AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOXIS — “EXPANSE OF HELLISH BLACK MIRE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Oct 282020
 

 

Cleveland-based Noxis have only been active since 2019 but they have wasted no time in proving their fiendish talents. Setting their sites on a particular kind of death metal, they released the aptly named Necrotizing demo in the year of their birth and are now following that with the new four-track EP we’re premiering today, also aptly named: Expanse of Hellish Black Mire. Those fiendish talents quickly hooked the attention of both Pulverised Records and Rotted Life Records, who will jointly handle the release on October 30.

In formulating their approach, Noxis owe some debts to the great NYDM triumvirate of Incantation, Suffocation, and Immolation, as well as Finnish bands such as Demigod and Convulse, and they’ve paid those debts by creating music that’s thuggish in its bone-fracturing, organ-rupturing belligerence and disgustingly gruesome in its atmosphere, and yet also mind-boggling in its mad contortions and technical extravagances. Their music is thus thoroughly putrid and punishing but also a big adrenaline kick. Continue reading »

INFERI: “OF SUNLESS REALMS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 282020
 

 

(This is the second installment in a seven-album review orgy by our man DGR, who is attempting to free his mind for year-end season by clearing away a backlog of write-ups for albums he has spent a lot of time with in 2020. Today’s subject is a new EP by Inferi, released on October 9th.)

As a rule of thumb, releases by the Tennessee-based tech-death crew Inferi tend to be a lot of fun. They made their name in the whirling maelstrom of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, pyroclastic-flow-of-notes style of hyperspeed tech-death. As much as anything, it’s a blast to see just how far Inferi are going to push each song before they fully disintigrate. While they’ve certainly become one of the groups whose music serves as a snapshot of a scene at the time of each release, there’s purely reptilian amusement to be found in seeing how much a band can shred within a single song.

Of Sunless Realms is the newest EP from the band, weighing in at a compact – for them – twenty-two minutes and five songs. Every previous time when covering a band of their ilk – including those their current label The Artisan Era likes to traffic in – it has always felt justified to warn people to gird themselves a bit for a massive journey ahead, simply because such bands really, really like to pack as much as they possibly can into every song. Surprisingly, Of Sunless Realms works in their favor simply because of its compact length – about as no bullshit as Inferi can get – with five songs that provide a tantalizing snapshot of where the band are now. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ICARE — “KHAOS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  15 Responses »
Oct 272020
 

 

Khaos is the new album by the Swiss band Icare. It’s set for release on October 30th by Division Records. It sounds like a musical diary, a recording of a band’s progress from a starting point four years ago to the extravagant destination they’ve now reached. Which is not to say their starting point was in any way mundane — far from it. It was as breathtaking as the place where time took them, albeit in a different way.

It turns out that the idea of a journey that comes to mind in listening to the album isn’t too far from the truth. When Icare joined together in 2016, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, their vision was to create an extremely virulent form of grindcore, which incorporated elements of black and death metal. They recorded an album in that year named Khaos. But things began to change. Those changes were manifested in a 2018 album named Charogne, which the band performed live as a single 45-minute song.

This year they returned to those early steps in Khaos, and transformed the album in the studio, among other things giving the music a greater connection to black metal. But it would be wrong to sum up the album as solely “blackened grindcore” — it goes to many other places as well, which you can discover for yourselves through our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

BLACK CROWN INITIATE: “VIOLENT PORTRAITS OF DOOMED ESCAPE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 272020
 

 

(In this post DGR begins a sequence of seven reviews, which we will do our best to post on seven consecutive days, catching up with albums from earlier in the year that we didn’t fully cover. And to begin we have Black Crown Initiate‘s latest album, released in August by Century Media.)

We’re nearing the end of the year, which means you’ve inevitably seen the occasional author musing to themselves about starting to work on their year-end lists. In fact, I’ve already seen a couple of prospective ones myself, which isn’t weird at all considering it’s still March. But there’s always been something of a compulsion of mine where I feel like if I don’t cover everything I’ve listened to this year then I’m short-changing the bands, even if a disc may have hit way early on in the year, and as far as the internet is concerned may as well have been released in the Cretaceous period.

In some cases it’s fine because that means that there can be some half-hearted attempts at brevity in these write-ups, but man if it doesn’t feel a bit like panicking right before the end of the year, especially while keeping in mind there’s still a few handfuls of releases still heading towards us in the October/November months. I generally try to avoid bringing a personal “I” into the mix when writing for that reason, because honestly, few care about the personal adventures of some dork with a laptop on the west coast; in that way, I try to keep things focused on how the album may play out to the listener while keeping my own adventures fairly light throughout.

It doesn’t really work that way when you write like this though. Instead, it becomes incredibly personal due to just how candid the reviews wind up feeling. Imagine laying your arm across a desk and just sweeping everything off it and you’ll have a mental image of what doing one of these collections can feel like. It’s reckless as hell and shit goes flying everywhere, but wow, look at how clear that desk is now. It is surprisingly freeing.

Thus we make a run at clearing out much of the backlog, some releases I’m surprised haven’t gotten more coverage around here and others matters of curiosity. A few of these are later discoveries and others I’d guess fall squarely into the DGR corner of the NCS virtual office and nowhere else. It’s like a weight is being lifted off my shoulders already.

So long as we ignore the blank ‘potential year-ender list’ file that is currently parked dead center on my desktop. Continue reading »

TEN YEARS OF TERRIBLE WRITING

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Oct 272020
 

 

(Andy Synn is celebrating his decade of writing for NCS with a collection of 10 reviews, one for each year….)

You know what I discovered this weekend?

I’ve now been writing for NCS for ten years.

I know. Mind = blown.

Over the last decade I’ve had several different jobs, moved house multiple times, and seen various relationships – both good and bad – come and go. But NCS has consistently been one of the few constants in my life which has helped keep me going through thick and thin.

So I want to say thank you. Thank you to all the bands for all the great music over the years. Thank you to all the readers and commenters (the good ones anyway) for all the kind words, “witty” banter, and support. Thank you to the rest of the core NCS crew, for always having my back (even if/when they disagree with what I’ve written, which inevitably makes them wrong and me right).

And thank you most of all to Islander for allowing me to become a part of the site. Hopefully one day you’ll finally understand just how much you’ve helped change my life.

Anyway, in honour of this momentous occasion I’ve picked out ten albums – one from each year I’ve been writing here, including this year – which I overlooked when they first came out. Continue reading »

SCATOLOGY SECRETION: “SUBMERGED IN GLACIAL RUIN”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 262020
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s enthusiastic review of the new album by the Spanish brutal death metal band Scatology Secretion, which has just been released by Pathologically Explicit Recordings.)

Today’s subject is the second offering, titled Submerged in Glacial Ruin, by the international band Scatology Secretion. It has just been released by the Spanish label Pathologically Explicit Recordings. I previously reviewed their 2017 debut album The Ramifications of a Global Calamity here, and it ended up being on my list of top BDM albums of that year at No Clean Singing.

As time passed since then, no news regarding the project came to light and I was worried that it had ceased to exist. But early this year it was announced that they had signed with Pathologically Explicit and they released the cover of the new effort. I was truly excited, as the art suggested they would continue their theme of world apocalypse but set it in a cold realm of nothingness. Continue reading »

PALLBEARER: “FORGOTTEN DAYS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Oct 232020
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by Pallbearer, which is being released today by Nuclear Blast.)

“This is going to be our heaviest album yet” or “We just wanted to strip things down and get back to our roots” are stock answers for many metal bands when asked about their next records. So much so they have become tropes. Yet that is what has happened on Pallbearer’s fourth album, which is their first for Nuclear Blast.

The title track that opens the album is even more Sabbathy than anything from Sorrow and Extinction, which of the three previous albums has the most in common with this one. Some of this is due to the rawer production. The vocals are mixed to sit back more in the guitars, bringing out the heft of the guitars. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2020: CELLAR VESSEL / HEXER / SKÁPHE

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Oct 222020
 

 

(Although Andy Synn hasn’t completely recovered from his recent debilitating injury, he’s well enough to continue forging ahead with reviews, and brings us three more today.)

Continuing with my Sisyphean task of attempting to cover each and every album which I don’t think has received enough attention or acclaim over the past several weeks and months, today I’m both pleased and proud to present the Progressive Death Metal delights of Cellar Vessel, the crushing Cosmic Doom of Hexer, and the alchemical Black Metal assault of Skáphe. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KEVEL — “MUTATIS MUTANDIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 212020
 

 

In the first minutes of the opening song “Of Being“, the Athenian band Kevel lay before the listener a blueprint of what will become the foundation for the imposing and wondrous edifice of their new album Mutatis Mutandis, which we’re premiering today. In that opening, a riveting drum solo is joined by heavy groaning chords and shrill discordant arpeggios. In one fell swoop, the music hybridizes primal physical punch, dismal and depressive moods, and spine-tingling sensations of flaring madness.

The band’s ability to create teeth-on-edge tension and earth-quaking heaviness comes to the fore again and again over these 50 minutes. The nuanced yet persistently skull-cracking drum performance repeatedly threatens to steal the show, both amplifying the songs’ most intense moments and creating fascinating contrasts within all of the band’s other richly multi-faceted movements. The bass tone possesses the heft of granite but the nimbleness of larks. And the guitarists are highly adept at creating tension and turmoil.

But it turns out that all these riveting contributions really are just the foundation, and what Kevel have created around it is a gnarled, frightening, yet shining tower that reaches into the stars, almost as astonishing and awe-inspiring in its visions as it is shattering in its impact. Continue reading »

WAYFARER: “A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 212020
 

 

(Here’s Gonzo’s imaginative review of the new album by Colorado’s Wayfarer, which was released last week by Profound Lore Records.)

In this writer’s humble opinion, there are two hallmarks of truly breathtaking music: 1) It gets better with every listen, and 2) it elucidates vivid imagery when listening to it with your eyes closed.

There are, of course, other criteria for evaluating the quality of music, but when talking about A Romance with Violence, the newest dust-covered output from Denver post-black metal crew Wayfarer, those two items are the perfect place to start. Continue reading »

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