AN NCS PREMIERE: SRPNTS — “INTER LIMINA”

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Aug 262026
 

(written by Islander)

Today we help introduce listeners to the German black metal band SRPNTS, a band formed from the ashes of the group Zwielicht after their bassist Veit Benning died in 2024. Their debut album Second Shape is now set for release by Serpent Sun Records (UK) on October 2nd of this year.

The album’s name manifests its occult inspirations and objectives, a work shaped by nihilism, Gnostic opposition, and the alchemical principle of solve et coagula. We’ll share some of what we’ve received regarding the intent behind the music:

The title Second Shape refers to transformation after dissolution. The state that remains after the first form has been stripped, burned and sacrificed. The album is not meant as a narrative of salvation but as a passage through loss, negation and occult illvmination, where the old self is not healed or restored but abandoned and reformed into something colder, clearer and self-willed.

Its imagery revolves around thresholds, false cosmic order, fire as revelation, the Serpent as initiator and the final act of coagulation. The outline of a new form rising from the Void.

To help further introduce SRPNTS and their music, today we’re presenting a song from Second Shape named “Inter Limina“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATH. VOID. TERROR – “V. (– —) DAPHNYR”

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Aug 252026
 

(written by Islander)

Less that two weeks ago the Swiss experimental extremists Death. Void. Terror returned after a five-year silence with their release through Sentient Ruin Laboratories of an EP named To The Great Monolith 2.5. The EP’s name signifies a progression from their 2018 debut album To The Great Monolith and their 2020 full-length To The Great Monolith II, but it was a progression in more than name.

That EP revealed a metamorphosis in sound from the band’s first two albums. As Cvlt Nation wrote when premiering the EP:

The cavernous, abyssal black/death deluges from their past releases surprisingly gives way to ritualistic, folk-tinged dirges of solemn tribal black metal with striations of occult rock and psychedelia. The guitars remain heavy and hypnotic but appear cleared of their debris, shimmering and resonating into the continuum with vibrant fervor as they trace the lineaments of a mystical liturgy accompanied by keys, synths, bone instruments, tribal percussion, and mantric chants. Urfaust comes to mind as the hypnotic, experimental dirge unfolds its contemplative wings, while the guitars’ solemnity and weight reverberate with the stern echoes of Bölzer or The Ruins of Beverast.

As it turns out, the EP functions as only the first stage of the band’s return, and the second stage is another album slated for release by Sentient Ruin on September 25th. Its title is To the Great Monolith III: Rifts, and today we’re premiering its fifth track, “V. (– —) Daphnyr“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SACRELIGIOUS — “VILE”

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Aug 252026
 

(written by Islander)

Given the current state of the world and “the music business” in particular, it frequently astounds us that young people continue starting up new bands and pouring their energies into creating songs and playing shows. Didn’t anyone tell them the odds of survival are near hopeless?

Well, no one told the Gothenburg death metal band Sacreligious, or they ignored such miserable advice — and death metal addicts who partake of their debut album Brutality Incarnated will be happy they did. We are certainly very happy to premiere the album’s diabolically exhilarating first single “Vile“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WHARFLURCH — “HEADLESS GOD”

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Aug 242026
 

(written by Islander)

Time flies when you’re having fun. It still flies when life looks like sheer hell, with nothing but more hell to come and no way of stopping the misery.

More than two years have flown by since we last commented about the music of the Florida-based death/doom band Wharflurch. The occasion then was a compilation forthrightly named Shittier/Slimier, which collected previously unreleased Wharflurch demos that showcased the more experimental and psychedelic side of the project. Commenting on just one song from it, we wrote:

“It’s more impressive than you might expect based upon the new album’s name. Sure, it’s foul and gross, with monstrous reverb-ed vocals, but also brutish and crazed, capable of triggering muscle reflexes and of spawning ghoulish visions. When the band slow down, that’s when you really feel like you’re being dragged by your hair into a stinking cesspool, and the feverish lead-guitar sounds like it’s gleefully reveling in your agony.”

Time has flown, and now we come back to Wharflurch, expecting both more fun and more hell. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DECONSTRUCTING SEQUENCE — “THE UNDYING VOID”

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Aug 242026
 

(written by Islander)

Last November Black Lion Records released a second album by Deconstructing Sequence named Tenebris Cosmicis Tempora. The band had been formed in the UK by Tiberius, but he relocated to Szczecin, Poland, and began shaping a new creative direction for the band that’s now manifested through this new album.

The new album leans much further into black metal than the debut album, Cosmic Progression: An Agonizing Journey Through the Oddities of Space (which we reviewed here), but also pushes even further forward into the progressive and avant-garde territories explored in that debut. As Black Lion summarized:

Tenebris Cosmicis Tempora blends the furious riffing of Mayhem, the majestic elements of DHG and Emperor, and the haunting depth of Akhlys, forging a journey through idiosyncratic sound and vision.

Tiberius recorded the album with new drummer Dark Soul and also recruited a new lineup for live performances. As an explosive reminder of what Tenebris Cosmicis Tempora encompasses, today we’re premiering a striking video for an unhinged and thoroughly heart-hammering song from the album named “The Undying Void“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HAINTGROVE — “I DREAM IN A TONGUE I CANNOT SPEAK”

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Aug 212026
 

(written by Islander)

On Juneteenth (June 19) Texas-based Haintgrove released “Starless Passage“, the project’s debut single and first track from a forthcoming album. I paid attention in part because I’m originally from Texas and spent nearly half my life there before moving to the Pacific Northwest, but mainly because of the song’s inspiration and lyrical themes, which Haintgrove described as follows:

“Starless Passage” serves as the opening chapter of a larger concept centered on the experiences of enslaved Africans in the colonial South. Rather than presenting history as a straightforward narrative, the project approaches it through atmosphere, landscape, memory, and emotional perspective. Coastal shorelines, flooded forests, forgotten crossings, and the natural world itself play a central role in the music’s identity.

The song proved to be quite impressive — and I’ll re-share my thoughts about it before we reach the end of this article, but the main subject is a second single from Haintgrove that we’re premiering today (along with a captivating video), a song called “I Dream in a Tongue I Cannot Speak“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DETHRASHED — “AVARITIA”

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Aug 212026
 

(written by Islander)

As their name suggests, Dethrashed are a death/thrash band. Having been founded just last year in Tbilisi, Georgia, they’re a new group (and a young one), but they’ve wasted no time in showing listeners what they can do. They independently released their debut album Existence Under Pressure in May of this year, and they’ve already got a second one waiting on the launch pad.

The name of their second album is The Weight Of The Vortex, and it will be released by Satanath Records on October 20th. To help spread the word, today we’re premiering a song from the album called “Avaritia“.

The label has given us this description of the album’s lyrical themes: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BOÖTES VOID — “PANTA RHEI”

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Aug 202026
 

(written by Islander)

On September 4th Vendetta Records will release a new album named Panta Rhei by the German black metal band Boötes Void. It follows a demo (The Alder’s Sleep), an EP (Alders Heresy) and two previous albums (C.O.L.D. and Singularity).

As disclosed on Metal-Archives (and probably elsewhere), the band took their name from “a region of space hundreds of millions of light-years in diameter and containing very few galaxies, also known as a supervoid”. And yet their new album is based upon the surviving writings of the vastly influential pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

It is a very interesting concept, and an unusual one as the inspirational basis for black metal, and so we want to share Boötes Void’s statement about it before we get to the main focus of this feature — our premiere of the new album’s title song, which includes guest vocals by Lukas Gosch (Ellende). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EXITIUM SUI — “UNTIL THE END HATH FOUND US”

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Aug 202026
 

(written by Islander)

We have been closely following the works of Exitium Sui since its inception, but for those who might be newcomers, it is a one-man band created in 2020 by E.S. (vocalist of the black metal band Deadspace) from Perth, Australia, and at a high level the music could be branded as a fusion of atmospheric black metal and funeral doom.

Breaking a two-year silence, Exitium Sui will be releasing a new album named Unravelling in cooperation with Meuse Music Records on September 4th. It is described as an album that confronts “the dark chasms of the human psyche” and “negotiates liminal space between utter chaos, complete seclusion, and fathomless depravity”.

Two of the songs have been revealed so far, and today we premiere a third one — “Until the End Hath Found Us” — which arrives as the subject of a shattering video. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TERATUM — “ORDNANCE OF SPIRITUAL WARFARE”

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Aug 192026
 

(written by Islander)

The Swedish group Teratum rose up from the ashes of the band Beastiality in 2024, and the next year they viciously announced themselves with a two-song promo tape made available in extremely small quantities. They are now following that with a debut EP named Ordnance of Spiritual Warfare, which will be widely released by Dying Victims Productions on August 21st.

The EP includes re-recorded versions of both songs from the demo, and two more. For those who weren’t exposed to the demo tape, Teratum’s music does draw upon the violent black/thrashing antecedents of Beastiality, but it has other dimensions as well — and we’re revealing all of them in our premiere of the EP in its entirety. Continue reading »

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