REVENANT MARQUIS: AN INTERVIEW BY NEILL JAMESON AND THE PREMIERE OF “ALL THE PLEASURES OF HEAVEN”

 Album Reviews, Interviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 052023
 

(On October 6th Death Prayer Records will release All the Pleasures of Heaven, the final album by the Welsh black metal band Revenant Marquis. Today we are privileged to present an interview by Neill Jameson (of Krieg) with S., the person behind Revenant Marquis, followed by a premiere stream of the new album.)

It becomes difficult, after being involved in a scene for so long, to overcome that jaded, nearly apathetic feeling and truly lose yourself in someone’s music fully. For the last few years I’ve felt this way about Revenant Marquis. Truly unique and disturbing black metal, created alongside an unnerving aesthetic, Revenant Marquis stands as one of the most authentic voices of horror in a cacophony of lesser acts vying for attention.

Manifesting his first recording in 2019, Revenant Marquis has cast a long shadow across twelve public releases, with his newest, All the Pleasures of Heaven being the final, and darkest, spell he has brought to life. Today we have the honor of presenting this record to you as well as the final words from the man himself. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ONE OF NINE — “THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 042023
 

“Listen. Here is One of Nine. An image Shrouded in Unlight.
A sound Enchanted by the Mother of Strangling Doom.
One of Nine. Unfaced, & unlit. They present here their efforts, a collection of tales. An offering to the perilous realm and the Great Tyrant of Utumno!”

That is how the Wolves of Hades label introduces an album named Eternal Sorcery by the mysterious black metal collective who call themselves One of Nine. They also characterize it as “a vortex of Black Medieval Sorrow”.

What this means is revealed in part through the album track we’re premiering today in advance of the record’s release on October 27th: “The Silence of Heaven“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRYMYCH — “SONGS OF SISTRUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 042023
 

The mysterious Welsh band Crymych are one of a small handful of secretive bands called the Pembrokeshire Black Circle, so named because of their location in the county of Pembrokeshire in the southwest of Wales, bounded on three sides by the ocean. Apart from Crymych, the best known member of the Circle is Revenant Marquis (who will be the subject of an interview by Neill Jameson and an album premiere we will publish tomorrow).

Crymych made their second release last year with an album on Death Prayer Records fittingly named Endless Fucking Winter (available here) (their first album Du Bach came out the year before that). This writer tumbled to Endless Fucking Winter thanks to its appearance on Neill Jameson‘s year-end list at Invisible Oranges. He wrote this about it:

If Voivod were mostly an ambient band when they recorded but also rooted in black metal and also had Jouni Havukainen sit in and contribute then you’re close to how I would describe Endless Fucking Winter and I’d still be off the mark. Coming from the same circle as Revenant Marquis, this Welsh collective aesthetically fell in line with their compatriots but managed to craft an atmosphere unlike almost anything I’ve ever heard. Deranged, challenging and yet very memorable, Endless Fucking Winter seemed to fly under the radar for many this year, which is a shame as it’s pure excellence.

Having heard that album, we were quite excited to learn that Crymych had followed it up fairly quickly. And it will be in your hands and heads very quickly too, with a release date on October 6th via the same Death Prayer Records — preceded by a full premiere stream right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WARCRAB — “SWORD OF MARS”

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Oct 032023
 

I’ve previously written that when I listeneded to WarCrab‘s music I used to think of the kind of whumping sound that would be produced by a giant battering ram pounding against concrete pylons and ejecting the rebar out the other side. I also sometimes thought of Bolt Thrower and Crowbar, and not just because Transcending Obscurity Records refers to those bands in the context of describing WarCrab‘s forthcoming album The Howling Silence.

But this new album requires a reconsideration, or at least a partial reconsideration. Although WarCrab are still quite capable of punching holes through concrete, they’ve brought out other armaments and moods in The Howling Silence and created a shape-shifting amalgam of death metal and sludge that formidably expands their musical horizons.

That much was evident from the first three singles that emerged from the album, and the conclusion is reinforced by the fourth song that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TETRAGRAMMACIDE — “SPECTRAL HYAENAS OF AMENTA HOWL, THE VULTURE OF MA’AT DESCENDS, AND TAHUTI WATCHES WITHOUT HIS APE”

 Premieres  11 Responses »
Oct 032023
 

We can confidently predict that the forthcoming second album by Kolkata-based Tetragrammacide will drop jaws, boggle minds, and pop eyes wide open among fans of black/death metallic extremity. That prediction won’t come as a complete surprise to people who’ve heard the band’s previous releases, but even for those people this album may strike like a revelation.

As before, Tetragrammacide‘s new music is one violent audio vortex after another, creating an overarching experience of explosive sensory overload. Yet it truly is also head-spinning, not merely ruthlessly assaulting but also remarkably intricate and technically lights-out, which are dazzling qualities that become vividly apparent thanks to the album’s professional production.

As fan have also come to expect, the band’s fondness for song titles of extravagant length and esoteric meaning is also jaw-dropping. You can see that in the name of the song we’re premiering today — “Spectral Hyaenas Of Amenta Howl, The Vulture Of Ma’at Descends, And Tahuti Watches Without His Ape” — and in the album’s title: Typho-Tantric Aphorisms From The Arachneophidian Qur’an. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SINNERY — “BELOW THE SUMMIT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 282023
 

Last year we opened the floodgates on a great volume of words when we premiered and reviewed a new album named Black Bile by the Israeli band Sinnery. We were delivering a full stream of the album, so what was the point of all those words?

The point was to try to wake people up and get them to look past the simple genre descriptions of “thrash” or “death/thrash” that seemed to follow the band around like lost dogs. The point was that Sinnery‘s music is much more multi-faceted and thus much more interesting than the labels might suggest — and also even more riotously exhilarating.

Black Bile was so damned good that we’re very damned fortunate Sinnery have quickly followed it up, releasing three singles this year and now a new EP named Below the Summit that includes those, plus two more tracks. Once again, we’ve got a full stream for you, and once again a torrent of words. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHROME WAVES — “FATHER, I WAIT”

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Sep 272023
 

Chrome Waves released their latest album Earth Will Shed Its Skin in April of this year. In his review our own Andy Synn noted that we have been writing about their music at this site since 2011, following their career “with both fascination and appreciation aplenty over the years.”

What Andy found particularly fascinating about their latest album was “the way in which it attempts to weave the two most distinctive aspects of the band’s sound – the cathartic ‘Post-Black Metal’ side that appeals to fans of Tombs, Deafheaven, and the like, and the shoegaze-y Alt-Rock side that recalls the best of acts like Hum and Catherine Wheel – into a single, coherent whole.”

But even last April the band’s leader Jeff Wilson was already hinting that we shouldn’t expect a future continuation of that interweaving. He said this in an interview around the time of the album’s release: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KALT VINDUR — “ŻYWIOŁY”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 272023
 

Kalt Vindur are a Polich black metal band, though the name they chose for themselves are Icelandic words that mean “cold wind” in English. They come from the southeast of their country, from a region called Podkarpacie, and they have labeled their music “Podkarpacki Black Metal” (“Subcarpathian Black Metal”).

That label signifies the significance of the region’s geography, history, and culture in the band’s musical inspirations. Those inspirations are at the forefront of their forthcoming new album Magna Mater, their first release on the Greek label The Circle Music. That’s evident in the song we’re premiering today through a lyric video.

The name of the song is “Żywioły“, which in English means “Elements”. Kalt Vindur vocalist Celsus describes it this way: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEBELKRÄHE — “NIELANDSMANN”

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Sep 262023
 

On October 27th Crawling Chaos Records will release a new album named ephemer by the Munich-based black metal band Nebelkrähe — their first full-length in a decade. It’s a most unusual album, extraordinarily varied in its sounds and moods, and in its vocals, instrumentation, and melodies, the kind of album in which conventions of black metal are disregarded as often as they are honored.

The band point toward those variations mentioned above in their epigram for the album: “Memories – rainbow bubbles for adults.” (A. Engel) They explain its significance this way:

What sounds kitschy at first can also be read soberly and unromantically: Like soap bubbles that burst to the horror of the naïve child if he or she gets too close to them, even the most dazzling memories are fleeting and ephemeral – or, in German, ephemer.

They also share that the German-language lyrics “tell of blurred boundaries, youth gone by, and shattered dreams of life – as a tribute to the allure and horrors of transience.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: RORCAL – SILENCE

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 262023
 

(We’re honoured to be hosting the premiere of Rorcal‘s new album in advance of its September 29 release by Hummus Records, with words by our own Andy Synn)

Success, or so they say, can be a double-edged sword.

What, for example, do you do after releasing an album which – in my opinion, at least – is both the very definition of a true cult classic and one of the best records of the year? How do you follow something like that?

Some bands double down on what already worked. Others switch things up and try a different approach.

But Rorcal… they just reached even deeper down into that aching, infinitely empty pit of gnawing hunger and nameless horror that exists within their collective soul and tore loose another spiteful slab of auditory darkness that they chose to call Silence.

Continue reading »

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