AN NCS PREMIERE: “INCENDIUM” BY BURIAL HORDES

 Premieres  12 Responses »
Jan 022014
 

I first happened upon Burial Hordes from Greece last January after discovering their split release with Enshadowed, which is excellent (reviewed here). They have a new album on the way, entitled Incendium, which will be released later this month by the Polish label Hellthrasher Productions. It features cover art by Mark Riddick, production by Devo Andersson (Marduk), and eight tracks of striking music divided into two “chapters” — “Decay” and “Fall”. Today we have the privilege of exclusively premiering the new album’s title song, “Incendium”.

It’s a gripping piece of music, shrouded in darkness and weighted by a choking atmosphere of doom and despair. Deep, ominous riffs accompany hoarse, heartless roars and hair-raising shrieks, while an off-the-chain drum performance infuses the music with powerful energy, and chiming guitar notes create an almost ethereal contrast. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE — CRYPTODIRA: “AN UNMARKED GRAVE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 302013
 

(Through the efforts of NCS contributor Austin Weber, We have the privilege of premiering a new EP by a New York metal band named Cryptodira. Austin provides the following introduction.)

Cryptodira are part of a new breed of metal bands. They don’t play within merely one style or genre but instead craft a multi-faceted sound all their own. I’ve compared them to East Of The Wall before, due to their post-metal influence, but Cryptodira are quite comfortable interspersing death metal and groove into their music as well.

While Cryptodira’s new EP, An Unmarked Grave, does not come out until January 4th, they graciously hooked us up with an exclusive stream ahead of its release. Both tracks are chaotic treats of swirling chaos and swelling calm, though some differences between them are apparent.

Track one, “Descension”, is certainly the faster of the two, exploding with a violent energy, abounding in frenzied, hard-hitting drums until (as usual) the band take you into beautiful instrumental reprieves and a lengthy singing passage. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “PROFANE” BY THE CONJURATION

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 132013
 

(NCS contributor Austin Weber introduces our exclusive premiere of yet another advance track from the forthcoming album by The Conjuration.)

As I mentioned rather recently when talking about The Conjuration here at NCS, they have a new album entitled Surreal on the horizon. While I have been informed it may be a couple months before it’s released, sole band member Corey Jason wanted to give us a bad case of aural AIDS caused by metal in the form of a new track entitled “Profane”. If anyone else suffers a similar reaction, please let me know so we can swap pics!

As far as The Conjuration tracks go, this one is a bit more straightforward, yet it still gives off the same mentally deranged vibe I’ve grown to love in the band’s music. While largely an aggressive death metal number, the early slight instrumental pause builds up the tension wonderfully— especially when coupled with the unsettling raspy howl that creepily appears for a few seconds hiding under the music around the 1:32 mark. Continue reading »

TEMPEL — “RISING FROM THE ABYSS”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Dec 102013
 

“Tempel” is the new name of an Arizona band formerly known as Temple. Those of you who are already familiar with their music are probably already fans. For everyone else, remember the name, because their debut album On the Steps of the Temple is a gem. Prosthetic Records will be giving it a broad-scale release in January 2014, and today we’re delighted to offer you an exclusive taste of what’s coming by featuring one of the album’s many strong tracks, “Rising From the Abyss”.

On the Steps of the Temple is an instrumental album, and one that succeeds brilliantly despite the lack of vocals. While much instrumental metal leans toward the proggy, post-metal end of the musical spectrum, Tempel have woven their dark tapestry primarily with strands drawn from death metal, doom, sludge, and black metal.

A musical meditation on greed, self-delusion, and their perils, On the Steps of the Temple is ominous, densely layered, and utterly crushing. Even for a solely instrumental work that exceeds 50 minutes in length, it’s an intense listening experience that commands attention from beginning to end. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “WHERE FLIES THE RAVEN” BY SOL NEGRO (And A Review of “DAWN OF A NEW SUN”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 182013
 

Sol Negro’s Dawn of A New Sun is an absolute gem. Originally released in a limited edition of cassette tapes last year, it’s about to get the full-fledged distribution it deserves via the excellent Mexico-based label Chaos Records. Today we’re giving you a taste of the album by premiering the record’s final track, “Where Flies the Raven”. But first, here are some impressions about Dawn of A New Sun as a whole.

Attempting to categorize the album in genre terms is a challenge. The music is remarkably dynamic, with different songs emphasizing different aspects of what turns out to be Sol Negro’s own very distinctive sound. At different moments I thought of bands such as Obscura and Death (at their most progressively inclined), though shrouded in a mantle of black metal and doom. But as it happens, the reference that may come closest to capturing the band’s core motif lies in the one cover song on the album: “Dead Emotion” by Paradise Lost, a brilliant song from the band’s second album Gothic (1991), which Sol Negro perform brilliantly.

And if all these diverse band references confuse you, trust me when I say that the music is masterfully cohesive. Sol Negro unite elements of doom, progressive death, and black metal to create a genuine feast for the ears. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “YOUR GOD” BY FEARED (And A Review of “VINTER”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Nov 182013
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the forthcoming album by Sweden’s Feared, and we’re also stoked to bring you the premiere of a new Feared song: “Your God”.)

A lot of us music fans, especially metal fans, and even more especially music fans who are musicians, have a good idea (or know very well) what goes into writing an album. It’s something that takes time, commitment, and if you care about your music, a great deal of deliberation over what you’re crafting in order to make it the best and most compelling it can be. But creating music has never really been a process that you can just schedule, put in the time, and expect it to come out fine. Some bands have managed to prove that idea wrong, like The Black Dahlia Murder, who’ve released albums on a reliable schedule and haven’t taken a quality dip. Other bands haven’t fared so well.

Usually, we tend to think of the creation process for an album-length work as a long-term endeavor. As fans, we may bitch about how much time it takes for a band to write and record their next album, but we also tend to become leery when a band releases a new album soon after the one that preceded it. So it’s a surprise that Feared, after releasing a monster of an album earlier this year in Furor Incarnatus, announced they’d be releasing another album this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THOSE DARN GNOMES – “RELIEF ORGAN”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Nov 082013
 

Regular readers of the site should recognize the name of this San Diego band, since I wrote about them only three days ago. Plus, their name is Those Darn Gnomes — not an easy name to forget once you’ve seen it. Their music isn’t easy to forget either. As of three days ago I had heard only one song, a long number named “Blacklip”, which will appear on their forthcoming debut album The Invariant. And now I’ve heard a second one — and you’ll get to hear it, too, because we’re premiering it right now.

The song’s name is “Relief Organ”. Like “Blacklip”, it’s longer than average, and like “Blacklip”, it’s a wild ride: heavy, slow, sludgy riffs mixed with distorted, proggy meanderings, mixed with cool jazz interludes, mixed with blasting drums and a blizzard of distorted chords, mixed with gargling gutturals, vomit-spewing howls, and mellow jazz-influenced female vocals (courtesy of guest vocalist Katie Walker). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VINDENSÅNG – “LIGHTS OF THE ABYSS”

 Premieres  11 Responses »
Nov 082013
 


(photo by Veleda Thorsson)

The best and the worst thing about life is that it’s full of surprises. When you need a bit of good fortune or at least a little stability, it delivers a car wreck and a shattered leg, as happened to a good friend yesterday. On the other hand, it delivers, on the same day, a brilliant new song from a band you last wrote about more than two years ago in a post that still holds the record for the fewest words ever written on this site about music.

More than two years ago I featured a song by a band from Pennsylvania named Vindensång from their 2008 debut album Terminus: Rebirth in Eight Parts, and introduced it with the word “THIS”. Now, the same band have a new album named Alpha, which they plan to release on February 4, 2014, and which will be a musical sequel to Terminus. And what we bring you today is the intergalactic premiere of one of the new album tracks, “Lights of the Abyss”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LISTEN TO A FULL-ALBUM STREAM OF EAST OF THE WALL’S “REDACTION ARTIFACTS” RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 312013
 

Two days ago New Jersey’s East of the Wall released their latest opus, Redaction Artifacts. It has already been showered with praise from many quarters, including Austin Weber’s review for our own humble site (here), which called the album “eclectic and captivating”, “a swirling hodge-podge of hostility, soothing calm, frequent tempo shifts, and beautiful singing mixed with hoarse bellows⎯all while being shred-filled and shaded by mercurial melodic explosions”, and the band’s “finest album yet”.

While we would like to believe that all right-thinking people accept our word in such matters as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — despite the fact that we rebelled against our own site’s name in recommending the album so strongly — the music speaks more powerfully than mere words. And while two songs from the album have previously been made available for streaming, we are privileged today to bring you Redaction Artifacts in its entirety. So listen to it next, and if you like what you hear, the album is available now, on CD through the band directly HERE, CD and digital at Amazon HERE, and the LP via Science Of Silence HERE.

Continue reading »

CHAPTERS: “THE IMPERIAL SKIES” (A Review and A Song Premiere)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 232013
 

(In this post we present our second review of the new album by Chapters — this one written by TheMadIsraeli — as well as the premiere of a combined song from the new album: “March of the Puritan/Arising”.)

This review comes later than I had planned. I was going to publish something I had originally written but it just didn’t convey the passion I have for this album.  Neither did I feel, in hindsight, that I gave Chapters their musical due, or rather, I was missing the target as far as what they do.  The thing is, Chapters channel a musical era of metal that I was passionately into and couldn’t get enough of.  The fact that a band like this existed when I discovered them back in 2011 excited me, and that excitement hasn’t waned one bit.  Their new album The Imperial Skies is one of the best releases of the year, no doubt, and it re-captures the excitement of a musical movement that unfortunately got trampled underfoot by the bullshit metalcore explosion that occurred from 2005 onward.

Chapters are, ironically because of their British origin, New Wave of American Metal.  I don’t say this solely as a matter my own speculation or opinion, mind you. In the friendships I’ve developed with masterminds Joe Nally and Angus Neyra, we’ve discussed this and they pretty much agree.  While they do draw influences from Death and from Bay Area thrash, it’s bands such as Shadows Fall, Lamb of God, God Forbid, Himsa, and early All That Remains who are the foundation Chapters have built upon.  Whether you want to call it metalcore (which I argue that stuff was) or not, Chapters fully embrace the thrash/hardcore/melodic death metal combination in which those bands fully entrenched themselves.

As such, you get all the expected elements: Melodic technical guitar work, driving emotive melodic passages, vocals with a great deal of passion behind them that sound like they’re being delivered at the risk of the vocalist’s voice, and beautiful acoustic interludes.  I eat this shit up, always have and always will, but Chapters deliver it exceptionally well, leagues beyond anyone else who’s tried to capture this sound since its heyday. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries