AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): COROZA — “AS WITHIN”

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May 152024
 

None of us here were formally trained as “music critics,” or even as “music writers.” It’s always been a case of learning by doing. One thing we’ve learned is that it’s usually best to begin a review in a way that grabs attention quickly and/or places the record in some broader context before diving into details.

With that in mind, let’s begin by saying that the Irish band Coroza‘s new album As Within sounds heavier than granite, hits harder than sledgehammers; burns like the immolation of sanity; and seems laced with the kind of psychotropics that trigger seductive but frightening visions.

Or, to place it in genre context, it’s a changing amalgam of sludge, stoner-doom, post-metal, and psychedelia that’s capable of swallowing a listener whole like some leviathan of old.

Details to follow…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTAR OF GORE — “LITANIES OF THE UNCEASING AGONIES”

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May 142024
 

Musical sensibilities and affinities vary, even among people like the denizens of this site for whom extreme metal is their bread and butter.

Depending on the time of day and the frame of mood, you might want to become engrossed in elaborate melodies, or have your brain twisted into knots by high-speed intricacy, or become scorched by malignant blackened conflagrations, or have your soul pulled into a chasm of gloom and despair.

But every now and then there’s a visceral need to just be bludgeoned senseless and viciously butchered in the most primitive, ruthless, and electrifying way possible. At those times, Altar of Gore‘s new album Litanies Of The Unceasing Agonies will be there to feed that need. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOUNDED FUNERAL — “THE WRECKING OF THE CRYPTS”

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May 132024
 

On May 25th, through the collaboration of Satanath Records (Georgia), Australis Records (Chile), and Futhark Records (Canada), the Canadian black metal band Wounded Funeral will release their third album, Skaalp. It is described as a musical recital of stories based on dark legends of the First Nations: “Expressing rage, hatred, psychological distress, combat… The typical emblem of the project revolves around the world of the great Wendigo.”

As a vivid sign of what they album brings us, today we’re premiering the fifth song in the album’s running order, a track called “The Wrecking Of The Crypts“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HENRY KANE — “CIRCLE OF PAIN”

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May 132024
 

Over the course of a quarter-century career the Swedish musician and vocalist Jonny Pettersson has been involved in an enormous number of bands and personal projects — 30 of them by the count at Metal-Archives, including Wombbath, Heads for the Dead, Just Before Dawn, Berzerker Legion, and Ashcloud. But of all of them, Henry Kane seems to have become the vehicle most adaptable to Pettersson‘s changing inspirations and interests.

That opinion is based on observing the evolutions that have occurred across Henry Kane‘s three albums so far, and the fact that it’s a solo project in which Pettersson writes everything and performs everything. Indeed, he started the project to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his first demo, naming it for the soul-devouring supernatural antagonist in the Poltergeist film series.

In contemplating a genre label for Henry Kane‘s debut album Den förstörda människans rike, you might consider crusty death/grind, or deathly grind/crust, or grinding death/crust, infused with horror and tuned to maximum slaughtering insanity. If anything, the second album Age of the Idiot was an even more ruinous sonic wrecking machine but also more variable, with a greater number of musical twists and turns.

The new Henry Kane album Circle of Pain (coming out on May 17th via Selfmadegod Records) twists even more from the project’s deathly crust and grind roots. As Jonny Pettersson has told us in advance of today’s album premiere:

“The best thing about Henry Kane for me, is that there are no boundaries to adhere to. So, with this album, I wanted to take what I have done on the previous albums and push the sound even further, and then wrap it all up in blastbeats, anger, and hate.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VÍGLJÓS — “TOME I: APIDÆ”

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May 072024
 

“Not all black metal must be about Satan. There’s plenty of bands who can be obscure and straight-to-the-point with a peculiar image and, of course, very powerful music.”

That is how the Dusktone label announced the debut album from the Swiss black metal band Vígljós, and indeed, it is not about Satan. As signified by the album’s title itself — Tome I: apidæ — it’s about… bees.  But there aren’t many bands who could have made an album like this one. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ERNTE — “THE WITCH (WAS BORN IN FLAMES)”

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May 072024
 

Today we renew our admiration for the Swiss duo Ernte, whose music we’ve previously described as “black metal that’s atmospheric and immersive, creating nightside experiences of mysticism and old magic”, but also simultaneously delivering “visceral punch and mind-scarring intensity”. Ernte’s music, we’ve written, “can be disorienting, depressive, unsettling, and even deranged, but it’s still very easy to fall prey to the music’s unearthly sorcery”.

What we’ve fallen prey to this time is a song named “The Witch (Was Born In Flames)” from Ernte‘s forthcoming third album Weltenzerstörer (“world destroyer”), which will be released by the esteemed Vendetta Records on June 7th.

Before providing the premiere of this song stream, we should put it in the context of the album as a whole, which Ernte describe as follows: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): JUST ONE FIX — “SUBMIT OR DEATH”

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May 062024
 

The phraseology of “diving into” a record is intended to capture the idea of an auditory experience in which your mind is quickly surrounded by the music.

Sometimes you want to get out of the stream and towel off as quickly as possible, left cold or, worse yet, finding the waters skin-temperature and drab. Or you might get pulled deep by heavy undercurrents, making it difficult to get even your head to the surface.

Or you might experience the thrill of discovering that the waters are shark-infested, and a leg that was once attached to you has just been chewed off, leaving the waters red and frothing as the horde of other predators begin joining the feast.

That’s the kind of dive you should prepare for in Submit Or Death, the EP from New Zealand’s Just One Fix that we’re premiering today in advance of its May 10 release. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORGUE MEAT — “CONQUEROR’S WRATH”

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May 032024
 

Eight years after the release of their debut album Mutilation in the Chapel, and seven years after their EP Realm of Eternal Suffering, the bestial Dallas death metal horde Morgue Meat are returning at last with their second full-length, Apocalyptic Visions, which is now set for co-release on May 23rd by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Pest Records (Romania), emblazoned with stunning cover art by Mark Cooper.

To help pave the way toward the new album’s release, today we’re premiering a thoroughly evil song from the record named “Conqueror’s Wrath“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARALLU — “EMPIRE OF SALT”

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May 032024
 

Two years ago the long-running Israeli black metal band Arallu, whose roots go back to the late ’90s, released their latest album under the imposing title Death Covenant. And the music is also imposing — ferocious, heavy, often vast and towering — but it’s also complex, dynamic, and exotic (for want of a better word) in its seamless incorporation of Middle Eastern folk melody and instrumentation.

It’s a striking example of how a style of extreme music born in the cold regions of northern Europe can be reconfigured and reborn to suit the terrain and traditions of a dramatically different world. And its changing musical manifestations and elaborate songcraft make it an album that rewards careful and extended listening in addition to firing up the blood and casting spells on a first spin, the kind of record that reveals new discoveries with each journey through its 10 songs.

One of this writer’s favorite songs on Death Covenant is the penultimate track, “Empire of Salt“, and so it’s a real pleasure to host the premiere of Arallu‘s transfixing video for that song today — especially since we’re doing it on a Bandcamp Friday, a good day to pick up records like Death Covenant. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CADAVEROUS CONDITION — “THEY CAME FROM THE HILLS”

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May 022024
 

The Austrian extreme metal band Cadaverous Condition started in the early ’90s (their first demos were released in 1990-’92), and since then their discography has swelled significantly, though more than a dozen years have passed since their last album (Burn Brightly Alone), if one doesn’t count an album-length collaboration they did with Herr Lounge Corps in 2018.

Despite their significant number of releases, this seems to be our site’s first encounter with them. The musical histories we’ve been provided are intriguing, to say the least. We’re told that their path has taken “many twists and weird turns, incorporating neofolk (‘death folk’) and collaborating with a wide range of artists creating a weird yet coherent body of work”.

It’s a crooked path that reportedly made them the first death metal band to cover The Sisters Of Mercy and Death In June and included their own interpretations of songs by The Decemberists and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and collaborations with such acts as Nurse With Wound, Thighpaulsandra, Tobias Nathaniel (The Black Heart Procession), and the afore-mentioned Herr Lounge Corps.

They also did an art project with Bill Drummond (The KLF) involving a specially made CD and sending a message in a bottle from the shores of Iceland.

Having read all that, we really had almost no idea what to expect from their new album Never Arrive, Never Return, which is set for a June 14 release via The Circle Music. What we found is something fascinating, something clearly rooted in death metal but with tendrils that taste of other terrains. As a sign of what we found, today we’re premiering a lyric video for the new album’s chilling but powerfully captivating opening song, “They Came From the Hills“. Continue reading »

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