AN NCS PREMIERE: DECAYING — “ZERO HOUR”

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Oct 062014
 

 

Given my near-pathological affection for old-school death metal, and particularly the curriculum taught in old European schools, I was kind of stunned to realize that I’ve failed to write about Finland’s Decaying since reviewing their debut album (Devastate) back in 2011. Since then, they’ve released two more albums — Encirclement (2012) and The Last Days of War (2012) — and now their fourth album is almost upon us. The new album’s name is One To Conquer, and based on the song from the album we’re about to premiere, it should be another strong one.

Decaying have a penchant for including longer, doom-suffocated tracks in their military-themed albums, but they’re fully capable of rolling right over you in a crushing assault as well — and that’s the style of “Zero Hour”. If you like your old school death metal in the form of a smoking tank attack with a howling, rasp-voiced commander exhorting the battalion to show no mercy, “Zero Hour” is your thing. It’s definitely my thing: The song is a gassed up, heavy-grooved headbang trigger with a beautifully morbid melody — death metal militarism that will put a charge into your brainstem.

Especially with the timbre of the voracious vocals, you may think of Asphyx or Hail of Bullets, but fans of Bolt Thrower should eat this up, too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FIDES INVERSA — “VI”

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Oct 062014
 

 

The two-headed Italian entity known as Fides Inversa released their debut album, Hanc Aciem Sola Retundit Virtus (The Algolagnia Divine), in 2009. At last, they have readied their second full-length assault. Bearing the title Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans, it will be released by W.T.C. Productions on October 31, 2014. Included within are seven songs identified only by Roman numerals, of which we bring you the premiere of “VI“.

“VI” burns like a bonfire blazing under a black sky, riffs flickering and roaring, with crackling drumbeats and zealous infernal incantations rising over the conflagration. It’s a monument to the cleansing light of chaos that explodes from the void, fueled by an infectious guitar melody that peals with the sound of ritual bells.

Or, to put it in more prosaic terms, this is hot-blooded black metal that’s both scathing and charismatic. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLACK THERAPY — “THE FINAL OUTCOME”

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Oct 062014
 

Well, I didn’t expect I’d have to visit Rome to get one of the most satisfying injections of Gothenburg-style melodic death metal of the year, but that’s what Black Therapy have delivered via the song we’re about to premiere — “The Final Outcome”. It comes in the form of a lyric video.

The song is the title track to a new EP that will be released on October 17 by Revalve Records. The EP follows the band’s 2013 debut album, Symptoms of A Common Sickness.

You’d better limber up your neck muscles before listening, because “The Final Outcome” is a high-voltage gallop, with jolting verse riffs, a catchy-as-hell chorus, and the kind of rapidly swirling lead guitar melody that may cause you to form your hands into claws and lift them toward the heavens. To top off all this goodness, the song also features expertly crafted, hard-driving drums and vocals that are acid enough to etch glass.

Plus, the EP was recorded by Stefano Morabito (16th Cellar Studio), who seems to produce the majority of high-flying extremity to come out of Italy these days. Not surprisingly, the music sounds great. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMIT — “BENEATH CARVINGS LINGER”

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Oct 032014
 

According to Metal-Archives, UK-based Emit put out its first demo in 1998, and almost every year afterward the band released something new — demos, splits, an EP, an album — until 2007, when things went dark. Five years later Emit surfaced with another album-length demo, Spectre Music of an Antiquary, and an altered sound. It was a very limited cassette release brought forth by Glorious North Productions.

Fast forward to 2014: Crucial Blast Records plans to re-issue Spectre Music in remastered form later this month as both a digital download and in digipak format, with the new cover art you see above. To help spread the word of this event, we agreed to premiere a song from Spectre Music named “Beneath Carvings Linger”.

The cover art could hardly be more fitting, given the sounds on “Beneath Carvings Linger” and on the album as a whole. That’s not to say that all the songs are cut from the same cloth — they aren’t — but one constant is the sense that you’ve left the physical world and have been set drifting in a black ether inhabited by phantasms. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAW BLOW — “DON’T TRY”

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Oct 032014
 

Every now and then I’m induced to veer off our usual beaten paths like a staggering drunk, and when that happens it tends to be because my head gets turned by some punks. And when the punks are named Raw Blow and their new EP is named Slow Choke, it’s even harder to resist. So here I am, premiering for you a song named “Don’t Try”.

I’m told that the members of Raw Blow have paid their dues over a decade of Boston brawling in bands named Now Denial, Furnace, Bravo Fucking Bravo, and Luau. They’ve got three vocalists, and the one who gets the most time actually sings — so there’s another step even farther off our well-worn path. On the other hand, the voices snarl and shriek, too.

Slow Choke fuses together clanging guitars, rambunctious drumming, poppy melodies (one more step), punk rhythms, and a few sharp, math turns that you don’t see coming. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VENOWL — “SCOUR (PARTS I AND II)” (AND AN INTERVIEW OF THE BAND)

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Oct 022014
 

 

On October 14, Broken Limbs Recordings is going to release a limited edition cassette split by the Dallas-based band Cara Neir and the hell-based band Venowl. At the risk of traumatizing frail psyches, we’re premiering Venowl’s track, “Scour (Parts I and II)”. And we’re accompanying the premiere with the first-ever interview of this mysterious entity.

“Scour” should be approached with care, or carelessly, depending on how risk-averse you are. At 21 minutes, it’s longer than many EPs and as long as what some bands call an “album”. It lasts as long as Venowl needed it to last. Like all their music, it’s improvisational, almost all of it recorded live in the studio this past July. “Harsh” doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s like a symphony of pain.

The pacing of the song ranges from slow to glacial. The ponderous drum hits and occasional cymbal crashes become the only life preservers you can hang onto as the tide pulls you out into this bottomless black sea — a sea of howling dissonant noise, raw, distorted chords, and nails-on-the-chalkboard feedback. Huge, groaning sounds give way to grinding riffs that generate a squall of brutal, abrasive cacophony and long spaces filled with the reverb-death-rattle of titanic notes.

It’s inexorable doom, an abyss of hopelessness, a miasma of death. The only sign of humanity that rears its head are barely human shrieks and distraught yells that emanate from what must be a very deep pit of emotional despair. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AMIENSUS — “WOLFHEAD’S TREE”

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Oct 012014
 

 

Minnesota’s Amiensus are a band we’ve followed closely, from their excellent 2013 debut album Restoration (reviewed here) to their split last year with Oak Pantheon, entitled Gathering (reviewed here). The band are now recording their second album, Ascension, but to keep fans at bay until it’s completed they’ve released a new free single that we have the pleasure of sharing with you today.

The song is named “Wolfhead’s Tree”, and it was originally recorded by the British duo known as Forefather for their 2008 album Steadfast. I wasn’t familiar with the song before listening to the Amiensus cover, but it’s really a perfect choice for the band, and they more than do it justice.

“Wolfhead’s Tree” is a dramatic and highly memorable pagan metal song, and it showcases both Amiensus’ aggressive side and their talent for performing grand and emotionally affecting melody. They stay close to Forefather’s original template, delivering both warlike black metal and folk metal that’s soul-stirring and sombre, while effectively adding keyboards in a way that enhances the mythic atmosphere of the music. Fitting the demands of the original, the vocals are an impassioned mix of jagged howls and strong, clean vocal harmonies. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORACULUM — “THE VESSEL OF ORICHALCUM”

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Sep 302014
 

 

Everything about this song is massive — the sound, the grooves, and the scale of the trauma that it inflicts. If my instincts are correct, it will also prove to be massively appealing to fans of death metal in the vein of Bolt Thrower or vintage Sadistik Exekution. The song I’m speaking of is the one we’re premiering in this post: “The Vessel of Orichalcum”. It appears on Sorcery of the Damned, the forthcoming debut EP by a three-man Chilean band named Oraculum that’s slated for release by one of those underground labels that seems to do no wrong — Invictus Productions.

“The Vessel of Orichalcum” isn’t a “grower” — it’s such a stupendously galvanizing and supremely headbangable track that it exerts an iron-fisted grip on the pleasure centers right from the first listen — and the same is true of Oraculum’s EP as a whole.

Do you like your death metal so choked with distortion and caked with grit that it feels like you’re being hosed down with an industrial-strength sandblaster? You’re in luck! Do you grin stupidly at the assault of riffs that pound like sledgehammers, grind like bone saws, and rumble like a freight train passing just outside your door? Prepare for big smiles! Do you appreciate organic, brute-force percussion with a lot of rhythmic variety? Check that off, too. And do you eat up spitfire solos and reverberating vocals that sound like the wretched howls of an anguished demon? Prepare to dine sumptuously! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THY DARKENED SHADE — “SAATET-TA RENAISSANCE”

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Sep 292014
 

 

On October 31, 2014, W.T.C. Productions will release Liber Lvcifer I: Khem Sedjet, the second album by Greek black metal band Thy Darkened Shade. In due course, you will hear much more about this album at our humble site. For now, it is enough to say that it’s absolutely stunning — one of the year’s best.

Today we have two teasers for you: In this post we bring you the premiere of the album’s eighth track (of 11) — “Saatet-ta Renaissance” — and then a bit later today we will bring you a fascinating interview with the band’s main man Semjaza, an interview that will significantly affect the way you hear the music. But the music comes first.

“Saatet-ta Renaissance” is one of this massive album’s longest songs. As it moves from entrancing acoustic strumming and choral chanting into an abrupt explosion of blistering fretwork and blasting percussion, you may experience a feeling of disorientation — and that feeling may be enhanced by the warm bounding bass notes and the rocking back-beats that come next, or by the variance between primal clawing growls and clean-voiced proclamations that give life to the lyrics. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZAPRUDER — “CYCLOPS”

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Sep 292014
 

 

The French band Zapruder made their advent two years ago with an EP named Straight From The Horse’s Mouth, and now they’re on the verge of delivering their debut album Fall In Line. The album’s title is an exercise in irony, because Zapruder plainly aren’t falling in line and they don’t want you to either. You’ll understand what I mean as soon as you listen to “Cyclops”, one of the nine tracks from the album that we’re premiering in this post.

Listening to “Cyclops” is akin to leaping on an infernal merry-go-round that’s spinning erratically (and dangerously), with flame-eyed horses bolting up and down like pistons in an engine with a mind of its own. Dissonant squalling chords mingle with skin-melting shrieks and cavernous roars, wind-shear speed gives way to a pounding dirge, knee-capping percussion coexists with almost ethereal reverberating lead guitar eeriness.  It’s unpredictable and unrelentingly intense music.

Both violent and cloaked in an aura of doom, “Cyclops” is heavy as hell and a fascinating and harrowing ride from a band who follow their own line. Continue reading »

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