AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CARVED MEMORIES — “THE MOIRAI”

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Oct 302024
 

(written by Islander)

The melodic death metal band Carved Memories originated in Costa Rica but are now settled in Berlin, Germany. They released a self-titled EP seven years ago, and now have a debut album set for release on November 1st on Black Lion Records.

The album’s name is The Moirai, and its eight songs have a unifying theme:

The Moirai delves into the concept of absolute power, exploring the immense forces that dominate and control their realms. Each track reflects the overwhelming presence of a massive deity or emotion, personified as an unstoppable force reigning supreme. The lyrics narrate the influence and dominion of these mighty entities, portraying them in their full might — unchallenged and eternal. The themes center around the unyielding nature of these powers, representing a reign that cannot be defied.

In line with this conception, the album’s music delivers hard-charging intensity and often reaches heights of towering supremacy, but it creates other experiences as well — and you’ll have the chance to become immersed in all of them through our full album premiere today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CRYPTORIUM — “HORRID EXULTATION”

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Oct 292024
 

(written by Islander)

Let’s dive right into the video and song we’re premiering today from Descent Into Lunacy, the debut album of the Swedish death metal band Cryptorium, and then come back to fill in the details.

“Horrid Exultation” is the name of the song, and that title is the epitome of truth-in-advertising: There is not one thing about the song that’s sane, not one thing amenable to reason or mercy, only the kind of demented and frenzied viciousness that spawns ghastly visions — and a finale that brings horrors of a different kind. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VEILBURNER — “WOE YE’ WHO BUILD THESE CROSSES… ARE THOSE WHO WILL SERVE US DEATH”

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Oct 292024
 

(written by Islander)

Our beloved Metal-Archives (well, beloved by many, despised by others) still calls the music of Pennsylvania-based  Veilburner “Black/Death Metal”, even after a run of six albums released so far, culminating in 2022’s VLBRNR, that throws bombs in the midst of such genre conventions, coupled with lyrical formulations that are no more conventional than the music.

M-A is to be forgiven for so rudely simplifying the band’s musical eclecticism in their expressions of fury and disgust over humanity’s self-mangling. Especially after VLBRNR, we’d drown in hyphens and slashes trying to incorporate all the musical ingredients the band have so freely thrown into the mix in musically rendering the recurrent absurdities of human existence.

M-A is also to be forgiven because Veilburner‘s eclecticism isn’t scattershot. They do have their anchor-points in death and black metal, like the bolts that connect a swaying bridge to its rocky endpoints above a chasm, the bridge they race across in ways both dizzying and dazzling (and frightening) without pitching headlong into a flailing descent with no good end.

The history built by those first six albums makes the impending release of a seventh one a signal event, with intrigue being a chief part of the anticipation: What have they done now? We already have signs, because two album tracks have surfaced so far, and now we bring a third one to your attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TYRANNIC — “TYRANNIC DESOLATION”

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Oct 282024
 

(written by Islander)

“The Australian band Tyrannic have already established themselves as a weird and wild force to be reckoned with, harnessing together elements of classic doom and savage black metal, but not really beholden to any genre constraints in their haunting and harrowing explorations of Death and what lies beyond.”

That’s how we began our premiere of a song from Tyrannic‘s second album Mortuus Decadence almost exactly three years ago, an album we called “a fierce and frightening leap forward from what they’ve done before.”

And now, three years later, we return to Tyrannic with another song premiere, this one the title track to their new album Tyrannic Desolation that will arrive on November 22nd via Iron Bonehead Productions. Have they made another leap forward? Well, as today’s song will clue you in, concepts like “forward” and “backward” may be inapplicable to the current music of Tyrannic, which instead often seems to leap way off any mapping of directional coordinates.

But “weird” and “wild” are adjectives that definitely still apply — in spades — and you definitely won’t forget that “desolation” is right there in the song’s name. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FESTERGORE — “GLASS CASKET”

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Oct 282024
 

The attractions of gore to the modern human mind are deep and abiding. Visual representations of disembowelment and dismemberment long pre-date the advent of moving pictures, but of course film provided a vivid and still-thriving new medium for the rendition of disgusting torture and unhinged slaughter. Representations of gore in greater and lesser degrees of specificity have also fueled both fiction and non-fiction writing, as well as photography and the graphic arts.

And of course fixations on the degradation of the human body in other ways have gone hand-in-hand with depictions of gore, both real and imagined — degradations such as those caused by disease and post-mortem decay, implemented by the array of tiny creatures for whom our flesh grudgingly provides host-bodies and nourishment.

And of course, as lovers of extreme metal well know, our collective fascination with gore and bodily degradation extends beyond the art-forms mentioned above. It extends to and inspires the making of music, the more frightening and repulsive the better.

Undoubtedly, scholars of various stripes have attempted to explain why human beings are so morbidly fascinated by these subjects. We can’t be bothered to verify this, or investigate the theories, at least not today, because today we celebrate the fact of it, as represented by the music of a death metal band from Staten Island, New York whose name leaves no doubt about their inspirations: Festergore. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NIGRUM — “INEFFABLE EMPIRE”

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Oct 252024
 

(written by Islander)

The black metal band Nigrum was born in 2015 in Cuernavaca, the lush capital of the Mexican state of Morelos, but eventually found its way to a new home in the south of Sweden. The years that followed ultimately culminated in Nigrum‘s 2022 debut album Elevenfold Tail, and now they’re following that with a second full-length, appropriately titled Blood Worship Extremism, which will be released next month by Iron Bonehead Productions.

Nigrum‘s music, as it now stands represented through the new album, is as viscerally electrifying as anything you’re likely to find this year. The songs often provide tremendous surging power, barbarically unhinged vocals, and fleet-fingered, fire-bright fretwork that’s devilishly elaborate and ecstatic. But they also spin listeners through changes that strengthen the music’s iron-clawed grip.

You’ll see what we’re trying to get at when you hear the relentlessly dazzling song we’re premiering today — “Ineffable Empire“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEBELKRÄHE — “ALS MEINE AUGEN ICH AUFSCHLUG…”

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Oct 242024
 

Fifteen years ago the German black metal band Nebelkrähe self-released their debut album entfremdet. Regarding the production of that album, the band have told us, “we were motivated as hell – but we were also completely inexperienced in almost every aspect of producing an album.” And so, although that album definitely found its fans, it left regrets among the band and a yearning to make it better, feelings that persisted even after Nebelkrähe went on to release two more albums in 2013 (Lebensweisen) and 2023 (ephemer).

And so, in a process that lasted 15 months, Nebelkrähe re-worked and professionally re-recorded entfremdet, making the songs true to what the band imagined they should have been. As they explain:

It may seem backward-looking and not very pragmatic to re-record the same old songs instead of new music after a decade and a half – because this much is clear: nobody was waiting for this new recording. But it was a project close to the hearts of the band members involved at the time, and when it comes to music, you should always follow your heart.

We have more info to share about this new version of entfremdet, which will be released on November 29th by the Crawling Chaos label, but our primary mission today is to share with you a video (made by Kevin Opitz) for the re-imagined and re-worked version of the second single from the new album, “Als meine Augen ich aufschlug…“ Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MACERATION — “SERPENT DEVOURMENT”

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Oct 242024
 

Almost exactly two years ago we had the privilege and great pleasure to premiere a fantastic new album by one of the earliest death metal bands to come out of Denmark — Maceration. That album, It Never Ends…, was the first Maceration full-length since their pioneering debut album A Serenade of Agony in 1992.

The comeback album drew a lot of quick attention because, like the Maceration debut, it featured guest vocals by Dan Swanö, but the record proved to be a mad and monstrous success for many reasons beyond Swanö‘s vocals (though the vocals were indeed extremely good).

It is thus excellent news that Maceration‘s  will continue their return with another new album on the Emanzipation Productions label to follow up It Never Ends…. To help spread the word, and to give you a strong taste of what’s coming, we’re now hosting the premiere of the album’s title track, “Serpent Devourment“, which will be released as a digital single on October 25th. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACKEVIL — “PRAISE THE COMMUNION FIRE FOR THE UNHALLOWED SACRAMENT”

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Oct 232024
 

(written by Islander)

Every one of us follows a personal collection of bands who by our lights just never stumble. They may be ground-breakers or they may not. They may make bold steps from one record to the next or they may only iterate subtly. But over and over again, long enough to build our confidence, they create music that gets its hooks in our heads, rings our chimes (pick your own metaphor), reinforces the conviction that whatever they do next, the odds are high it will be well worth the time (and the money).

In my case the Bavarian band Blackevil are one of those groups. To borrow some words I’ve written before, their past music has been a black-thrashing devil-rush, high-grade adrenaline fuel but laced with an atmosphere of magic and menace. While drawing from well-springs of primal Teutonic thrash and the greats of speed metal, they also bring into play the epic fireworks of classic heavy metal and add mystic instrumental nuances, creating anthems of devilish glory and blood-rushing ecstasy.

They’ve been doing this long enough now, and getting better and better at it with each release, that people like me become greedily excited when seeing the news that they’ve got something new on the horizon. And the horizon is very near now, because on October 25th Dying Victims Productions will release the band’s spectacular third album, Praise the Communion Fire for the Unhallowed Sacrament, which you’ll be able to hear in full today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ATARAXIE — “LE DÉCLIN”

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Oct 222024
 

(written by Islander)

Today we premiere a full stream of Le Déclin, a new album by the veteran French band Ataraxie that will be released this coming Friday, October 25th, by Ardua Music and Weird Truth Productions.

To make it was an enormous undertaking. The results speak to that: Four songs, each of which is in the range of 16-22 minutes, and a total running time for the album of more than 80 minutes. You could think of it as four EPs released simultaneously, and you could choose to listen to them that way, but thematically they are all connected.

Before you reach the end of this article you’ll find extensive comments about the album from Ataraxie bassist/vocalist Jonathan Théry. As he describes them, the lyrics of the songs are about the negativity and sickness of the modern world — the descent of humanity into ignorance, absurdity, the rejection of science, the glorification of malignant fantasy, the rise of depression and disease, and an unwillingness to confront what could be done (or must be done) to prevent humankind from extinguishing itself.

Given the way that most metal bands make music, it’s unlikely that the lyrics (in French) were written first, and the music written to follow the lyrics. But there is still an undeniable unity between the themes and the sounds. The music itself channels anger, disgust, agony, isolation, and ruin on a global scale, as well as moments that seem to capture the value of what is being destroyed. Continue reading »

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