AN NCS PREMIERE: DISKORD — “ONWARD! TO NOWHERE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 212024
 

This makes the sixth time we’ve written about releases by the Norwegian band Diskord since discovering them in 2013 and the third time we’ve premiered music from one of those releases. In straining to describe their methods, we’ve previously used such words and phrases as “bizarre”, “chaotic”, “mind-shearingly abrasive”, “disorienting”, “unpredictable”, “avante-garde-filtered and technically played”, and “a source of considerable fascination and continuous thrills”. As one of our writers wrote about their 2014 EP Oscillations:

[T]hey seem to have transcended not only genre boundaries, but the confines of flesh as well. They exist among the cracks in reality, guided by hidden horrors unknown to most in a realm where few have dared to venture. Oscillations is bestial discomfort refined, progressive while residing in primordial murky depths, an oasis for those who thirst for ghastly evil sounds, memorable riffs, and strange batshit insanity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OBSCENE — “THE REAPER’S BLESSING”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 202024
 

We are genuinely thrilled today to blow up a grenade of sights, sounds, and information regarding an eagerly awaited new album from the Indiana-based death metal extremists in Obscene.

The name of the new album, which is the band’s third full-length, is Agony & Wounds. It’s now set for release on July 12th by Nameless Grave Records. As you can see, it’s adorned by eye-catching and mind-bending cover art created by the wickedly talented Brad Moore.

The new music turns out to be every bit as macabre and mind-blowing as the artwork, though it is ruthlessly brutalizing as well, and thus it legitimately represents a significant step forward for a band that has already made a cult name for itself among death-worshipping denizens of the underground.

Which brings us to the first song from the album that you’ll be able to hear, and that we’re maliciously thrilled to premiere today. Get on your knees and prepare to receive “The Reaper’s Blessing“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PERVERSA — “THE TRIAL OF CHRISTIANITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 172024
 

On May 27th Satanath Records (Georgia) and Pluton’s Rising Productions (Poland) will co-release Under The Sign Of Blasphemy, the debut album from the Roman black/death metal band Perversa, and today we help introduce it through our premiere of an album track named “The Trial Of Christianity“.

The members of Perversa aren’t newcomers, having been involved in numerous other groups before this one, including Lord Vampyr, Malamorte, Handful of Hate, Massemord, Funeral Oration, and Iblis, but what brought these Italian musicians together under the banner of Perversa was a shared desire to practice satanic black metal in a most evil way — and that’s vividly borne out by the song you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TLÖN — “THROUGH NEBULOUS SCARS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 172024
 

In May 1940 the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, widely credited as a founder of “magical realism” in literature, published a story named “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius“. In that mind-bending tale Borges was himself a protagonist. The plot concerns events going back as far as the early 17th century and culminates in a postscript, set in 1947. As summarized in The Font of All Human Knowledge:

“Told in a first-person narrative, the story focuses on the author’s discovery of the mysterious and possibly fictional country of Uqbar and its legend of Tlön, a mythical world whose inhabitants believe a form of subjective idealism, denying the reality of objects and nouns, as well as Orbis Tertius, the secret organization that created both fictional locations”.

That story inspired both the name of the new Scottish band Tlön and the lyrical themes of their debut EP Through Nebulous Scars — an astonishing mind-bender of its own that we’re helping spring upon an unsuspecting world today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ROPE SECT — “ESTRANGEMENT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 162024
 

Rope Sect is about seclusion.
Renunciation of society.
A dance on ruins.
A doomsday revel.
Naked spite.
Eleutheromania.
Obedience.

So say this clandestine German band in their own words. They also say this about their new album Estrangement, which you’re about to hear:

“It can be seen as a reflection of all the ruins we are surrounded by, the increasing reign of pessimism over optimism in a world that seems to have doomed itself as well as expressing a sense of not belonging and the connected urge to escape all this and live by your own rules in your own little world, passing all the warning signs of human kind going astray.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FEED THEM DEATH — “DELETERIOUS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 162024
 

As you can see, we’re premiering a song from a new album by Feed Them Death. There is so much we would like to say about it that it’s hard to know where to begin. But we decided to begin with the lyrics.

To be honest, lyrics are often an afterthought in extreme metal of all stripes, put to paper after the music has been created and not worth much attention even in the rare cases when you can make out the words. Not so in the case of Feed Them Death. The lyrics on all the songs in their new album The Malady are poetic, politically charged, and thought-provoking, well worth reading and pondering (though they’re expelled with such super-heated fury in the songs that reading them is what most people will need to do).

Here are the words to “Deleterious“, the song we’re premiering, written by the band’s founder and principal musician Void: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): COROZA — “AS WITHIN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 152024
 

None of us here were formally trained as “music critics,” or even as “music writers.” It’s always been a case of learning by doing. One thing we’ve learned is that it’s usually best to begin a review in a way that grabs attention quickly and/or places the record in some broader context before diving into details.

With that in mind, let’s begin by saying that the Irish band Coroza‘s new album As Within sounds heavier than granite, hits harder than sledgehammers; burns like the immolation of sanity; and seems laced with the kind of psychotropics that trigger seductive but frightening visions.

Or, to place it in genre context, it’s a changing amalgam of sludge, stoner-doom, post-metal, and psychedelia that’s capable of swallowing a listener whole like some leviathan of old.

Details to follow…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTAR OF GORE — “LITANIES OF THE UNCEASING AGONIES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 142024
 

Musical sensibilities and affinities vary, even among people like the denizens of this site for whom extreme metal is their bread and butter.

Depending on the time of day and the frame of mood, you might want to become engrossed in elaborate melodies, or have your brain twisted into knots by high-speed intricacy, or become scorched by malignant blackened conflagrations, or have your soul pulled into a chasm of gloom and despair.

But every now and then there’s a visceral need to just be bludgeoned senseless and viciously butchered in the most primitive, ruthless, and electrifying way possible. At those times, Altar of Gore‘s new album Litanies Of The Unceasing Agonies will be there to feed that need. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOUNDED FUNERAL — “THE WRECKING OF THE CRYPTS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
May 132024
 

On May 25th, through the collaboration of Satanath Records (Georgia), Australis Records (Chile), and Futhark Records (Canada), the Canadian black metal band Wounded Funeral will release their third album, Skaalp. It is described as a musical recital of stories based on dark legends of the First Nations: “Expressing rage, hatred, psychological distress, combat… The typical emblem of the project revolves around the world of the great Wendigo.”

As a vivid sign of what they album brings us, today we’re premiering the fifth song in the album’s running order, a track called “The Wrecking Of The Crypts“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HENRY KANE — “CIRCLE OF PAIN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 132024
 

Over the course of a quarter-century career the Swedish musician and vocalist Jonny Pettersson has been involved in an enormous number of bands and personal projects — 30 of them by the count at Metal-Archives, including Wombbath, Heads for the Dead, Just Before Dawn, Berzerker Legion, and Ashcloud. But of all of them, Henry Kane seems to have become the vehicle most adaptable to Pettersson‘s changing inspirations and interests.

That opinion is based on observing the evolutions that have occurred across Henry Kane‘s three albums so far, and the fact that it’s a solo project in which Pettersson writes everything and performs everything. Indeed, he started the project to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his first demo, naming it for the soul-devouring supernatural antagonist in the Poltergeist film series.

In contemplating a genre label for Henry Kane‘s debut album Den förstörda människans rike, you might consider crusty death/grind, or deathly grind/crust, or grinding death/crust, infused with horror and tuned to maximum slaughtering insanity. If anything, the second album Age of the Idiot was an even more ruinous sonic wrecking machine but also more variable, with a greater number of musical twists and turns.

The new Henry Kane album Circle of Pain (coming out on May 17th via Selfmadegod Records) twists even more from the project’s deathly crust and grind roots. As Jonny Pettersson has told us in advance of today’s album premiere:

“The best thing about Henry Kane for me, is that there are no boundaries to adhere to. So, with this album, I wanted to take what I have done on the previous albums and push the sound even further, and then wrap it all up in blastbeats, anger, and hate.” Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries