AN NCS PREMIERE: FULL-ALBUM STREAM OF “WOMB OF LILITHU” BY NECROPHOBIC

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Oct 232013
 

Sweden’s Necrophobic trace their roots back to Stockholm in 1989, right in the heart of an explosion of creativity when a uniquely Swedish brand of death metal was beginning to take the world by storm. Yet Necrophobic followed a different path. Along with Dissection (which was also formed in 1989), they began combining elements of death metal and second-wave black metal, helping establish the foundation that would go on to influence a multitude of other bands over the following decades.

Now Season of Mist is on the verge of releasing Necrophobic’s seventh album and their first in four years: Womb of Lilithu. Combining razor-sharp riffs, eerie melodies, progressive lead guitar work, and striking vocal variations, it’s a blend of the vicious and the spellbinding that will stand as one of the band’s strongest works to date.

Today we’re privileged to bring you a full-album stream of Womb of Lilithu. The album is due for release on October 29 in North America and October 25 everywhere else and can be pre-ordered here. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENDSTILLE – “STALIN NOTE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 102013
 

Germany’s Endstille are about to follow up their 2011 album Infektion 1813 with their eighth full-length, Kapitulation 2013, and today we will give you an exclusive taste of the album with the premiere of its eighth track, “Stalin Note”.

Endstille have always been somewhat unusual in the sphere of black metal, with many of their lyrical themes drawn from historical events, including events related to World War II and its aftermath. The “Stalin Note”, for example, refers to a proposal that Josef Stalin made to Western powers in 1952 “for the reunification and neutralization of Germany, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for ‘the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly’ and free activity of democratic parties and organizations.”

German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Western allies ultimately rejected this overture, and of course what followed were many decades in which Germany was a divided nation. There has been much debate about whether Stalin’s Note was genuine and about whether the West missed a chance for early reunification of Germany. It should not be forgotten, of course — and Endstille do not forget — the barbarity of Stalin’s regime. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WATCH THE SUN THROUGH A TELESCOPE (“YOU CAN’T KILL ME”)

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 012013
 

“Moody noise-rock cranked through a piss machine/ Beauty in soundscapes torn up by a synth ogre/ Toes dipped in a bowl of cold dog piss/ Clapping forever and no sound smiles/ Hooked on good music for miles and miles.” Three weeks ago I read that come-on for a forthcoming album by a one-man Canadian band named The Sun Through A Telescope. Didn’t know anything about them/him, but after seeing those words I had to find out. And that album, I Die Smiling, lit me up like a Roman candle. I hadn’t heard anything like it all year, or maybe ever.

I pleaded for a chance to premiere something — anything — from the album. This isn’t my usual behavior. We love to premiere music, but almost never ask for the opportunities (too afraid of rejection). Turns out those glory hogs at Invisible Oranges premiered the whole album. But I got my wish anyway, as you’re about to see.

What I got was the chance to premiere an official video for “You Can’t Kill Me”, the album’s opening track. Not just any old video, this one was made by David Hall of Maryland Deathfest the Movie fame, whose Handshake Inc. label is how I found out about I Die Smiling (get it here). It’s such a fitting marriage of imagery and music. Hall takes what appears to be a clip from a wholesome TV show and turns it into something strange and unsettling. The Sun Through A Telescope takes aspects of black metal, drone, post-metal, and sludge and turns them into something hypnotic and arresting. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KARTIKEYA — “TUNNELS OF NARAKA”

 Premieres  14 Responses »
Sep 192013
 

(Today we are proud to premiere the new song and video from an NCS favorite, Russia’s Kartikeya. TheMadIsraeli provides this introduction.)

I’m sure all of you are now frothing at the mouth as much as I was when I found out we’d be debuting “Tunnels of Naraka”. I’m especially excited and honored because it’s Kartikeya’s first-ever music video (which is done quite excellently I might add) and because the song we’re debuting is quite possibly one of their most brutal to date.

We’ve heard two songs from Samudra so far, those being “Durga Puja” and “Horrors of Home”. One displayed Kartikeya exploring their groove side a bit more, while the latter saw the band deliver a more evolved version of a solid standard Kartikeya track, full of heavy riffs, suffocating atmosphere, convincing mood, and an abundance of surprises. “Tunnels of Naraka” is both the third and perhaps the final song we’ll hear before this album is released, and what a high note to do so on.

Kartikeya are in my mind a quintessential example of what metal needs right now: Music that is brutal, epic, bombastic, and chaotic, while achieving proggy undertones and melodic reprieves at the same time. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RIVERS OF NIHIL — “MECHANICAL TREES”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Sep 182013
 

On October 15 Metal Blade Records will release the debut album by Rivers of Nihil — The Conscious Seed of Light — and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s sixth track, “Mechanical Trees”.

We’ve been following this Reading, Pennsylvania band since January 2012, close on the heels of their second EP, Temporality Unbound. We didn’t know for sure what the future would hold in store for them, but the potential was undeniable. And, as things turned out, that potential blossomed into a contract with Metal Blade last December and then an intense recording session in St Petersburg, Florida, with Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal) at his Mana Recording Studio in March. And now we have the results.

The Conscious Seed of Light began with the idea that it would be the first of four albums, each one reflecting a particular season of the year. Vivaldi meets death metal? Bassist/vocalist Adam Biggs explains that this debut album “is intended to be representative of Spring and explores various themes concerning new beginnings, growth, and an attachment to the natural world in a post-human Earth.” That’s right — post-human. It is a death metal album after all, one graced by the cover art of Dan Seagrave, which isn’t exactly the typical imagery of spring. As guitarist Brody Uttley observes, “What we see on the cover is a landscape of a world that doesn’t need mankind, we are relics here, and the sun is the only true master.” Continue reading »

VASALLO: “BLACK SWAN EVENTS”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Sep 062013
 


(photo by Brandon Hunt)

What I’m about to say won’t come as a complete shock to those of you who read NCS regularly, but it may still be a challenge to wrap your mind around it:  Nick Vasallo, lead vocalist and songwriter for the excellent technical death metal band Oblivion, has a Ph.D. in Music, is a professor at Cal State Polytechnic University (Pomona), and is a composer of classical music whose works have been performed internationally.

But even if you knew all that, you may not know that one of Vassalo’s compositions, and the one that earned him his Ph.D., represents a collision of heavy metal and classical music, and then ultimately a synthesis of the two. The name of the piece is Black Swan Events, and later in this post you’re going to see and hear the premiere of a video of its performance in Berkeley, California, on August 17, 2013.

The integration of metal and classical music in this concerto goes well beyond the fact that it was written for electric guitar, drum set, and orchestra. The integration occurs at a much deeper level, as I’ll do my best to explain in a moment. But first, it may help to know where the title of the work comes from. Continue reading »

BURNING GHATS: “SOMETHING OTHER THAN YOURSELF” (A REVIEW AND A SONG PREMIERE)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 062013
 

The one thing Vancouver’s Burning Ghats have always had going for them is the capacity to trigger an explosion of abrasive mayhem. They sound like they’ve got high-octane gasoline for blood that someone ignites with an acetylene torch right before they kick into gear. But as time has passed, they’ve become ever more interesting, and their debut album, Something Other Than Yourself, is their best music yet.

It takes a special kind of talent to rip through 10 songs in 20 minutes, with more than half of them coming in at slightly more than a minute or less, and have each of the songs sound like they mean something. They’re like members of a big violent family — you can see the DNA all the cousins share, but they’re each distinctive. Not that you’d want to have a sit-down dinner with this family, at least not without putting away the breakables and all the sharp things.

What they share: discord and dissonance, feedback galore, hardcore fury, crust-punk chords, kidney-punching bass, drums that clatter and hit the d-beat, and vocals bled raw, like a throat being cinched with barbed wire. (Oh man, are the vocals good.) Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THEATRE NOCTURNE – “NEPENTHE AND LAVENDER”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 172013
 

When we got the chance to premiere the new music video from Buffalo, New York’s Theatre Nocturne, we jumped on it. Not only is “Nepenthe and Lavender” a killer song, the video itself is also riveting to watch.

As for the music, it’s flat-out explosive — a jet-fueled rampage of blackened death metal that’s a sure-fire headbang trigger. It lets all of the band’s talented performers strut their stuff, and they’ve definitely got the right stuff: razor-edged riffing and fiery soloing, gut-rumbling bass, munitions-grade drumwork, and feral howls. And you gotta love the spine-jarring bass lead that takes center stage in the song’s mid-section.

But there’s more to the music than a pleasing amount of technical flash and a healthy dose of ravenous brutality. “Nepenthe and Lavender” is also a dynamic, well-written song with a catchy melody, the sort of thing that pulls you back for repeat listens. And the production quality is excellent.

As for the video — filmed and produced by Doug White of Watchmen Recording Studios — it layers a montage of images of the dead over well-filmed, well-edited video of the band thrashing in a fire-lit space. The photos are from another era, solemn portraits of loss, the living and the dead side-by-side. Since “nepenthe” is a medicine for sorrow, a drug of forgetfulness in the ancient Greek, the imagery is fitting. Continue reading »

RAZORMAZE: AN NCS PREMIERE AND AN INTERVIEW

 Interviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Jul 082013
 

The “re-thrash” movement has been pronounced dead and gone by more than one observer, and it’s hard to argue with the proposition that the the vast majority of thrash revival bands who glutted the market over the last decade produced little more than formulaic music with some nostalgic appeal but no staying power. The bands who succeeded in capturing the imagination of fans, and who are still vibrantly with us, were the ones who bucked the trend by building something original and interesting on top of a thrash foundation — bands such as Vektor, Skeletonwitch, and Revocation. Now it’s time to add another name to that select list: Boston’s Razormaze.

With their forthcoming album Annihilatia, Razormaze have supercharged the thrash engine in ways that call to mind what their fellow Bostonians Revocation have accomplished — by extravagantly packing their songs with complex, head-spinning riffs and solos and interweaving elements of melodic death metal, groove, and even prog into the mix. The result is music that succeeds in being technically impressive and thoroughly interesting without sacrificing the blood-pumping speed and aggression of the thrash roots from which it grew.

Today we’re stoked to bring you our exclusive premiere of a new song from Annihilatia — “Something Like A War” — along with an interview of the band that we hope you’ll find as interesting as the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MAJESTIC DOWNFALL’S “WHITE DARK”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jun 202013
 

Jacobo Córdova may be best known in his guise as Mr. Jacko, the bassist/guitarist for Mexican death metal powerhouse Zombiefication. But he has another project, one in which he does everything, called Majestic Downfall. While Zombiefication has already produced one of 2013’s best death metal albums in At the Caves of Eternal, 2013 will also see the release of Majestic Downfall’s third album, fittingly entitled Three. It will come our way on July 15 via the completely dependable Chaos Records.  Today we have the privilege of bringing you a trio of Three premieres.

First, we’re unveiling the awesome cover art for the album (click the image above to see an even larger version). The artist is Norway’s Robert Høyem of At the Ends Design, who has created artwork for a long list of metal bands, including Shining, Iskald, Evoken, Kampfar, and Gravdal.

Second, near the end of this post we’ll show you Three’s track list.

And third, we’re giving you an exclusive listen to the first advance song from the new album — “White Dark”. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries