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AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: DESTRUKTOR — “OPPROBRIUM”

Jul 242015

Today is the day, the day when Hells Headbangers opens the cage door and allows Destruktor’s new album Opprobrium to run rampant across the world. It’s the band’s first full-length since Nailed emerged in 2009, and it’s one hell of an album.

The first minute and a half of “Priestiality” might seem at first blush to function as a statement of intent, its slow, dismal chords and funereal drum rhythm casting an aura of gloom right from the start. But slow and dismal isn’t really what Opprobrium is about. It’s about ripping big bleeding holes in your body while giving your head the kind of enthusiastic whipping it deserves.

With the exception of a few astutely placed breaks in the onslaught, Destruktor deliver one furious, fast-paced blast of energy after another, mixing together elements of black metal, thrash, and death metal into music that’s vicious but tremendously infectious (in both senses of the word). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OGOTAY — “ENTERING THE VOID”

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Jul 232015

The Polish death metal band Ogotay have completed a new album (their second) named Dead God’s Prophet that will be released by their new label Selfmadegod Records on August 1. We were given the opportunity to premiere a new song from the album of our own choosing. After listening to the album and liking it a lot, I agreed.

But picking the song turned out to be more difficult, because there is a lot of good stuff to choose from on this release, and the songs certainly aren’t all alike. The one I eventually chose was “Entering the Void”, which is the album’s fourth track. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFINCRAFT — “IMPIOUS SPAWN”

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Jul 222015

Alexander L. Brown’s cover art for the debut album by Finland’s Coffincraft will ensure that it gets noticed. But although eye-catching album art doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with ear-pleasing music, it certainly does in the case of In Eerie Slumber. And by “ear-pleasing”, I mean “skull-cleaving savagery”. If you doubt my word, dive into the song we’re about to premiere from the album — “Impious Spawn“.

In Eerie Slumber follows two previous EPs released by the band, 2010’s Bestial Conclusions and Shockwave of Truth from 2012. As before, Coffincraft channel the undead spirit of original Swedish and Finnish death metal from the early-to-mid ’90s, with a tip of the hat to bands like Bolt Thrower and Carcass as well. But the new album reflects an even more powerful mastery of the sound and style, and an approach to song-writing and execution that makes it sound vibrantly alive — and lethally evil. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: IN DREAD RESPONSE — “HEAVENSHORE”

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Jul 222015

(We premiere a full stream of the new album by New Zealand’s In Dread Response, with the following introduction by TheMadIsraeli.)

Melodic death metal and metalcore have been intersecting with each other for quite a while now. I’ve been a proponent of the idea that this has mostly produced mediocre music that should be of little interest, often resulting in little more than watered-down melodic death metal with clean pop vocals, riffing that lacks any technical edge, and a boring breakdown here and there. But In Dread Response have always consistently done it right, taking exactly the best aspects of both styles. The technical edge, ferocity, and speed of melodic death metal are in play, combined with metalcore’s emotive sense of melody, energy, and a vocal style that comes off as more emotionally charged. Think of early Killswitch Engage with Jesse Leech, except IDR are definitely about the more ferocious aspects of heavy music. And there are no breakdowns or clean vocals to be found here. Zero.

Heavenshore is the band’s third album, and their best. I’ve not heard metal of the melodic sort this emotionally charged or this vicious in a long time. It’s also one of the few instances in which I truly feel an album is “perfect”, in the sense that there is no filler on it. Every song is distinct and equally great, and I never have an urge to skip to the next track at any point. This is as repeat-listenable as Alive Or Just Breathing or Slaughter Of The Soul, and I’ve been treating it as an album of like prestige since the IDR guys sent me the promo of it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BREEDING FILTH — “PRONOUNCED CANCER”

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Jul 222015

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new song by Breeding Filth from Lafayette, Indiana.)

Back in March, I helped premiere the first single from Breeding Filth, a Lafayette, Indiana-based technical brutal death metal act. For those who didn’t catch my post before, the band includes members of fellow Indiana tech-death wunderkinds Dawn of Dementia, which should tip you off to the talent and quality involved with their music.

While the band has yet to set a release date for their debut album, Perverse Devolution, they’ve tentatively stated to me that it will be dropping toward the end of the year. To ease the burden of this long wait, we at NCS are proud to show you another song off their record called “Pronounced Cancer”.

If you like your death metal frantic yet full of finesse, then consider “Pronounced Cancer” a metastasizing treat, aurally akin to being helplessly dropped into a fucking war zone. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE AND A REVIEW: ARPHAEL — “GUIDED BY LIGHT”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Jul 212015

(In this post we present TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by the Ukrainian one-man band Arphael, along with a full-album stream.)

For me, this album represents a whole new evolutionary step for death metal. It would be hard to argue that Arphael’s music is nothing more than death metal, but it’s obviously the driving force behind his music. I feel like he sought to create something truly extreme and overwhelming in every sense, and he has already accomplished that goal.

I did a small write-up about the music not long ago, with a brief recommendation of his only album at that time, Ambigram, an album that threw more at me than I had any clue what to do with. Guided by Light is Arphael’s sophomore album, and it represents a dramatic step up in every way from his first album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AENAON AND VIRUS OF KOCH

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Jul 212015

We present to you in this post a special dual premiere, the two new songs by the Greek black metal bands Aenaon and Virus of Koch that will appear on their new 7″ vinyl split, scheduled for release on September 7, 2015, via III-Damnation Productions, with artwork by Alexander Leybovich. Below you will find a few words about each song — “Ultima Momentum” from Aenaon and “Voro: Forma Mentis” by Virus of Koch — plus the music streams.

The split will be released in 50 copies of black/white haze vinyl (available for pre-order here) and 200 copies in black vinyl (available here). In a word, it’s fantastic.

AENAON: “ULTIMA MOMENTUM”

The new song from Aenaon follows their brilliant 2014 album Extance, which made many of our year-end lists and was also the source of a track (“Grau Diva”) that we named to our list of last year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ORPHEUS OMEGA — “PARTUM VITA MORTEM”

Album Reviews, Premieres 6 Responses »

Jul 202015

(Today we bring you the premiere of a full stream of the new third album by Orpheus Omega, scheduled for release later this month by Kolony Records — preceded by this typically detailed review from our man DGR.)

Orpheus Omega are a young melodeath band from Melbourne, Australia. They’ve been around for seven years now and have managed to produce two albums, an EP — and one new disc coming out very soon. That album is the one you’re about to hear in its entirety, Partum Vita Mortem.

Until 2013, they operated under just the name Orpheus, but wound up adding the Omega to their name that year. They hail from the school of melodeath that places a heavy emphasis on keyboard work and guitar melody, the school that became incredibly popular with the explosion of bands like Soilwork, In Flames, and Dark Tranquillity. However, the band really came into their own with 2013’s Resillusion and showed that they could modernize that sound. They also proved that they would be one of those bands who seemed to improve astronomically with every album.

Over the past couple of years we, here at NCS seem to have had good fortune in finding groups like this, bands who are clearly students of a genre yet play like masters, who recognize the boundaries of what they are playing with yet still put out fantastic material with the tools they have. Aether Realm, Words Of Farewell, and Crepuscle spring to mind as more recent discoveries who, alongside Orpheus Omega, are proving to be the new blood of this keyboard-heavy branch of the melodeath genre. In the case of Orpheus Omega, Partum Vita Mortem is their most mature and well-developed album to date. Continue reading »

INFERA BRUO: A REVIEW OF “IN CONJURATION” AND THE PREMIERE OF “ASTROGENESIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

I’ve been on a Bindrune Recordings roll this week, with a review of the new Panopticon album on Monday, a review of the new Alda album on Wednesday (with a song premiere), and now this review of the new album by Boston’s Infera Bruo — and a premiere of one of its stellar new songs. I’ve been living with these three albums for a while, and life has been good. If it’s not too much to hope for some justice in the world, it should be good for these bands and this label as well.

Infera Bruo’s new album In Conjuration is the band’s third full-length, following their 2011 self-titled debut and 2013’s Desolate Unknown. In the past, the band’s music has drawn favorable comparisons to that of Enslaved, and no doubt the new album’s progressive casting of black metal will again invoke remembrances of those masterful Norwegians. These new compositions are often complex and challenging in ways that should appeal to fans who appreciate avant-garde approaches to extreme metal. But the album is also a very dark and unsettling beast, with an affinity for tension-ratcheting intensity that rarely reaches the breaking point. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ADVERSARIAL — “CURSED BLADES CAST UPON THE SLAVESCUM OF CHRIST”

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Jul 172015

The last two releases by Adversarial have been short ones — a split with Paroxsihzem last year (Warpit of Coiling Atrocities, reviewed here) and another one with Antediluvian in 2012 (Initiated In Impiety As Mysteries, reviewed here). Both of them were stunningly good — and so I’ve had supremely high expectations for the band’s second full-length, Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism. As high as they were, those expectations were elevated even further after I saw the band’s obliterating set on the final night of this year’s Maryland Deathfest.

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, when you have such high hopes for a new release, you find yourself at least somewhat disappointed when it finally arrives. Not this time.

Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism will be essential listening for fans of black/death. It’s Adversarial’s best work to date, which is saying something — a journey into a vortex of lightless chaos that’s both terrifying and somehow entrancing. Today we are privileged to unsheathe this black knife as we premiere one of a very strong album’s strongest tracks, “Cursed Blades Cast Upon the Slavescum of Christ“. Continue reading »

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