AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SINNERY — “BELOW THE SUMMIT”

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Sep 282023
 

Last year we opened the floodgates on a great volume of words when we premiered and reviewed a new album named Black Bile by the Israeli band Sinnery. We were delivering a full stream of the album, so what was the point of all those words?

The point was to try to wake people up and get them to look past the simple genre descriptions of “thrash” or “death/thrash” that seemed to follow the band around like lost dogs. The point was that Sinnery‘s music is much more multi-faceted and thus much more interesting than the labels might suggest — and also even more riotously exhilarating.

Black Bile was so damned good that we’re very damned fortunate Sinnery have quickly followed it up, releasing three singles this year and now a new EP named Below the Summit that includes those, plus two more tracks. Once again, we’ve got a full stream for you, and once again a torrent of words. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHROME WAVES — “FATHER, I WAIT”

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Sep 272023
 

Chrome Waves released their latest album Earth Will Shed Its Skin in April of this year. In his review our own Andy Synn noted that we have been writing about their music at this site since 2011, following their career “with both fascination and appreciation aplenty over the years.”

What Andy found particularly fascinating about their latest album was “the way in which it attempts to weave the two most distinctive aspects of the band’s sound – the cathartic ‘Post-Black Metal’ side that appeals to fans of Tombs, Deafheaven, and the like, and the shoegaze-y Alt-Rock side that recalls the best of acts like Hum and Catherine Wheel – into a single, coherent whole.”

But even last April the band’s leader Jeff Wilson was already hinting that we shouldn’t expect a future continuation of that interweaving. He said this in an interview around the time of the album’s release: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KALT VINDUR — “ŻYWIOŁY”

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Sep 272023
 

Kalt Vindur are a Polich black metal band, though the name they chose for themselves are Icelandic words that mean “cold wind” in English. They come from the southeast of their country, from a region called Podkarpacie, and they have labeled their music “Podkarpacki Black Metal” (“Subcarpathian Black Metal”).

That label signifies the significance of the region’s geography, history, and culture in the band’s musical inspirations. Those inspirations are at the forefront of their forthcoming new album Magna Mater, their first release on the Greek label The Circle Music. That’s evident in the song we’re premiering today through a lyric video.

The name of the song is “Żywioły“, which in English means “Elements”. Kalt Vindur vocalist Celsus describes it this way: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEBELKRÄHE — “NIELANDSMANN”

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Sep 262023
 

On October 27th Crawling Chaos Records will release a new album named ephemer by the Munich-based black metal band Nebelkrähe — their first full-length in a decade. It’s a most unusual album, extraordinarily varied in its sounds and moods, and in its vocals, instrumentation, and melodies, the kind of album in which conventions of black metal are disregarded as often as they are honored.

The band point toward those variations mentioned above in their epigram for the album: “Memories – rainbow bubbles for adults.” (A. Engel) They explain its significance this way:

What sounds kitschy at first can also be read soberly and unromantically: Like soap bubbles that burst to the horror of the naïve child if he or she gets too close to them, even the most dazzling memories are fleeting and ephemeral – or, in German, ephemer.

They also share that the German-language lyrics “tell of blurred boundaries, youth gone by, and shattered dreams of life – as a tribute to the allure and horrors of transience.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: RORCAL – SILENCE

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 262023
 

(We’re honoured to be hosting the premiere of Rorcal‘s new album in advance of its September 29 release by Hummus Records, with words by our own Andy Synn)

Success, or so they say, can be a double-edged sword.

What, for example, do you do after releasing an album which – in my opinion, at least – is both the very definition of a true cult classic and one of the best records of the year? How do you follow something like that?

Some bands double down on what already worked. Others switch things up and try a different approach.

But Rorcal… they just reached even deeper down into that aching, infinitely empty pit of gnawing hunger and nameless horror that exists within their collective soul and tore loose another spiteful slab of auditory darkness that they chose to call Silence.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TORN THE FUCK APART — “CORROSIVE FORM”

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Sep 252023
 

Torn the Fuck Apart is one of the most unpretentious band names in extreme metal, and it’s also an example of “truth in advertising”: their music delivers what the name promises. Much the same could be said for this Kansas City’s band’s new album that’s due for release next month: Kill. Bury. Repeat.

But here’s the thing: as brazenly and unpretentiously violent as these names are, TTFA operate more like mad surgeons than crazed slashers or thuggish butchers. Their technical talents and precision are damned impressive, their songwriting is often head-spinning in its intricacy, and the music — while indeed bludgeoning and berserk — is catchy as hell.

A lot of people already know that, because Kill. Bury. Repeat. is TTFA‘s fifth album, and they’ve backed those with a lot of live performances over the years. But even people who are already ardent fans will likely have their eyes popped open by the new record, and newcomers (especially those who have a taste for death metal in the vein of such groups as Suffocation and Cryptopsy) will have something to look forward to eagerly when Gore House Productions releases the record.

As a sign of what’s coming, today we premiere a hellaciously exhilarating album track named “Corrosive Form“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WELLS VALLEY — “ACHAMOTH”

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Sep 252023
 

In preparing to write what you’re about to read I finally tried to answer a question I’ve wondered about for years: Where did the Portuguese band Wells Valley get their name?

After spending more time googling than I should have, and even reaching out to the band’s label Lavadome Productions, I still don’t know the answer. It may be a place on a map, a fixed location on the Earth, or a fictional location in a tale, conceived either by the band or some novelist or filmmaker.

I’m still curious, but one thing is quite clear: whatever else Wells Valley may mean, it now represents a landmark for a mysterious and extremely unsettling place the band create in a listener’s mind, and their new album Achamoth is a previously uncharted descent toward that harrowing place that’s unlike most others. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BULLETBELT — “NO AFTERLIFE”

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Sep 222023
 

Any year that sees the release of a new album by New Zealand’s Bulletbelt is a very good year, no matter how much shit is raining down around the rest of the calendar. At least that’s the conclusion you’d draw from all the many expressions of enthusiasm we’ve showered on the band at this site going back to 2014, when their second album Rise of the Banshee came out.

Now they’ve got another full-length, Burn It Up, which is officially being released today via Impaler Records. In many ways it’s surprising, as compared to what we’ve come to expect, due in part to the advent of a new Bulletbelt vocalist, whose talents have led to band to expand the influences of classic heavy metal, power metal, and rock in their songwriting.

On the other hand, the new album also includes songs that are more in line with the kind of verbiage we’ve used in the past (which included frequent comparative references to the band Midnight), words and phrases like “viscerally appealing”, “stunningly contagious”, “absolutely electrifying”, “hard-hitting”, and “anthemic”.

All of which is to say that Burn It Up is quite a varied album — and even more varied than the preceding paragraphs might lead you to expect. Vivid proof of that comes in the form of the frightening video we’re premiering today for the new album’s devastating fourth track, “No Afterlife“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MARTYRDOOM — “SHEDDING OF THE SOUL”

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Sep 222023
 

Although I thought for sure that we had passed along some comments about the Grievous Psychosis debut album from Poland’s Martyrdoom six years ago, alas, we didn’t, though we did share an interview by Comrade Aleks of guitarist Grzegorz Młynarczyk.

Ours was a regrettable oversight, because that first album was packed with grisly charms. It leaned into doom-soaked old school death metal, with plenty of heaviness and hooks, revealing an evolution from the band’s earlier releases.

And yet maybe it’s just as well, because the band’s forthcoming second album, As Torment Prevails, is even better. The songwriting is more capable and dynamic, the melodies more blood-congealing, the grooves even more bone-smashing, and the production is improved, though still dirty enough to suit the band’s old school devotions.

To back up these opinions, what we have for you today is the premiere of the new album’s fifth track, “Shedding of the Soul“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LACRAU — “AXIOMA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 212023
 

Death comes for some people suddenly, and often far too soon. For others it waits at the end of a slow process of physical and mental decline, far later than some would wish.

In times greatly distant from our own the harshness and hardships of life, coupled with an inability to treat illnesses, caused people to age and diminish faster and die sooner. But even then, as well as now, it has often fallen to children to care for declining parents, past the point when the pleasures of companionship have vanished and only pain remains.

In many cultures at different times around the world the problems of aging were solved by the practice of senicide — the killing of the elderly. In some places the aged were expected to relieve the burdens on their clans by killing themselves. In others, they became the victims of ritual sacrifice.

It is said that in ancient Scandinavia “the practice consisted in elderly people throwing themselves, or being thrown, from precipices after becoming unable to take care of themselves or perform everyday tasks.” And that practice, as described by the Portuguese band Lacrau, is the subject of their debut album Axioma, which we’re premiering in full today on the eve of its release by Monumental Rex. Continue reading »

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