AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MEKIGAH — “TO HOLD ONTO A HEARTLESS HEART”

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Aug 092024
 

(Writtenby Islander)

Metal-Archives currently brands the Australian band Mekigah “Gothic/Doom Metal” based on the band’s first four albums. Based on Mekigah‘s forthcoming fifth album they may have to put an “(early)” parenthetical next to that genre description. But what will they put in front of “(later)”? What kind of genre label does the fifth album suggest? That turns out to be a very tough question.

Mekigah itself describes the new album as “a purposely designed ugly, drawn out, raw, awkward journey,” with “no attempt or desire to either embrace the slow slow doom, to aggressively technically impress or to build upon previous motifs”:

“Everything is caught between worlds, as Mekigah itself is caught between worlds. Nothing is where it belongs as things are uncomfortably forced together through the sheer necessity of only gaining satisfaction via sonic self sabotage and harm, creating audial-mazes which then have to delicately be navigated through.”

What does this mean? We’ll find out together, through our premiere stream of this new album, To Hold Onto A Heartless Heart, now due for release on August 15th via the Aesthetic Death label. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CRAWLING THROUGH TARTARUS — “THE FALL OF ATLAS”

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Aug 082024
 

As their name portends, the southern California band Crawling Through Tartarus, whose music straddles a line between contemporary death metal and deathcore, have drawn inspiration from ancient Greek mythology, with a particular relish for the most brutal and hellish aspects of those old tales, as proclaimed in their name itself.

But while the band wish to lead us into the deepest region of the infernal underworld where the gods internally imprisoned their enemies and ruthlessly punished the wicked, they don’t… crawl. Their music does succeed in creating hellish experiences, but their forte is bludgeoning listeners within an inch of their lives.

One example of what we mean is a song off their self-titled debut album, released earlier this year, that’s the subject of the lyric video we’re premiering today. In a nutshell, it’s a bone-smashing groove monster, albeit one that becomes haunting before the end. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEVENIAL VERDICT — “GARDEN OF EYES”

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Aug 082024
 

The appearance of another painting by Mariusz Lewandowski on the cover of a metal album is always welcome, and the album on which the one above appears is also welcome, especially because the music is as hauntingly chilling and as frighteningly colorful as the image.

That album, Blessing of Despair, is the Finnish death metal band Devenial Verdict‘s second full-length, following up their daunting Ash Blind from 2022. What we have for you today is a premiere of the third song from the record released so far, evocatively named “Garden of Eyes“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANOXIDE — “MORALS AND DOGMA”

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Aug 072024
 

Twelve years have passed since the birth of Anoxide somewhere in London. In that time they have released a pair of EPs, a demo, and a couple of singles, but nothing in the last six years. And so it comes as something of a surprise that two days from now they will release an album via Ghastly Music, their full-length debut at last.

They’ve titled it Morals & Dogma, and packed it with 9 songs (one of them an instrumental) that explore such subjects as the influence of misinformation in a media-saturated world, inescapable cycles of systemic corruption within society, the exacerbation of socio-economic disparity and the devastating effects of austerity policies on the working class and marginalized communities, the resurgence of far right ideologies, and visions of dystopian futures produced by suffering and inequality.

Weighty subjects to be sure, and there’s powerful heft in the music too, but also head-spinning adventures, as you’ll discover through our full album premiere today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CLOSET WITCH — “TO THE CAULDRON”

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Aug 062024
 

The dictionary defines “catharsis” as “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions”. It’s one of the first words that comes to mind in listening to the fusion of grindcore and powerviolence made by Iowa-based Closet Witch, and especially so in listening to the song that’s the subject of the Closet Witch video we’re premiering today.

This song, “To the Cauldron“, is explained by lead vocalist Mollie Piatetsky: “The song is about needing, wanting, yearning for comfort/advice/the presence of someone who is no longer on the earthly plain and the torment caused by this.”

The subject is familiar to many of us who have lost a parent, or both of them, or others who never had the kind of parent they wished for, or maybe never really knew them at all. Here are the song’s lyrics: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IFRIT — “SALTS OF PENITENCE”

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Aug 062024
 

Every religious tradition includes demons, as if their authors couldn’t conceive of human beings alone being capable of the evils they inflict upon each other. Better to ascribe those evils to inhuman spirits from which humanity might be saved by appeals to other (divine) spirits, rather than by finding and healing their own better spirits.

In Islamic scripture and culture, the most powerful and malicious demonic entities are called ifrit, sometimes described as ruthless chthonic spirits made of smoke and fire.

When you listen to the music of the New Zealand band Ifrit, it’s no wonder they chose that name. Their formulation of death metal is both malevolent and eldritch, an expression of eye-popping violence and soul-sinking misery that seems to strike from another world.

And hear it you shall (that’s an order!), because today we present one of the four songs on Ifrit‘s debut EP Haunting Charnel Grounds, which will be co-released on September 6th by Brilliant Emperor and Gutter Prince Cabal. The name of this terror is “Salts of Penitence“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TYPHONIAN — “TOWARDS THE CHAMBER OF THE OMNIPRESENT MIND”

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Aug 052024
 

Shakespeare famously had one of his characters ask, “What’s in a name?”, suggesting that the naming of things is irrelevant. In the underground domains of metal where many of us spend our listening time, a band’s music is indeed vastly more important than the name they choose for themselves. And yet the name Typhonian is one that seizes attention, at least for some of us who are also drawn to the worlds of mythology — and monsters.

That name most prominently refers to the monstrous serpentine giant Typhon. One of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology, the hundred-headed winged creature sought to overthrow Zeus in a cataclysmic battle, but failed and was cast into deepest Tartarus, or in some accounts buried beneath Mount Etna where it subsequently caused devastating eruptions.

And so, choosing the name Typhonian inevitably sends signals (as you’ll see, so do the names chosen by the band members for themselves in their Typhonian union). But of course the music matters most, and it’s the music of the German band Typhonian that we turn to now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SHEMHAMFORASH — “HEIR OF EMPTINESS (LIVE)”

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Aug 022024
 

Even for songs that have been out in the world a while, well-made music videos can open doors that listeners haven’t entered before, to find something previously undiscovered that proves to be arresting. That happened to this writer upon viewing and listening to the live video we’re about to premiere, and it will happen to some of you as well (and for those who are already dedicated fans of this band, it will be a welcome gift).

The band in question, Shemhamforash from Guadalajara, Mexico, are making their first appearance at our site, proving that although we make strenuous efforts to cover a multitude of bands, we still inevitably overlook worthy contenders — and the one song featured in today’s video premiere is definitely worthy of attention (ours and yours). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MASSA/GRAF — “GLOBAL/GENOCIDE”

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Aug 022024
 

Maurice de Jong‘s latest project MASSA/GRAF has me thinking about Lon Chaney, “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. Widely regarded as one of American cinema’s most versatile and powerful actors, Chaney was (as portrayed here) “renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted, characters and for his groundbreaking artistry with makeup”.

De Jong doesn’t have Chaney‘s fame, but he has been a person of prolific musical guises, more than 40 of them according to Metal-Archives, perhaps best known for Gnaw Their Tongues and Cloak of Altering. And many of those guises, like Chaney‘s most famous ones in London After Midnight, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, have been dark, disturbing, even horrifying.

The article linked above includes something the great Ray Bradbury wrote about Chaney:

“He was someone who acted out our psyches. He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen. The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that’s grotesque, that the world will turn away from.”

That too resonates when listening to some of De Jong‘s musical manifestations. (Put aside the fact that all but one of Chaney‘s films were silent movies and that De Jong is a sonic artist.)

What guise has De Jong assumed in MASSA/GRAF and the project’s debut album The/Deholyfied? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INSURRECTION — “BLESS THE MACHINE”

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Aug 012024
 

In our past writings about the music of the Canadian death metal band Insurrection we’ve emphasized the obliterating nature of their assaults, the titanic grooves in their music and the pneumatic punishment they mete out, the slithering derangement of their melodies, and the tyrannical barbarity of their vocals. On the off-chance that their previous four albums left some remnants of human civilization still standing, they’ve decided to release a fifth one.

The new album, Obsolescence, will be released on Friday the 13th of September via Bam & Co. Heavy, and what we have for you today is a single from the album called “Bless the Machine”, augmented by a guitar-playthrough video for the song. Continue reading »

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