CASTRATOR: “CORONATION OF THE GROTESQUE”

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Aug 152025
 

(Today is the day when Dark Descent Records releases the second album by the death metal band Castrator, and to help spotlight the event we present DGR‘s review and a full stream of the album.)

Sometimes, you just have an extrasensory idea that an album is going to be one you’re going to enjoy. It’s not enough to launch your own late night hotline to allow people to speak to dead relatives but wow, does it feel close to it. The combination of artwork, genre, musicianship involved if you’re extra nerdy like us around here, and sometimes even the cover song in the tracklisting manage to align the planets just right and you just know that this is one you’ll like.

Listening to such an album then becomes an exercise in watching a detonation cord burn. The lead up to the final explosion is exciting but it’s a tense exercise watching it burn down when you’re waiting ever so intently for that moment when the album catches fire for you and becomes one that you lock in with. In the case of Castrator and their new album Coronation Of The Grotesque, thankfully that wait is not tremendously long. In fact, a rough estimate would place that initial explosion around song two, and if not then, by song four, and if not then there’s a pretty good one at song six and if not… well you can guess how this is going to go. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRUEL BOMB — “CRUEL BOMB”

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Aug 142025
 

(written by Islander)

Ferocious speed, riffs with mean hooks, beats with spine-shaking groove, howling mad vocals, hardcore belligerence, and enough flash and flair to keep listeners on their toes in between wanting to body-check someone in a mosh pit. In essence, that’s what the Pennsylvania thrash band Cruel Bomb bring to the table in their self-titled debut album which will see release tomorrow (August 15th).

To flesh this out, let’s take the album’s second track and lead single “Target Neutralized“, which arrived with a video that lets us see (through strange lenses) these marauders in action. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: KING WITCH / SEA MOSQUITO / TECHNOLOGIST

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 142025
 

(Andy Synn offers up another tasty platter of meaty British Metal for you all to enjoy)

It feels like it’s been ages since I last did one of these “Best of British” articles… though, in truth, it’s only been a couple of months.

But, whatever the reasons behind this slight delay (mostly due to the fact that I’ve been busier than usual recently, although it hasn’t helped that at least one of the albums/artists I was going to cover ended up coming to us for an album premiere, thus taking them out of contention… looking at you here Ba’al) I’m now once again set to present you with three more recent releases from the always verdant, ever versatile British Metal scene.

Continue reading »

ABHORRENT EXPANSE: “ENTER THE MISANTHROPOCENE”

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Aug 142025
 

(We present Todd Manning‘s vivid review of the second album from the deliciously demented Midwest US band Abhorrent Expanse, which will be released tomorrow by Amalgam Music.)

For all the talk of demons and quantum physics and Lovecraft and heavy metal, how many bands can actually take you outside mundane human experience? You may love Judas Priest as much as the next person, but listening to them isn’t going to warp your sense of time and space and take you to other dimensions. Conventional song structures might just be for conventional lives.

Arriving from the Midwest by way of R’lyeh, Abhorrent Expanse‘s journey began with 2022’s Gateways to Resplendence, a stunning hybrid of extreme metal and avant-garde improvised music. Now, in 2025, they’ve returned with Enter the Misanthropocene, due out August 15th, courtesy of Amalgam Music. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANTHRODYNIA — “UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS EMANATING FROM WITHIN”

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Aug 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Anthrodynia is a new two-person band formed last year in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, uniting the talents and experience of Derek Orthner (Begrime Exemious, Azath) and Durell Smith (ex-Mahria, ex-Kuroi Jukai). Their music, as captured on their blood-congealing and blood-rushing debut album Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within, manifests a love for both death and doom metal and a shuddering aptitude for marrying the mauling, miserable, and supernatural qualities of those genres.

Undeniably well-named, the album will be released this Friday, August 16th, by Nameless Grave Records, but you’ll have a chance to listen to all of it through our full streaming premiere today. Continue reading »

STARLIT PYRE: “VEINS OF SULFUR”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 132025
 

(We present DGR‘s review of Veins of Sulfur, a debut EP by the French band Starlit Pyre that was released last month.)

Observing the changes and outside perspectives people bring to melodeath has often been as interesting as the permutations people make of the music itself. It’s a long-been-known quantity, and as we’ve witnessed cycles upon cycles of retrograde nostalgia and the ‘influenced by the influenced by’ crowd slowly becoming crowd-becoming forces of their own, so too does the genre change. Not necessarily evolving, but new strains are born or echo outwards into the wider metalsphere.

Given melodeath’s already pretty blatant mass-market trappings, the chosen aesthetic for some groups to approach the genre’s two-step-heavy guitar leads and thrashier rhythms to make it appear ‘refined’ qualifies for a certain amount of sense. We have grown older, so too does the genre. We’re past the days of snot-nosed kids sticking the middle finger up at a bunch of old folks in favor of an ambitious wildness and an ear for the catchy.

The calling cards that we’re following down that path are pretty recognizable as well, one being an ever-present keyboard layer in the band’s music… and the other? Well, sometimes that other one is uniforms, and French melodeath group Starlit Pyre seem to have both in spades with their July EP Veins Of Sulfur, a solid seventeen-minute block of melodeath that goes on a whirlwind tour through the genre before quietly sneaking out of the back of the room. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PSILOCYBE LARVAE

 Album Reviews, Interviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 132025
 

(The long-running Russian band Psilocybe Larvae will release a surprising new EP on August 15th, and on the eve of that release we now present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with founding member Vitaly Belobritsky.)

Psilocybe Larvae, once one of the key teams of the Russian underground extreme scene, are confidently approaching their thirtieth anniversary. But there is still a year left before that date, so I did not expect any news from the band, and therefore I was surprised with the news about their new EP Novyi Divnyi Mir (Новый Дивный Мир/“Brave New World”).

Throughout their entire discography Psilocybe Larvae have tried different things, and in order to make life easier for themselves and the public, they defined their style as “manic-depressive metal”. This concept included a combination of melodic doom, death, and black-metal, with straightforward extreme vocals. Therefore, the material of this EP shocked me at first. Continue reading »

ASHEN – LEAVE THE FLESH BEHIND

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 122025
 

(Andy Synn continues to be the biggest advocate of Australian Death Metallers Ashen here at NCS)

Let me ask you something… do you ever feel out of step with the (music) world?

I mean, I know we all do at some time, that’s a given, but every so often something comes along to really drive home to me how the bands I want to be bigger and more successful in the Metal scene (particularly the Death Metal scene) are rarely the ones who receive the biggest push.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of Undeath, Gatecreeper, and 200 Stab Wounds now and then, but I’d be much happier to see the likes of Baest (whose new album I reviewed last week), Tribal Gaze (whose upcoming second album, Inveighing Brilliance, was just announced) and Ashen receive the same level of attention.

But, let’s face it, there’s probably a reason I’m not an A&R guy, since I’m demonstrably terrible at assessing which bands are going to be the most marketable and most successful… although I’ve still got a pretty big platform here, and if I can use it to get some more of you to jump onboard the Ashen bandwagon in advance of their upcoming second album (out next week on Redefining Darkness) then I’ll consider it a job well done.

Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XIX: MR. OZZY

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Aug 112025
 

(Here’s Daniel Barkasi‘s monthly NCS roundup of reviews, focusing this time on records released in July 2025.)

To begin, a quick word about the loss of one of the legends of legends in metal music. Not long after my last column for June releases, we lost Ozzy Osbourne. To say it was a surprise would be disingenuous, as his health hadn’t been great for a time. The rousing performance he and the rest of Black Sabbath gave everyone at Back to the Beginning was nothing short of stunning, a perfect sendoff for the band who is responsible for all of this.

A quick anecdote: I actually met the man, albeit very briefly. I was set to interview Silenoz of Dimmu Borgir at Ozzfest 2004. I was waiting backstage, and he was running a little behind. Lo and behold, here comes Ozzy with his entourage. He just wanted to make the rounds and say hello to people. I was lucky enough to get a brief greeting, and starstruck, I managed to thank him for making all of this possible. He just thanked me for being there, and moved on, holding court like only he could.

A blip in his day, I’m sure, but he made you feel like you were the most important person in the world for those few seconds. Silenoz came by not too long after, and I thanked him for his delay; he couldn’t have been cooler and still is one of my favorite interviews that I’ve done. The performance that evening was nothing short of brilliant, of course, and how can one complain about seeing Dimmu Borgir, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath on the same bill? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AMORPHIS, PROGENY OF THE SUN, TEMPEST, LAANG, DARK WATCHER, ZLOBNIK, CRUSTY OLD TOAD, DISTRESS

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 092025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s unlikely I will be able to write a SHADES OF BLACK column for tomorrow, due to conflicting weekend plans with my wife. So I’ve made this Saturday roundup a big one, and I’ve included a greater-than-usual number of black metal bands.

I decided to put a shiny bauble at the top of the group, hoping that it might lure some people to dig deeper into the pile before realizing they’ll get cut up by all the sharp objects underneath. Which is to say, there’s really nothing like Amorphis waiting for you later on. Continue reading »

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