AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SUFFERING SOULS — “AN ICONIC TASTE OF DEMISE”

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May 312024
 

The German symphonic black metal band Suffering Souls first sprang to dark life in the distant year 1994 under the name Dismal, but soon embraced its current name. From the beginning its founder Tobias Micko (aka Lord Esgaroth) has been at the helm, at times accompanied by other participants either in recordings or on stage.

At the end of 2019, after a quarter-century of the band’s existence, Tobias Micko started songwriting for the fifth Suffering Souls album, and it was recorded at the history-making Hertz Studio in Poland. Micko is responsible for everything on the album, other than the session drums, which were performed by Michiel Van Der Plicht (Pestilence).

Today the album is being co-released by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Fetzner Death Records (Germany). Its name is An Iconic Taste Of Demise, and we’re premiering it in full right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BEATEN TO DEATH — “SUNRISE OVER RIGOR MORTIS”

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May 302024
 

Metal band names, when considered either in isolation or in conjunction with the bands’ music, span a range from terrible to perfect. The name Beaten To Death is damn-near perfect, both in isolation and especially in the context of this Norwegian group’s ferociously brawling brand of grindcore.

The name creates expectations, perhaps especially to someone who’s never encountered the five albums Beaten To Death have put out beginning in 2011. But then such a stranger could take one look at the fantastical cover of their forthcoming sixth album Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis and begin to get the idea that maybe those expectations aren’t going to be entirely accurate, or at least they’re going to be incomplete.

But those of us who have encountered one or more of Beaten To Death‘s previous releases won’t be entirely surprised, because while this band are indeed fully capable of beating their listeners to death, they are equally capable of adventurously turning conventional grind expectations upside-down — and as you’re about to discover, they do it again on this newest album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FERVENT HATE — “A HAUNTING TALE”

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May 282024
 

Originally formed in 2008, the Peruvian band Fervent Hate are about to launch their third album, In Rot We Trust, through the cooperation of Satanath Records and Australis Records.

The album was victimized by the covid pandemic, which forced a postponement of its recording, but at last the recording work was done last year (at Alto Calibre Studio in Arequipa, Peru with Miguel Asencio), completed by the mixing and mastering of the great Dan Swanö at Unisound Studio.

The new album brings us 10 songs, again influenced by classic Swedish death metal and hard rock bands, reinforcing Fervent Hate‘s genre moniker of “death ‘n’ roll”, and today we’re very happy to premiere one of them, a track called “A Haunting Tale“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLOVEN — “THE MADNESS OF SERPENTS”

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May 212024
 

It seems unlikely that any musical artist records a cover of a song unless the song means something important to them. Oh, undoubtedly we might find examples where someone just made a cynical calculated effort to draft off the talent of someone else for their own benefit, but more likely it’s a sign of genuine affection and admiration, and that’s what we have in the song we’re premiering below.

In this instance the obscure Canadian solo project Cloven recorded a cover of “The Madness of Serpents” by The Devil’s Blood, expressly as a tribute to the late Selim Lemouchi. It may also be a farewell to Cloven as well as Lemouchi, though we understand that before the end comes there will be a Cloven album that includes the recording you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISKORD — “ONWARD! TO NOWHERE”

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May 212024
 

This makes the sixth time we’ve written about releases by the Norwegian band Diskord since discovering them in 2013 and the third time we’ve premiered music from one of those releases. In straining to describe their methods, we’ve previously used such words and phrases as “bizarre”, “chaotic”, “mind-shearingly abrasive”, “disorienting”, “unpredictable”, “avante-garde-filtered and technically played”, and “a source of considerable fascination and continuous thrills”. As one of our writers wrote about their 2014 EP Oscillations:

[T]hey seem to have transcended not only genre boundaries, but the confines of flesh as well. They exist among the cracks in reality, guided by hidden horrors unknown to most in a realm where few have dared to venture. Oscillations is bestial discomfort refined, progressive while residing in primordial murky depths, an oasis for those who thirst for ghastly evil sounds, memorable riffs, and strange batshit insanity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBSCENE — “THE REAPER’S BLESSING”

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May 202024
 

We are genuinely thrilled today to blow up a grenade of sights, sounds, and information regarding an eagerly awaited new album from the Indiana-based death metal extremists in Obscene.

The name of the new album, which is the band’s third full-length, is Agony & Wounds. It’s now set for release on July 12th by Nameless Grave Records. As you can see, it’s adorned by eye-catching and mind-bending cover art created by the wickedly talented Brad Moore.

The new music turns out to be every bit as macabre and mind-blowing as the artwork, though it is ruthlessly brutalizing as well, and thus it legitimately represents a significant step forward for a band that has already made a cult name for itself among death-worshipping denizens of the underground.

Which brings us to the first song from the album that you’ll be able to hear, and that we’re maliciously thrilled to premiere today. Get on your knees and prepare to receive “The Reaper’s Blessing“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PERVERSA — “THE TRIAL OF CHRISTIANITY”

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May 172024
 

On May 27th Satanath Records (Georgia) and Pluton’s Rising Productions (Poland) will co-release Under The Sign Of Blasphemy, the debut album from the Roman black/death metal band Perversa, and today we help introduce it through our premiere of an album track named “The Trial Of Christianity“.

The members of Perversa aren’t newcomers, having been involved in numerous other groups before this one, including Lord Vampyr, Malamorte, Handful of Hate, Massemord, Funeral Oration, and Iblis, but what brought these Italian musicians together under the banner of Perversa was a shared desire to practice satanic black metal in a most evil way — and that’s vividly borne out by the song you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TLÖN — “THROUGH NEBULOUS SCARS”

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May 172024
 

In May 1940 the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, widely credited as a founder of “magical realism” in literature, published a story named “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius“. In that mind-bending tale Borges was himself a protagonist. The plot concerns events going back as far as the early 17th century and culminates in a postscript, set in 1947. As summarized in The Font of All Human Knowledge:

“Told in a first-person narrative, the story focuses on the author’s discovery of the mysterious and possibly fictional country of Uqbar and its legend of Tlön, a mythical world whose inhabitants believe a form of subjective idealism, denying the reality of objects and nouns, as well as Orbis Tertius, the secret organization that created both fictional locations”.

That story inspired both the name of the new Scottish band Tlön and the lyrical themes of their debut EP Through Nebulous Scars — an astonishing mind-bender of its own that we’re helping spring upon an unsuspecting world today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ROPE SECT — “ESTRANGEMENT”

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May 162024
 

Rope Sect is about seclusion.
Renunciation of society.
A dance on ruins.
A doomsday revel.
Naked spite.
Eleutheromania.
Obedience.

So say this clandestine German band in their own words. They also say this about their new album Estrangement, which you’re about to hear:

“It can be seen as a reflection of all the ruins we are surrounded by, the increasing reign of pessimism over optimism in a world that seems to have doomed itself as well as expressing a sense of not belonging and the connected urge to escape all this and live by your own rules in your own little world, passing all the warning signs of human kind going astray.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FEED THEM DEATH — “DELETERIOUS”

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May 162024
 

As you can see, we’re premiering a song from a new album by Feed Them Death. There is so much we would like to say about it that it’s hard to know where to begin. But we decided to begin with the lyrics.

To be honest, lyrics are often an afterthought in extreme metal of all stripes, put to paper after the music has been created and not worth much attention even in the rare cases when you can make out the words. Not so in the case of Feed Them Death. The lyrics on all the songs in their new album The Malady are poetic, politically charged, and thought-provoking, well worth reading and pondering (though they’re expelled with such super-heated fury in the songs that reading them is what most people will need to do).

Here are the words to “Deleterious“, the song we’re premiering, written by the band’s founder and principal musician Void: Continue reading »

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