AN NCS PREMIERE: CURSED TO OCCULT — “CULTLEADER”

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Aug 082023
 

Cursed To Occult is a German one-man band, the solo recording work of one Micha Eibisch, though it expands to a full band for live performances. Because it is a one-man project, the music is very much a reflection of its creator’s personal experiences, and those experiences are distressing — as you might guess from both the name of Cursed To Occult‘s debut album Mind Wreck, and the title of its forthcoming second album, Diary Of A Broken Man.

What we have for you today is the unnerving and exhilarating first video and single from that new album, in advance of its release by the Crawling Chaos label on September 1st. Entitled “Cultleader“, it’s a viscerally compelling amalgam of crust punk, black metal, sludge, and hardcore, all roped together to lash and pummel the senses with shattering intensity.

But before we get to that song and video, it’s worth sharing what Micha Eibisc has stated about where the music on the new album comes from: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVERIPPER — “RESIST AGAINST THE LIGHT”

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Aug 072023
 

At the end of every year for the last 13 years our site has rolled out a list of each year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“. Barring some unforeseen calamity we will do it again at the end of 2023. We don’t start seriously thinking about which songs should make the list until the waning days of each year, but sometimes some of the choices become immediately obvious, and this is one of those times. There absolutely WILL be a song from GraveRipper on the 2023 edition of the list. The only thing up in the air is, which song?

The choice won’t be easy, because GraveRipper‘s forthcoming debut album Seasons Dreaming Death (set for release later this month by Wise Blood Records) is packed to the brim with highly infectious black-thrashing romps, the kind of exultant escapades that are loaded with hooks, bury them deep in a listener’s brain, and get hearts pounding and heads banging.

No, it won’t be an easy choice, but the song from the album we’re premiering today — “Resist Against the Light” — will certainly be a leading contender. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLGATA — “UR ELD OCH ASKA”

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Aug 072023
 

In mid-June of last year we had the opportunity to premiere a video for a song from Ur eld och aska (“out of fire and ashes”), the then-forthcoming third album by the Swedish melodic black metal band Golgata, which was subsequently co-released by Satanath Records and Ketzer Records.

As we wrote then, the album (as suggested by its title) “is a journey through fire and ash but it’s also a journey through time, inspired by the history and natural surroundings of the dark, forested region that gave birth to this duo. It has the capacity to scathe the senses in raw and unbridled fashion, but it’s equally powerful in its capacity to mesmerize and to transport listeners away from modernity and into a much older age, creating grim and haunting visions of yearning and sorrow.”

We now have an opportunity to revisit the album, and to introduce it to people who might have overlooked it, through our premiere of a lyric video for its title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAMHAIN — “THE COURIER”

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Aug 032023
 

Our subject today is The Courier, Emanzipation Production‘s forthcoming deluxe vinyl reissue of demo tapes first released by the Danish band Samhain in the mid-’80s, now remastered by Tue Madsen. The advertising for this special album-length release (and the extensive liner notes accompanying it) refer to is as “a piece of metal history“. It further includes these quotes:

“Samhain helped us kickstart our career because they believed in metal! Forever thankful and I‘m happy to see their music being re-released. Hail Samhain!” Mille Petrozza, Kreator

“This is the kind of riffs bands like Obituary have made a career out of touring with for 30 years. Samhain played those riffs way earlier. And Obituary fucking rules!” Tue Madsen, producer, Antfarm Studio

“Way better musicianship and production than on the first Hellhammer demos. You guys were already way ahead of them. This shit is heavy as shit. In a primitive, good way!” Monte Conner, metal industry legend

All of this is entirely appropriate, but let’s be real: There are vast numbers of metal fans out there, old as well as young, who will greet this kind of prose with a shrug. There’s a musty smell to history, and a question about why people who aren’t history buffs, collectors, or folks trying to re-live a vital time in their own past, should pay attention to music created by teenagers 40 years ago, given that we’re already drowning on a daily basis in non-stop typhoons of music that’s brand new.

For people like that, we say: Forget about everything you’ve just read above. Pretend that Samhain is a brand new band who is just now releasing The Courier for the first time, and listen to what they’ve done. It will make you forget about history right damned fast. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVEW): BLIGHT HOUSE — “BLIGHT THE WAY”

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Aug 022023
 

“Frank Owen Gorey is not a well person. Frank Lloyd Blight is not a well person either. Physical illness provided the genesis for their collaboration. Mental illness has kept it going…. Would it be too un-empathetic to say I hope the two Franks never get well? I’m only being honest about my greediness for their music. Wellness is overrated anyway, especially when it comes to death metal.”

Those were among the words I spewed in the context of premiering a song from Summer Camp Sex Party Massacre, an album by the two Franks under their chosen band name Blight House that Nefarious Industries released almost exactly five years ago.

Back then it seemed evident that these two had either shunned, or been shunned by, the outer world, preferring the confines of a swampy basement and whatever collection of mechanical and unspeakable organic materials they used in making their thoroughly demented and disgusting death metal. How delightful it must have been for them to see almost everyone else forced by the pandemic into a similar isolated existence!

Well, they must have taken some delight in that state of affairs, because now Blight House is returning with a thoroughly macabre new album. While others may be fumbling about looking for something to light the way out of all the dark tunnels in which we find ourselves, the two Franks have rediscovered how to Blight the Way — and you will learn how they’ve done this through our premiere stream of the new album that bears that name, in advance of its August 4 release by Syrup Moose. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IRON ALTAR — “MORTALITY”

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Aug 012023
 

In their new song “Mortality” the Scottish band Iron Altar musically harness their own four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although one might imagine the ravages of the biblical foursome of Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, the song spawns powerful visions of Rage, Madness, Desolation, and Despair, inflicted not by some world-ending divinity but by a deeply flawed humanity.

As you will soon discover for yourselves through our premiere of a video for the song, Iron Altar create such harrowing impressions through a relentlessly dynamic and multi-faceted piece of heavy-grooved deathly sludge that hits very hard on multiple levels. And it’s no outlier, because the band’s new album Promethean (their second full-length) is a powerhouse experience all the way through. It’s set for release on September 29th by Trepanation Recordings. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REVERENCE TO PAROXYSM — “PORTALS TO DARK MISERY”

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Jul 282023
 

When I first encountered the debut song of Mexico City’s Reverence to Paroxysm, a long track called “Congruence of the Profound Forlorn” on their 2020 split with Spain’s Pestilength, I struggled to find words capable of expressing how horrifying the experience was. I’m not sure I succeeded, even in referencing “hallucinatory sensations of dread, degradation, and disease” and the reign of “unreasoning madness and fatal sickness”, or resorting to such phrases as “demented and doomed” and “mauling and mangling”.

More horrors were revealed when the band released a live album named Cadaveric Continuity of Unreal Perspectives last fall, providing a steep descent into a foul death metal netherworld where primal fears thrive and defenseless victims are bludgeoned, poisoned, and sliced with corroded blades into strips of bleeding meat by monstrosities of preternatural origin.

Well, you see, I’m still trying to find the right words, and the task becomes even more daunting because the band have built on what they’ve already accomplished (frightening as that prospect may be) by completing a debut studio album named Lux Morte. As a sign of how wickedly effective it is, the album has been picked up for release on August 31st by none other than Me Saco Un Ojo Records and Dark Descent Records.

As an even more viscerally effective sign, we’re premiering a song today named “Portals To Dark Misery“. More struggles with words to come…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PANZERCHRIST — “LAST OF A KIND”

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Jul 272023
 

Some of you reading this already know the 30-year history of the Danish band Panzerchrist without being told, because you lived through it. Others may have heard the name but were still children when the band released their last album, 7th Offensive, a decade ago — and yes, a decade of silence has passed since their last release.

The full history is an extensive one, not merely because the band’s origins go back to 1993 and included seven albums before the silence fell, but also because the band’s members have changed significantly over that 30-year life, and the full list of participants is both very long and also star-studded.

It’s tempting to delve deeper into that history to set the stage for the evidence of the band’s resurrection — a new album named Last Of A Kind that will be released tomorrow by Emanzipation Productions — but despite the ground-breaking nature of the band’s earliest albums, most hardcore metalheads know that an enthusiastic reception for a new record must be earned, even by bands who have already made their place in the history books.

So, in the case of Last Of A Kind, have Panzerchrist earned it? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ATONEMENT — “SADISTIC INVADERS”

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Jul 262023
 

If we were health-and-safety regulators we’d require people to don flame-retardant suits and headgear fed by big oxygen tanks before listening to the album we’re about to premiere in full (it would also be a good idea to dig up whatever spells you can come by that are designed to ward off demons). But we’re not regulators of any kind, so just forget about self-protection and get ready to be torched by one of the most explosive and exhilarating albums you’re likely to hear all year.

The band is a Swedish trio from Stockholm named Atonement, and the album Sadistic Invaders is their full-length debut, which will be released in just a couple of days by Dying Victims Productions. When you hear it you wouldn’t guess that these three barbarians aren’t yet in their 20s, age-wise, and thus it’s even more mind-boggling to consider what they might do next to follow up a truly mind-boggling debut album.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s focus instead on what we have in front of us right now. The PR materials portray the band as “dead-ringers for juiced-up and jackhammering deathrash of a most mid-‘80s vintage,” which is true, but we’d venture to sum it up in a different way — as maniacal demon-thrash that blows open the gates of Hell. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TELOCH VOVIN AND VISERION — “THE IRON AGE OF KALI YUGA”

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Jul 252023
 

On Friday of this week, the 28th of July, two New York based black metal bands whose music we’ve covered here before — Teloch Vovin and Viserion — will release a new split entitled The Iron Age of Kali Yuga, available on CD and digital formats from both bands and featuring artwork by Elena Vasilaki. On Friday night they’ll also participate in a listening party for the songs at Duff’s Brooklyn.

A pair of songs from the split, one from each band, have already surfaced, but what we bring you today is a full stream of the entire split — essentially one new EP from each group. They will serve as a fine introduction to these bands for people who haven’t encountered their music before, and for existing fans it provides a portrait of where their music has arrived in the current day (though it will undoubtedly continue to evolve).

As usual, we’ll share our own thoughts about the split as a preview of the listening experience, along with some insights from the bands themselves, and we’ll take them in alphabetical order. Continue reading »

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