AN NCS PREMIERE: TERRA BUILDER — “INTERPLANETARY PORTAL”

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May 192023
 

As far as we know, the first hint of what the German band Terra Builder had concocted for their debut album Solar Temple was a song named “Abyss” that first surfaced on the Transcending Obscurity Records label sampler released in January of this year. What kind of musical message did it send us?

Well, in a nutshell, it communicated the band’s desire to beat the living hell out of people and gouge out their guts, while simultaneously pouring nightmare fuel into their ears and screaming bloody murder in their faces. Viscerally propulsive, insidiously infectious, and fear-inducing in its atmosphere, it proved to be a damned good teaser for this solar temple they had made out of death metal and grindcore, along with hints of sludge and black metal.

Patiently biding our time, we’ve been waiting for more, and now we (and you) have more. We haven’t been exposed to the whole album yet, nor do we know its release date, but we have been given another track to share with you, and this one is named “Interplanetary Portal.” Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GALLOWS RITES — “WITCHCRAFT AND NECRO DESECRATION”

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May 182023
 

Portugal’s Gallows Rites are as un-pretentious as they come. In their debut EP Witchcraft and Necro Desecration they announce their steadfast devotion to Lucifer, and never swerve from it. The music is a black thrashing glorification of the lord of Hell and all his minions, often primal and primitive but thoroughly saturated by the stench of sulphur and exulting in the kind of sonic sorcery that brings visions of witches’ covens to the mind’s eye.

Gallows Rites thrive in the fast lane, just as devoted to music that would stir up mosh pits into bloody froths as they are to the glory of the Lightbringer. But they also switch gears and moods in these five songs, in ways that make them even more attention-grabbing.

You will experience all this for yourselves today, because we have a premiere stream of the EP in advance of its release tomorrow — May 19th — by Helldprod Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL CURSE — “BLACK MASS SHEPHERD”

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May 172023
 

As you could quickly conclude if you searched our site for the words “Infernal Curse“, it’s always welcome news around here when this Argentinian black/death metal band surfaces with new music. The latest welcome news is that on June 23rd Infernal Curse will release their third album in a career that now spans 15 years. The name of the new one (a classic example of truth in advertising) is Revelations Beyond Insanity, and it will arrive via Iron Bonehead Productions.

If you haven’t yet explored this group’s evolving discography, it’s a hell of a trip. There are definite through-lines — bestial barbarity and barely controlled chaos among them — but the band have also moved in more mind-bending directions, using their undeniable savagery as a morphing vehicle for spawning blood-congealing hallucinations and visions of hideous grandeur. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: UKĆ — “UNCERTAINTY”

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May 172023
 

I first encountered the music of UKĆ in March of this year thanks to a prompt from Rennie Resmini in his most recent entry at starkweather’s SubStack. It concerned a single song named “Uchodząc” (“Fading Away”) from a then-forthcoming album and read as follows:

“I’ll be damned if the intro to the new track from Poland’s Ukć ‘Uchodz​ą​c‘ isn’t distinctly Bathory – Hammerheart meets Swans – “Will We Survive”. Great track that melds this melodic edge and fierce black metal. Looking forward to how this new album shapes up. This is monumental, epic stuff quickly following on the heels of last year’s Przemijanie.”

I probably didn’t need to say anything more about “Uchodząc“, but of course I did. I wrote then: “In its remarkably varied sounds, you’ll find bone-rattling drumwork and spine-jolting riffage, as well as sensations of harrowing and scintillating grandeur complemented by horn-like and chime-like tones, plus striking vocal intensity (along with gloomy spoken words and some singing) — and a lilting acoustic melody that’s sublime.”

Having listened, I wanted to know about the lyrics.  Because they were in Polish, I resorted to Google Translate, which told me that the song was about a child’s yearning to live, to learn, to love, within a twisted reality that’s “blind, deaf, stupid, indifferent”, and brutally kicks hope in the face. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PANDRADOR — “NITHSTANG OF SLEIPNIR”

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May 162023
 

The “post death metal” band Pandrador hail from Poland but for their forthcoming second album Seiðr (set for release by Pagan Records on May 26th) they have again drawn inspiration from the heritage of Scandinavian culture. But anyone who guesses they’re about to hear “Viking metal” needs to think again.

The narrative of the album is very much a contemporary heroic poem, not a pedantic leafing through the pages of ancient histories and poems or musical paeans to the glories of Valhalla but a challenging examination of tradition that uses it as a jumping-off point into disturbed reflections about human culture as it now exists (worldwide) and what the future might bring (if we have one).

It’s worth spending a few more minutes about Seiðr‘s conception, because this is one of those albums where the thematic content and the music aren’t really separable. As the advance press describes it: “They complement each other, set the pace and mood for each other. The album spirals through a spectrum of emotions, from unbridled rage, through denial, painful understanding and powerlessness in the face of one’s own tragedy, to the final statement – ‘too late.'” Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BEZDECH — “TAM, GDZIE GNIJEMY POD POMNIKAMI”

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May 162023
 

Almost two years ago we encountered Duhkha, the debut EP by the Polish band Bezdech, summarily describing it as “a hair-raising and head-spinning alchemy of avant-garde black and death metal”, and then adding these words:

This Polish duo paint their disturbing but often electrifying sonic portraits with colors of mind-abrading dissonance, thoroughly unpredictable fretwork maneuvers, and rapidly veering tempos. But the music is just as likely to become cloaked in shrouds of haunting gloom or to dip into streams of soul-shaking misery as it is to spin like a centrifuge of technically impressive lunacy and riotous savagery. And holy shit, the vocals are stunningly rabid and possessed.

Since then Bezdech have expanded their line-up from a two-man studio project to a full four-man band, and have managed to get a few live gigs under their belts. They’ve also been working on new music for a debut album, but have decided to give the world a glimpse of what they’ve been working on via a demo named Tam, gdzie gnijemy pod pomnikami that we’re gratefully premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE END OF SIX THOUSAND YEARS — SELF-TITLED

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May 152023
 

Today we have another tale of slumber and revival. In this case it’s the Italian band The End of Six Thousand Years. Their inception occurred nearly 20 years ago, and by 2012 they had released two albums, in addition to some shorter releases. But then a long silence befell them, interrupted only by a single (“Angelus Errare“) that emerged in 2020.

Well, they weren’t actually sleeping, more a case of “life getting in the way”. Yet the desire didn’t die, and although line-up changes have occurred, the band is now returning with a new EP that will be released by Hypershape Records on May 18th. As a sign of the rebirth, and it’s fair to say a reinvention, the new EP is self-titled. It includes four tracks, concluding with a cover of “The Man Who Loves to Hurt Himself” by Today Is The Day, and we’ve got all four of them for your listening pleasure today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WOODEN VEINS — “GANYMEDE”

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May 122023
 

The Chilean melodic doom metal band Wooden Veins, whose members are now mostly based in European countries, made an auspicious full-length debut with their well-received 2021 album In Finitude. There, the band crafted beautifully produced music that pulled from deep wells of sorrow and gained strength from the deep, rich singing voice of frontman Javier Cerda.

Now Wooden Veins are returning with a follow-up album named Imploding Waves, which will be released on June 23rd by Ardua Music. Beginning last year the band started disclosing singles from the new album. So far, three songs have surfaced with videos, and today we present a fourth one — “Ganymede“.

Collectively, these songs demonstrate that Imploding Waves expands on the songwriting evident on In Finitude, adding progressive and gothic elements and overall providing a more elaborate, more dynamic, and ultimately more memorable experience. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VILE RITUAL — “LIVING HELL”

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May 122023
 

Even if you missed out on Vile Ritual‘s self-titled debut demo from 2019 or the Tongues of the Exanimate compilation of Vile Ritual‘s music that Sentient Ruin Laboratories released early last year, the linguistic embellishments accompanying the band’s forthcoming debut album would clue you in to the terrors of this project’s music.

Sentient Ruin, which will also release this first full-length (on June 16th), refers to it as a “psychedelic bestial death metal plague” emerging from “the bowels of hades”. Or try these vivid words on for size:

On the forty-minute, eight-track death-riddled hallucinatory tesseract, Vile Ritual unites the animalistic violence of bands like Archgoat and Von with the technical and compositional unpredictability of progressive and atmospheric-leaning death metal bands like The Chasm, Timeghoul, Incantation, Infester and Demilich to unleash a mind-devouring hallucination of mutated dark and occult death metal carnage.

In a way not dissimilar to what we’ve seen done by bands like Antediluvian, Howls of Ebb, or Chaos Echoes, Vile Ritual‘s aim with Caverns of Occultic Hatred is that of prying the listener’s mind open with violence, expanding it to dissolve the consciousness and using alchemical, ritualistic and esoteric orchestrations to create a trance-like state that renders the listener trapped and disoriented into a sonic delusion, to then bludgeon them mercilessly with the carnage of the primeval and barbaric blackened death metal that shapes the other half of its darkened, gruesome soul.

Or maybe just ponder for another moment the new album’s name: Caverns of Occultic Hatred. Or just stare for a minute at the cover art. Better yet, listen to the first single we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RANĂ — “LÄUTERN”

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May 112023
 

In the last month of 2021 the German band Rană made their recording debut with an EP named Armament co-released by Vita Detestabilis Records and Fiadh Productions. Nearly a half-hour long (you could call it an album without a lot of argument), that four-song release delivered both a musical and an emotional wrecking ball. Using corrosive riffs, ringing leads, bone-bruising percussion, and scalding howls, Rană veered from moods of ruinous, doom-drenched hopelessness and furious belligerence to sensations of agonizing despair, heartbreaking melancholy, and defiant resilience.

To do that Rană mainly harnessed elements of black metal, crust-punk, and hints of post-metal in strikingly dynamic fashion, but also stepped well outside those influences with the hauntingly beautiful reverence of the song “Pyres” in its clean-sung opening phase (before it becomes a conflagration), and the lonely, grief-stricken instrumental prelude of “Im Joch” (before the onrushing storm of rebellion at the gates).

The band also made very clear that melodies which would stir the soul, often in sweeping fashion, were just as important in their songwriting as crushing power and the ignition of adrenaline-fueled wildfires.

Now Rană are  following Armament with their 40-minute album Richtfeuer, which will see release on June 16th via Breath Sun Bone Blood. Armament left expectations high. Richtfeuer abundantly fulfills them. Continue reading »

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