AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: GREAT FALLS AND RADIATION BLACKBODY

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Oct 262023
 

On October 27th — tomorrow! — Ancient Temple Recordings and 7 Degrees Records will jointly release a new 7″ split by Seattle’s Great Falls and Brooklyn’s Radiation Blackbody, and today we’re presenting a stream of both bands’ contributions to the split.

The news of this release seized our attention mainly because of the presence of Great Falls. Even though Metal Archives hasn’t yet seen fit to include them, the band’s 2023 album Objects Without Pain is one of the most emotionally intense and stupefyingly heavy records you’ll find this year, and a worthy candidate as we get closer to year-end listmania.

At least for those of us around the NCS hovel, Radiation Blackbody was a new discovery — and, it turns out, a very good one. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PEINE KAPITAL — “PEINE KAPITAL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 252023
 

“It’s hard to be optimistic in such a fucked up world. Because we witness violence and ugliness on a daily basis, we can’t help but make music that is aggressive and filthy.”

With those words, the French doom-sludge trio Peine Kapital have announced their self-titled debut album, which will be released on October 27th by the respected Sludgelord Records. And those aren’t empty words. As you’ll learn for yourselves today through our complete streaming premiere of the album, Peine Kapital is a truly harsh, harrowing, and immensely heavy experience. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GLACIER EATER — “TEMPEST”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 242023
 

We read the lyrics for Glacier Eater‘s new album Tempest before listening to any of the music. They are well worth reading, both because they were crafted with literary flair and also because they tell a story that builds anticipation for the music.

That gripping narrative unfolds across the songs, each of which is like a chapter in a tragic saga. Through two contentious narrators, they relate the attempt of a warrior captain to lead his forces away from the life of killing they knew and to sail toward a foreign shore “at the edge of the world” where they might find peace, “a chance to make it right”.

Some in the company don’t share the captain’s optimism, and sure enough, it turns out they have sailed “into a hole of death”. Against the backdrop of a volcanic eruption they are assaulted by other warriors on the shore, whom they slaughter until forced to retreat and set sail again, only to be assaulted in a different way by the tempest for which the album is named, as if the gods themselves are exacting “a righteous vengeance” for all the killing they have done.

But even then, after the storm and the drowning of many, the protagonists’ turmoil hasn’t ended, because another ship, a hostile one, is rapidly gaining on them and cannons blaze, “another fight on our hands”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ONE MASTER — “THE SECRET NAMES”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 232023
 

After six long years of lycanthropic reclusion, ONE MASTER are ready to unveil a new full-length recording: The Names of Power. Taking its title from the ancient occult idea that if one learns the true name of a deity, access to its power can be obtained, the theme of the album is on the power of language, with each song being focused on its use in a different context: religion, heresy, a cult, solitude, the universe, and modernity.

That’s how the promotional materials for The Names of Power begin introducing the new double-LP from this cult East Coast black metal band. They include more details that we’ll share with you, but for now we want to move right into the music, which is maybe even more fantastic than even die-hard fans of One Master might be expecting. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REVULSED — “BEYOND THE DEPTHS OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS”

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Oct 202023
 

It’s been a long pause since the Australian death metal band Revulsed released their slaughtering debut album (Infernal Atrocity) in 2015. The band hasn’t been completely silent since then. A live album emerged in 2017, along with a scattering of cover songs (digitally compiled in 2019) featuring Revulsed‘s take on tracks by Cannibal Corpse, Testament, Death, and Gorguts.

But at long last Revulsed are now returning with another album or original music, this one entitled Cerebral Contamination, and Everlasting Spew Records will be releasing it on December 15th. To help pave the way, today we’re bringing you a track from the new album named “Beyond The Depths Of The Subconscious“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMBRACE YOUR PUNISHMENT — “OPPRESSION”

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Oct 202023
 

Hailing from Valenciennes, France, Embrace Your Punishment have been smashing bones and ruining minds since 2009, compiling a discography that includes a debut EP and two albums (2014’s Honor Before Glory and 2019’s Nameless King). Along the way they’ve wrecked lots of venues from the stage too. And now they’ve got a third album teed up for release by Lacerated Enemy Records on December 1st.

The name of the new album is Made of Stone, and that name is a good preview of the music, which is massive, mauling, and made to crush skulls and spines with no mercy and no remorse. You really might as well embrace your punishment, because this record leaves you no choice.

You want proof? Listen to the song we’re premiering today, the well-named “Oppression“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RITUAL CLEARING — “PENITENCE”

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Oct 192023
 

“Cold depravity”, “raw hideousness”, “hypnotic, harrowing splendor”, “an undeniable sense of dread… laced with a resigned melancholia”. Those are among the descriptions offered in the PR materials accompanying Penitence, the debut album from Connecticut-based Ritual Clearing that’s now set for release by Eternal Death on November 17th.

Can we improve upon those vivid words? Probably not, but that won’t stop us from trying, and the occasion for our strenuous efforts is the title track from the new album that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BACTERIAL HUSK — “FLAYED BY ANOMALIES”

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Oct 192023
 

Stupid us, until recently we’ve slept on the Boston-based death metal band Bacterial Husk. Based on what we’re hearing from their forthcoming debut album Anthropogenic Ruin, that was probably a grievous error, because the album is a mind-boggling hellraiser.

It’s not the band’s first effort, having been preceded by a 2016 EP named Agnosia of Omens and the 2018 single “Mystics of Transmutation“, and the band’s members have been involved in other past and current projects, including Boston thrashers Razormaze and the brutal death metal of Scattered Remnants.

But in some ways Anthropogenic Ruin sounds like a very different beast than what’s come before — both more technically spectacular, more fiendishly berserk, maybe more vicious, and possibly even more bone-breaking, while changing moods almost as fast as the band shift among tempos and riffs.

We’ve got a prime example of what we’re trying to describe in today’s premiere of the song “Flayed By Anomalies“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE PLAGUE — “HACKED AND BUTCHERED”

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Oct 182023
 

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, The Plague erupted from cemetery earth in 2017 with a debut EP appropriately named Mass Genocide, and then honed their grisly blades with live performances in support of such bands as Angelcorpse, Master, Entombed AD, and Ensiferum (among many others).

Time passed and in 2021 Bitter Loss Records released the band’s debut album Within Death. As we wrote around that time, on the occasion of a premiere:

The music of this full-length debut does indeed live within death — death metal of the old school to be precise, of a particularly mauling and murderous, gruesome and ghastly variety. Powered by that beloved chainsawing guitar distortion, propelled by bone-smashing drumwork, and elevated into rarified air by truly astonishing vocal madness, The Plague‘s music is electrifying. We have little doubt that (as the advance press claims) it will strongly appeal to fans of classic Dismember and Entombed as well as more recent entrants such as LIK and Entrails.

And now The Plague return again, on the other side of a real-world plague, with a second album named Erosion of Gods, which will be released on October 28th by Brilliant Emperor Records. And once again we have the ghoulish pleasure of premiering a song from the album, along with a gore-soaked video-tale of hideous torture and cannibalism. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RECKLESS — “SHARP MAGIK STEEL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 182023
 

We are fast approaching Dying Victims Productions‘ October 20 release date for the debut album of the Bogotá-based speed metal band Reckless. Or rather, that album is rushing toward us with the momentum of an 18-wheeler whose brakes have failed at the zenith of its power.

The band jam the pedal down on the very first track, “Kneel Before the Gods“, and they don’t ease up very much until the closing track “Unholy Odyssey” has run its own riotous course. It’s an album fueled by adrenaline, and it’s a big transfusion of adrenaline for listeners, but as you’ll discover from our full streaming premiere, the thrills derive from more than just the music’s turbocharged intensity. Continue reading »

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