AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KONKEROR – “I, MONOLITHIC”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Mar 242014
 

In October 2012, NCS writer TheMadisraeli went bonkers over the debut album by a band from the outskirts of Detroit named Konkeror. He threw around comparisons to the likes of Melechesh, Nile, Vader, Obituary, and Immolation and concluded by praising The Abysmal Horizons as “a collection of songs that prove potent enough to compete with even the most legendary of death metal veterans — it’s impressive, it’s vicious, it’s sophisticated, it’s badass.”

Now, Lacerated Enemy Records is on the verge of re-launching Konkeror’s debut worldwide with brand new eye-catching artwork by Mark Cooper (above), in physical as well digital formats, and including Konkeror’s recently recorded cover of Bolt Thrower’s “Cenotaph” as a bonus track. And to help add fuel to the launch we’re premiering the band’s official video for the album’s first track, “I, Monolithic”. To borrow TheMadIsraeli’s words about this song:

“A foreboding acoustic intro followed by a doom riff with badass solo work ushers in a torrent of blackened death metal ferocity.  The riffs here just catch your ear, attach to your memory like leeches, and mummify you from the inside out…. After this song alone, you’ll feel like someone just hit you with a truck.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BENEATH — “CHALICE”

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Mar 212014
 

In early February we featured the fetching piece of cover art by Raymond Swanland that you see above, along with the fetching news that Iceland’s Beneath would be releasing a new album named The Barren Throne, via Unique Leader on April 29. We’ve written frequently about Beneath. To quote our chum Gemma Alexander, who interviewed members of the band in Iceland a couple of years ago, they are fairly new, but the musicians behind the name are some of the heaviest hitters in Icelandic metal.

“[W]ith Unnar Sigurðsson of Ophidian I fame on guitar, and with drums provided by Atrum’s Ragnar Sverisson, Beneath came out swinging in 2009, winning Iceland’s first Wacken Metal Battle. An EP followed in 2010, with their first full-length, Enslaved by Fear, released [in] July [2012]. Needless to say, all of the usual metaphors involving blunt force trauma apply.”

Beneath have a new vocalist since their last release — Benedikt Natanael Bjanason (also with Azoic) — and we’re delighted to give you a first listen to him and to what Beneath have cooked up for their new record as we premiere the official lyric video for “Chalice”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE AND A REVIEW: DEAD IN THE MANGER — “TRANSIENCE”

 Premieres, Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Mar 202014
 

Transience is the name of the debut EP by a mysterious new group named Dead In the Manger. Although the band has not publicly disclosed their identities or location, nor even shared much information about themselves with 20 Buck Spin — the label that pounced on this EP after hearing it and will be handling the release on April 29 — their music says all you need to know.

The EP consists of six songs, entitled “Parts I – VI”, and it’s a multi-headed beast. “Part I” for example is a slow guitar instrumental, the slightly distorted notes conveying a somber, affecting melody while deep in the distance the vocalist howls in a throat-bursting agony.

“Part II”, on the other hand, races from the starting gate, driven by a swirling, swarming lead guitar melody and a high-speed drum assault. And that brings us to the song we’re premiering today: “Part III”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTIVERSE — “BETHLEM”

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Mar 202014
 

Antiverse is a band of old friends from Minneapolis who have been involved in other musical projects since the 90s but have now united under the Antiverse name to release Cosmic Horror. To be clear, Cosmic Horror is the title of their debut album (due for release on April 8), though it could also appropriately describe the forces summoned by their music. At the end of this post we’ll give you and the rest of the world a first taste of the album as we premiere a song named “Bethlem”.

The band’s guitarist and backing vocalist Carl Skildum described the album’s concept this way: “It reflects our interests in dystopian science fiction and horror, and humanity’s tenuous place in the universe. The name Cosmic Horror obviously is a tip of the hat to Lovecraft although none of the songs specifically address his literary creations, just the general feeling of dread and a sense of being taken unaware by events far beyond our ability to comprehend. It’s a loosely organized grand tour of mayhem, with scientific hubris, North American folklore and cryptids, and otherworldly invaders all taking their turns.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IMBALANCED — “ASSIMILATION OF THE ENSLAVED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  9 Responses »
Mar 192014
 

(Our man Leperkahn reviews the new EP by San Diego’s Imbalanced., and delivers a full stream of the EP to boot.)

If you’ve followed NCS for a decent amount of time, you may remember the Imbalanced name from when I covered them in my second post for the site, a San Diego death metal/Bob Filner-themed affair. Luckily for us, the trio have returned with a new mini-slab of their blistering technical death metal for us all, in the form of a new EP entitled Assimilation Of The Enslaved, replete with the intriguing cover art of David Correa.

When describing Imbalanced’s sound to interested parties, I’ve pretty much always used Arsis as a reference point, and that point still stays. However, the grittier production of this EP (as compared to most of Arsis’ output), whether by design or necessity, has helped these guys create a different sound, a sound that is wholly and uniquely Imbalanced. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “SATAN SPEAKS” BY A HILL TO DIE UPON

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Mar 172014
 

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the third album from the titanic blackened death metal entity known as A Hill To Die Upon, and now it’s nearly upon us. Entitled Holy Despair, it’s scheduled for release on April 22 via Bombworks Records. The album follows 2011’s Omens, which Andy Synn praised in this review on our site, and an excellent 2013 single called manden med leen (reviewed here). We’ve had the chance to hear the new album in advance of its release, and it’s really, really good. Today, we’ll give you evidence of its strength by premiering an official lyric video for the song “Satan Speaks”.

As the lyrical text for the song, AHTDU used a poem of the same name by noted British essayist and novelist C.S. Lewis. It appears in a collection of poems named Spirits In Bondage that Lewis wrote as a young man after returning from the horrors of World War I. As Lewis wrote to a friend in 1918, the book is “mainly strung around the idea that I mentioned to you before – that nature is wholly diabolical &
malevolent and that God, if he exists, is outside of and in opposition to the cosmic arrangements.”

As one writer described the bleak message of the poem, “Death, not life, is the victor. The spider catches the fly, creation returns all its creatures to the dust from where they came, even the sun will in the end be ‘consumed’ by maximum entropy.” To the end of Lewis’ poem, AHDTU added their own final couplet: “I am Satan, accuser accursed / Heed not my words, I was not first.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EPISTASIS — “WITCH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a song from the new EP by NYC’s Epistasis with this review.)

Change and evolution in a musical context is a mighty double-edged sword for artists and fans alike, with fickle listener attitudes and the artists’ desire to keep the fans interested providing both a reason to change and a reason not to change. If we are being honest, evolution is necessary for any artists to feel they are not stagnating, but we as fans often have a hard time accepting this. At this perilous point of intersection is where Looking Through The Dead Glass, the new EP from New York City natives Epistasis comes in.

When I wrote about their 2012 self-titled EP last year at NCS they were a quirky, adventurous group tackling a potent merger of classical influences, metal, and elements of rock to create a dense web of ever-shifting madness. Now they’ve added vocals, and evolved their sound to include a strong black metal undercurrent. Both are bold moves that pay off for Epistasis, allowing them to explore new frontiers musically, while not repeating what they have done before. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “I THINK I CAN” BY WTCHDR

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Mar 112014
 

When I reviewed the debut EP by Vancouver’s WTCHDR in 2012, I wrote: “WTCHDR brings together a bit of gory old Carcass, a bit of Dismember, a bit of crawling death/doom, a bit of crust-punk, a few nail-bombs, and some arson at a nursing home. Put all those bits together and you get an earful of chainsaw violence that will hold your interest from start to finish.” The comments were even better. One compared the band’s speed and fury to Trap Them. Another commenter wrote: “That guitar tone makes me want to do things with 4 liters of whiskey and half a mascot suit.” Only the top half, no doubt.

I also admitted in the review that I was kind of afraid to listen to the EP before I started, given the presence in the band of two marauders (Cam and Kevin) from the Vancouver grind band Burning Ghats. Perhaps you can imagine my trepidation when I learned that WTCHDR are about to release their debut album, which is entitled Triumph and Despair. But I girded my loins with sheet metal and even agreed to premiere a song from the album named “I Think I Can”, which features guest vocals by Andrew Drury of Southern Lord artist Baptists — as if WTCHDR weren’t hardcore enough on their own without a terrorist like that in the mix.

“I Think I Can” rumbles like a freight train and stomps like your spine is a snake that needs killing. Selfishly I would have preferred that the song were longer, but on the other hand I still had one working leg by the time it ended, so there’s that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIRGE — “HYPERION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Mar 112014
 

About three weeks ago we featured an advance song from Hyperion, the forthcoming sixth album by the Parisian band Dirge. Today, in cooperation with the band’s new label Debemur Morti, we’re thrilled to help premiere a stream of Hyperion in its entirety.

On Hyperion, Dirge prove themselves to be immaculate practitioners of a dark and beautiful art. They stand like potent spellcasters at the intersection of doom, sludge, and post-metal, a place cloaked in perpetual night, hemmed in by black thorns, lit only by a sliver of moon above and the shimmer of winking stars.

The songs are long, culminating in a 16-minute instrumental closing track. They manage to be both ghostly and very heavy, both ethereal and menacing in the power of their undertow, like the siren song and the bottomless whirlpool. Combining low distorted chords and massive drum strikes with rippling lead guitar lines, mixing raw howling vocals with ghostly, subdued, clean ones, they walk a line between pain and perseverance without ever losing their balance. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GREY SKIES FALLEN — “RITUAL OF THE EXITER”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  6 Responses »
Mar 062014
 

Grey Skies Fallen are a New York band who trace their roots back to 1996. Since then they’ve released three full-length albums and two EPs, all of which are available for free download at the band’s web site (here). Along the way, they’ve made changes in their sound, as well as changes in the line-up, and they’re now set to release a new album entitled The Many Sides of Truth. Today we’re giving you a glimpse into the new work through our premiere of “Ritual of the Exiter”.

When I first heard this long song, I was left bedazzled, and grasping at straws in thinking about how to describe it. Just when I thought I understood what the band were up to, they crossed me up. As the title suggests, there is indeed a ritualistic quality to its progression, with the parts of the rite segmented by unexpected guitar interludes that break the building tension before the intensity begins to build again.

The song is anchored by a really good rhythm section, with both the bass and the drums getting their hooks into you. But the bleak melodic motifs in the music are the key to its success, along with the vocals, which are both clean and agonizing. Genre boundaries are ignored, with elements of doom, prog, black metal, and melodic death metal in the mix. Continue reading »

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