AN NCS PREMIERE: CARNOPHAGE — “UNTIL THE DARKNESS KILLS THE LIGHT”

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Jul 292024
 

As Transcending Obscurity Records has described, the Turkish band Carnophage do seem like some legendary mythical entity that arises every eight years, not slumbering as long as locust swarms but biding their time and making their plans for longer than most metal bands in between releases.

Their second album, 2016’s Monument, followed the first one, Deformed Future/Genetic Nightmare, by eight years, and eight years have again elapsed since then. Thus, it is time for a new Carnophage album to create havoc and wonder, and we will all have it via Transcending Obscurity on August 2nd.

The name of this new third album is Matter of a Darker Nature, and it’s the source of the song you’re about to hear: “Until the Darkness Kills the Light“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PHENOCRYST — “ASTONISHING DEVASTATION”

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Jul 292024
 

Even if you don’t know anything about the Portuguese death-dealers Phenocryst and had managed to miss out on their 2021 debut EP Explosions (briefly reviewed here at our site), you could take your cues about their tremendous debut album from its name — Cremation Pyre — and its brilliantly molten cover art, with skulls bobbing in the lava, eye sockets glowing.

Another cue comes from the name of the album track we’re premiering today in advance of the record’s August 30 release by Blood Harvest — the perfectly named “Astonishing Devastation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WEALD & WOE — “WINGS OF HATE”

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Jul 282024
 

Last summer we had the great pleasure of premiering For the Good of the Realm, the second album by the Idaho-based black metal band Weald & Woe. Fiadh Productions, which released the album, summed it up as combining “the majesty of the medieval era with the ferocity of classic black metal inspired by Obsequiae, Véhémence, Darkenhöld, Immortal, Ensiferum and many others.” We provided our own preview, which included these words:

[T[he album as a whole, when experienced front to back, does seem like a mythic narrative. It includes episodes of dire conflict, driven by punishing drum-blasts, vicious thrashing riffage, and scorching, throat-ripping vocals, but the music also elevates into the magnificence of waving banners and steel shining in the sun, with dramatic synths unfurling above the host and solos that spiral upward and flicker like druid sorcery….

To be sure, the songs also create grim and grievous moods, and moments that might spawn visions of terrible mayhem or corpses strewn across ruined fields. But the overused yet still apt word “epic” keeps coming to mind, because there’s nothing remotely mundane about this music. It’s an elaborate and thoroughly ravishing pageant unfolding on a vast scale, in a time long lost to the ages.

Today we have an excellent occasion to revisit Weald & Woe as we premiere an exhilarating video for an equally exhilarating song named “Wings of Hate“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INGURGITATING OBLIVION — “THE BARREN EARTH OOZES BLOOD, AND SHAKES AND MOANS, TO DRINK HER CHILDREN’S GORE” (PART 1)

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Jul 252024
 

Today we embark on an unusual collaboration with the German band Ingurgitating Oblivion and Willowtip Records, the label that will release their new album Ontology of Nought on September 27th. What we’re doing is hosting the first of three music premieres for the album — and all three are for the same song.

That song can stand the attention. On its own it’s the length of a typical EP — roughly 18 minutes in duration. And it’s not just the song that’s long, so is its title: “The barren earth oozes blood, and shakes and moans, to drink her children’s gore“.

Each of the three premieres features a part of this song, unfolding in the same sequence as the music unfolds. As it happens, “The barren earth…” is the final track on Ontology of Nought. The preceding four are also long, and so are their solemn titles: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EARTH SHIP — “BEREFT”

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Jul 252024
 

Once upon a time, long, long ago, one of our writers summed up the music of Earth Ship as “raw, no-nonsense sludge metal that would rather kick your teeth in than wow you with any fancy tricks, and because of that, it’s excellent.“

Back then, the subject was this German band’s second album, Iron Chest. Since then they’ve released three more albums and a pair of EPs, and now their sixth full-length overall is on the horizon. Entitled Soar, it’s set for release on August 9th by The Lasting Dose Records.

What we have for you today is a video for a recently released single from the new album, and its name is “Bereft“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INCESSANT — “ENTROPIC AEONS”

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Jul 242024
 

I’ve already stomped my feet and banged on the table in a loud display of enthusiasm about “Of Disillusion and Doctrine,” the first single off Incessant‘s new EP Entropic Aeons:

Prepare for a roiling and ravishing typhoon of danger and destruction, replete with harrowing howls and unchained sky-high wails, but the mix also includes rocking grooves, feral chords, and glittering melodies with an exotic Eastern air. It’s a hell of a thrill-ride….

Less loudly, I hoped the rest of the EP by this Dublin blackened-death trio would be as good as that song. I’m here to tell you that it is, and to give you an immediate chance to appreciate it for yourselves as we premiere a full stream in advance of the EP’s imminent release by Repose Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEMON SACRIFICE — “UNDER THE BLACKLIGHT OF DIVINE”

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Jul 232024
 

Today we’re fiendishly pleased to premiere Under the Blacklight of Divine, the debut EP from the Indonesian band Demon Sacrifice, which will officially be released tomorrow by the Indonesian label Ironbound Records.

We are “fiendishly pleased” because Demon Sacrifice‘s music is indeed fiendish, and fiendishly clever. They bring to the table a mixture of visceral punk beats, howling vocal terrors, and the kind of black metal that gets its hooks in the head but also sounds thoroughly supernatural.

They claim “indirect” influence from the likes of Bathory, Darkthrone, Devil Master, Spectral Wound, and Tribulation, and you’ll understand the use of the word “indirect” when you hear the music, because it’s not a blatant copy any of those bands. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE OTHER SUN — “DAIMON, DEVIL, DAWN”

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Jul 222024
 

Here at NCS we like to think that in deciding what music to write about we avoid getting stuck in any ruts. Variety, after all, is a powerful antidote to the poison of boredom. And besides, we don’t want people to get too confident in thinking they know in advance what they’re going to experience whenever they land here. If our choices don’t at least occasionally pull people out of their “comfort zones”, then we’re failing by our own lights.

Having said that, the album we’re premiering below is in almost all ways vastly different from the music that populates our own ever-expanding spectrum of musical coverage. Because it is so different, there may be a risk that some of our visitors will shy away from it. However, I fervently hope that won’t happen, because Daimon, Devil, Dawn is a most skilled form of sonic sorcery that should not be missed. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOE BEARER — “ROTTEN TONGUE”

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Jul 192024
 

We find ourselves in an unusual but not unheard-of situation at our site: featuring the music of a band we know almost nothing about other than the music we can hear.

In this instance the band’s name is Woe Bearer. It is a duo consisting of H., who performed guitars and bass, programmed the drums, wrote the lyrics, and mixed and mastered the recording, and T., the vocalist. We don’t know where they’re from or anything about their backgrounds.

They’ve recorded a debut album named Thriving Within the Absurdity of the Human Plight, which will be released on digital and tape formats by Onism Productions on August 23rd.

And that’s what we know… apart from the startling music you’re also about to hear now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ALIOTH BOREALIS — “THE MAUSOLEUM OF ALL HOPE AND DESIRE”

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Jul 182024
 

One of my tasks at NCS is to monitor the e-mails sent to our site. This is a tedious and terrible job. We get about 200 of them every day, at least half of which arrive because (perplexingly) we’re on mass lists used by some PR agents to promote non-metal music we have less than zero interest in. For other reasons many of the others don’t fit what we do around here (e.g., they’re “newsy” items or concern metal bands whose music isn’t in our wheelhouse).

Some days I don’t even have time to skim the subject lines. When I do, I try to pay particular attention to e-mails coming in from bands themselves, i.e., people who don’t have PR agents or labels backing them. I figure they need more help from sites like ours than groups who have some professional machinery behind them.

Of course, most musicians aren’t naturally talented self-promoters, and so (no criticism intended), a lot of band e-mails don’t set the hook quickly or effectively. However, the one I saw from Alioth Borealis definitely did do that. Check this out: Continue reading »

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