AN NCS PREMIERE: HORRIFIER — “DERANGED SANITY”

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Nov 152023
 

“Old school repulsive death metal from Oslo, Norway.” That’s how Horrifier themselves portray their music. Their label Personal Records drops references to the spirits of Repulsion and Autopsy as well as nods toward “the new wave of Norwegian deathrash” in the vein of Obliteration, Sepulcher, Inculter, and Condor.

Horrifier haven’t been around long, having come together only in 2022, and the members don’t look like they were alive when their major influences were laying down rotten foundations for death metal in the late ’80s.

But sometimes, and this is one of those times, something very good comes from people who aren’t trying to re-live their own distant youth but are right in the midst of it right now, and have found the right inspiration (along with bullet belts all ’round).

See for yourselves (or rather hear for yourselves) by lending an ear to Horrifier‘s “Deranged Sanity“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: NEURECTOMY — “OVERWROUGHT”

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Nov 142023
 

(Our old friend Austin Weber again returns to NCS, and this time he’s introducing our premiere of a new album by the technical/brutal death metal band Neurectomy.)

In the immortal words of Twin Peaks: “That gum you like is going to come back in style.”

Outside of the overwhelming and well-warranted love Archspire has garnered in the scene, technical brutal death metal that both leans into and focuses on extreme shredding, chaotic tempo shifts, and is just all-in on not giving a damn about being “listenable” has largely gone out of style.

And again, I know/love Archspire, and technically, Archspire is still sort of doing this, as is Origin, but overall this type of sound is sort of a now-lost sub-genre within technical brutal death metal. For a while there, it was a very active style thanks to Viraemia, Beneath The Massacre, Anomalous, Brain Drill, and countless others. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RANK AND VILE — “WORSHIP”

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Nov 142023
 

Four years after their debut album Redistribution Of Flesh, Portland’s ingeniously named Rank and Vile will detonate a new album named Worship on November 17th, with the pin pulled by Modern Grievance Records.

It really is an explosive weapon, this album, one that discharges a blast front of violent deathgrind but also inflicts bunker-busting grooves and is equally well-calculated to stir up electrified pits of sweat-soaked humanity in the pit.

The album is also well-timed, because its high-octane fuel is politically charged rage and its method is punishment. It is, first and foremost, a musical catharsis, a weaponized reaction that (in words from the label’s PR materials) “takes shots at flabby politicians, hypocritical religious fanatics, and fence-sitting sycophants”. Theocrats, autocrats, and plutocrats may not get the justice they deserve in the outer world, but they sure as hell get it in the inner world of this record. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABYSSAL RIFT — “THE EYE”

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Nov 132023
 

In case you missed Decibel Magazine‘s premiere of Abyssal Rift‘s song “The Scourge“, here’s a recap:

It’s every bit as frightening as the cover art above for this Ohio band’s debut album Extirpation Dirge. Hell, it’s even more frightening — both abyssal and extraterrestrial, abysmal and maddened in the sensations generated by the eerie reverberation of its swirling and swarming riffage, its strangely writhing leads, and the monstrous roars and ghastly screams welling up from catacomb depths.

But that’s not all. The song moves from hammering and scathing intensity into a wraithlike realm, where swaths of ambient eeriness surround glimmering and glittering notes and musing bass tones. Then the chords lurch like a behemoth, gargantuan and grim, heaving ahead as those horror-show vocals rise up once more and a guitar wails in agony. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VORAATH — “JUDAS BLOOD AND VULTURES”

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Nov 132023
 

The North Carolina experimental death metal band Voraath boasts a lineup that includes members of other groups we’ve followed over the years, including Xael and Rapheumets Well, and their resumes also include participation in Implosive Disgorgence, Sweet Blood, Accursed Creator, and Visitant. They’re now beginning to pave the way toward release of their debut album next year via Exitus Stratagem Records.

Voraath‘s aim is to do more than record and release music. The music is part of a universe they’re creating, drawing upon elements of horror and science-fantasy, which includes significant visual as well as audio portrayals, including the band’s own presentation of themselves on stage — each member appears as a character in the lore of the music, as you can see: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HATRED REIGNS — “AWAKEN THE ANCIENTS”

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Nov 102023
 

About five years ago, after becoming immersed in the debut death metal EP of Hatred Reigns from Ottawa, Ontario (whose title was Realm: I – Affliction), we lauded “the band’s ability to join together murderous brutality and impressive technical fireworks,” “whipping the listener through a vortex of sound that is somehow both chaotic and machine-precise”.

Consisting of three tracks, that EP was released to provide a preview of a future concept album. Now,  on the other side of a lot of hard work, and hard times brought about by the covid pandemic, Hatred Reigns are at last ready to release that concept album on December 1st, and its name is Awaken The Ancients.

To help pave the way, today we’re premiering a video for the album’s title track, which also opens the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VARGSHEIM — “THE THIRD EYE”

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Nov 102023
 

Near the end of December 2022 the Crawling Chaos label released In the Tower of Ivory, the fifth album by the German band Vargsheim. In the run toward that release we premiered a video for a song that all by itself demonstrated how diverse this trio’s musical interests are, and how adept they are at bringing them together.

As we wrote then about that song (the album’s title track), “You’ll get a feeling of free-ranging but carefully thought-through experimentation at work…. As it slowly builds and then begins to morph and contort you can pick out bits and pieces of doom, psychedelia, prog, and rock, entwined like vines through a daunting framework of black metal”.

Now we’ve got a reminder of Vargsheim‘s talents with yet another video premiere (this one a lyric video) for a song off In the Tower of Ivory. This one is the album’s penultimate track, “The Third Eye“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PLAGUE RIDER — “CHALLENGER’S LECTURE”

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Nov 092023
 

A decade after their debut album, with a couple of EPs in between, the UK death metal band Plague Rider will see the release of their second album Intensities tomorrow, courtesy of our friends at Transcending Obscurity Records.

So close to its release, the album has already received a flood of reviews, all of them favorable so far as we can tell, and most of them striving to underscore just how unorthodox and unpredictable the album is, how devoted it is to turning listeners inside-out and upside-down.

Words like “twisted”, “challenging”, and “avant-garde” pop up, which are usually warning signs that you won’t be banging heads and humming tunes as you go, but you might already get that idea just from James Watts‘ impressionistic cover art and its interweaving of very dark and vivid colors.

Obviously you won’t have to wait long to hear all 7 tracks for yourselves, but we do have one more to premiere before the whole thing comes uncaged tomorrow. It’s the record’s penultimate gauntlet of madness, “Challenger’s Lecture“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LEFT EYE PERSPECTIVE — “CONUNDRUM”

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Nov 092023
 

Sometimes comparisons of one band’s music to the music of other better-known bands works pretty well. Other times you scratch your head or vigorously shake it — what the hell was that writer thinking?

But in the case of the Belgian band Left Eye Perspective, their label Argonauta Records hit the nail on the head: The band’s debut album Conundrum really does sound like someone gene-spliced Mastodon, Gojira, Baroness, and The Ocean.

Or to frame the matter differently, their music proves to be a highly contagious alchemy of sludge, stoner rock, progressive metal, and grunge. Adventurously executed with a lot of instrumental and vocal flair, it brings powerhouse grooves, flights of head-spinning elaboration, mood-moving atmospheres, and plentiful doses of lysergic acid diethylamide.

You’ll see for yourselves what we’re getting at, because today we’ve got a full stream of this magnetic album on the eve of its release. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENGULF — “BELLOWS FROM THE AETHER”

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Nov 082023
 

For three years in a row beginning in 2017 the one-man New Jersey death metal band Engulf released EPs.

We caught up to what the band was doing when Engulf released its second EP, 2018’s Gold and Rust (which we premiered), and enthusiastically stayed with it when the third EP Transcend came out the next year (reviewed here).

Andy Synn ended that latter review with a wish:

“Hopefully one day soon we’ll get a comprehensive full-length album from Engulf, as there’s a very good chance it’ll be a modern day classic when we do.”

There was reason to expect that Engulf‘s mastermind Hal Microutsicos was at work on an album when that year-over-year release of EPs stopped, and the months ticked by without something new (granted, those ticking years included the depths of the pandemic).

And at last we do indeed have a debut full-length from Engulf on the far horizon, an album named The Dying Planet Weeps that Everlasting Spew Records will launch on January 12th. To help introduce it, today we’re premiering the second track in the running order, “Bellows From the Aether“. Continue reading »

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