover by artist Josh Bayer and comes with Dwid Hellion’s complete lyrics, along with an updated narration by him on the album’s last track.

And it has been remixed by Joel Grind (Toxic Holocaust) with guidance from Hellion and Integrity guitarist Aaron Melnick and remastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege — and that has brought an added power and immediacy to the recorded music that probably wasn’t even possible in 1995. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: XUL — “MALIGNANCE”

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Oct 272015

In preparing to write a few words about our premiere of this hair-raising album from XUL, I went back and read what I wrote about a XUL song we premiered earlier this year from their lethal 2015 EP Extinction Necromance, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I think my mind was so exploded by the music that I forgot where I put it. I’m warning you now that the same thing may have happened when I started writing this post after listening to XUL’s Malignance.

That’s the name of this British Columbia band’s 2012 debut album, which was originally self-released and is now getting a gilded reissue by Redefining Darkness Records, with remastering executed by Ken Sorceron (Abigail Williams), eye-catching new artwork by Remy Cuveillier (Headsplit Design), and a previously unreleased bonus track. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUNAR MANTRA — “GENESIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Oct 262015

So close and yet so far away, mysterious and unknowable for most of our existence, the Moon has exerted as strong a pull on human imagination as it has on the tides. With its reflected light waxing and waning, it alternately casts the night into deepest darkness and illuminates it with a ghostly pallor, spawning tales of night terrors and visions of things beyond the material plane. And for millennia, it has been associated with madness (there is a reason why the words “lunatic” and “lunacy” are derived from the moon’s Latin name, luna).

The debut album, Genesis, by the Scottish black metal band Lunar Mantra brought all these thoughts to mind, and not just because of the band’s name. In many ways, the album captures the mystery and the powerful influence of our closest celestial neighbor on our imaginations — as well as its link with madness. Genesis is indeed “a nightside odyssey through the formless void”, as one press description has it — a disorienting and arcane experience that proves to be spellbinding. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: LOST SOUL — “ATLANTIS: THE NEW BEGINNING”

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Oct 232015

(KevinP provides the following introduction to our premiere of the new album by Poland’s Lost Soul.)

Poland’s death metal masters, Lost Soul, return with their fifth full-length album, Atlantis: The New Beginning, via Apostasy Records on October 30, 2015. Today we proudly present to you the exclusive North American stream of this new opus.

Mainman/founding member Jacek Grecki (vocals/guitar) and Damian Czajkowski (bass) return with the band’s first new material since 2009’s Immerse in Infinity. Making their recording debut with Lost Soul are Asmodeus Draco Dux (drums) and Marek Golas (guitars), who both joined in 2012.

If you like what you hear (and who are we kidding, YOU WILL), stay tuned — as on Monday, October 26, we will GET TO THE POINT in an interview with Jacek Grecki. See the links below to grab digital and physical copies of the album (vinyl will be released in February 2016). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: VEHEMENCE — “FORWARD WITHOUT MOTION”

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Oct 222015

Forward Without Motion is the fourth album by Arizona’s Vehemence — and the first since the band split up in 2005 following the 2004 Metal Blade release of Helping the World To See. They are obviously back — and as you’re about to hear from our premiere of a full stream of the new album, they are back with overpowering force.

We knew this album was on the way. In September our writer Andy Synn helped pave the way for its arrival by compiling reviews of all three of the band’s previous full-lengths for the 62nd installment of The Synn Report (here). What we didn’t know then was that we would be invited to bring you a full listen to the new album — but we’re damned glad the opportunity has come our way.

The wait has been a long one — and no one knows that better than the band. They provided us this statement to accompany the album stream: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVOKER — “ENGULFED FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS”

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Oct 222015

We’ve previously premiered two tracks from the new album by Germany’s Invoker — “Secrets of Seed” and the title track “Aeon”. Two is not enough. We have more, beginning today with the album’s seventh track, “Engulfed For Millions of Years”.

If you’ve been following the songs from Aeon that have appeared to date, you already know about Invoker’s talent for weaving dark melodic hooks into the majestic and multifaceted tapestry of their sound, and “Engulfed…” is another grant example of that skill at work. The song races and rips from the beginning, seizing the listener’s attention without delay, and then begins to move along a changing course that includes hard-jabbing riffs, a swirling melodic guitar melody that shimmers like streamers of light, and big, booming hammer blows of pile-driving power. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUNG MOLDE — “LUNG MOLDE”

Premieres, Reviews 5 Responses »

Oct 222015

Lung Molde is an evocative name for a band. Knowing nothing about the music, it begins to shape your impressions of what you will hear. You begin to imagine your air supply choked off by a toxic growth of slime breeding in the hothouse of your own body, of a once pink vitality turned into a gasping black ruin, of your eyes clouded by the fog of your own impending asphyxiation. Or maybe that’s just me, contemplating the start of lung molde season here in the Pacific Northwest.

This Portland trio (which includes members of Triumvir Foul) chose their name well, because, as you’re about to learn through our premiere of their debut self-titled album, the music is indeed calamitous. Their brand of staggering sludge and doom generates an oppressive atmosphere, creating a soundscape that’s blighted, bulldozed, and burned. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NAR MATTARU — “THE END OF THE BEGINNING”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Oct 212015

When I first encountered the music of Chile’s Nar Mattaru back in February 2014, I was already late to the party. I had missed the band’s first album, 2011’s Eluma Elish, but the song I heard (now more than 18 months ago) really made a deep impression. That track (reviewed here) was “Funeral In Abzu”, and it was due to appear on the band’s second album Ancient Atomic Warfare. And then, almost one year later, I discovered a second advance track from the album, a monstrous nuclear firestorm called “Declaration of Supremacy” (discussed here). Where, I wondered, was the rest of this album?

Well, at long last, the wait is nearly over — because I, Voidhanger Records has now revealed that Ancient Atomic Warfare will be released on December 7 — and today we bring you another track from the album, this one named “The End of the Beginning”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THIRTEEN BLED PROMISES — “BIBLEPHAGY SLENDER PHYTOBEZOARS”

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Oct 202015

This winter Thirteen Bled Promises from Madrid, Spain, will release their second album through Blood Fire Death. Entitled The Black Legend, it will function conceptually as a prequel to the band’s debut album Heliopause Fleets that traces the origins of our planet to the 16th century.

The sci-fi themes that provide the backdrop for the band’s music have been worked into the video we’re premiering today for a song from The Black Legend entitled “Biblephagy Slender Phytobezoars”. Continue reading »

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