AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE RITE — “THE ASTRAL GLOOM”

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Aug 102023
 

We invite you into The Astral Gloom, as today we pull back the veil between worlds and allow you to gain entry. But pay careful attention to those chosen words: Deep shadows lie in wait, but things move within them that aren’t the living things which might lurk around you in a midnight stroll through the woods or dimly lit urban canyons. Chilling dangers await, as well as chilling wonders, and little of it seems to have an earthly origin.

We’re speaking of the forthcoming second album by the international collective known as The Rite, a band first spawned in 2017 through the collaboration of A.th (Black Oath) and Ustumallagam (Denial of God) and now fully fleshed out to include drummer War D. (Morbus Grave), and guitarists Gabriel (Black Oath, Morbus Grave) and M. Desecrator (VomitVulva, Funest).

In listening to the new album it’s easy to fall into the kind of fumbling poetic reveries you saw in the first paragraph above, and a few more of them will follow in our introduction to the full album stream we’re presenting below on the eve of its release by Iron Bonehead. In much more mundane terms, you can expect an alchemical interaction of black metal, old-school doom, and (for want of a better term) “classic heavy metal”, equally prominent in nightmare atmospherics and imperious head-moving heaviness.

There’s also a cover of “Naked When You Come” by The Lollipops. More on that later. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GEIST — “PANIC ADDICTS”

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Aug 092023
 

If you’ve been a regular visitor to this site over the last 7 years you’ve seen the name Geist a lot, because over that span of time we’ve published a multitude of Geist song and video premieres, record reviews, and show reviews. The reasons for all that attention can be summed up in a few quotes pulled from some of those articles:

“Coming across like a younger, hungrier, and – more importantly – groovier, sibling to bands like Cursed and Converge, the Newcastle-based quintet strike a careful balance between raw intensity and pinpoint precision….”

“…delivering an absolutely stunning set of pissed-off, punk-fuelled polemic and scalding sonic shrapnel… both impressively tight, yet as raw and fractious as the wildest of riots, every track… detonated like a pipe-bomb flung into the audience….”

“Geist unleash some of the angriest, most vitriolic Metallic Hardcore I’ve heard in a very long time, pulling a total of zero punches and taking no prisoners in the process.”

“Through a feral mix of dark hardcore, crust, and metal, they channel emotionally raw and devastating sensations (and bone-busting force) through their debut album Swarming Season.”

There’s a lot more where all that came from, but you probably get the point. We’re very high on Geist‘s music, and thankfully they show no signs of slowing down, because they’re now preparing to release their second album Blueprints To Moderate Sedation in September of this year through Cursed Monk, Black Omega, and Trepanation Recordings. And as you can tell, today we’re premiering an explosive song and video for the new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORPHALIS — “STARING INTO RUIN”

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Aug 092023
 

Today we are most happy to revisit the music of the German band Orphalis after spending a lot of time with them around the release of their second album The Birth of Infinity back in 2016. Shame on us for not paying nearly as much attention to their third album, 2019’s The Approaching Darkness — definitely a case of oversight rather than dissatisfaction.

What brings us back to them again today is the rapidly approaching advent of the band’s fourth album, As the Ashes Settle, which is set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on August 25th, and more specifically our premiere of an extravagant new song from the album named “Staring Into Ruin“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXCARNATED ENTITY — “CORRIDOR OF FLAME”

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Aug 082023
 

A band whose members hail from such groups as Anhedonist, Triumvir Foul, Ash Borer, and Dagger Lust? Say no more, we’re drawn to what they’re doing like iron filings compelled by a big magnet.

Those are indeed some of the many band names on the resumes of the now-Portland-based quartet who call themselves Excarnated Entity. They’ve devoted their talents to the creation of doomed death metal, as revealed in desolate and devastating fashion on their forthcoming debut album Mass Grave Horizon — a title that’s entirely fitting as a preview of the music within.

The album is now set for release on September 8th by Nuclear Winter Records. One single has already emerged, and today we present a second one, a song of hideous majesty, pulverizing power, and otherworldly misery that goes by the name “Corridor of Flame“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CURSED TO OCCULT — “CULTLEADER”

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Aug 082023
 

Cursed To Occult is a German one-man band, the solo recording work of one Micha Eibisch, though it expands to a full band for live performances. Because it is a one-man project, the music is very much a reflection of its creator’s personal experiences, and those experiences are distressing — as you might guess from both the name of Cursed To Occult‘s debut album Mind Wreck, and the title of its forthcoming second album, Diary Of A Broken Man.

What we have for you today is the unnerving and exhilarating first video and single from that new album, in advance of its release by the Crawling Chaos label on September 1st. Entitled “Cultleader“, it’s a viscerally compelling amalgam of crust punk, black metal, sludge, and hardcore, all roped together to lash and pummel the senses with shattering intensity.

But before we get to that song and video, it’s worth sharing what Micha Eibisc has stated about where the music on the new album comes from: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVERIPPER — “RESIST AGAINST THE LIGHT”

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Aug 072023
 

At the end of every year for the last 13 years our site has rolled out a list of each year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“. Barring some unforeseen calamity we will do it again at the end of 2023. We don’t start seriously thinking about which songs should make the list until the waning days of each year, but sometimes some of the choices become immediately obvious, and this is one of those times. There absolutely WILL be a song from GraveRipper on the 2023 edition of the list. The only thing up in the air is, which song?

The choice won’t be easy, because GraveRipper‘s forthcoming debut album Seasons Dreaming Death (set for release later this month by Wise Blood Records) is packed to the brim with highly infectious black-thrashing romps, the kind of exultant escapades that are loaded with hooks, bury them deep in a listener’s brain, and get hearts pounding and heads banging.

No, it won’t be an easy choice, but the song from the album we’re premiering today — “Resist Against the Light” — will certainly be a leading contender. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLGATA — “UR ELD OCH ASKA”

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Aug 072023
 

In mid-June of last year we had the opportunity to premiere a video for a song from Ur eld och aska (“out of fire and ashes”), the then-forthcoming third album by the Swedish melodic black metal band Golgata, which was subsequently co-released by Satanath Records and Ketzer Records.

As we wrote then, the album (as suggested by its title) “is a journey through fire and ash but it’s also a journey through time, inspired by the history and natural surroundings of the dark, forested region that gave birth to this duo. It has the capacity to scathe the senses in raw and unbridled fashion, but it’s equally powerful in its capacity to mesmerize and to transport listeners away from modernity and into a much older age, creating grim and haunting visions of yearning and sorrow.”

We now have an opportunity to revisit the album, and to introduce it to people who might have overlooked it, through our premiere of a lyric video for its title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAMHAIN — “THE COURIER”

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Aug 032023
 

Our subject today is The Courier, Emanzipation Production‘s forthcoming deluxe vinyl reissue of demo tapes first released by the Danish band Samhain in the mid-’80s, now remastered by Tue Madsen. The advertising for this special album-length release (and the extensive liner notes accompanying it) refer to is as “a piece of metal history“. It further includes these quotes:

“Samhain helped us kickstart our career because they believed in metal! Forever thankful and I‘m happy to see their music being re-released. Hail Samhain!” Mille Petrozza, Kreator

“This is the kind of riffs bands like Obituary have made a career out of touring with for 30 years. Samhain played those riffs way earlier. And Obituary fucking rules!” Tue Madsen, producer, Antfarm Studio

“Way better musicianship and production than on the first Hellhammer demos. You guys were already way ahead of them. This shit is heavy as shit. In a primitive, good way!” Monte Conner, metal industry legend

All of this is entirely appropriate, but let’s be real: There are vast numbers of metal fans out there, old as well as young, who will greet this kind of prose with a shrug. There’s a musty smell to history, and a question about why people who aren’t history buffs, collectors, or folks trying to re-live a vital time in their own past, should pay attention to music created by teenagers 40 years ago, given that we’re already drowning on a daily basis in non-stop typhoons of music that’s brand new.

For people like that, we say: Forget about everything you’ve just read above. Pretend that Samhain is a brand new band who is just now releasing The Courier for the first time, and listen to what they’ve done. It will make you forget about history right damned fast. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVEW): BLIGHT HOUSE — “BLIGHT THE WAY”

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Aug 022023
 

“Frank Owen Gorey is not a well person. Frank Lloyd Blight is not a well person either. Physical illness provided the genesis for their collaboration. Mental illness has kept it going…. Would it be too un-empathetic to say I hope the two Franks never get well? I’m only being honest about my greediness for their music. Wellness is overrated anyway, especially when it comes to death metal.”

Those were among the words I spewed in the context of premiering a song from Summer Camp Sex Party Massacre, an album by the two Franks under their chosen band name Blight House that Nefarious Industries released almost exactly five years ago.

Back then it seemed evident that these two had either shunned, or been shunned by, the outer world, preferring the confines of a swampy basement and whatever collection of mechanical and unspeakable organic materials they used in making their thoroughly demented and disgusting death metal. How delightful it must have been for them to see almost everyone else forced by the pandemic into a similar isolated existence!

Well, they must have taken some delight in that state of affairs, because now Blight House is returning with a thoroughly macabre new album. While others may be fumbling about looking for something to light the way out of all the dark tunnels in which we find ourselves, the two Franks have rediscovered how to Blight the Way — and you will learn how they’ve done this through our premiere stream of the new album that bears that name, in advance of its August 4 release by Syrup Moose. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IRON ALTAR — “MORTALITY”

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Aug 012023
 

In their new song “Mortality” the Scottish band Iron Altar musically harness their own four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although one might imagine the ravages of the biblical foursome of Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, the song spawns powerful visions of Rage, Madness, Desolation, and Despair, inflicted not by some world-ending divinity but by a deeply flawed humanity.

As you will soon discover for yourselves through our premiere of a video for the song, Iron Altar create such harrowing impressions through a relentlessly dynamic and multi-faceted piece of heavy-grooved deathly sludge that hits very hard on multiple levels. And it’s no outlier, because the band’s new album Promethean (their second full-length) is a powerhouse experience all the way through. It’s set for release on September 29th by Trepanation Recordings. Continue reading »

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