AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVEFIELDS — “PILGRIMS OF AMIRAH”

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May 032023
 

There are a lot of extreme metal songs out there where the vocals are really just an accent or an afterthought, with the vocals struggling to match up with musical instrumentation that carries the lion’s share of the load. What you’re about to hear, however, is a song where the burden is almost — almost — reversed.

Especially at first, the vocals on Gravefields‘ new song “Pilgrims of Amirah” are so stunningly monstrous, macabre, and frighteningly deranged that you almost don’t notice the music around them, though perhaps that’s because the instrumentation is also deranged — and dangerously destructive.

This isn’t the first time we’ve hosted a premiere for a release by Gravefields, but because almost exactly four years have passed since the last time, it’s worth a reminder that the core of the band is a duo consisting of Irish multi-instrumentalist Alan Hurley and French lyricist/vocalist Thomas Blanc (aka “DM“), who has a very long resume of vocal credits that you can find here. On the band’s forthcoming second album Tetragrammaton, they’re joined by bassist Paul Girvin. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GAROTED — “UNFATHOMABLE MANIFESTATION”

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May 032023
 

We have one hell of a video for you today, for a vicious song that generates enough voltage to drive massive turbines to the meltdown point. Garoted easily could have made four different playthrough videos for it, each one featuring the eye-popping performance of a different band-member, but instead we get to be even more thoroughly bamboozled by watching as the screen rapidly cuts from one to the next.

The song that’s the subject of the video, “Unfathomable Manifestation“, is off this Kansas-based band’s forthcoming fourth album, Bewitchment of the Dark Ages, which is set for a May 26 release by Lavadome Productions. It ought to leave fans of savage, technically jaw-dropping death metal slobbering, both hungry and head-spun. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NADIR — “EXTINCTION RITUALS”

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May 022023
 

All things rise and fall, both the animate and the inanimate. Mountains heave up from the Earth’s crust, and erode over time. Flora and fauna flourish much more briefly, but all of it is always doomed to perish. Human life in particular strives, grasping for meaning and some measure of “success”, but humanity’s most vaunted achievements are in fact evanescent, and self-destruction seems deeply rooted. In the arc of all things, there are zeniths, and at the bottom of the trajectory is where you’ll find Nadir.

Nadir is the name chosen by a Norwegian blackened hardcore band whose extravagant debut album we’re presenting today in advance of its May 5 release. Its conception is summed up in the title — Extinction Rituals — and becomes even more clear through the band’s elaboration of what that means:

Extinction Rituals is an exercise in the duality of futility and hope. It is a comment upon the ignorance of man and the inventive way we manage to prey upon each other. Musically, Extinction Rituals sets out to match the lyrical content through blending eclectic sources of inspiration and striving for a harsh and aggressive sound.”

Nadir succeeded in their striving. Paradoxically, they’ve made their dark descent into a zenith of their own. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HAIL CONJURER — “GOLDEN SPINE / THE HEAT GOES ON”

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May 022023
 

Today marks the first appearance at our humble site of the Finnish black metal band Hail Conjurer, but a glance at the band’s discography reveals that we are very, very late in paying attention.

Beginning in 2017 Hail Conjurer has released numerous demos, splits, and EPs, as well as six full-length albums. The word “prolific” is well-earned here, and the volume of creative output is even more impressive considering that during those years the person behind the project has also been a participant in Hooded Menace, Horse Latitudes, and Ride for Revenge (among others).

As large as it is, the discography of Hail Conjurer is about to swell again, because on May 18th (Ascension Day in the christian church) the band will release a new full-length named Ouroboros Lust on the Bestial Burst label, and that album is the source of the hellish music we’re premiering today through an official video. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEXAKOSIOIHEXEKONTAHEXAPHILIA — “DEMO DCLXVI”

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May 012023
 

“Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia” is an actual word. It refers to fear of the number 666 (just as the slightly better known triskaidekaphobia refers to fear of the number 13). We’re not sure that anyone is actually afflicted with that fear as a clinically recognized phobia, but we have many examples of fearful superstitious avoidance of the number.

For example, did you know that there used to be a U.S. Highway 666, so named because it was was the sixth branch off U.S. Highway 66? Did you know that in 1986 researchers found that 23% of all crashes involving injury that occurred in the Shiprock District of New Mexico occurred on a 0.9-mile stretch of Highway 666, and that it eventually became known (of course) as the Devil’s Highway? Perhaps needless to say, the government did away with that name in 2003; it’s now the much duller U.S. 491.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphilia, on the other hand, isn’t a word we’ve been able to find in our googling — other than as the name of a new solo metal project out of the Netherlands. But it’s about damned time someone coined that word, which must mean “fondness of the number 666”. Even if it would take a lot of practice to be able to enunciate it correctly (and we’ll be doing a lot of copy/pasting today), we should hail the conception because it represents basically all of metaldom.

But we’re here to hail the name for another reason, because the debut demo of Hexakosioihexekontahexaphilia that we’re about to premiere is dazzling. Its name is Demo DCLXVI. Can you guess which Arabic numeral is represented by that Roman numeral? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHODAN — “NONE SHALL PREVAIL”

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May 012023
 

On May 5th Time To Kill Records will release None Shall Prevail, the third LP by the Polish death metal band Shodan. In two words, it’s absolutely stunning.

Of course we have a lot my words to spill about it, but we’ll leap ahead through them to emphasize these: The album is a genuine rarity, in the sense that it has the potential to appeal to fans from across many genres of extreme metal, from brutal death metal to technical death metal, from prog metal to melodic death metal (and more).

Moreover, the band don’t reveal these different influences in separate songs, but beautifully integrate all of them in every track through songwriting that’s elaborate, dynamic, and executed with eye-popping skill. In addition, the record is exceptionally well-produced to emphasize these signal qualities, delivering both power and clarity.

Of course, it’s still way too early to be throwing around references to year-end lists, but None Shall Prevail is so spectacular that it seems like a very safe bet we’ll see it on many of those in the waning months of 2023. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LUX NIGRUM — “OMNIA AB UNO, OMNIA AD UNUM”

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Apr 282023
 

Lux Nigrum‘s 2019 debut EP Burning the Eternal Return (which we reviewed and premiered here) made a striking impression. The music channeled chaos, but not in the sense of some flailing, disorganized cacophony. There was a palpable sense of fierce wildness and burning devotion in the music, but an equal devotion to the crafting of excellent riffs, which had both emotional power and magnetic musical appeal.

And so it was very welcome news to learn that this Chilean band would be returning this year with a debut album named Omnia Ab Uno, Omnia Ad Unum. The band describe it as “a conceptual album based on the Acausal Spirituality and the mysterious duality of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death, dealing with the unification of everything as One, and its own dissolution towards Ain.”

In February we had the pleasure of premiering a lyric video for the song “Adamas Voluntatem“, and today we’re equally pleased to bring you the sounds of the entire record on the day of its release. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NON SERVIAM — “APOCALYPTIC LUST”

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Apr 282023
 

Many musical extremists add new layers of brick and mortar to old walls surrounding well-established genre structures, and some of them are such good crafts-people that they still deserve applause for their renewal of the fortifications. On the other hand, the anonymous Parisian collective Non Serviam take a wrecking ball to genre walls.

No doubt, what they do with their noise scandalizes some listeners, but as their name suggests, they’re dedicated to being confrontational — conventions be damned — and their confrontational nature extends to the anarchist and antifascist convictions that inspire their music. We have a prime example of all this in the video we’re presenting today for the furious Non Serviam tirade called “Apocalyptic Lust”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PUNEBRE — “HELE HELE”

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Apr 272023
 

As you can see, we’re about to bring you another premiere. As you can see, it’s from a record with an out-of-the-ordinary piece of cover art, especially for a slab of monstrous death metal. So let’s start with that artwork.

Obviously, it looks like a comic book cover — a strange one, to be sure, with an attractive young woman swaddling a Lovecraftian nightmare spawn, and some other inhuman figures in the corner presiding over the torching of a church. There’s a tiny logo in the other corner with “HM-2” in the center. And then there’s the comic’s date: April 02 1973. What is the significance of that?

Well, it turns out to be a tribute to the late Leif Cuzner, who was born on that day. A bassist and guitarist for the enormously influential Swedish band Nihilist, he is widely credited as the inventor of the legendary “buzzsaw” guitar sound, created by turning up all the knobs on his Boss HM-2 distortion pedal to the maximum.

Paying attention to all the clues in the unusual cover art tells you many useful things about the record itself, which is the debut album of the Filipino death metal band Punebre. Entitled Ang Nasa Dako Paroon, it will be released on May 15th by the Mexican label Death in Pieces Records. But through our premiere of the album track “Hele Hele” we have an even better clue. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ELITIUM — “TASTELESS”

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Apr 272023
 

After quickly turning out a pair of EPs in 2012 and 2014 (Transcendence and Ataxia), the Portuguese band Elitium fell silent… for a long time. We don’t know all the details about how the last 9 years were spent, but no doubt there were trials and tribulations of various kinds — as well as a lot of work on new music.

That work has borne extravagant fruit, because at last Elitium are returning with an explosive debut album named Wrong that will be released by Gruesome Records, and today we’re presenting an electrifying album track named “Tasteless” accompanied by an excellent music video. Continue reading »

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