AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WHYTHRE — “SCORPIONS OF SINAI”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 192023
 

We’ve been eagerly following the progress of the Seattle-based melodic death metal band Whythre ever since discovering (and then writing about) their 2018 single “Savage“, which followed up their 2015 debut album Hel’s Hollows. The next year we reviewed and premiered their explosive new EP Stillborn World here, which we introduced with these words (among many others):

“If your ass has been dragging, beaten down and disgusted by the daily grind, strapped for sleep, short on cash, and your reservoirs of hope running low as well, we’ve got a sure-fire antidote for most of those ails…. On top of recharging the energy in your depleted batteries, the songs on this EP also turn out to be damned addictive. It’s very easy, at the end, to just go back to the beginning and ride this lightning again… and again.”

And now we happily continue to follow the progress of Whythre, because they’ve got a new album on the way named Impregnate My Hate, and today we get to do another premiere — a lyric video for a track from the new album named “Scorpions of Sinai“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH — “THE PENDULUM OF NECROPATH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 192023
 

You could say that this is Sporae Autem Yuggoth week at NCS. Yesterday we presented a very good interview of this Chilean band, which presents lots of background about how they came to be, as well as intriguing insights about their debut album …However It Still Moves, which is set for release by Personal Records on May 19th. And now we’ll help introduce you to music from the album.

As our interviewer Comrade Aleks explained in his own introduction yesterday, “Their death-doom is balanced – it’s old school, but it isn’t obsolete, it’s grim and yet it has its bright moments.” Aleks also quoted some accurate words from a press release: “‘Dark as fuck’ is one way of describing However It Still Moves, but ‘bittersweetly beautiful’ is another, depending on what minute of the hour-long album you land on – many movements and many moods, but all dripping into (and reverberating back up from) a bottomless well of despair”.

As an even more tangible sign of what the album brings us, today we’re premiering the song that appears second in the album’s track list — “The Pendulum of Necropath“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENOID — “MES ÉTRANGES PENSÉES TISSENT LEUR SOLITUDE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 182023
 

The prolific Swiss multi-instrumental musician and vocalist Bornyhake is an artist of many musical guises, with a resume that includes nearly three-dozen bands and personal projects, both within an expansive sphere of metal and outside the boundaries altogether. Among them, the solo project Enoid is one to which he has repeatedly returned, with eight albums being released since 2006 and a ninth one now on the way.

That ninth full-length, Ô Nuit, emporte-moi !, is now scheduled to see the light of day on April 23rd via Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile). In a nutshell, it confirms that Enoid is the vehicle to which Bornyhake returns when in the mood for crushing, hate-fueled black metal ferocity. and the dominance of death It is the burning ground where its creator locks arms with revolutionary forebears from the ’90s.

And lest there be any doubt about that, we have for you today the premiere of a song from the new album named “Mes étranges pensées tissent leur solitude“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WRACK — “RUINEN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 182023
 

The creative processes of the German black metal band Wrack are atypical. They have not been in a rush. Thirteen years have passed since the release of their debut album Gram und gleißende Wutwork, and since then they have worked simultaneously on four albums, creating numerous songs and continually revisiting them, allowing them to connect or diverge and to experience a kind of intuitive evolution. In that evolution, during which Wrack say the subconscious plays a greater role than the rational, other genre influences have been brought in.

One of the albums that have taken shape over those 13 years, Altäre der Vergänglichkeit (German for “Altars of Transience”), was released earlier this month by the Crawling Chaos label. It features guest contributions from Stef of Minas Morgul, Rigor Mortis of Hallig, and Frida Nordlys of Miscreation.

In its conception, the album “describes the spiritual atmosphere that emanates from the aesthetics of external and internal decay” — “the decay of the man-made, as well as the refuge and violence of the natural realm, draw a deeply connected, but also rapt relationship to nature”. In its expression, it provides a mixture of atmospheric black metal and death/doom, accented by acoustic guitars, 7-string guitars, and ambient drones, as well as considerable vocal variety.

What we have for you today, to help draw attention to this captivating record, is the premiere of a video for a two-part song on the album, the name of which is “Ruinen“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LAVA INVOCATOR — “PSYCHO-TERROR WORLDWIDE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 172023
 

When the Ukrainian black metal band Lava Invocator released their debut album Mörk in March 2017 Russia had already illegally “annexed” Crimea, and pro-Russian “separatists” had declared “independence” in the eastern region of Donbas, leading to persistent fighting that had killed thousands. But at that time Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was still five years away. Now, of course it is a brutal reality.

And it was in the midst of that brutal reality that Lava Invocator wrote and recorded their second album, and gave it a name inspired by what was happening around them and in the world at large: Signs Of Apocalypse.

You can imagine the harrowing destruction of modern warfare when listening to the album’s music, and you’d expect nothing less from a band named Lava Invocator. But their music is far more multi-faceted than that. There’s a fascinating dynamism in the songwriting, a compelling use of melody, and the generation of mood-changing atmosphere, not to mention a lot of attention-seizing instrumental inventiveness.

We have an excellent demonstration of all this in “Psycho-Terror Worldwide“, the song we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s April 20 co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and The Ritual Productions (Netherlands). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FIAT NOX — “OPIUM TO INSIDIOUS SLUMBER II”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 172023
 

In 2021 we had the honor of premiering In Contemptuous Defiance, a new EP by the German black metal band Fiat Nox, which followed their 2021 debut album The Archive of Nightmares. In an accompanying review we wrote that the EP “further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies”. In Contemptuous Defiance was also home to a song (“Amok Hymn“) that we named to our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Allowing no grass to grow beneath their iron-shod hooves, Fiat Nox followed that EP with another one in 2022 — Demanifestation (Hymns of Destruction and Nothingness). Unfolding across three tracks and 30 minutes, it provided a bracing amalgam of blistering and blasting blackened fury, engrossing melodies, and frightening, esoteric atmosphere worthy of the record’s magnificently hellish cover art.

With their creative fires still burning hot, Fiat Nox have readied yet another EP for release later this month. Entitled Opium To Insidious Slumber, it consists of two songs, and today we’re premiering a lyric video for the second of those — “Opium To Insidious Slumber II“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TEITAN — “INSECTOID”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 142023
 

The Dutch black metal band Teitan got its start in 2008 as a collaboration of two Dutch teenagers, Devi and Damon. Inspired by chaos, and the antecedents of Marduk, Dark Funeral, and Mayhem, they put out a demo the next year, which Devi calls “crappy”, and then Teitan seemed to die a sudden death.

Devi Hisgen joined other bands, later started Cthuluminati, and got increasingly into aspects of psychedelic music, but it turned out that the love for black metal never vanished. And thus 10 years after the demise of Teitan it was reborn, this time as Devi‘s solo project. 2019 brought the debut album Weight of the Void, and two singles and an EP named Vákuum surfaced in 2021 and 2022. And now a second album is on the way.

The new album reinforces the impression of the other more recent releases that Teitan has become much more interested in experimentation than simply following in the footsteps of BM forebears. And we should note that Void Wanderer and Onism, the two labels that will release the new album In Oculus Abyss, apply the genre label “Psychotic Black Metal”. Perhaps you’ll understand why when you listen to “Insectoid“, the song we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MESMUR — “CHTHONIC”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 122023
 

The debate over whether human beings have souls has endured for millennia and will endure for millennia more (assuming humanity survives that long). It has been a mainstay of philosophical and theological discourse, and scientists have intruded as well, with explanations rooted in the chemistry and electricity of the brain.

The debate won’t end, and not just because the hypothesis and its rejection are both un-provable at some level, but also because of the unyielding hope that some essence of us will survive the death of the body. In the midst of all the agonies that life brings our way, many people have always wondered, “Really, is this all there is?“, and with varying degrees of conviction insist, “It can’t be!”

Mesmur‘s new album Chthonic doesn’t directly address this age-old question. Thematically, it’s “a collection of paranormal horror tales” that speak “of fabled entities making contact through the veil of sleep, summoning prey to subterranean depths, or haunting a post-apocalyptic landscape” (to borrow from the PR materials).

And yet the music is so deeply stirring in its effects that it might make some people think it’s connecting with something within that has no physical existence or explanation, but so daunting that it could be understood as delivering the terrible message that nothing survives the end of breath, or that if something does survive it will find that only horror awaits. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAVE MOTH — “PARALYTIC LOVE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 112023
 

These days the phrase “catch and kill” has connotations of schemes to buy up embarrassing news about bloated political figures and then bury it. But it’s also a phrase that leaped into our heads when listening to Cave Moth‘s new EP Paralytic Love. This time it’s us that are being caught and killed. The catching employs lures of different kinds that are damned difficult to resist. The killing occurs in equally ingenious (one might also say aberrant) ways.

The whole experience, though separated into 8 tracks, comes to an abrupt end less than 8 minutes after it begins. It seems longer, like there’s some time-dilation effect happening, maybe because it’s so packed to the gills with mad, head-spinning permutations — which become the lures. The songs rush and rampage with centrifugal force, but simultaneously bamboozle the listener’s higher faculties with the whipping whirligig of genres and sounds that feed into the chaos. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THANATOMASS — “SORCERY OF HADES”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 112023
 

Thanatomass are returning with a new record, and anyone who’s heard their previous material will know what that means: The gates of Hell are about to be blasted open again, and we’re about to be thrown inside.

Imagining what Hell must be like has been a constant theme of heavy metal bands since early days, but the new music of Thanatomass is so deliriously violent and berserk, and so steeped in an atmosphere of the hideously supernatural, that you might begin to get the chilling suspicion that these Russian black metal deviants have really been there.

And thus it’s no surprise that Thanatomass named their debut album Hades, and who could ask for a more gob-smacking visual to accompany it than what Dávid Glomba has rendered for the album cover and the interior artwork. Maybe he’s been there too? Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries