AN NCS PREMIERE: SERIAL BUTCHER — “SADISTIC SPARE PARTS SURGERY”

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Aug 132015
 

Serial Butcher-Brute Force Lobotomy

 

Even if you’re not already familiar with Serial Butcher, the cover art by Tony Koehl for their forthcoming second album should tell you almost all you need to know about the music you’re about to hear. And if you’re a little slow to catch on, then take a second look at the title of the song we’re premiering and reflect upon the fact that it comes from an album named Brute Force Lobotomy.

Still not getting it? Well, consider the additional fact that Serial Butcher’s current line-up consists of current and formers members of Aborted, Emeth, Moker, and Ectopia, and that the album will be released by Unique Leader Records.

Still not enough information? Man, some of you must still be half-asleep. Well, here’s a statement from the band: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEAVYDEATH — “DEAD TREES”

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Aug 132015
 

Heavydeath-Dark Phoenix Rising layout

 

Heavydeath is a trio of experienced Swedish musicians (guitarist/vocalist Nicklas Rudolfsson, bassist Johan Bäckman, and drummer Daniel Moilanen) who have been involved in many other projects (including Necrocurse and Runemagick). With session drummer Oldfor Suns standing in for Danel Moilanen, who has been performing with Katatonia as their live drummer, Heavydeath have recorded a new EP entitled Dark Phoenix Rising that will be released by Caligari Records on August 25, 2015, and today we’ve got for you the premiere of the EP’s opening track, “Dead Trees“.

I’ve had this song running through my head virtually non-stop since first hearing it. When other music tries to enter the picture, “Dead Trees” just bulldozes it out of the way and stomps it to smithereens for good measure. The song’s central riff is massive — and massively catchy. It hammers and vibrates and occasionally spirals up into the sky from the dank pit where it spends most of its time. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE RITUAL AURA — “ERASED IN THE PURGE”

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Aug 122015
 

The Ritual Aura-Laniakea

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new video and song from a forthcoming debut album by The Ritual Aura.)

We’ve covered The Ritual Aura before at NCS (here), and this Australian death squad are in impeccable form once again on the song/lyric video that we are premiering today called “Erased In The Purge”. In the time since we last wrote about them, they’ve signed to Lacerated Enemy Records and are nearing the release of their debut album, Laniakea, on August 27th.

If you think you know what you are in store for, “Erased In The Purge” has a few tricks up its sleeve beyond its primary mission of whipping you into a psychotic frothing frenzy. It’s so hellbent on destruction that it’s possible it was conceived specifically to be a sonic call to arms. If any nation around the globe with warmongering tendencies were smart, they’d make this their national fucking anthem. It’s that lethal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FUNERAL THRONE — “HYPNOTIC COILS”

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Aug 122015
 

Funeral Throne-Threshold

 

Last year, the British black metal band Funeral Throne released their second album, Threshold, through Exitium Productions in a very limited cassette edition. Now, Germany’s Blut & Eisen Productions will give the album a wider distribution on CD (and eventually vinyl), with an international release date of September 15, 2015. Today we bring you the premiere of Threshold’s fourth track, “Hypnotic Coils”.

Funeral Throne devoted five years of effort to the creation of Threshold and have explained that the songs commemorate specific times and experiences along a path of spiritual and musical growth. They also sought to avoid technical tricks of the trade such as drum triggering and re-amping of guitars in an effort to produce an authentic sound that would complement their effort to capture the “rebellion and truth” at the heart of “all true heavy metal”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MARE COGNITUM — “PULSES IN EXTRACONSCIOUS LUCIDITY”

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Aug 112015
 

Mare Cognitum cover

 

Last year I, Voidhanger Records released Phobos Monolith, the third album by the one-man California project known as Mare Cognitum, and now that very tasteful label has decided to reissue the band’s second album, An Extraconscious Lucidity, in remastered form and with cover art and layout by Max Loeffler. Originally released only as a digital download and as a limited CD-r, the album includes six tracks of atmospheric black metal — and we are now premiering the closing one, “Pulses in Extraconscious Lucidity”.

The song is absolutely electric — I can’t think of a better word for it. Even when the song slows in the final third of its significant length, it’s a gripping piece of music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HERCYN — “OF RUIN”

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Aug 112015
 

Hercyn-Dust and Ages

 

Following a debut demo in 2013 (Magda), an acoustic version of the demo in 2014, and a 2014 split release with Brooklyn’s Thera Roya (All This Suffering Is Not Enough), New Jersey’s Hercyn have completed work on their debut album. Entitled Dust and Ages, it’s set for release on September 11, and today we bring you the premiere of its first advance track, “Of Ruin“.

It’s a long song, topping 11 minutes, and it holds attention from start to finish, running the gamut from lilting folk-influenced acoustic melody to cascades of layered guitars, rippling bass notes, thundering percussion, and knife-edged vocal abrasion. The eye-opening performance of the rhythm section alone grabs you by the neck and never loosens its grip, while the slashing riffs and striking lead guitar melodies prove equally galvanizing. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RANNOCH — “AGE OF THE LOCUST”

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Aug 062015
 

Rannoch Locust-final 1

 

In November 2013, a band named Rannoch from West Midlands in the UK released their debut album, Between Two Worlds, via Eulogy Media. It inspired one of our writer Andy Synn’s most enthusiastic reviews ever (here), a review that included sentiments such as these:

“Every so often an album comes along, pretty much out of nowhere, and absolutely blows you away – sometimes with its technicality, sometimes with its songwriting, and sometimes with its sheer audacity. Rannoch’s Between Two Worlds blew my mind in every one of these ways, and more….

“This is a truly stunning debut. Superfluously skilled, terrifyingly talented. Captivatingly composed and perfectly performed. It’s a near masterpiece of progressive death metal that pays tributes to its predecessors whilst defining its own clear sense of identity, bridging the gap between two worlds – the old, and the new, the modern and the classic, the artful and the antagonistic.”

Today we have the pleasure of bringing you a brand new video for one of the songs on that album — “Age of the Locust”. We’ll borrow a few more of Andy’s words about the music: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: CREEPING — “REVENANT’

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 042015
 

Creeping-Revenant

 

Steel yourself for a harrowing experience, for we’re about to bring you a full stream of Revenant, the new third album by New Zealand’s Creeping.

This isn’t an idle warning. Making your way through the album is like a brutal descent into a sodden catacombs inhabited by damned and vengeful spirits. The deeper you stagger and stumble into its depths, the farther the light recedes above you, replaced by an ever-increasing sense of implacable menace and wrenching loss. You are about to join the company of phantasms, and Creeping make their terrors your own.

Mostly slow or mid-paced, the songs are often as crushing and remorseless as the most catastrophic doom album you’re likely to find this year. Anchored by titanic, distorted riffs and earthquake drumming, the music is laced with eerie reverberating guitar melodies which enhance the supernatural atmosphere that surrounds the entire album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INHUMAN — “CONQUERORS OF THE NEW WORLD”

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Aug 042015
 

6pnlFolder

 

On August 30, Satanath Records and Sevared Records will jointly release the second album by Costa Rica’s Inhuman. The album’s name is Conquerors of the New World, and today you’ll find out how it begins, as we premiere the title track.

Different bands have different philosophies about how to begin an album. Some prefer to set the stage with an instrumental track, something designed to set the mood or begin building an atmosphere (though as often as not that kind of introduction has little to do with the music that follows it). Not this band. They jam the accelerator to the floor without giving you any time to catch your breath — and you’ll have difficulty finding a moment to breathe before it ends, too. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: BLACKQUEEN — “THE DIRECTRESS:

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Aug 032015
 

Black Queen-The Directress

 

It’s not uncommon for metal bands to concoct their own genre terms for the music they create, though more often than not the new terminology is just a grab at attention for music that really sounds no different than what you’ve heard countless times before under age-old genre labels. But after you hear blackQueen’s new album The Directress, you’ll probably agree that the band’s description of their music as “Witch Metal” is just about exactly right — and that no other genre term you’ve heard before does a very good job capturing the album’s esoteric variety.

The Directress was released via Bandcamp on August 1, and those of you who have already discovered blackQueen’s black magic through their previous releases will have already pounced on it. For those who are new to the band or aren’t quite as quick to make the leap, we bring you a full stream of the album at the end of this post, as well as a look at the new video for the album’s opening track, “The Olde Religion”. Continue reading »

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