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AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TURIA — “ZUIVERHEID”

Nov 252015

Four days ago I included a review of an excellent debut album named Dor by the Dutch trio Turia in one of our new-music round-ups, and today it’s our pleasure to bring you the premiere of a video for a song from the album called “Zuiverheid“.

For me, Dor was an unexpected encounter, but it has proven to be very seductive. As I wrote in the review, much of the music (which was recorded live) could be characterized as propulsive, atmospheric black metal with teeth, barbed with melodic hooks and relying on sequences of repeating movements that drive the music into your head like railroad spikes. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MYRKUR TALKS FAN ART (PLUS SOME RECENT MUSIC)

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Nov 242015

Every year there seem to be one or two metal albums that become particular lightning rods of controversy. This year Myrkur’s debut album M was one of those. On the one hand, it has drawn praise — for example, it has just appeared in the Number 28 spot on DECIBEL magazine’s list of the Top 40 Albums of 2015, described as “a collage of icy vibes”, “haunted by demons and angels alike”, “true extreme metal, not intended for the weak, -hearted or -minded”. On the other hand, it has been the target of unpleasant assaults by various devotees of underground black metal who seem upset to the point of resentment by the attention it has garnered.

Well, the point of this feature really isn’t to rekindle that debate, it’s to share a video that’s an example of the positive interactions that can happen between musicians and their fans — a kind of feedback loop in which each inspires the other. It’s far from the only example, of course, but it seemed to me one worth spreading around. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEMIURGON — “TEATRO DEL COITO”

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Nov 242015

Last spring we had the pleasure of premiering a killer song from Above the Unworthy, the debut album by Italy’s Demiurgon released in June by Ungodly Ruins Production, and today we bring you the debut of a lyric video for a brand new Demiurgon song: “Teatro Del Coito“.

This new song is destined for release as part of a split with another Italian band, Valgrind. It’s a bit of an experiment for the band, as they recorded the song using drop-A tuning and wrote the song with lyrics in Italian. And for those who aren’t conversant in Italian, well, let’s just say that Demiurgon welcome you to the theater of sex. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCIENTIST — “THE LIGHTHOUSE”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 8 Responses »

Nov 232015

The experimental, Chicago-based metal band Scientist have recorded a follow-up to their self-titled debut album. This new album includes more vocals than the debut (contributed in part by some notable guests), but that doesn’t mean the music is any more conventional. It simply adds more dimensions to music that is still fascinatingly difficult to pin down.

The album’s title is 10100II00101, and it’s scheduled for digital and CD release on December 11 (with vinyl coming later from Hell Comes Home). For those who haven’t yet encountered Scientist, it’s the collaborative vehicle of these talented musicians: guitarist, vocalist, and founder Eric Plonka (Yakuza), guitarist/vocalist Patrick Auclair (Taken By The Sun), drummer Justin Cape (Taken By The Sun), and bassist Mathew Milligan (Making Ghosts).

I’ll also mention up-front the names of the guest vocalists: Stavros Giannopoulos (The Atlas Moth), Andre Almaraz (Pale Horseman), Anthony Cwan (Without Waves), and James Clayton Bowman. Aw hell, I might as well mention a few more notable names who are associated with this unpronounceable new album: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXTREME COLD WINTER — “PARADISE ENDS HERE”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Nov 232015

Everything about Extreme Cold Winter’s debut EP is massive, frigid, and pitiless. Compared to what I’ve heard from the music of founder AJ van Drench’s previous death/doom band Beyond Belief, Paradise Ends Here is slower, more desolate and forbidding, and more brutally staggering in the force of its impact. The word DOOM belongs before “death” this time, and it deserves all the capital letters.

In keeping with the band’s name, the song titles and the apocalyptic lyrical themes are devoted to the extinction of heat, joy, and life. The music and the words — which can be heard clearly in the well-rounded and monstrous growls of vocalist Pim Blankenstein (Officium Triste, The 11th Hour) — conjure feelings of desperation and dread. When Blankenstein roars, “We came from far, from raging worlds to kill again the sun and moon!”, you can easily imagine that he’s talking about the band, even though he’s not. Continue reading »

SPAWNING ABHORRENCE: “THE WRITHING RHETORIC”

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Nov 222015

Spawning Abhorrence from Leeds in the UK have finished work on their second album, The Sleepless One, and they’ve just released one of the new songs (“The Writhing Rhetoric”) for streaming. Even though we’re a few hours late to call it an actual premiere, we’ve decided to help spread it around because it’s an obliterating listening experience. And what better way to close out the weekend and get our game faces on for the new week than by getting obliterated?

I could probably just leave it at that, but I can’t resist adding a few more words of introduction, just so you have a better idea how the obliteration will proceed.

It will happen in a torrent of furiously writhing, viciously jabbing, and mercilessly grinding death metal riffs, accompanied by hyper-speed drumming and ghastly roars. And in the second half of this barrage, some interesting things will happen as the band give the song added texture, when a brief moment of near-silence paves the way for a combination of percussive blasting and dark, shimmering melody. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THIRD SOVEREIGN — “SAKEI AI HLA / GRAVE OF HUMANITY”

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Nov 222015

India’s Third Sovereign released their debut album Destined To Suffer eight years ago. In the intervening years, the band relocated to a remote state named Mizoram in the northeastern part of the country and have now recorded a new album named Perversion Swallowing Sanity that’s due for release by the Transcending Obscurity India label in January of the coming new year. Today we bring you the album’s opening track, a two-part manifesto named “Sakei Ai Hla / Grave of Humanity”.

The song’s exotic introductory section builds an atmosphere that’s sinister and brooding, while introducing a skull-pounding riff that then quickly accelerates into a thrashing charge of death metal ferocity. With the vocalist barking and snarling at high speed, the band inflict a sonic beating that jabs hard and fast and then rides right over the listeners’ prone bodies in a gallop. The rhythmic grooves in the song are damned infectious, and the band take the music through its dynamic paces without ever sacrificing the overarching aura of malevolence and morbidity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE CANYON OBSERVER — “FVCK”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 192015

FVCK is the title of the debut album by Slovenia’s The Canyon Observer, and it will fuck you up. It’s almost unremittingly intense — as heavy as a pile of corpses, as hallucinatory as a drug-induced nightmare, chaotic, deranged, and powerfully disorienting. It’s also spellbinding, a descent into a subterranean demolition zone that proves to be as hypnotic as it is harrowing.

Three of the album’s four songs are long ones, ranging from roughly nine minutes to almost 15, and the first three tracks flow into each other, further deepening the immersive effect of the music. Making your way straight through the album is an emotionally exhausting experience, but there’s really no other good way to do it. Each of the songs are devastating enough standing by themselves, but it’s the combined, layering effect of all of them together that makes this album such a towering monument of derangement and catastrophe. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: ESCARNIUM — “GODLESS SHRINE OF DECAY”

Album Reviews, Premieres 12 Responses »

Nov 182015

Earlier this year the Brazilian death metal band Escarnium signed a North American deal with Redefining Darkness Records, looking ahead to the release of their next album. To pave the way for that, Redefining Darkness is releasing Godless Shrine of Decay, a compilation that includes selected cuts (all of them remastered) from the band’s previous releases as well as one new song, and we’ve got a full stream of this godless shrine for you today. It seems only fair to issue a warning in advance: Prepare for a ravaging onslaught of hellish old school death metal.

The album hits the ground running (“marauding” would actually be a better word) with “Radioactive Doom” from the band’s 2014 single Genocide Ritual and then moves to “Human Waste”, the previously unreleased track that’s included on the album. From there you get the title track from that 2014 single, seven decimating cuts from the band’s 2012 debut album Excruciating Existence, five tracks from the 2011 EP Rex Verminorum, and the title song from their first demo, 2009’s Covered In Decadence. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PUNCHING MOSES — “HUMANITY PANDEMIC”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Nov 182015

Integrity and Ringworm may be the first names that come to mind when people think of Cleveland’s landmark contributions to the inventive fusion of hardcore punk and metal, but those names don’t exhaust the town’s hotbed of vicious talent. Witness the new EP Humanity Pandemic by Punching Moses. For this listener, it’s been a revelation.

The opening instrumental track “Intro-Venous” may get your mind thinking in a certain direction. Slow, morbid, and heavy, with dismal guitar harmonies and a squalling, bluesy guitar solo, it might lead you to think you’re in for a really good dose of stoner doom — and then the double-bass kicks in and the riffs start to jab in a flurry. Even then, you don’t realize until looking back at the song after finishing the EP that you’ve just been teetering on the edge of an inferno. The rest of the songs hit you from behind and shove you all the way into the flames. Continue reading »

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