AN NCS PREMIERE: HARVEST OF ASH — “EMBRACING”

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Feb 062025
 

(written by Islander)

Not all bands make music with a sense of place, with a connection to the environment that surrounds them and their experiences in that particular setting. Instead, the music might sound like it could have been conceived and created anywhere. But Salt Lake City’s Harvest of Ash definitely do have that connection. Here’s an introduction from their Bandcamp page:

Salt Lake City’s geography is a study of contrasts. Towering mountains, expressing power and grandeur, meet with desert emptiness – a completely flat limitlessness where barely a shrub is able to grow. Enormous and overwhelming, three-piece doom band Harvest of Ash conjures both the magnificence of mountain ranges and the desolation of barren deserts.

The band’s music is also equally rooted in their own experiences within that environment, including various chaotic calamities that hindered the completion of their new album Castaway, which is now set for release on March 6th. Here’s how they describe the new songs’ lyrical journey: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DRUGS OF FAITH — “MICROCHIP”

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Feb 062025
 

(written by Islander)

Allow me to repeat what I wrote about “Gas Mask,” the first single off Drugs of Faith‘s new album Asymmetrical (not that you have a choice): “It skitters and slashes, bounces and brawls, vents the words in a red-eyed fury, and eventually takes off from its punk launching pad into an eruption of grindcore mayhem.”

In other words, after a nearly 6-year hiatus following their last EP and nearly 14 years beyond their last studio album, Drugs of Faith have gotten up off the mat and come out swinging — hard. They have the same lineup that produced that EP (Decay) — guitarist/vocalist Richard Johnson (Enemy Soil, Agoraphobic Nosebleed), bassist Ivan Khilko (Immanent Voiceless), and drummer Ethan Griffiths (Embra) — and their chemistry still produces a volatile concoction of sounds.

Here’s a preview of the album offered on behalf of the labels that will release it on February 21st (Selfmadegod Records and Malokul): Continue reading »

“STRESS TEST” — AN NCS SONG PREMIERE AND A REVIEW OF THE ALBUM

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 052025
 

(On February 28th Transylvanian Recordings will release the self-titled debut album by Stress Test from Portland, Oregon. What we have for you today is Todd Manning‘s review of the album and our premiere of its title song.)

With all the blends of sub-genres that make up the metal world today, grindcore and old-school thrash metal is a combination that doesn’t often pop up. But Portland’s Stress Test make it sound natural, like we all should’ve been doing this all along.

After a brief intro, “Degrees of Violence” vomits forth a tirade of crust and blast beats. The song is 30 seconds long, as it should be, and is awesome in all the standard grind kind of ways. “Coward” follows and at first glance seems similar to what came before. But there are moments that upon closer examination have a thrash feel. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GHOSTSMOKER — “ELOGIUM”

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Feb 052025
 

(written by Islander)

Smoke dope if you want, but today you can imagine what it might be like to pack your bong with ghosts and see what happens when you apply the flame.

The occasion for this mind game is a lyric video for the song “Elogium” that we’re premiering today. It’s the opening track from Inertia Cult, the debut album from Melbourne’s Ghostsmoker that’s now set for release by Art As Catharsis on March 21st, described by the label as “a record of earth-shaking sludge and blackened doom.”

But before we get to that, you ought to first allow your mind to be invaded by a gripping video for the first single from the album, “Incarnate.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SARKOM — “ENTER AS FOOL – EXIT AS BEAST”

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Feb 052025
 

(written by Islander)

There’s nothing wrong with a very good band sticking to what they know and essentially repeating an appealing formula from one record to the next. Many have done that, including groups who’ve been practicing their craft for long stretches of time.

On the other hand, many of us (most of us?) are more interested in creative types who aren’t content to crank out basically the same thing over and over again, even if it’s appealing. Over a large span of years, that might begin to seem like working on a musical assembly line, where boredom sets in.

Of course, varying a workable formula can be risky, depending on the extent and nature of the changes. What’s fun and exciting for the musician might be confusing and unwelcome to their fans.

Which brings us to Sarkom, the Norwegian black metal band who are now several years into their third decade of music-making, and just a couple of weeks away from the release of their fifth album, Exceed In2 Chaos. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INBORN SUFFERING — “PALE GREY MONOCHROME”

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Feb 042025
 

(written by Islander)

Inborn Suffering came together in Paris in 2002. They released two albums that made substantial impact craters in the landscape of doom, Wordless Hope in 2006 and Regression To Nothingness in 2012, and then they sunk into lightless depths for a long time. After returning with singles in 2023 and 2024, they now have a new album for us that will be released on February 7th by Ardua Music.

The name of the new album, Pale Grey Monochrome, is not an inviting one. It’s more fitting as a description of a winter sky hiding the sun beneath a curtain of slate that stretches from horizon to horizon than as a come-on for new music. It seems to promise a colorless gloom, drab and featureless. There is a reason for the name, but the music is the antithesis of monochromatic, as you will soon see. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IMPURIST — “EVOLVING CORTEX”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 032025
 

(written by Islander)

Impurist are a new death metal band formed in Hull, England in 2023. Their lineup features former and current members of Extreme Noise Terror, Gorerotted, Winterfylleth, and Introrectalgestation. They proudly proclaim that they have taken influence from the bands they grew up listening to, and they obviously must have grown up listening to violent horrors.

Impurist made their recording debut in April of last year with an EP aptly named Punishment Without Mercy. Since then they’ve recorded a second EP entitled Evolving Cortex. It will be released by 783label on CD, cassette tape, and 12″ vinyl — and the vinyl edition will include the band’s debut EP as the B-side.

The new EP, Evolving Cortex, includes three songs, and we have some thoughts about each of them — along with the premiere of a frightening animated lyric video for the title song. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALL ARE TO RETURN — “THAT WHICH LISTENS”

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Feb 032025
 

(written by Islander)

The Dutch two-man formation All Are To Return describe their creations as “extreme, experimental music with an urgent sense of dread.” They began with a self-titled EP in 2020 and have followed that with three more releases, most recently a 2024 album named AATR III on Tartarus Records. Simply reading the eloquent but harrowing thematic descriptions of these records at Bandcamp demonstrates the duo’s extremely grim, indeed nihilistic, perspectives on humanity’s degraded past and hopeless future.

The music has been in line with those perspectives. It has often generated massive and caustic assaults on the senses, hostile and brutalizing, furious and doomed, sometimes cinematic in its sweep, but also deeply chilling and relentlessly unsettling.

For their most recent effort AATR have created a new audio/visual work named Limen. It consists of four pieces of music, each of them with a video, that present an interconnected narrative. Limen is also intensely disturbing, but represents a variation that makes greater use of haunting and harsh ambient sensations, though the band haven’t abandoned their industrial proclivities. It also again vividly displays the duo’s talent for crafting harrowing poetry.

Late last month the first chapter of the new EP was revealed, and today we’re revealing the fourth one. Continue reading »

ACT OF IMPALEMENT: “PIERCING THE HEAVENS”

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Jan 312025
 

(written by Islander)

The musical trajectory of Nashville’s Act of Impalement has been intriguing (and scary) to observe. Their 2018 debut album Perdition Cult (released by Unspeakable Axe) quickly proved they could pull off a whole lot of monstrous magic acts, veering from one parcel of extreme influences to another without losing their footing.

Their second album Infernal Ordinance (their first one on Caligari Records), was more focused, less likely than their debut to throw listeners off-balance but still packed with thrilling and chilling variations. As one writer put it, that album was “akin to a morbid melting pot of Cianide, Bolt Thrower, Prophecy of Doom, and Archgoat.”

And now we have Act of Impalement‘s third album Profane Alter on the way, again to be ushered toward us by Caligari Records. It’s introduced on behalf of the label with these reference points:

Though still drawing from the likes of Autopsy, Incantation, and of course Cianide, Act of Impalement‘s third album is a filthy & finely honed assault of bestial death metal, drawing more inspiration from the likes of Belgium’s Possession, Finland’s Belial, and ever more Archgoat.

What we have for you today is the second song to be disgorged from Profane Altar, the vividly and accurately named “Piercing the Heavens“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXORDIUM MORS — “OATH”

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Jan 302025
 

(written by Islander)

“After more than two decades of relentless chaos, the blackened legions of Exordium Mors return once again, forging their path with maniacal speed, blistering melody, reckless vitriol, and sheer violent brutality. Their sound is hammered with an iron fist, delivering ruthless, in-your-face hostility.”

That is how PR materials we’ve received begin to introduce Sworn To Heresy, a new EP by New Zealand’s Exordium Mors that will be loosed upon the world by Praetorian Sword Records on March 1st. The words are in line with this band’s dominant reputation, a reputation for discharging sounds of frenzy and ferocity. But that is only part of the Exordium Mors story, albeit a significant part.

To quote ourselves this time, from our premiere of the band’s last album As Legends Fade and Gods Die (2022), their music “moves at a dizzying, high-octane pace,” generating “storms of vitriol and volatility,” but it also interweaves “mood-changing melodies that are sinister and gloomy but also exotic and brazenly imperious,” as well as incorporating “wild soloing that reaches epic heights.” And it has proven to be multi-faceted (“every song is a kaleidoscopic adventure”) and executed with surgical precision.

To return to the PR materials for the new EP, they promise “a bold evolution” in the band’s sound as Exordium Mors enter their third decade. What does this mean… and is it cause for concern? Continue reading »

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