AN NCS PREMIERE: ANCIENT MALIGNITY — “DYSTOPIAN SUBJECTION”

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Aug 262024
 

(written by Islander)

I’m as infected by laziness as everyone else, but I do have my limits. For example, I almost always steadfastly refuse to quote what PR agents write in promoting the music of bands and labels, because copy/pasting that stuff is just… LAZY… even though lots of other metal sites do that routinely.

But today, I can’t resist quoting from the press materials for Ancient Malignity‘s new album Dehumanization Dawn, even though I’m going to eventually follow it with my own garbled verbiage:

Like a lost relic from the mid-to-late ’90s, Ancient Malignity‘s second album surges and slices with both palpitating precision and gangrenous gnarliness.

Those maniacs out there who hold high the torch of such old gods as Order From Chaos, Imprecation, Sacramentary Abolishment, America’s Crucifier, old Vital Remains, and earliest Kataklysm should find red-eyed solace in the blitzed & bleary decibels on display across Dehumanization Dawn.

Even the production itself sounds era-authentic — dank, dingy, and dungeoned, but no less muscular…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAPIENTIA DIABOLI — “I OV THE DARKNESS”

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Aug 232024
 

(Written by Islander)

Despite the fact that the identities of the most infamous progenitors of second-wave black metal, including arsonists, murderers, and the murdered, are very well-known (famous now, as well as infamous), anonymity remains among the more defining characteristics of black metal.

More so than in any other genre of metal, black metal is home to creators who adamantly prefer to let the music speak exclusively for them, without the potential distractions of identity. It’s not just a rejection of “celebrity”, it’s an embrace of obscurity, not just a pervasive use of pseudonyms but a blank space un-filled by any details other than what can be heard.

This iron-clad embrace of an underground ethos where the people making the music allow no light to shine on themselves (and sometimes no light to shine through the darkness of the music) often complicates and almost always undermines the mission of spreading of the word about the music. People who choose not to talk about what they’ve done, or even to tell actual or potential fans anything about who they are, leave more to chance about whether their accomplishments will find an audience.

Which brings us to Sapientia Diaboli, whose name is Latin for “The Wisdom of the Devil”. Maybe it is the Devil’s wisdom they practice by concealing everything except the shuddering impact of their sounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SINISTRO — “ELEGIA”

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Aug 222024
 

We’re about to premiere a video for the second advance song from Sinistro‘s new album Vértice. But before we get to it, let’s take a few steps back.

This Portuguese band’s last album, 2018’s Sangue Cássia, made a big and favorable impact around our crumbling and gore-streaked halls, and a very distinctive one given that their music was a very big exception to the permeable “rule” in our site’s title.

Our Andy Synn named Sangue Cássia to his year-end list of 2018’s “Critical Top 10” albums, calling it “one of the most intensely intimate, moodily mesmerising releases of the year.”

For us (and for many others) it was therefore very exciting and intriguing to learn that Sinistro would be returning this year with a new album, with a new singer (Priscila Da Costa) and a new label (Alma Mater Records), masterminded by Moonspell singer Fernando Ribeiro. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHLESS VOID — “PURPLE TRIAD”

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Aug 222024
 

(written by Islander)

The Dutch extremists Deathless Void burst upon the scene in 2022 with a debut demo that Iron Bonehead Productions wisely picked up for release on vinyl and tape. Its experiences of dread and delirium spawned comparisons by the label “to later Katharsis or Antaeus or especially turn-of-the-millennium Thorns“.

Deathless Void opened that demo with an instrumental piece, and followed it with “The Shattered Realms of Man Become the Abyss” and the stupendous “Crossing the Threshold“.

Not the usual dispensable intro track, “Ignis Fatuus” created an authentically flesh-creeping sonic hallucination, building layer upon layer of dismal, diseased, and demented sensations, both haunting and nightmarish.

In the subsequent two songs Deathless Void maintained the intro track’s connections to hostile beyond-our-world dimensions but escalated into mind-warping paroxysms of violence. Even more elaborately layered than the intro but orders of magnitude more orgiastic, those songs scathed and screamed, hurtled and heaved, and twisted themselves into a multitude of unexpected directions — including episodes of blaring and boiling grandeur, thrilling exoticism, and bottomless descents into the ice-cold void of their name.

Now, Deathless Void are poised to release their first album, The Voluptuous Fire of Sin, again ushered into our world by Iron Bonehead. It includes those latter two tracks from the demo, plus seven other songs, and we have one of those to share with you today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFIN ROT — “HANDS OF DEATH”

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Aug 212024
 

When we last devoted attention in our pages to the works of Coffin Rot from Portland, Oregon, the occasion was the impending release of their split with Molder in 2018. Much has happened to the band since then, including the release of their 2019 debut album, A Monument to the Dead, and the expansion of their lineup from founders Hayden Johnson (vocals) and Derek Johnson (drums) and guitarist/bassist Tre Guertner to also include bassist Brandon Martinez-Woodall and second guitarist Jonathan Quintana (from Decrepisy, Thanamagus, and Ascended Dead).

Now, this quintet has prepared a second album. Fittingly entitled Dreams of the Disturbed, it’s set for release by Maggot Stomp on September 20th. As you’ll discover, it’s not just the lineup that has changed since 2018, but the array of ingredients Coffin Rot have brought into their sound, and the array of skin-crawling moods they’ve thereby created on this new full-length.

As proof of this, today we premiere the new album’s second single, “Hands of Death“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INGURGITATING OBLIVION — “THE BARREN EARTH OOZES BLOOD, AND SHAKES AND MOANS, TO DRINK HER CHILDREN’S GORE” (PART 2)

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Aug 212024
 

(written by Islander)

Four weeks ago we embarked here on an unusual collaboration with the German avant-garde death metal band Ingurgitating Oblivion and Willowtip Records, the label that will release their new album Ontology of Nought on September 27th. What we began doing four weeks ago was the rollout of a single long song from the album, a rollout divided into three segments. Today we present the second Part, with the third and final one still ahead next month.

The name of the song is also long, and unsettling in the vision it portrays: “The barren earth oozes blood, and shakes and moans, to drink her children’s gore”. As we disclosed in Part 1 of this premiere, the rest of the song titles on the album are also unusual, and also evocative of dark moods — and all those other songs are also expansive in their duration. Here’s the track list: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVOCATION — “OPIUM THEBIACUM (SOMNIFERUM)”

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Aug 202024
 

So far, we’ve managed to comment (and comment favorably) about every release from the Chilean occult extremists Invocation, from their debut demo in 2016 through their 2020 EP Attunement to Death, and now we get to maintain our fidelity by premiering a song from Invocation‘s eagerly awaited debut album The Archaic Sanctuary (Ritual Body Postures).

The album is set for release on September 20th by Iron Bonehead Productions, who also released that Attunement to Death EP, as well as its predecessor, The Mastery of the Unseen EP from 2018.

The song we have for you, the second one disclosed from the album so far, is “Opium Thebiacum (Somniferum)“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ASHEN TOMB — “CATHARSIS THROUGH TORTURE”

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Aug 202024
 

(written by Islander)

The band name chosen by the Finnish death metallists Ashen Tomb suggests visions of lifeless emptiness, a cold catacombs whose ruins enclose desiccated flesh and collapsing bones, blanketed in the ash of some long-forgotten blaze. Their music, on the other hand, ignites visions of the horrid catastrophes that left the dead in such a blasted place.

Take, for example, the song we’re premiering today (with an excellent video) from Ashen Tomb‘s debut album Ecstatic Death Reign, which is set for release in October by Everlasting Spew Records: Its name is “Catharsis Through Torture“. Like the album’s name, it portends a revel in violence rather than lifeless ruins, and the music does indeed prove to be an expression of monstrous murderous ecstasy. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HATCHEND — “SUMMER OF ’69”

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Aug 192024
 

(written by Islander)

The name of Hatchend‘s debut album is Summer of ’69. As you can see, the cover art is a collage of Charlie Manson’s face covered with what appears to be Marilyn Monroe’s hair, or maybe it’s Sharon Tate’s. It was in the summer of ’69 when Manson’s cult murdered at least nine people, including Tate.

Hatchend‘s drummer Rikard Wermén asks, “Where were you in the Summer of ‘69? You got any proof of that?” I know where I was. I was alive then in Texas, and sentient enough to remember learning about the Manson cult’s murders as they came to light, along with a lot of other things happening that summer, including the Apollo 11 moon landing, Woodstock, and the release of Bowie’s Space Oddity. Vanity prevents me from showing the proof, because it would reveal how old I was then and thus how absurdly old I am now.

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, the members of Hatchend weren’t alive in the summer of ’69, though they’re definitely not young kids. Also interesting, I haven’t found anything which explains why they chose that title for their album. Now that I’ve written this, maybe it will be revealed.

But regardless of the title’s inspiration, the music on Summer of ’69 kicks a big boatload of ass, as wild in its own way as the wildness of the turbulent times some of us lived through in that summer of 55 years ago. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TORREFY — “STREET REAPER”

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Aug 162024
 

The last time we hosted a premiere from Torrefy‘s forthcoming fourth album Necronomisongs we used the album’s remarkable cover art as the jumping-off point. As you can see, it portrays the performance of a hellish orchestra, stripped of flesh but not stripped of their deathless desire to perform, and the song we premiered itself sounded like the demented revels of a devilish orchestra — fast and frenzied, brazen and baroque, and perpetually veering in a multitude of different but diabolical directions, creating an extravagant display of technical pyrotechnics and crazed yet sharply executed ebullience.

Today, as you can also see, we’re premiering another song by these unconventional Canadian black/thrashers from Necronomisongs, and this time our jumping-off point concerns the inspirations for the album tracks: Each of them is based on a favorite book of Torrefy vocalist John Ferguson.

The song we previously premiered, “Enslaved New World“, was inspired by a fantasy series called The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Before that, the band had revealed the album’s first single, “Of Wind and Worm“, along with an electrifying performance video. That song, as perhaps you might guess based on its title, was inspired by Frank Herbert‘s Dune.

And today we have a song incited by a Stephen King novel. As John Ferguson explains: Continue reading »

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