AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MUSIC IN LOW FREQUENCIES — “THIS CORPSE”

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Dec 012023
 

Today we’re presenting one of the most intense, most wholly absorbing, and most uncomfortable audio-visual experiences we’ve encountered this year. The song itself is overpowering, and shattering. The video magnifies that experience, like turning up the dial on electrodes in your spine that are already delivering tremendous voltage.

The song is “This Corpse“, and it’s one of seven on a new album named Catharsis by the Portuguese trio Music in Low Frequencies. It will be released on December 8th by Raging Planet Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSAL TOMB — “BURIED”

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Nov 302023
 

We’re ghoulishly happy to help spread the word today about a new Australian death metal band, Abyssal Tomb, and their debut 5-track demo Buried, which will officially be released tomorrow.

Though the band is new, the members aren’t newcomers. The lineup consists of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Callinan from Galaxy and Sylvan Awe (whose fantastic new album we premiered here just yesterday), lyricist/vocalist Rohan Buntine (Battlegrave), and drummer Tim Wright (Munitions / Blunt Shovel).

They describe their aspirations simply and directly — to “celebrate death metal in one of its early forms, honouring bands such as Obituary, Morta Skuld and early Six Feet Under“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SOLBRUD — “SJÆLESKRIG”

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Nov 302023
 

The number 4 is a recurring theme in the new album by the Danish black metal band Solbrud, which is set for release in February by Vendetta Records. It is the band’s fourth album, and thus its title is IIII. In addition, the band has 4 members, and for the new album they altered their usual compositional process by having each member individually compose music and write lyrics for one vinyl side each (though the full band performs all the songs) — and yes, the new album consists of 4 vinyl sides.

Moreover, the 4 classical elements of Wind, Water, Earth and Fire are vital parts of the album’s universe, and each member’s compositions thus constitute one element each.

One song from the album (“Tåge“) has debuted so far, and today we’re presenting a second one, an instrumental piece named “Sjæleskrig“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SYLVAN AWE — “PILGRIMAGE”

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Nov 292023
 

The artwork on the front of Sylvan Awe‘s new album Pilgrimage (their third) is one that will make most people stop in their tracks and stare for a while. It’s a slightly cropped and inverted image of a 1920 painting by the German artist Ferdinand Leeke, who died three years after completing it. The title is “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle“.

Leeke seems to be best known for his depiction of scenes from Wagnerian operas, most of them commissioned by Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried after his father’s death. “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle” doesn’t seem to be one of those 10 commissioned paintings, but may have been similarly influenced, given that Wagner did compose an opera called Parsifal, based on the legend of the Grail Knight.

What that legend has to do with Pilgrimage is open to conjecture, though Parsifal himself engaged in a pilgrimage back to the sanctuary where ailing Grail Knights kept watch over the Grail, after Parsifal vanquished the necromancer Klingsor and retrieved from him the Holy Spear (which pierced the side of Jesus as he died on the cross), ultimately reuniting it with the Grail. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THUNRAZ — “BORDERLINE”

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Nov 282023
 

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 that comes out today, on CD and digital formats.

The new album is entitled Borderline, and it includes nine songs, one of which — “You and Me” — we premiered a few weeks ago, along with a head-spinning red-shifted video. Today, of course, we’ve got all of it for you. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ETT DÖDENS MASKINERI — “KULTURKRIGET”

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Nov 272023
 

Kulturkriget is the name of the forthcoming second album by the Swedish hardcore punk band Ett Dödens Maskineri, whose name seems to translate to “a machine of death“. As the album’s title forecasts, its lyrical themes explore “the tumultuous battleground of the culture war that saturates every facet of modern existence,” dissecting issues that range from “identity politics and media manipulation to ideological clashes.”

Anyone with eyes to see and ears to here knows that society in almost all of the world is fractured more severely than it has been in generations, and there seems no imminent way out of it, the fractures so deep and jagged that repairing them would seem to require some kind of wizardry beyond the capacity of mere mortals.

The music on Kulturkriget is undeniably in line with such thoughts — bringing forward intensely evocative melodies that are bleak and furious, heart-broken and seeking escape, desperate but defiant. The piercing and haunting power of the melodies and the relentless dynamism of the music is part of what makes the album stand well out from the pack, but it’s still a punk album at its core, and so it’s also raw and raging, confrontational and caustic, and a damn good antidote for anyone whose adrenaline is at low ebb. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLOVEN — “ASTONISHMENT OF HEART”

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Nov 242023
 

Sometimes we know an encyclopedia’s worth of information about a metal band, especially those who’ve been around for decades and play to packed arenas. Other times we have almost nothing other than the music. This is one of those times.

All we know about Cloven is that they’re from somewhere in Canada and that sometime in the future, most likely next year, they will release an album named Chance Encounter of Flesh and Nail. We’ve also been told that the song from the album we’re premiering today was a decade in the making. But that’s all we know.

Nosy people that we are, we’re left curious, but even when we know a lot about who is in a band, where they’re located, what inspired them, etc., etc., it’s still the music that must carry the day, and “Astonishment of Heart” does that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OLDEST SEA — “THE MACHINES THAT MADE US OLD”

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Nov 242023
 

Our site’s name states a rule, but it has always been more preferential than fanatical, more tongue-in-cheek than belligerently adamant. And so we make exceptions, but still, they must be earned.

And now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can begin presenting one of those well-earned exceptions — not just well-earned, but too astonishing to brush away.

The centerpiece of the long song you’re about to hear, and the key feature that makes it both spellbinding and emotionally crushing, is the voice of Samantha Marandola, who with her husband Andrew are the duo behind the band Oldest Sea from rural New Jersey, and whose new album A Birdsong, A Ghost will be released on December 1st by Darkest Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE SECOND FOVEA — “VIBORA”

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Nov 232023
 

Today marks the fifth time we’ve written about and/or premiered singles by The Second Fovea (a band who began in India and are now based in the San Francisco Bay area) — and thus we’ve covered all of them to date. Thematically, each one has been different from the ones before, but all of them driven by a socio-political consciousness:

“Headshot” was a condemnation of hate crimes and racism across the globe. “Manta” was devoted to the majesty and mystery of the creatures for whom the song was named and tried to help spread the word about their conservation (we featured two different videos for that song). “The Echoing Habitat” called attention to our relentless pollution of the oceans with plastics. And today we have a fourth single, “Vibora“, which takes as its subject a metaphor for the lethal consequences of greed.

Just as the band’s lyrical themes have differed, the music has differed too, from song to song, and it changes again here, in part due to the appearance of the band’s new permanent vocalist, “Lalit Mehta“, who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FRAUGHT — “TRANSFIXED ON DYING LIGHT”

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Nov 232023
 

Here in the U.S. many people are celebrating Thanksgiving Day today, a national holiday first officially announced by Abraham Lincoln during our Civil War but modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (“Pilgrims”) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag indigenous people (who had previously occupied the Plymouth site but had been decimated by smallpox).

We have many things to be thankful for here at our humble site today, and one of those is Transfixed on Dying Light, the debut album by the Irish band Fraught. Founded in 2018, they survived a change of name (from Drought to Fraught), the rude interferences of the covid pandemic, and the kinds of other difficulties that beset any band trying to make underground music they believe in rather than following whatever way the prevailing winds are blowing.

Fraught are one of those bands who are given to experimentation, inspired by their many influences but driven to interweave them in ways that don’t neatly get circled by genre boundaries. That was already becoming evident in their MMXIX demo (released in 2020) and their first EP, 2021’s Splitting Tongues, but more evident still in this new album, which we’re giving you the chance to hear in advance of its release tomorrow by Argonauta Records. Continue reading »

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