AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UAMH — “AT THE EDGE OF THE LOCH”

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Jul 052023
 

On July 7th, Fiadh Productions will (with considerable delight) release At the Edge of the Loch, the debut full-length by the Montana-based atmospheric black metal artist Uamh. As the album title itself suggests, Uamh‘s music draws inspiration from Celtic traditions, and subtly interweaves old folk instruments, along with drumming that sounds more stripped-down and even primitive than flashy (but still makes a visceral impact).

On the other hand, with one prominent exception, the vocals take the form of raw black metal screams, and the music, which derives its greatest strengths from the ravaging and ringing power of the carefully layered guitars, is capable of searing the senses and melting hearts as well as opening the mind’s eye to breathtaking panoramas.

We have a lot more thoughts about each of the album’s five compelling tracks, all of which we’re sharing with you today in advance of the album’s release this Friday, but we ought to begin the introduction with Uamh‘s own words: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FOSSA MAGNA — “FOSSA MAGNA フォッサマグナ”

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Jul 042023
 

Those who’ve come here today looking for riffs and melodies, uplift or succor, will leave empty-handed. What you’ll find instead is “a merging of harsh minds during even harsher times,” “relentless textural soundscapes and combative tones sharpened and pointed by design in order to scrape the listener clean to the bone”.

So says the French label WV Sorcerer Productions and its co-release partners Damien Records and Hell Simulation about the self-titled debut album by an international group of noisemakers who’ve chosen the name Fossa Magna. The participants in this collaborative effort are:

Astro (Japan):
Hiroshi Hasegawa 長谷川洋

Many Blessings (USA):
Ethan Lee McCarthy (Primitive Man, Vermin Womb)

Coalminer (Philippines):
Chester Masangya & Robert Glen Dilanco Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRAWL — “VANITY”

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Jul 042023
 

Misanthropic-Art‘s cover image for a new split by the Swedish death metal bands Feral and Crawl is decrepit, decaying, and haunting, but also molten, an image of ancient regal grandeur now cracked, strangled by roots sprung from the earth, and littered with skulls of the dead, but something not of the earth pours forth from the eye of an obelisk.

It’s a fitting image for a split by two bands who honor the now seemingly ancient and unhealthy powers of Swedish death metal but in ways that still make it sound molten. Both bands released hellishly good albums five years ago (Feral‘s Flesh for Funerals Eternal and Crawl‘s Rituals), and the split marks a very welcome return, with each band contributing two new songs.

The split is entitled Made As Those Who Are No Longer Alive, Transcending Obscurity Records will release it on September 5th, and what we’re bringing you today is the debut of the second of Crawl‘s two songs — “Vanity“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NUCLEAR DUDES — “BOSS BLADES” (FEATURING DAVE VERELLEN)

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Jul 032023
 

For some of you, and especially those who frequent the grimy vermin-ridden squat occupied by this site, your first exposure to the music of Nuclear Dudes might have been “Manifest Piss Tape“, the first single from the project’s forthcoming debut album Boss Blades, which we covered here. But some other possible exposures preceded that one (the Gin and Panic and Bad at Sleep records released last year) and one other has followed it (another single from the new album, named “Year 3“).

If you’ve caught up to any of this so far, you already have a pretty good idea that the new album is going to be a sonic whirligig that’s perilous to life and limb (and sanity) no matter how tight you strap yourself in. And so it is — “a manic mix of extreme metal, synth-prog, powerviolence, and industrial noise” (to quote from the press materials), or as framed by Jon Weisnewski, the person behind the project, “a wild-eyed response to the question ‘What if Carcass and Gary Numan were locked in a studio and had to figure out how to make a record together?’”

Weisnewski‘s name alone draws attention to the album, given that he’s the front-person of the notorious Seattle bands Sandrider and Akimbo. So does the name Dave Verellen (from Botch), because he makes two guest vocal appearances on Boss Blade — and Dust Moth’s Irene Barber joins in on a track too. And speaking of Dave Verellen, one of the songs on which he contributes is the album’s title track that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HALLUCINATE — “CRIMSON RAIN”

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Jul 032023
 

In introducing From the Bowels of the Earth, the debut album by the German band Hallucinate‘s debut album (whose lineup features members of Graveyard Ghoul and Karloff), it would be extreme negligence not to explain the traumatic event that spawned it. So, we begin with that explanation, in the words of vocalist / lead guitarist Persecutor:

“From the Bowels of the Earth sprung forth from a very tough psilocybin experience right before the onset of the pandemic. It almost broke me mentally; I wasn’t prepared for it at all. I started writing the songs in an attempt to put myself back together, trying to integrate that experience. It was a very dark and intimidating display of ancient powerful archetypes haunting me with synchronistic, apocryphal, and soul-crushing revelations – not the funky-shmunky colorful hippie shit most people associate with this stuff. So a psych-stricken, kinda-prog death metal record felt most natural to tell the story, where each song represents a stage of the trip with its physiological, psychic and spiritual implications.”

The connection between that dire trip and the album’s music is reflected in the song titles, which capture the changing visions. But the connection is also manifested in the music, which is crushing death metal at its core but also thoroughly infiltrated with influences of prog and (of course) psychedelia, ingredients that don’t sound stuck on like post-it notes but instead grew of their own accord, like arteries and veins in a gestating thing that has now found flourishing and frightening life.

Today we have one of the mind-altering visions brought to life on From the Bowels of the Earth in the song called “Crimson Rain” that we’re premiering in advance of the album’s release by Caligari Records on August 4th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD AND DRIPPING — “MOLECULAR DEGRADATION UPON WARPED ONYX STOVES”

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Jun 302023
 

Since 2016 the one-person New Jersey band Dead and Dripping has lurked in a far subterranean corner of the sonic torture chamber known as “brutal death metal”. Over the course of a pair of demos and a pair of albums, its music has proven to be far more bamboozling than the typical pile-driving thuggery and bullet-spitting mayhem for which the genre is best known. The music has been unusually intricate and technically impressive, though it would be wrong to try to slot it into the “technical death metal” framework, and it has trended in increasingly macabre directions.

All of those qualities stand out in Dead and Dripping‘s new album Blackened Cerebral Rifts, and indeed this new one is even more surreal and schizophrenic than what has come before, even more technically complex, and yet somehow also ruthlessly bludgeoning and gruesome. For those reasons (and others), the vividly colorful and strikingly bizarre cover art by Jason Wayne Barnett is an excellent companion for the music. Not for naught does Transcending Obscurity Records recommend it for fans of Wormed, Demilich, and Defeated Sanity, as well as Suffocation, Mortal Decay, and Wicked Innocence.

Three songs from the album have already premiered, and if you’ve heard those you have a very good idea of what you’ll be getting yourselves into when Transcending Obscurity releases the album on August 11th. But especially if you haven’t heard any of those, and even if you have, the song we’re premiering today is well worth your time. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SQUELCH CHAMBER — “THE STEEPLE IS FALLING”

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Jun 302023
 

 

On July 12th the Czech label Owlripper Recordings will release Eater of Self, a new album by Pennsylvania-based Squelch Chamber. In describing it, the label invites you to consider the idea of a sonic blender:

For the forthcoming album, mangle together in a blender reminiscences of the untamed ferocity of Primitive Man, The Body, Ken Mode, Therapy? on their first 2 EPs, Abandon (Sweden), Skinny Puppy, then add dashes of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Full Of Hell and Fear Of God all on 16rpm, but with added liquids, doom and noise. That’s the Squelch Chamber cocktail as I hear it, so I hope this gets you suitably intrigued for the monolithic album that is to follow…

Well, that got us intrigued, and the album track we’re premiering today followed intrigue with deep-seated disturbances, made even more disturbing by the video that accompanies it. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GROTESQUERIES — “VILE CREMATORY”

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Jun 292023
 

In their current promo photo the members of Grotesqueries look serious, quiet, maybe a bit withdrawn — but that’s what the neighbors always say about the serial killers who lived down the block after the awful truth comes out. Grotesqueries probably didn’t actually kill anyone in the making of their debut album Vile Crematory, but it sure as hell sounds like they did, and in the most horrible ways you can imagine.

As they did on their debut EP Haunted Mausoleum from last year, this Boston-based quintet devote themselves on the new album to a particular kind of death metal, the kind where almost nothing is clean and almost everything is vile. The kind where the guitars are tuned to sound like manifestations of flesh-eating disease, the vocals are possessed by monstrous horrors, the grooves are calculated to inflict bone-smashing trauma, and the moods are malign, maniacal, and miserable.

But as you’ll also discover for yourselves through our premiere of the album today, on the eve of its release by Caligari Records, Grotesqueries are also very adept at getting the blood of listeners racing, as well as causing it to congeal. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MACHINATIONS OF FATE — “A SPLIT SECOND OF DIVINITY”

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Jun 282023
 

Kentucky-based Machinations of Fate made their recording debut almost a dozen years ago with their album-length demo Tyrannous Skies. Significant time passed before the band made another release — a self-titled debut album released by Redefining Darkness Records in 2020 that was a re-mixed and re-mastered version of the tracks from the demo that also included re-recorded drum tracks, courtesy of Ash Thomas (Faithxtractor & Shed the Skin). Although the songs weren’t new, they received a very positive reception, which fueled the band’s work on a follow-up album.

That second album, Celestial Prophecies, is now finished and set for release by the same Redefining Darkness Records on July 28th. The label describes it as “first and foremost, fueled by melody, while the rhythms remain aggressive and cutting”, bringing to mind at different times the classic works of Hypocrisy, Dissection, Immortal or Dimmu Borgir, the kind of thing that “will appeal to those metal fans who have been diehards for decades”.

To help pave the way to this eagerly anticipated follow-up album, today we’re bringing you its second single, a song called “A Split Second of Divinity“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RANNOCH — “THREADS”

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Jun 282023
 

Few metal bands have so captivated our attention from their beginning to the present day as the UK prog-death powerhouse Rannoch. They started strong and became even stronger; witnessing the evolution of their ambitions and their skills has been thrilling, and in both respects they reached a high-water mark in the extraordinary achievements of their last album, 2020’s Reflections Upon Darkness.

For precisely those reasons, however, there’s been some frustration among us here that Rannoch still haven’t gotten all the acclaim and attention they deserve. They run rings around bands vastly better-known than they are, but thankfully those injustices don’t seem to have sapped Rannoch’s desire. Instead, they have only driven themselves harder, and their forthcoming third album Conflagrations is abundant proof of that. It is indeed a creative conflagration, and one we hope will propel their name to the scale of attention their talents warrant.

This new album is set for release on July 21st by Willowtip Records, and it’s our privilege now to premiere its second single “Threads“, presented through an attention-riveting video. Continue reading »

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