AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SUMMON — “HELIOS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jan 272020
 

 

If you have been searching for the soundtrack to your worst nightmares, you have come to the right place. What we have for you today is a full stream of Helios, the new EP by the three Portuguese black/death demons who call themselves Summon. Consisting of three horrifying assaults on the senses, Helios will be released on February 2nd under the hammer of Godz Ov War Productions.

For those unfamiliar with Summon, their two preceding releases were the Aesthetics of Demise EP in 2017 and the Parazv Il Zilittv full-length in 2018. As those records have already revealed, but this new EP demonstrates without question, Summon are not content merely to deliver barbaric assaults of battle-zone chaos (which they do quite powerfully). Their music equally creates atmospheres of unearthly malignancy and apocalyptic doom. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AEONIAN SORROW — “A LIFE WITHOUT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 272020
 

 

Lovers of enthralling musical misery and cathartic, crushing power have a prize awaiting them on the near horizon, because on January 27th the multinational funeral doom band Aeonian Sorrow will release a mesmerizing and majestically tragic new record named A Life Without, which we are streaming in its entirety today.

This new release follows the band’s 2017 single, “Forever Misery“, and their 2018 debut album Into The Eternity A Moment We Are, and reflects the work of a revised and solidified line-up. For this recording, the band’s founder Gogo Melone (singer, songwriter, keyboardist, and lyricist) was joined by harsh vocalist Ville Rutanen (Red Moon Architect), guitarist Jukka Jauhiainen (Red Moon Architect, Crimson Sun) and drummer Daniel Neagoe (Shape of Despair, Clouds, Eye of Solitude), in addition to previous guitarist Taneli Jämsä (Ghost Voyage, Hukutus) and bassist Pyry Hanski (Mörbid Vomit, Before the Dawn etc.).

While some might call the record an EP, its four tracks are each substantial in length, adding up to more than 35 minutes of dolorous and devastating sounds. And each track is an involving and overpowering experience, each one in its own way portraying (to quote the band) “the eternal sorrow and misery above the earth, the slow death of our souls plus our human nature and instincts under the ownership of grief and pain”. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: WITCHTRIP — “A BURNT OFFERING”

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Jan 242020
 

 

During the early morning hours of July 23, 2019, a fiery inferno engulfed and consumed a warehouse on Jarvis Avenue in Winnipeg, Canada. By the time the sun rose that day, according to this report, there was nothing left of the building but some skeletal exterior walls. The flames devastated more than the structure itself. The three-story warehouse had been home to the work of some of the city’s most distinguished artists, and it also housed the jam space of Witchtrip, a metal band whose membership significantly overlaps with Occvlt Hand and whose debut EP (Cosmic Cauldron) we premiered in 2018. Lost in that conflagration were thousands of dollars of the band’s instruments, gear, band merchandise, and other possessions, all of it uninsured.

Sometimes even disasters like that one have a silver lining, and in this instance it spurred Witchtrip to record a new two-track EP, their first music to be released since Cosmic Cauldron, as a means of trying to raise money to replace what they lost. Fittingly, and perhaps with a rueful smile, Witchtrip named the EP A Burnt Offering, and we’re premiering it today in advance of its official release on February 1st. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “CYCLE OF SUFFERING”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jan 242020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Sylosis, which will be released on February 7th by Nuclear Blast.)

Sylosis are one of Britain’s all-time great metal exports, and in my mind are undeniably one of the most important metal bands of the 2000’s, the 2010’s, and now. Nevertheless, these guys seem to get a lot of what I see as undue shit from a lot of people. They are often maligned for being boring (whatever that means) and for not doing anything essentially original (not essentially true), and somehow are accused of writing uninteresting riffs despite Josh Middleton, Sylosis’ founder and composer, being one of the post-2000‘s greatest riff writers. He blends an interesting approach to thrash metal and the heyday of pedal-point-riff-driven melodic death metal with the emotive, bruising nature of early metalcore, and further combines that with a post-y sense of ambience and atmosphere that sounds like no one else.

I guess for me, Sylosis has been metal at its most emotionally honest. It’s powerful, melancholy, angry, and arresting, and since the band’s debut, Conclusion Of An Age. I’ve just been unable to stop listening. They combine the technical aspects and the speed of styles of metal dear to me while also being provocatively emotive, which is a hard line to straddle and make it work. I am a fan, to say the least, with a view of their past catalogue as flawless, a band who’ve never written a record that includes a single throwaway song and who’ve always tried to evolve and refine their sound, never staying in quite the same place. They are modern song-writers still attracted to the past, a sort of approach to metal that I admittedly will eat up like candy if the passion is there. Continue reading »

THY CATAFALQUE: “NAIV”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 232020
 

 

(Our old friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to NCS with this review of the new album by one of our favorite bands, Thy Catafalque, which will be released by Season of Mist on January 24th.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. I am here today because we have been blessed once again with a new Thy Catafalque album, a wonderfully common occurrence in the last few years (with new albums being released every year-and-a-half to two years). For those unfamiliar with my love affair with the work of Tamás Kátai, I first discovered Thy Catafalque in the olden days of The Number Of The Blog thanks to an old contributor, Tr00 Nate (if you’re out there somewhere, yes, I’m still giving you the credit you deserve). The album Róka Hasa Rádió was an eye-opener for me, providing a portal through which I could immerse myself in something utterly distinctive and unlike anything I had ever heard.

Since then, Thy Catafalque’s catalog has reached nine full-length albums (plus the Cor Cordium demo), and each album is a masterwork in varied songcraft. I lack any real grasp of music theory, and so I’d imagine that there is someone out there more learned than I who could probably explain it, but there is something about Kátai’s music that makes it immediately recognizable as his work, regardless of the song’s composition. Given how much variety there is in your average Thy Catafalque song, much less an entire album, this musical identity is simply staggering to me. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: MENTAL CASKET — “DEMO 2020”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 232020
 

 

Mental Casket first crawled forth from some stinking grave in Warsaw, Poland, in 2018, inspired by the early works of Chuck Schuldiner and other fore-runners of Floridian death metal, with an affinity for the likes of Autopsy and Pestilence as well, plus newer bands like Gruesome. Last year they released their debut demo, and today their second one is making its grotesque appearance. We’re fiendishly happy to help spread the word through this premiere of its three tracks.

Mental Casket proudly wear their influences on their ragged and rotting sleeves, but while their chosen formulations of death metal may be quite familiar, they’re so good at composing and executing their sonic monstrosities that it’s still a thrill to hear what they do. Sometimes you don’t need to break any molds in order to put a charge into a listener’s brain stem, and Mental Casket definitely do that. Continue reading »

SLAVE ONE: “OMEGA DISCIPLES”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 232020
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the new album by the French progressive technical death metal band Slave One, which will be released by Dolorem Records on January 24th.)

It’s been a while since I have done a small review, and this time around I’m taking the time to write about the band Slave One and their sophomore effort Omega Disciples, to be released via Dolorem Records. To be honest, I was not aware of this French band’s existence until I heard a single from this album, and was hooked. So, I decided to check out their previous work.

There, this Death Metal outfit incorporate various elements within their song structures, displaying both brutal and tech elements as well as melodic inputs in some of the sections that create a dark atmosphere that is quite appealing. But when I heard the the promo of the new record I was blown away with the musicianship on display within the 8 chapters of this current offering.  The continuous growth from their first EP to now is evident, and that is something I always look for in a band. Continue reading »

SALLOW MOTH: “THE LARVAL HOPE”

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Jan 222020
 

 

(The Texas-based death metal band Sallow Moth has followed its Deathspore EP with a continuation of the tale begun there. The band’s debut album was released on January 15th, and Andy Synn reviews it here.)

The existence of so many great one-man-bands (the multi-instrumentalist recording-project types, not the “banjo-bass-drum-harmonica” types) has always been a perplexing puzzle to me.

As someone who enjoys, and craves, the stimulation (and frustration) of collaboration when making music I just can’t quite get my head around what it must take to be willing, and able, to go it alone.

Heck, one of the reasons I’ve never gotten my own still-as-yet-unrealised Black Metal project off the ground is that I’ve never found the right collaborators/co-conspirators to work with!

But I remain immensely fascinated, and impressed, whenever I stumble across an album whose high quality can only be attributed to the efforts of a single individual, especially in cases like this one, which is giving off some major Blood Incantation/Mithras/Slugdge vibes. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): JORDABLOD — “THE CABINET OF NUMINOUS SONG”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 212020
 

 

Perhaps because I often confuse “numinous” with “luminous“, I resorted to a dictionary to be sure about the meaning of the former before listening to the Jordablod album we’re premiering today. And in doing that I saw this explanation:

“Numinous is from the Latin word numen, meaning ‘divine will’ or ‘nod’ (it suggests a figurative nodding, of assent or of command, of the divine head). English speakers have been using numen for centuries with the meaning ‘a spiritual force or influence.’ We began using numinous in the mid-1600s, subsequently endowing it with several senses: ‘supernatural’ or ‘mysterious’ (as in “possessed of a numinous energy force”), ‘holy’ (as in ‘the numinous atmosphere of the catacombs’), and ‘appealing to the aesthetic sense’ (as in ‘the numinous nuances of her art’).”

I also found a quote by CS Lewis about the meaning of numinous that I also think is worth sharing — but not until after we’ve considered The Cabinet of Numinous Song, which you’ll be able to stream now, just a few days before its January 24 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Continue reading »

CHROME GHOST: “THE DIVING BELL”

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Jan 212020
 

 

(Andy Synn pauses in his consideration of forthcoming records to look back at an album released last November by Chrome Ghost from Sacramento, California.)

To quote a very famous tv show… “time’s arrow neither stays still or reverses, it merely marches forward.”

This particular truism has felt particularly relevant to me in recent years, as it really does feel as though if I don’t stay on top of all the various new releases, week by week, that I’m going to end up missing out and falling behind in a way that I’ll never be able to recover from.

In fact, this is exactly what happens every year. There comes a point when my “to do” list reaches critical mass and has to be jettisoned so that I can start afresh. It’s unfortunate and it means some artists/albums inevitably lose out, but that’s just the way it is.

There are occasional moments, however, where it seems like time’s arrow does at least slow down a bit, allowing me to take stock and, if I’m very lucky, to look back and catch up with things that went over my head (or under my radar).

And sometimes, if I’m really, really lucky, I’m able to discover something really special in the process. Continue reading »

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