AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DARKEND — “VIATICUM”

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Jun 122024
 

(On June 14th Time To Kill Records will release the fifth album by the Italian black metal band Darkend, and today we’re premiering its full stream, preceded by an extensive review by our writer (and longtime Darkend fan) DGR.)

Even though it would be wonderful for every group we cover to achieve massive stardom, playng to gigantic crowds and existing as a perpetual part of the cultural zeitgeist – since that seems to be the only way we can completely guarantee someone is making a decent living playing music these days – a few artistic benefits are afforded to musicians who are currently dwelling in the underground, ever on the slow burn and amassing more and more notoriety over time, as opposed to a sudden viral explosion that sees them top of the world one week and then trying to maintain that for years afterward.

One of those is that you are free to move within the realms of an artistic spectacle far more than you might otherwise be given room to; every album becomes an opportunity to swing for the fences and execute upon ambitious and grand ideas while also giving room to reinvent oneself as much as you feel.

We bring this up in part because Italy’s Darkend have had a near-two-decade career at this point and it is one that has allowed them to be increasingly ambitious over the course of five albums, while remaking themselves into as much of a spectacle as they are a musical act within that time. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOLGOTHA — “SPREADING THE WINGS OF HOPE”

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Jun 112024
 

Over the course of a career that began in 1992 and has continued fairly steadily ever since (interrupted by one long break following their third album in 2005), the Spanish band Golgotha have remained devoted to musical renditions of melancholy and desolate sorrow. They remain devoted to their own traditions in their newest album, and yet, as the album’s title itself portrays, they have not lost hope.

That album, Spreading the Wings of Hope, comes from a place of maturity and the depth of emotional reflection that only many decades of daily experience can bring — experiences of deceit and pain, of inner psychological trauma and persistent injustice in the outer world, but also experiences of resilience and beauty.

For Golgotha, it is evident, as they say themselves, that they still carry “the flickering flame of hope”: “It burns low, but it burns still…” That comes through in both the lyrics and the music on the new album, though what also comes through is that Golgotha have not forsaken the need to express the doom and desolation that continues to plague human existence, as it always has.

Spreading the Wings of Hope will be released by Golgotha‘s new label Ardua Music on June 14th, and we’re privileged to let you hear all of it today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VORARE — “AMBER HUM”

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Jun 102024
 

Prepare yourselves for a nightmare armageddon of sound. No riffs, no melody, no reprieve, only derangement, devastation, and pain.

Truth be told, there really isn’t any good way of preparing for the sounds and sights in the video we’re premiering for the track “Amber Hum” off Atelier, an album released last month by the Finnish duo Vorare. Even the genre summing-up “avant-garde drone-doom/death industrial” doesn’t really do the job, and the track’s intriguing title only obscures the horror of what’s about to happen. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLOODCROSS — “GRAVEBOUND”

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Jun 102024
 

We managed to overlook Abyssal Blood, the first demo of the Finnish heavy metal band Bloodcross, when it landed in 2021. And so their debut album Gravebound is hitting us like an enormous surprise. Maybe that’s for the best, because with Gravebound it feels like Bloodcross have musically found their best selves, with results that really are astonishing.

Whereas Metal-Archives stuck the simple “Black Metal” label on Bloodcross based on that demo, even then it really didn’t completely capture what Bloodcross were doing (something like “blackened melodic thrash” would have been more informative.) But with Gravebound they have more extravagantly and elaborately branched out, not totally forsaking the influence of such bands as Dissection and Necrophobic, but more prominently bringing into play elements of power metal, speed metal, and (for want of a better term) “classic” heavy metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOX — “ENTITY”

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Jun 072024
 

Today we’re taking you off our usual well-beaten musical paths as we premiere a full stream of Entity, the debut album of a duo who have taken for themselves the name Nox.

The identities of those two artists are what first led us down this divergent path. They are Inmesher from the German band Rope Sect, whose own new album Estrangement we premiered here not long ago, and Lykaios (aka Lykormas) from the Belgian band Hemelbestormer, whose fascinating post-metal instrumental excursions we’ve written about frequently in the past (he is also the person behind Lhaäd and a member of Rituals of the Dead Hand).

Having been beckoned by those two names and the attractions of the music they’ve made in their other projects, we were curious about what they chose to do as the Nox entity. Hints of what they accomplished were provided in the PR materials furnished on behalf of their label Neuropa Records, which is releasing the album today. For example, this: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GLYPH — “ODES OF WAILING, HYMNS OF MOURNING”

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Jun 062024
 

Beginning in 2019 the mysterious U.S. black metal entity Glyph has provided a dozen short releases and two full-lengths, with a third album arriving imminently, i.e., tomorrow, via Milwaukee-based Shape of Storms Records and other labels whose names will be familiar to our readers.

The name of the new album, which we’re premiering in full today, stands as a signpost of what lies ahead: odes of wailing, hymns of mourning. And so it seems evident that the album represents a way or working through grief and pain, but it achieves that catharsis in startling, shattering, and ultimately triumphant fashion. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OKULAR — “REGENERATE”

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Jun 052024
 

Many death metal bands “look the part”, black-garbed and festooned with spikes, pentagrams, bullet-belts, and/or skulls, and others don’t. Norway’s Okular are on the “don’t” side of the line. In their recent promo photo there’s not a band shirt to be seen nor any other allusion to Satan, the Grim Reaper, or spilled guts, and there’s more khaki in their attire than black. They’ve also got a few more years in their faces, which aren’t contorted in evil grimaces, than whatever hot young things you were listening to yesterday.

Some metal bands also churn out music like there’s no tomorrow. On the other hand, if Okular are expecting the end of the world, they’re obviously not anxious about it: 11 years have passed since their last album.

But Okular‘s non-conformity goes beyond their approach to appearance and timetables. Most importantly, it’s represented by their music, which you’d already know if you happened upon either that last album 11 years ago or the one before that, and which you’re about to learn (or learn again) when you hear their new full-length Regenerate. For newcomers, let’s quickly say that it’s neither plain nor khaki-colored. It’s more like the cover art created by Tina Harsheim Giertsen: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THIRTEEN GOATS — “SIGN OF THE GOAT”

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Jun 042024
 

Somewhere the Devil is smiling broadly, imagining how much hell-raising fun you’re about to have when you listen to the song we’re premiering (with a video) from Thirteen Goats‘ new album Capricorn Rising.

This song, “Sign of the Goat“, functions as an overture for the rest of the album, which is itself described as “an extreme metal rock opera about madness, death, and the destruction of all things”. We also have a more detailed preview from the Vancouver-based band about the role of the song in that context: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DERELICT — “SPECTRUM”

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Jun 042024
 

Over the course of three albums beginning in 2006 the Montréal band Derelict have established a name for themselves as a group that found an intersection between technical death metal and the more brutal and melodic pathways of the death metal soundscape. A long 12 years have passed since their last album, but now they’re finally returning with a fourth one.

The title of the new album is Versus Entropy, a nine-song affair that’s now set for release on June 21st. What we have for you today is the premiere of the second single from the album — “Spectrum” — and it’s a very interesting song in more ways than one. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALBURNUM — “ON THE BONES OF PILGRIMS”

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Jun 032024
 

Today we revisit the Dutch band Alburnum, whose 2022 debut album Buitenlucht proved to be a multi-faceted, soul-shaking, and intensely memorable first step. The occasion for our reunion with them is their completion of a follow-up album, The Withered Roots of Reality, which is now set for release on July 20th.

As you will know if you encountered Buitenlucht, Alburnum infuse their black metal with folk instrumentation and a reverence for musical traditions far older than the musical evolutions that produced the varying tropes of black metal as we’ve come to know them. They do it again on the new album, but have created even more ambitious and dynamic arrangements, a progression that is still inspiring and intensely moving but even more fascinating — as you shall discover today through our premiere of a song from the new album named “On the Bones of Pilgrims“. Continue reading »

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