AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CELL PRESS — “ORIGINAL URANIUM BABY”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 162024
 

About 3 1/2 years ago we premiered the self-titled debut EP of the Montreal band Cell Press on the eve of its release. We opened our introduction this way:

“If we could see your faces when you listen to it, there would be a great temptation to write nothing about the music and just watch your expressions change as all the surprises hit you like battering rams, expressions that might range from joy to panic to spine-tingling fear, and perhaps revulsion too. But since we can’t see you, on we go….”

And on we went, somewhat spoiling the surprises by referring to the music as “mad, mauling, and mind-bending — sometimes fiery and frenzied, sometimes cold and brutally destructive, and almost always so viscerally gripping that it makes your whole body want to move (even if some of the movements are spasms)”.

And so we couldn’t help but experience a kind of deviant glee when learning that Cell Press would be releasing their first full-length this March, a work named Cages, and more deviant glee when realizing we’d have the chance to premiere the video you’re about to witness for the second single off the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SUN OF NOTHING — “GHOST”

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Feb 152024
 

Metal genre labels begin to resemble scrambled eggs cooked with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes, with a sprinkling of cheeses and spices. The thought comes to mind in contemplating “experimental post blackened sludge metal”, which is how some have characterized the music of the long-lived Greek band Sun of Nothing.

But just as a flavorful breakfast scramble causes the mouth to water, Sun of Nothing‘s music is also very enticing, even though it might also make you think it’s the last meal you’ll be eating before the world ends. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KELEVRA — “CLEANSE WITH FIRE”

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Feb 142024
 

On March 8th the Canadian metal band Kelevra (from Regina, Saskatchewan) will release a new album named Oneiric, which follows by a significant 8 years their last record, 2016’s Lividity.

For all of us, those 8 years brought an immense amount of change and challenge, and no exception was allowed for Kelevra. Among other hurdles they had to surmount, their bass player Adrienne suffered severe heart damage caused by an extremely rare and usually lethal autoimmune disorder, damage that led to multiple surgeries, the implementation of an electronic device (which powered her heart even as she continued playing live shows), and eventually a heart transplant.

We mention Adrienne‘s experience here at the outset, because she is one of the performers you’re about to see in a guitar-and-bass playthrough video for a thrilling song named “Cleanse With Fire” off Kelevra‘s new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HANDS OF GORO — “DEMONIZER”

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Feb 142024
 

What shall you give your love on this Valentine’s Day? This person advises against store-bought flowers because they’re not planet-friendly. Boxes of sweets that rot teeth and burgeon butts? Maybe not the best idea either. Is there anything you can do that isn’t damaging in some way (even though love is almost always damaging at some point)?

How about showing your affection with a gift of some thundering music that includes “elements of anthemic, epic, traditional heavy metal with torrents of harmonized savagery and brief ventures into the likes of punk, classic rock, and more”?

That’s the PR come-on for the self-titled debut album by Hands of Goro, which is set for release on March 1st. It’s a seductive come-on, and becomes even more seductive when you see that the band’s three participants include members of Spirit Adrift, Nite, Slough Feg, and former live members of Carcass and Angel Witch. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STELLAR REMAINS — “WASTELANDS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 132024
 

Let’s pretend you can’t listen to Stellar Remains‘ new EP right now, even though you can if you just scroll further down the screen you’re now looking at.

Let’s take our game of make-believe a move further and pretend you have no idea who this band is and have never heard a note of its music. That requires less suspension of disbelief, because Wastelands is in fact the first release of Stellar Remains, and only one song from the EP has been available for streaming before today.

Moreover, all that most of us know or could find out about the band (apart from that one song) is that it’s the solo work of Brisbane-based Dan Elkin, who has no resume on Metal-Archives yet.

So, if you indulge all this pretending, then you have to put some amount of weight on what we now have to say about Wastelands. How nice for us. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHILD — “CREATIVE INVENTIONS OF KILLING”

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Feb 122024
 

As one dictionary tells us, the German word zeitgeist means “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time”. It combines two words that mean those very things — time and spirit.

Now, take a guess about how the Swedish band CHILD think about our current age, given that they’ve named their new album Shitegeist. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERWOED — “THE MADMAN’S DANCE”

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Feb 092024
 

We’ve been following the progress of the Dutch black metal band Verwoed (the solo project of Erik Bleijenberg), and becoming increasingly intrigued and viscerally moved by each successive release. And so it was exciting news to learn that Wolves of Hades and Argento Records will be releasing a new Verwoed album named The Mother on March 29th. Getting the chance to premiere a song from it was another thrill.

The song is called “The Madman’s Dance“, and madness does burn within the music, with such intensity and such wholly enveloping power that it’s easy to feel consumed by it, witnessing not merely derangement but bloody splendor. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FROZEN WINDS — “THEOSPHOROS”

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Feb 072024
 

Freezing winds howl through the Earth’s atmosphere in the far northern and far southern latitudes, but they can howl through our minds too, regardless of where we dwell. In realms of music, black metal brings the howling cold in ways more biting and dreadful than most genres, with the gales often whipped by the furious wings of fallen angels.

And so it’s not so perplexing to find a black metal band named Frozen Winds that originated on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, no matter the usual sun and warmth of those climes. They delved into occult subjects and found ancient expressions of the Left Hand Path that led them into the gales, and also into the ritualism of mystics.

More than 17 years into their existence, Frozen Winds have moved their music to evolve, building upon their previous releases as well as live performances, sharing stages with the likes of Rotting Christ, Kawir, Septic Flesh and The Dead Creed. Where the movements have now taken them will be revealed in a new album (only their second) named Keys to Eschaton, and is partially revealed today through our lyric-video premiere of the first single from the album, a fabulous song named “Theosphoros“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOUNDS — “ZOOPHAGIST”

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Feb 052024
 

It’s always a pleasure to come across a song name that sends us running for the dictionary, even when it’s a name whose meaning we might be able to guess after dividing it into its component parts. If you guessed that “Zoophagist” refers to an animal that eats every other animal available to it, you get a gold star.

However, in the case of the song you’re about to experience courtesy of the Chicago band Wounds, that creature isn’t one you can find in any zoo or earthly wilderness. As the song’s chilling lyrics describe, it is instead a collective of lethal things that have captivated the mind of their captor in a lab in outer space and thereby achieved their escape.

In the words of the song, these things eagerly anticipate what will come next after they make their way to our solar system: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSUS — “UNDER SIEGE”

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Feb 022024
 

As their name portends, the Greek death metal band Abyssus did not arise to shine light and love on a miserable world, but to submerge it into deeper darkness and more relentless savagery. Since the release of their debut EP a dozen years ago, they have not wavered in their dedication to musical renditions of blade-sharp barbarism, esoteric terrors, and punk-fueled mayhem, nor allowed mercy to mediate their music.

The band’s latest descent is an EP named Under Siege. It was released without much fanfare near the end of last year, and so the title of this feature plays fast and loose with the “premiere” word, which is something we almost never do. But the chance to help spread the word about Under Siege was just too tempting, especially now that it’s being offered by Chaos and Hell Productions on CD. Continue reading »

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