AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HUSQWARNAH — “PURIFICATION THROUGH SACRIFICE”

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Sep 122024
 

(written by Islander)

In December 2021 we premiered and reviewed Husqwarnah‘s debut album Front Toward Enemy. I also put one of the songs from that album (“Ignoto1”) on our list of 2021’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (here), a recognition of how hook-laden and compulsive the music was — in addition to it being tank-like, ravaging, fire-breathing, and morbid.

Today we see what these Italian death metal marauders have been up to since then, as we again host a full stream of Husqwarnah‘s newest album, Purification Through Sacrifice, which is set for release on September 16th by the distinctive Time To Kill Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HAMMERFILOSOFI — “SOLUS”

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Sep 122024
 

(written by Islander)

Tomorrow, on the first Friday the 13th of 2024, ATMF will release a new EP by the Italian/Norwegian duo Hammerfilosofi. Its full name is SOLUS (Igne Natura Renovator Integra).

The EP follows by almost exactly one year the band’s first release and debut album The Desolate One, which we premiered here, calling it ” fanatical, fiery, and frightening,” but also “a harrowing esoteric process of liberation and elevation.”

ATMF portrays the new EP as “four psalms of relentless, multi-layered, and hellish madness,” and the band’s NKTFR describes it as “an inward journey of spiritual violence and cathartic soul-searching,” picking up from where The Desolate One left off: “Both musically and conceptually we want to bring back some of that rebellious pride, wrath, and danger – some Blood, Fire, and Death – that for us are mandatory ingredients in Black Metal.”

As we did for the album, today we present SOLUS… from beginning to end. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FERAL — “THE DEVOURING STORM”

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Sep 112024
 

Seventeen is a prime number, and seventeen is the number of years that the savage Swedish band Feral have lived so far. Their music has also proven to be prime, prime cuts for carnivores of massive and mauling but also dynamic and addictive death metal.

On October 18th Transcending Obscurity Records will add to an already impressive Feral discography by releasing the band’s fourth album, To Usurp the Thrones, and today we’re premiering a song from the album fittingly named “The Devouring Storm“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INGURGITATING OBLIVION — “THE BARREN EARTH OOZES BLOOD, AND SHAKES AND MOANS, TO DRINK HER CHILDREN’S GORE” (PART 3)

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Sep 112024
 

(written by Islander)

It’s a standard practice for bands and record labels to preview forthcoming albums by releasing a song or two (or more) in advance of the release date. It’s extremely uncommon for anyone to do what the German avant-garde death metal band Ingurgitating Oblivion and Willowtip Records have been doing over the last few months: releasing three segments of a single song, one after another.

On paper, it looks like a risky strategy. Wouldn’t most people lose patience or get frustrated, hearing only a part of a song instead of getting the chance to listen to all of it, especially when listeners have to wait a month in between each part? And because even at the end all you have before the album release is one song, instead of several songs?

Well yes, it’s risky. But this uncommon strategy works for Ingurgitating Oblivion because the long song they’ve been rolling out in segments is itself so unusual, and because each Part has been as long as (or longer than) an individual track on most albums, but mainly because each Part has so powerfully seized attention on its own.

Moreover, the first two parts have succeeded in building an eager anticipation for the third one, to find out how this uncommon extravaganza is going to end — and today we bring you the answer. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HAND OF OMEGA — “THE END OF THE BEGINNING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 102024
 

(written by Islander)

We live in a world where Darwin’s radical old theory has been replaced and evolution is now determined by the survival of the shittest, a world in which some are sworn to the Mentat’s Oath and others have become cyberspace conscripts, with our lives supported by nothing but foundations built on shifting sands, watching the Amazon burning (and much of the rest of the world with it), our shapes determined by a wretched new convolution.

And there I’ve managed to stitch together all of the song titles from the debut album by the UK band Hand of Omega, the name of which is The End Of The Beginning.

I have no idea whether Hand of Omega would endorse this way of interpreting their thematic intentions, but their music seems consistent with it, because it’s both crushingly bleak and destructively enraged — as you’ll find out today through our premiere of the album in advance of its September 13 release by the Irish label Cursed Monk Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BTK (BIND TORTURE KILL) — “BANDAISON”

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Sep 092024
 

You’re about to see a violent short film in the company of violent music. The video doesn’t show us what the victim did to deserve his brutal punishment, if he did anything deserving of such a fatal encounter. We only get the headlong chase, a struggle in the mud, and the vengeance of the hangman’s noose.

Based on the name of the song presented through the video — “Bandaison” — the motivating factor may have been a perverse kind of sexual thrill, though whether the perversion took root in the victim or his assailant is ambiguous (the lyrics might shed light, but the expulsion of the words is so terrorizing that even those who speak French might face a challenge in deciphering them).

The perpetrators of the song are the French band BTK, which stands for Bind Torture Kill, and the source of the song is their forthcoming third album album Sauvagerie, which will eventually be released by a trio of labels on different formats. This one track will see digital release on September 12th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE — “LOSS”

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Sep 092024
 


(written by Islander)

On August 20, 2017, the day before a total solar eclipse I was about to witness in Wyoming, I wrote about a song I had heard the night before by a Canadian band named Hell Is Other People (it was the title track to their album Embrace, which came out about 10 days later). But over the course of many paragraphs before ever getting to the song I wrote about the band’s name, and about the alcohol-fueled discussion of it that took place among my friends and me under the stars that night.

I won’t put you through all those paragraphs again (they’re here if you want to read them), even though the discussion meant a lot to me then and still does. I’ll just mention that the band’s name is a famous statement from the play No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre, and it’s an assertion that’s subject to many interpretations, about the many ways in which other people can make life hell for us, or cause us to make our own lives into a hell.

Still grateful to this band for that night, today I’m going to get to their music a lot faster, because we’ve got a song to premiere from their new album Moirae, which comes a long seven years after Embrace. One thing that hasn’t changed over those many years is this band’s capacity to be thought-provoking — and to pierce through into the heart of where our emotions come from. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MAGNETAR — “SCUM”

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Sep 062024
 

In learning about the musical influences of the British band Magnetar you might imagine the re-emergence of the three-headed Cerberus once more stalking at the gates of Hades. They describe the musical inspirations encompassed on their debut album There Will Be No Peace in My Valley this way:

Primarily the great melodic Black/Death Swedish bands of No Fashion Records in the early 90s. Then also the muscularity and speed of 80s North & South American thrash/death acts such as Slayer, Sepultura and Infernal Majesty. And last but never least, the hallowed British bands of the 80s including Judas Priest, Motörhead and Iron Maiden. Also, of course, is a passing nod to our Black Metal forefathers Darkthrone, Immortal & Bathory.

So maybe this hound has four heads instead of three. That’s a hell of a list of influences, to be sure, but may leave you wondering how in the world all those heads could work together in a coherent way. We’ll help you answer that question today through our premiere of the album’s opening track, “SCUM“, in advance of the album’s release by Vendetta Records on September 27th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KRVL — “ZIELENRUST”

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Sep 062024
 

The video prepared for KrvL‘s song “Zielenrust“, which you’re about to see and hear, is a beautiful but haunting piece of art. Slow-moving and only occasionally accented by color, it depicts a solitary figure communing in their own way with the expanse of the ocean and its gently rolling tides. Mysterious and mesmerizing, it’s an interesting setting for a song that proves to be… shattering.

The song is the first single from the forthcoming second album by this Belgian black metal band, whose name is a compacted reference to the Belgian forest named Kravaal. Entitled Donkere Paden (“Dark Paths”), it will be released on October 11th by These Hands Melt and has become available for order just in time to take advantage of another Bandcamp Friday. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EC{C}ENTRIC PENDULUM — “PERSPECTIVA INVERTALIS”

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Sep 052024
 

The Indian metal band Ec{c}entric Pendulum send all sorts of signals about the nature of their music before you hear a single note. Their name of course, which kindles images of a swinging thing that doesn’t swing like you expect it will, and the quirky typography they use in spelling it. And then there’s the title of their forthcoming second album — Perspectiva Invertalis — a Latin phrase which means “inverted perspective”.

And then there’s that cover art up above by Sam Ektoplasm, which is (to put it mildly) out of the ordinary for a metal band (or any band).

Undoubtedly some of you are aware of what Ec{c}entric Pendulum do with their music, because they do have a previous album (Winding the Optics) to their credit, and they’ve played at Wacken Open Air in Germany (the first band to represent India there), and shared stages in both Europe and India with the likes of Opeth, Textures, Meshuggah, Kreator, Orphaned Land, and recently Suffocation.

But it’s been more than a dozen years since that first album was released, and nearly seven years since their Tellurian Concepts EP, and so even if you’ve heard what they’ve done in the past, it’s best to now listen with fresh ears to what they’ve accomplished on this new album, which will be released tomorrow via Subcontinental Records. Continue reading »

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