AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VORAATH — “JUDAS BLOOD AND VULTURES”

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Nov 132023
 

The North Carolina experimental death metal band Voraath boasts a lineup that includes members of other groups we’ve followed over the years, including Xael and Rapheumets Well, and their resumes also include participation in Implosive Disgorgence, Sweet Blood, Accursed Creator, and Visitant. They’re now beginning to pave the way toward release of their debut album next year via Exitus Stratagem Records.

Voraath‘s aim is to do more than record and release music. The music is part of a universe they’re creating, drawing upon elements of horror and science-fantasy, which includes significant visual as well as audio portrayals, including the band’s own presentation of themselves on stage — each member appears as a character in the lore of the music, as you can see: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HATRED REIGNS — “AWAKEN THE ANCIENTS”

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Nov 102023
 

About five years ago, after becoming immersed in the debut death metal EP of Hatred Reigns from Ottawa, Ontario (whose title was Realm: I – Affliction), we lauded “the band’s ability to join together murderous brutality and impressive technical fireworks,” “whipping the listener through a vortex of sound that is somehow both chaotic and machine-precise”.

Consisting of three tracks, that EP was released to provide a preview of a future concept album. Now,  on the other side of a lot of hard work, and hard times brought about by the covid pandemic, Hatred Reigns are at last ready to release that concept album on December 1st, and its name is Awaken The Ancients.

To help pave the way, today we’re premiering a video for the album’s title track, which also opens the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VARGSHEIM — “THE THIRD EYE”

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Nov 102023
 

Near the end of December 2022 the Crawling Chaos label released In the Tower of Ivory, the fifth album by the German band Vargsheim. In the run toward that release we premiered a video for a song that all by itself demonstrated how diverse this trio’s musical interests are, and how adept they are at bringing them together.

As we wrote then about that song (the album’s title track), “You’ll get a feeling of free-ranging but carefully thought-through experimentation at work…. As it slowly builds and then begins to morph and contort you can pick out bits and pieces of doom, psychedelia, prog, and rock, entwined like vines through a daunting framework of black metal”.

Now we’ve got a reminder of Vargsheim‘s talents with yet another video premiere (this one a lyric video) for a song off In the Tower of Ivory. This one is the album’s penultimate track, “The Third Eye“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PLAGUE RIDER — “CHALLENGER’S LECTURE”

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Nov 092023
 

A decade after their debut album, with a couple of EPs in between, the UK death metal band Plague Rider will see the release of their second album Intensities tomorrow, courtesy of our friends at Transcending Obscurity Records.

So close to its release, the album has already received a flood of reviews, all of them favorable so far as we can tell, and most of them striving to underscore just how unorthodox and unpredictable the album is, how devoted it is to turning listeners inside-out and upside-down.

Words like “twisted”, “challenging”, and “avant-garde” pop up, which are usually warning signs that you won’t be banging heads and humming tunes as you go, but you might already get that idea just from James Watts‘ impressionistic cover art and its interweaving of very dark and vivid colors.

Obviously you won’t have to wait long to hear all 7 tracks for yourselves, but we do have one more to premiere before the whole thing comes uncaged tomorrow. It’s the record’s penultimate gauntlet of madness, “Challenger’s Lecture“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LEFT EYE PERSPECTIVE — “CONUNDRUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Nov 092023
 

Sometimes comparisons of one band’s music to the music of other better-known bands works pretty well. Other times you scratch your head or vigorously shake it — what the hell was that writer thinking?

But in the case of the Belgian band Left Eye Perspective, their label Argonauta Records hit the nail on the head: The band’s debut album Conundrum really does sound like someone gene-spliced Mastodon, Gojira, Baroness, and The Ocean.

Or to frame the matter differently, their music proves to be a highly contagious alchemy of sludge, stoner rock, progressive metal, and grunge. Adventurously executed with a lot of instrumental and vocal flair, it brings powerhouse grooves, flights of head-spinning elaboration, mood-moving atmospheres, and plentiful doses of lysergic acid diethylamide.

You’ll see for yourselves what we’re getting at, because today we’ve got a full stream of this magnetic album on the eve of its release. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENGULF — “BELLOWS FROM THE AETHER”

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Nov 082023
 

For three years in a row beginning in 2017 the one-man New Jersey death metal band Engulf released EPs.

We caught up to what the band was doing when Engulf released its second EP, 2018’s Gold and Rust (which we premiered), and enthusiastically stayed with it when the third EP Transcend came out the next year (reviewed here).

Andy Synn ended that latter review with a wish:

“Hopefully one day soon we’ll get a comprehensive full-length album from Engulf, as there’s a very good chance it’ll be a modern day classic when we do.”

There was reason to expect that Engulf‘s mastermind Hal Microutsicos was at work on an album when that year-over-year release of EPs stopped, and the months ticked by without something new (granted, those ticking years included the depths of the pandemic).

And at last we do indeed have a debut full-length from Engulf on the far horizon, an album named The Dying Planet Weeps that Everlasting Spew Records will launch on January 12th. To help introduce it, today we’re premiering the second track in the running order, “Bellows From the Aether“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AZATHOTH’S DREAM — “THE MOOR”

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Nov 082023
 

There is a world of the imagination in which the clock of the seasons has frozen and moves no longer, in which the freezing dark of winter is endless. Technology works no longer, and decay is the order of the day. What human life remains is now huddled around fires, and beyond those shrouds of light terrible predatory things wait in the endless night, inhuman and ascendant.

It is a world of dream, a nightmare for huddled humans but a hideous glory for the dreamer, if the dreamer were something like the horrid ruler of the Outer Gods. The imagining of such blood-freezing dreams may have spawned the name chosen by the project whose music we’re premiering today — which is indeed Azathoth’s Dream.

Other nightmare dreams of endless night may explain the title of the project’s debut album — Nocturnal Vampyric Bewitchment. But regardless, that title is well chosen because the music is all of those things — deeply nocturnal and viciously vampyric, and yes, also frighteningly bewitching. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THUNRAZ — “YOU AND ME”

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Nov 072023
 

The Estonian band Thunraz, the solo project of Madis Jalakas, has been in a creative surge from its inception, releasing a pair of EPs and a pair of albums since 2018. If anything the surge has strengthened, because Thunraz is following its latest album Revelation (released about five months ago) with yet another album coming out before this current month ends.

The new album is entitled Borderline, and it includes nine songs, one of which — “You and Me” — we’re premiering today along with a head-spinning red-shifted video. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RAT KING — “DESTROYER OF US ALL”

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Nov 072023
 


Photo by J Donovan Malley

Given that I’ve lived in the Seattle area for 28 years I tend to have… tender feelings… for Seattle metal bands. Especially the ones whose music makes me feel like I’m a piece of meat that’s being tenderized and then flame-broiled.

I’ve also had especially tender feelings for Rat King ever since being bowled over by a live show they played at Seattle’s Funhouse venue in 2017. That was my first exposure to the audio tornadoes and earthquaking upheavals generated by the Ecuadorian brothers Danny Racines (bass, vocals) and Ricky Racines (guitar, backup vocals) and their Nicaraguan drummer Carlos Delgado.

Since then they’ve moved from strength to greater strength with each release, the most recent of which is their album Psychotic Reality, which was released by the Satanik Royalty label at the end of September. It’s an album you shouldn’t miss, and in case you did we have a vivid reminder to catch up to it via our premiere today of a video for the song “Destroyer Of Us All“–well-timed to coincide with the band’s in-progress tour of the western U.S. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SKY ISLAND — “FALL INTO DARKNESS”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 062023
 

This is one of those “and now for something completely different” moments at our site, like coming home to find that all your furnishings have been replaced and people you’ve never seen before are there waiting for you. Startling to be sure, but if you don’t immediately exit and slam the door, maybe you discover that the unexpected changes are… to your liking.

Well, maybe you’ve seen or heard one of the participants in Sky Island before. He’s the one sitting behind the drum kit in the video you’re about to see. His name is Ben Fagerness, and he’s been violently hitting things in the Minneapolis death metal band Graveslave for almost a decade, and also in Gloryhole Guillotine.

Some of you might also recognize the other person in the video, Niilo Smith, though his participation in the wide world of metal and rock as a solo creator has been in a very different sector, most likely unknown to the usual visitors at this site. Continue reading »

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