AN NCS PREMIERE: TORREFY — “ENSLAVED NEW WORLD”

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Jun 282024
 

Today we’re revealing the complete cover art for Necronomisongs, the forthcoming fourth album by the black-thrashers Torrefy from lovely Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. As you can see, it seems to portray the performance of a hellish orchestra, stripped of flesh but not stripped of their deathless desire to perform.

In addition to revealing the ghastly cover art we’re also presenting the new album’s second single, “Enslaved New World“, and when you hear it, the cover art will make lots of sense. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EVILYN — “BLOVIATE”

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Jun 282024
 

What an interesting word “bloviate” is. Dictionaries define it as speaking verbosely and in an annoying way, as if the speaker thinks himself very important but is instead empty of substance. It seems to have originated in the U.S. in the early 1850s as an alteration of the word “blow,” as in the sense of “to boast,” like a blow-hard. It came up then, and still comes up, in reference to politicians.

Even more interesting is the death metal band Evilyn‘s choice of that word as the name of a song on their debut album Mondestrunken (which will be released on August 16th by Transcending Obscurity Records). And there’s another interesting word.

Mondestrunken seems to be a German expression that translates as “moondrunk“. The only previous reported use of it that we’ve found in our research is in the name of a song that opens an innovative musical melodrama (commonly known as Pierrot lunaire) composed by Arnold Schoenberg based on a cycle of poems by Albert Giraud. It premiered in Berlin in 1921.

Well, we can only guess about why Evilyn chose that name for the album and “Bloviate” as the name of the song we’re about to premiere. But it turns out that the music is every bit as atypical as the naming choices. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TROG — “HORRORS BEYOND”

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Jun 272024
 

The origins of the word troglodyte date back to antiquity, where it was used by ancient Greek and Roman geographers and historians to refer to primitive cave-dwellers in different regions. Over time, of course, it has also been used to refer to any people “characterized by reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes”.

The New Jersey death metal band TROG probably had their tongues in their cheeks when they chose that name. (When the band originally formed in 2019 the name they used was Troglorot, which obviously incorporated some other connotations too). On its face, the name suggests primitive caveman death metal, the kind that sounds like grunting hulks brutishly banging rocks together.

But even their first EP, Of Vomit Reborn, made clear that this wasn’t really what they were up to. Their debut album Horrors Beyond, which we’re premiering in full today on the eve of its June 28 release, makes that even more apparent, and no one with ears to hear would ever characterize the music as a reflection of “outmoded or reactionary attitudes” — far from it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALCONFORT — “STAIN (FANTASY)”

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Jun 272024
 

Some of us, maybe only those of us with too much time on our hands, like to play guessing games about the music of a new band before hearing any of it. In the case of the UK band Malconfort, the game was irresistible, but also a bit perplexing.

First, they took their name from a Deathspell Omega song off the Paracletus album, a lyrically fascinating song that speaks of a God who came to Babylon in malevolence, in remembrance of whom “they shall pray backwards,” and whose congregation “was cast out of humanity… like an abominable branch!”

Then we found that Malconfort‘s otherwise undisclosed lineup includes members of Sea Mosquito and Amaltheia, a fact that strengthens the speculation that black metal is in the mix… at least to some degree.

And then there’s the track list on Malconfort’s debut album Humanism, where each single-word title is accompanied by an intriguing parenthetical: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BITTER WINE — “THE LIGHTING STARS”

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Jun 272024
 

Almost exactly one year ago the Portuguese label The Hills Are Dead Records released In The Soleness Of The Storm, the debut album by the Iranian band Bitter Wine. At that time, Bitter Wine was the solo project of Murray Arisch, which had its inception in 2021. Since the album’s release, the band has expanded with a full lineup that now includes guitarist Vahid Karimifard, bassist Amir Bonakdar, and drummer Hossein “Ermita” Zahedi.

And so begins a new chapter in the life of Bitter Wine, which has included them playing their first live show in Iran, with ambitions to play in other countries as well. To help remind people of the album and to help draw deserved attention to the band, today we’re premiering a lyric video (made by Mahyar Masoudi) for the song “The Lighting Stars“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROCELL — “OF FROST, OF FLAME, OF FLESH”

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Jun 262024
 

The formidable Danish band Crocell released their debut album The God We Drowned in 2008, and then followed that with new full-lengths every two or three years, culminating in their fifth album Relics in 2018. Keeping to that pattern, we might have expected a new album in 2021, but that year they instead brought us a pair of four-song EPs on the same day (reviewed here).

Now, however, three years later, we do have a new Crocell album, and it will be coming out on June 28th via the band’s new label Emanzipation Productions. Its name is Of Frost, Of Flame, Of Flesh, and today we’re presenting it in its entirety. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOXIS — “VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM”

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Jun 252024
 

Almost four years ago we premiered Expanse of Hellish Black Mire, the debut EP of a Cleveland-based death metal band named Noxis. In an accompanying review, I attempted to sum up the music by saying that it was “thuggish in its bone-fracturing, organ-rupturing belligerence and disgustingly gruesome in its atmosphere, and yet also mind-boggling in its mad contortions and technical extravagances. Their music is thus thoroughly putrid and punishing but also a big adrenaline kick”.

Having experienced that EP, I wasn’t completely shocked by what Noxis have accomplished on their debut album Violence Inherent In The System, which we’re premiering today in advance of its June 28 release, but it still leaps beyond what Noxis achieved on that very impressive EP. And for those of you who might be encountering Noxis for the first time, you’re in for an enormous surprise, a surprise of genuinely explosive proportions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PNEUMA HAGION — “HARBINGER OF DISSOLUTION”

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Jun 242024
 

The Texas duo Pneuma Hagion made an inspired choice of artwork for the cover of their forthcoming third album, From Beyond: It is William Blake’s 1795 drawing The House of Death, which was inspired by lines from Book XI of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the archangel Michael reveals to Adam in terrible detail the doomed fate of humans — a description of a “Lazar-house” filled with afflicted people suffering in their agonies, “and over them triumphant Death his Dart Shook….”

Pneuma Hagion‘s new album, which is set for release on August 30th by Everlasting Spew Records, conjures terrible images of its own:

“From Beyond explores Lovecraftian ideas of horrifying extra-dimensional entities forcing their way into the causal universe by infecting the minds of humans.

“Each song is from the perspective of some malevolent entity of unfathomable nature trying to influence the world of mortals and trying to infiltrate our universe in order to cause its ultimate destruction.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): REPLACIRE — “THE CENTER THAT CANNOT HOLD”

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Jun 202024
 

Behind every album there is a tale — of course there is. Sometimes the tales are mundane, but in the case of Replacire‘s new album The Center That Cannot Hold, the story brings to mind the  travails of Sisyphus, that benighted figure from Greek myth whom the gods punished for cheating death by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top.

In legend, the fate of Sisyphus is one of eternal toil. but fortunately Replacire did eventually manage to reach the summit and stay there, not only completing this new album but also achieving a new summit in their music.

We’ll give you an excerpt of information about why the completion of the album turned out to be such a struggle, but our main mission today is to present a full stream of the album on the eve before its June 21 release by Season of Mist. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CEREMONY OF SILENCE — “PRIMAEVAL SACRIFICE”

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Jun 192024
 

On July 19th Willowtip Records will release Hálios, the second album from the Slovakian death/black metal band Ceremony of Silence. The label’s introduction of it is very intriguing:

Hálios represents the unborn luminous radiance, the all-pervading immutable light of the Universe, and our fundamental inherent nature. It is the thousand-rayed Sun, always in motion, but unchangeable, the axis mundi manifesting the sacred within our temporal world and serving as a bridge to the mythical time. The album sets forth on an eerie journey to this sacred dimension, reenacting the old stories inspired by the essence of the ancient Indo-European mythology, entwined in the obscure visions and dreams.

This introduction suggests that the music will be even deeper in its development of profound, soul-stirring atmosphere than this band’s first full-length, 2019’s Oútis (reviewed here), and that is indeed true. But it’s also true that Ceremony of Silence are still capable (indeed more so) of mounting head-spinning shock-and-awe assaults on the senses. Both the first single from the album and a second one we’re premiering today with a lyric video are proof of all that. Continue reading »

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