AN NCS PREMIERE: DEPRAVITY — “AWFUL MANGULATION”

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Oct 302025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s always a pleasure to adorn our page with a painting by Paolo Girardi, especially when it’s as monstrously grotesque as the one that leaps off the cover of Depravity’s new album, Bestial Possession.

It’s also always a pleasure to re-connect with the music of this Australian death metal band, which we’ve been covering in our articles beginning in 2011, and to host a premiere of their songs (today’s is our fourth Depravity premiere since 2016).

It’s been a bit of a wait since our last encounter with Depravity, due to the five-year gap between their last album (Grand Malevolence) and this new one. But in the case of Depravity, it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, assuming one is fond of getting musically mauled and mangled.

Speaking of which, the song from Bestial Possession that we’re premiering today is named “Awful Mangulation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOX NOSTRA — “VITA DANTIS”

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Oct 292025
 

(written by Islander)

Vox Nostra (Latin for “Our Voice”) is a Texas band that began to take shape in 2022, founded by vocalist Nathan Buckhoff and former bassist Jay, and then fleshed out with drummer Steven Pedini, guitarist Juan Diaz, and later guitarist Andrew Dahdouh in 2024.

They released two singles in 2023 (“Façade” and “Synthetic Womb“), and today we’re premiering a lyric video created by Scott Rudd (SR Films) for a third one, “Vita Dantis“, which we predict will appeal strongly to fans of emotionally evocative technical death metal. The band have given us this description of the song’s subject matter:

“Vita Dantis, in Latin ‘The Life of the Giver’, reflects a world where the working class is subjugated to weaponized AI by the ruling class. It’s the moment right before awareness turns into unrest.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRYOXYD — “AMBIVALENT FEELINGS”

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Oct 282025
 

(written by Islander)

Imagery of sharp edges is a recurring feature in descriptions of the music and other aesthetics of the French death metal band CRYOXYD that have been circulated by Dolorem Records, which will release their debut album on December 12th.

The notes are described as “shards of bone” and the riffs as “blade-like”; their lyrics and visuals are described as “a shattered mirror held up to the abyss”; their stance is characterized as “neither provocative nor comforting, but surgical”; “Art as a Scalpel” sums it up.

The band’s intent is to create a conceptual artistic structure and identity devoted to the “autopsy of human collapse”, to confront “systemic dehumanization, collective madness, cognitive technodictatorship, and the moral failure of civilization” — “a sonic and visual manifesto against the illusion of progress, an X-ray of modern alienation’s mechanisms.”

How they seek to achieve these goals on their debut album This World We Live In… is through a formulation of music rooted in the technical death metal of the 1990s, drawing inspiration from the likes of Death (during the Human and Spiritual Healing eras), Pestilence, Brutality, and Morbid Angel, but as you’ll discover from the multi-dimensional album track we’re premiering today, they’ve put their own spin on those revered precedents. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD AND DRIPPING — “NEFARIOUSLY SCINTILLATING THROUGH VACANT GALACTIC RESERVOIRS”

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Oct 282025
 

(written by Islander)

New Jersey-based Dead and Dripping has created macabre musical intersections of sensations that are ghastly, putrid, bludgeoning, and malicious, but also machine-precise, head-spinning, and dazzling (in a very demented way).

Anyone who has dabbled in Dead and Dripping’s three previous albums already knows this, but you will know it in spades when you have the chance to hear the new one, or even just the songs from it that have been disgorged so far, or even just the one we’re premiering today.

But before we get to the music, we ought to remind folks about Dead and Dripping’s wordplay, as revealed in the band’s perpetually twisted and luxuriously multisyllabic song titles. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL DIATRIBE — “RAKTAKSHI SADHANA”

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Oct 272025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s easy to imagine that the Kolkata black metal band Infernal Diatribe subsist on a diet of rage and the tears of their enemies, washed down with the blood of a dissolving world. They manifest terrors and tribulations, infiltrated by tendrils of the exotic and overlaid by clouds of the occult.

Their forthcoming debut album, to be released by a trio of labels on November 29th, is inspired by and deeply rooted in an ancient Hindu concept known as Mahabhuta Pralaya (which is also the album’s name), a process of complete cosmic destruction that paves the way for a new cycle of creation and the rebirth of the universe. Their description of the concept is lengthy, but worth absorbing before listening to the music: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LIMINAL SPIRIT — “A BETTER PLACE”

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Oct 242025
 

(written by Islander)

The song we’re about to premiere marked our introduction to Liminal Spirit. Both that name and Liminal Spirit’s music may be new to you too, so we’ll begin by sharing what we’ve learned — including what we know about the unusual subject matter of the forthcoming EP (Unwell) that includes the song we’re premiering.

Liminal Spirit is the solo project of Milwaukee-based multi-instrumentalist Jerry Hauppa. Prior to this, he was involved in the sludge metal band Northless, the death metal band Ara, and the instrumental space-focused band Deorbit. He has referred to Liminal Spirit’s recordings as “seance music”, a fusion of genre ingredients “designed to channel spiritual passage”. That fusion could be summed up as “progressive doom metal”, but as you’ll discover, that shorthand isn’t quite complete. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VEILBURNER — “MATTER O’ THE MOST AWFUL MARTYRS”

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Oct 232025
 

(written by Islander)

This makes the lucky 13th time we’ve written about the music of Veilburner (beginning 11 years ago), and the 7th time we’ve premiered their music — that’s a lot of prime numbers! Which is fitting because this is a prime band, their music not easily divisible into conventional component parts but instead twisting and looping back onto itself much like the ever-feeding Ouroboros that the band favor in their symbolism.

The subject of today’s premiere is “Matter o’ the Most Awful of Martyrs,” the third song to be revealed from Veilburner’s new album Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy, which will be released on November 14th by Transcending Obscurity Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: URANIUM — “CORROSION OF EXISTENCE”

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Oct 232025
 

(written by Islander)

If there were a Cookbook for Cataclysm you might find a recipe that called for a base stock of hurricane, whisking in blizzards blown by the four winds, a strong helping of avalanche, handfuls of human viscera (explosively ejected), a seasoning of sewage to taste, and everything drenched in lethal fissionable material hot enough to glassify sand and stone. Listening to the music of Uranium, it’s easy to imagine they found that recipe but then altered it for transmutation into sound because it wasn’t sufficiently ugly or painful.

There are other ways of trying to preview the music. Sentient Ruin Laboratories calls Uranium an “American nuclear black industrial weapon”. They call the monstrous tracks on Uranium‘s new album Corrosion of Existence “plutonium-fueled auditory terror” and “an unimaginable cauldron of destruction”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SHORES OF NULL — “AN EASY WAY” (AND A REVIEW OF “LATITUDES OF SORROW”)

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Oct 222025
 

(written by Islander)

Latitudes of Sorrow is a new five-song split featuring the music of two bands whose past music has garnered substantial praise both here and elsewhere: Convocation from Helsinki and Shores of Null from Rome. The esteemed Everlasting Spew Records will release the split on November 21st.

At the beginning of this month we had the privilege of premiering one of Convocation’s compelling songs from the split, “Empty Room,” and now we’re following that with the premiere of “An Easy Way” by Shores of Null. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MIASMIC SERUM — “BETTER LEFT DEAD”

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Oct 212025
 

(written by Islander)

Last year we had the ghoulish pleasure of reviewing and premiering a full stream of Infected Seed, the debut album from the Italian band Miasmic Serum, which we called “one of the most thrilling and accomplished death metal assaults of the year so far.”

We are fortunate that Miasmic Serum are already back with a new EP named Better Left Dead that will be released on October 24th by Iron Fortress Records, and equally fortunate to be the bearer of another full streaming premiere.

Whereas that debut album was thematically focused on poisons, venoms, and hallucinogens, for this new EP the band have drawn inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft, and in particular his short story “Herbert West – Reanimator” and the cult 1985 film adaptation Re-Animator. The EP also features the band’s new vocalist Riccardo Marconato (Afraid Of Destiny). Continue reading »

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