AN NCS PREMIERE: HOMUNCULUS — DEMO MMXXIV

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Apr 242024
 

As you can see, we’re premiering a demo today, the first two songs to be revealed from a Seattle band named Homunculus, a word that most dictionaries define as “a very small human or humanoid creature”. It’s an interesting choice of name because, as you’ll soon discover, the music is anything but small, though it most definitely is inhuman.

To begin our introduction of the demo, we’ll share some of the evocative words provided by Cestrum Nocturnum Recordings, which will release the demo on May 1st and brands it “experimental black/death”: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COMBAT NOISE — “STALINGRAD IN BLOOD”

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Apr 242024
 

The Cuban death metal band Combat Noise first emerged in 1995 in La Habana, inspired by both Floridian death metal and a desire to render tales of war through their music. Beginning in 1996 they steadily released a sequence of demos, an EP, and eventually three full-length albums, with the last of those appearing in 2013.

There then followed a decade-long hiatus in recordings, a gap that will now end with To the Heart of Battle, a new album set for co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Sanatorio Records (Costa Rica) on May 21st. Today we premiere one of its 12 anthems of war, a song entitled “Stalingrad in Blood“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WINGLESS — “ASCENSION”

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Apr 232024
 

Wingless is a great name for a band who’ve chained themselves with the heavy links of doom and death. It seems to encapsulate the core reality that human beings struggle to soar, land-bound and crawling toward a bitter end beneath the distant gaze of winged creatures that have always seemed more free.

And yet the new album from this Krakow-based band, their fifth full-length since forming in 2012, is named Ascension. The title raises questions: ascending toward what? and when? and how?

The music suggests answers, though they are likely to vary with each listener’s interpretation of the experience. What’s not likely to vary is the inevitability of becoming submerged in the music, and to rise with it. You’ll have that chance today, as we premiere a full stream of Ascension in advance of its release on April 26th by Selfmadegod Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO AND ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEPLORABLE — “SHATTERED LAMENT UNMOORED”

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Apr 222024
 

In this article we’re presenting two premieres — a full stream of Shattered Lament Unmoored, the debut album by the Costa Rican band Deplorable, which will be released today by the Dutch label Breathe Plastic, and a video for one of the album’s six songs. Perhaps the best one-word description for both of them is… HARROWING. But of course we’ll try to flesh that out with more words.

It might be best to begin with the video and the song it presents, “Apparition In The Ether“, even though that song appears second in the album’s track list, because it provides such a soul-shattering introduction to the black chasm of dread and despair that the album opens up beneath us as listeners. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CANIS MAJORIS — “THE END OF CIVILIZATION”

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Apr 192024
 

Canis Majoris is a musical project created in Gdansk, Poland by the multi-instrumentalist musician and lyricist Alienus, joined on the project’s debut album by invited vocalist Brut from the death metal band Raspatory.

The name of that album, which will be released by Satanath Records on April 28th, is Eternity Borns From A Moment. It is described as “a journey around the endless space of the Universe,” and a journey through time as well, in which “the listener becomes a time traveller from the beginnings of life till its total disappearance…” Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEADSPEAK — “NO RESPECT – NEITHER FOR LIVING NOR FOR THE DEAD”

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Apr 182024
 

The occult death metal band Deadspeak was formed in 2008 in Ireland, where its two Polish co-founders (Krakus and Tomasz Prokop) were then living. They recorded a pair of demos in 2008 and 2010, but then the band seemed to disappear for a long time.

Yet after returning to Poland the creative embers caught fire again and just last year Deadspeak released an excellent debut album named Human Alchemy (available here), a 44-minute work that they have described as “a blizzard of obscure riffs and strange melodies, fueled by hypersensitivity to society”.

Striking while the iron is hot, Deadspeak are already following up that album with a two-song EP that we’re happily premiering today. For these recordings, the Deadspeak duo of adventurous guitarist Krakus and venomous vocalist Tomasz were joined by guest bassist Ataman Tolovy and, as session drummer, the veteran hitter James Stewart (Decapitated, Berserker Legion, Bloodshot Dawn, ex-Vader, etc.). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PARADOX RIFT — “THE SKY BENEATH”

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Apr 162024
 

On May 10th the Cleveland-based extreme metal band Paradox Rift will release a debut album named Ensnared. It features harrowing cover art by Remy Cooper (Headsplit Design), which captures key elements of the album’s themes. In the band’s words it depicts: “A figure or entity stuck/being torn between two dimensions; A demolecularizing body that has no complete form in one realm or the other. Existing in agony, never to be whole. Constantly being ripped apart and reanimated, Ensnared between two worlds.”

The band’s music pulls from different worlds too — different sub-genres of metal reflected in the influence of such bands as Between the Buried and Me, Gojira, Lamb of God, and Converge (among others). To share again the band’s own explanation:

Paradox Rift is a blend of multiple generations of metal coming together. With members in their early thirties, late thirties and even a fifty year old. We all listen to different generations, styles and subgenres of metal and we all bring something different to the Paradox Rift table.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video made by Scott Rudd Films and featuring artwork by Mark Erskine for a song from Ensnared named “The Sky Beneath“, and once more we’ll start with the band’s description of what the song is about: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEREMENT — “FORGING THE DARKNESS”

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Apr 162024
 

The blasphemous Athenian quartet Serement came to life in mid-2022, with three of its members moving onward from the death metal band Blessed by Perversion and the fourth having spent time in Chaos Heresy and Sickening Horror.

After independently releasing their 2022 EP Deviation From God, Serement made an unholy pact with Dolorem Records (France) and Iron, Blood and Death Corporation (Mexico) for the release of their debut album Abhorrent Invocations on May 17th of this year. The labels faithfully describe the music this way:

Their sound and style are heavily influenced by the most obscure and aggressive aspect of the Death Metal genre, with a Black Metal atmosphere that always casts a shadow over every track of the new record, combining fast blast beats with some groove rhythms and haunting melodies.

As a more concrete sign of what the album brings, today we’re premiering an album track called “Forging the Darkness“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TORTURERS’ LOBBY — “REPTILIAN HIDE”

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Apr 152024
 

One look at the cover art for the debut album from Tampa-based Torturers’ Lobby tells you that the music is likely to be disturbing but unconventional. It’s not easy to decipher what we’re seeing. Though skeletal remains and a vulture’s head appear to be part of the scene, the ghastly greenish hues and running veins create a twisted image of an old desecration.

It turns out (thankfully) that the music is also disturbing and unconventional, even more so than the cover art, the result of a willfully free-wheeling hybridizing of influences that follows only its own twisted logic but (also thankfully) doesn’t come off as “different for the sake of being different,” cohesion be damned.

We should quickly add that the music’s intensity is often so overpowering and shattering that it might leave you bug-eyed and slack-jawed.

As evidence of these conclusions we have two songs from the album to spotlight today, one of which has previously surfaced and one of which we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s June 14th release by Caligari Records and Ixiol Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VRYKOLAKAS — “BILATERAL VENOMOUS ASSAULT

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Apr 152024
 

As you can see, today we’re premiering a song from a new album, Nocturnal Dominion of Death, by the veteran Singaporean death-dealers Vrykolakas. It’s the second song from the album to be revealed so far. Together, those two tracks bring to mind the boxing terminology for the “one-two punch”, the devastating combination of blows that leaves an opponent sprawled on the canvas.

So let’s take up the first punch first. Continue reading »

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