AN NCS PREMIERE: GATEWAY — “SACRIFICIAL BLOOD OATH IN THE TEMPLE OF K’ZADU”

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May 112023
 

In glancing at our extensive previous commentary going back to 2015 on the music of Gateway, the most commonly occurring words have been variants on “titanic”, “obliterating”, “pestilential”, “skull-cleaving”, “abysmal”, “mauling”, “blood-congealing”, and “ghastly”. The phrase “appalling and abominable” popped up as well. There was also this pungent passage from our review of the band’s 2018 EP Boundless Torture, which still rings true:

Within the more heartless and slaughtering corners of the extreme metal underground there has been a decades-long competition to reach the deepest, coldest caverns of devastation and despair, and to weaponize the horrors found within the crushing pressures of those abyssal chasms. The Belgian one-man death/doom band Gateway has been one of the more dedicated and successful combatants in that race to the bottom.

But hey, as nightmarish as Gateway‘s music has been, it still gets its massive meat-hooks in the head. We even named the 12 1/2 minute title track from Gateway‘s 2021 EP Flesh Reborn to our list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It does take a special kind of talent to scare the shit out of listeners yet leave them compelled to continue listening again and again.

And now we have new Gateway nightmares to indulge, thanks to the album Galgendood that Transcending Obscurity Records will release on July 5th. The label promises “a catastrophe of biblical proportions”. We would expect nothing less. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THORN — “HYPOGEAN CRYPT”

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May 102023
 

Let’s begin with a slice of history: Phoenix-based Thorn (the solo wrecking machine of Brennen Westermeyer) made its advent in 2020 with an EP entitled The Encompassing Nothing, which (in our words) revealed itself “as a musical monstrosity dedicated to the creation of cavernous, ominous, and dreadful death metal”. Thorn followed that auspicious debut by joining forces with Toronto’s Fumes for a fearsome split release in January 2021. We hosted the premiere of songs from that split, summing up Thorn’s contributions as “an amalgam of crushing brutality, freakish mayhem, and eerie supernatural frightfulness”.

After that we helped spread the word about Thorn‘s 2021 debut album Crawling Worship by premiering the song “Drowned Serpents”, which we described as “a jolting, neck-bending experience” shrouded in “an atmosphere of horror”.

Thorn followed that with another split and then another album, named Yawning Depths, and we touched on that one too, describing its advance track “Cavernous Shrines“ as “a ravishing combination of sensations”: “It will bludgeon you senseless, but also creates an atmosphere of otherworldly mystery and poisonous fascination. It’s discordant and grinding, cruel and even hideous, but mercurial and mesmerizing”.

Since then Thorn has continued to write its own history at a rapid clip, releasing two splits last year and now preparing to present yet another album, its first one on the Transcending Obscurity label. This one bears the portentous title Evergloom, and today we’ve got a sign of what it holds in store via our premiere of the song “Hypogean Crypt“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VORTEX — “THE WALLS”

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May 102023
 

When the Canadian collective Vortex begin work on a new album their songwriting approach differs from that of most extreme metal bands. They begin with a story, crafting chapters in a narrative that then become the basis for the songs. The music takes shape based on the feeling of the tale, and because of that the musical ingredients shift with the story. In the case of Vortex and their newest album The Future Remains In Oblivion, those ingredients draw upon death metal and black metal, with helpings of orchestration, and are both scathing and richly melodic.

Like the band’s last two albums, The Asylum (2016) and Lighthouse (2018), their new one is thus a concept record, a continuous lyrical and musical narrative. Today we present one of those musical chapters in advance of the album’s release on June 9th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRIDFAILURE / INTERSTITIA — “POPULATION COMPLIANCE ATTAINED THROUGH THE DISSEMINATION OF A PSYCHOTROPIC AGENT”

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May 092023
 

Once upon a time, before sound came to movies, pianists and organists (or phonograph recordings) would perform soundtracks for audiences in darkened venues, calculated to capture the changing moods of the silent footage or (as written here) simply to distract the viewers from the early unnaturalness of the larger-than-life two-dimensional medium and “absorb the shock” of it.

Those days are long gone of course, though (to quote the same source) “music eventually became so indispensable a part of the film experience that not even the advent of mechanically produced sound could silence it.” Witness the fact that almost no movies over the last century have been presented without a synchronized recorded soundtrack.

What you’re about to witness in this premiere is something like a throwback to the time of silent movies, even if it is a step forward into a dystopian future — though silent-movie audiences would have been horrified to see and hear this short film. The imagery is reality turned inside-out, and the music provides no real comfort, no “shock absorbers” despite its viscerally compulsive movements, but instead an ultimate reinforcement of fear. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETHEREAL VOID — “THE VOICELESS”

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May 092023
 

Aggressive music (for want of a better term) seems to rush forward, not just because time is moving forward as the music plays out but because the music itself seems violently to surge at the listener. In the case of extreme metal there’s a reason why we say (ad nauseum) that a band has “assaulted” us or has been “unleashed”. It’s because the music sounds like we’re the target of an attack.

In the case of Ethereal Void song we’re premiering today, the attack is particularly vicious, and it sounds like they have an imminent deadline for finishing us off — no time to waste, no chance for escape. And yet the music also moves… sideways… as if diverting us from the danger, or even seducing us into its embrace. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THÖRNE — “THOSE GOLDEN RULES”

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May 082023
 

In late January of this year the Portuguese blackened hardcore band Thörne followed up their 2019 debut EP Octagon with an immensely powerful three-track single named Those Golden Rules. Unfolding across 9 stunning minutes, the band used the single to explore “the untold truths of one’s past — the trauma caused by reckless parenting, the toll it carves in one’s behavior and social capabilities, and the resulting depression during adulthood”.

The single was originally released digitally, but in late April it received a cassette tape release through Black Lava Records. What we have for you today is a beautifully filmed video for a live performance of all three tracks that appeared on the new single. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CHTHON — “EREMITE”

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May 082023
 

As you’re about to see in the lyric video we’re premiering, the scribe of the Athenian band Chthon is a talented story-teller, though the tale told in the title track to Chthon‘s new album Eremite is a narrative of supernatural horror. It recounts the experience of a ruined, one-eyed zealot offering himself before a basalt shrine to an unnamed terror from another dimension.

The music tracks the tale in a progression of sound that’s just as supernatural and frightening as the words. In its initial phases the song presents the physical and mental ruin of the eremite — famished, face scarred, fingers mangled, body afflicted by festering wounds, and his one remaining eye unnaturally dilated — and simultaneously creates a chilling occult atmosphere.

In those initial phases, slow isolated notes reverberate in their gloom through an ambient mist, and then the band proceed in a massive mid-paced stomp, with distorted guitars deepening the feeling of oppressive gloom. A wailing guitar melody begins to slither and sway, like the exotic strains of a snake-charmer, but the melody is disturbing — it channels illness and misery. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OLKOTH — “TO EAT OF THE LOTUS”

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May 052023
 

The South Carolina black/death metal band Olkoth first began taking shape in 2016, formed by Zach Jeter (also in Imperivm and Lecherous Nocturne) and by Vance Jeffcoat, who passed away the following year. A debut demo emerged in 2019, and the band (with a new line-up in harness) released the “Eidolon of Flames” single in 2021 (which we had the pleasure of premiering here). Now they’re poised at last for the release of their debut album At The Eye Of Chaos by Everlasting Spew Records on the 26th of May.

Embracing themes of the occult, horror, mythology, and corruption throughout history, the new album creates sonic experiences that are ferocious and deadly, brutalizing and nightmarish. It makes good sense that the Italian maestro Paolo Girardi was enlisted to create a particularly blood-congealing piece of cover art — tentacular, abundantly skulled, and altogether hideous. You’ll understand why the artwork is so fitting when you hear the album track we’re about to premiere — “To Eat of the Lotus“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE ISUA — “DEPARTURE”

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May 052023
 

We live in a world where engaging with strangers we don’t have to engage with is a risky endeavor. Wariness is an important self-protective instinct, even though it might prevent engagements that would turn out to be felicitous. Hell, here in the U.S. for example it seems that rubbing some stranger the wrong way could lead to gunfire.

Fortunately, the rules of engagement when it comes to new music are very different. Encountering strangers is actually something desirable, at least around this site, because it can lead to very welcome surprises, even if it may also lead to disappointment.

Case in point: Today we welcome ISUA to our pages for the first time. Getting to know their music has been a captivating experience — even though it has also led to destruction. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BOARGAZM — “ARMAGAMMON”

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May 042023
 

With their new album Armagammon, the South African band Boargazm have reached the end of their Aporkalypse trilogy. A twisted sci-fi narrative accompanied by comic books, it tells the story of a rebel band of time-travelling freedom fighters known as “The Pig Whisperers”, who warn the world of the impending Aporkalypse, through the Baconing, all the way to Armagammon.

And if that sounds like some weird fun, wait ’til you hear this new album. As the band’s founder Heine van der Walt has explained: “We wanted to shift our focus on doing something highly experimental and weird, yet true to our sound. So, lots of freneticism, while still retaining groove, and to see if we can balance that in a coherent method. It was a fun exercise and experience, figuring out how to do all that.” Continue reading »

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