AN NCS PREMIERE: INNARDS — “ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH HATE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 152020
 

 

Victor Costa‘s cover art for the debut EP of the Portuguese death metal band Innards is a perfect accompaniment for the ghoulish delights the EP holds in store. The music, like the art, is an eruption of cemetery horrors coming right for your throat. In other words, this isn’t lurching, cadaverous death metal, even though it’s decidedly gruesome and rotten to the core. No, Innards (true to their name) are coming for your guts with unhinged relish. The EP’s title is thus similarly appropriate: Back From The Grave, Straight In Your Face.

There are only three songs on the EP, but they make for an explosive first strike. Two of those songs have previously debuted, and today we’ve got the premiere of the third one, an absolutely crazed onslaught wonderfully named “Enlightenment Through Hate“, which features none other than guest vocals by Kam Lee of Massacre and a guitar solo by none other than Frank Blackfire from Sodom. And with all three tracks now out in the world, you have a fully informed basis for picking up the record well in advance of its February 21st release by Transcending Obscurity Records. Continue reading »

GNAW: “BARKING ORDERS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 152020
 

 

(Here’s Todd Manning‘s review of the new EP by Gnaw, which is set for release on January 31st via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia.)

New York-based Gnaw produce the kind of brutalizing listening experience that just can’t be achieved without coloring outside the lines of genre rules. They’ve been producing their Metal/Industrial/Noise mash-up since 2009, and their latest EP, Barking Orders, shows they definitely have not lost their edge.

For most Metal bands, the music comes first and the vocals often seem to default to the style that best matches what the instruments are doing. This isn’t the case with Gnaw, who are fronted by scene veteran Alan Dubin, whose unique vocal style has been at the forefront of such acts as O.L.D. and Khanate. “Unsettling” doesn’t even begin to describe the brutal screeches, yells, and bellows emanating from him. Perhaps the most notable part of his style, though, is the clarity with which he delivers the lyrics, despite the means he uses to deliver them. With Gnaw, the band seem to construct their sounds to complrment his powerful and unique style, utilizing whatever sort of cacophony best accompanies his voice and the harrowing lyrics it conveys. Continue reading »

NERO DI MARTE: “IMMOTO”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jan 142020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Italian band Nero Di Marte, which is set for release on January 24th by Season of Mist.)

As someone who occasionally dabbles in releasing music himself, I’ve often pondered when exactly the “optimum” time to release an album is.

After all, put something out too early in the year and you risk being forgotten about by the time all the December “End of the Year” lists roll around, but put something out too late and you’re probably going to struggle to get yourselves into contention for the summer festival season.

Nero Di Marte clearly have good reasons for deciding to release their new album right at the start of 2020 however, as Immoto is such a dense, intricately layered piece of work that it’s likely to take their audience the rest of the year to fully unpick and unpack everything it has to offer! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): REVENANT MARQUIS — “YOUTH IN RIBBONS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Jan 132020
 

 

Youth In Ribbons, the new album by Revenant Marquis, is shrouded in mystery, not merely in the chilling sensations of its sounds but also in its inspirations. No less mysterious is the source of the music, a prolific yet anonymous Welsh musician, whose idiosyncratic creations confoundingly combine the mind-mutilating assaults of raw black metal with a certain style of wraithlike, hallucinatory melodicism that one might even call elegant. Images of a fine-fingered and well-dressed vampire come to mind, seductive in its allure but lethal in its promise.

When I first discovered the album I was struck by the photograph on its cover and by curiosity about what the album’s title might signify in the context of that image. As I wrote here, after listening to the first advance track, I had my own interpretation: The beauty, the innocence, the aspiration in that face, the brightening of the flowers — it’s as if the band were saying, “Here’s what you might have looked like when your dreams for the future were still bright, and now let us show you what life is really like”.

And hence, I thought of the album title as a reference to youth torn to ribbons, rather than adorned by them. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WORMHOLE — “THE WEAKEST AMONG US”

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Jan 092020
 

 

Granted, we’re not even two weeks into the new year, but listening to Wormhole’s new album is hands-down the most fun I’ve had with a 2020 release so far. And as I think about it, I’m hard-pressed to remember an album from last year that was more fun than this one either.

Don’t get me wrong, The Weakest Among Us will also beat you senseless and leave you staggering toward the nearest ER. That’s actually another part of the fun. But the band’s combination of wild ideas and sheer instrumental exuberance with all that brutalizing obliteration is what brought so many smiles to this listener’s (lacerated) face.  And so, it’s with great pleasure that we’re hosting a full stream of the album today, in the run-up to the album’s January 14 released by Lacerated Enemy Records. Continue reading »

BAESTIEN: “RITUAL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 072020
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by the Czech band Baestien, which was released on December 6th by Alerta Antifascista Records.)

As you may have noticed (or maybe not, I don’t know how much attention people really pay to my comings and goings around here) I’ve been reasonably absent from NCS for the last couple of weeks.

The reason for this is quite simple, as I decided to take some time off to relax and recharge over the Christmas/New Year period, and in fact spent the last week enjoying the sights and sounds (and, especially, the flavours) of Prague in the Czech Republic.

And while I’m probably going to continue being relatively quiet here for the foreseeable future (I’ve got vocals to record, as well as a fair bit of work to catch up on at my day job), I couldn’t resist giving a quick write-up to Ritual, the latest release from Czech quartet Baestien, which I fortuitously stumbled across the day after I returned home. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LESATH — “SACRED ASHES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 062020
 

 

On January 6, 2020, the label alliance of Casus Belli Musica and Beverina will release the debut album of a mysterious atmospheric black metal band named Lesath, whose location and membership remain undisclosed. The album’s name is Sacred Ashes. It consists of six tracks, but really four songs, because two of those four are divided into two parts in the track list.

In September of this year, Lesath (and subsequently the two labels) released one of those two-part songs, “Like the Wind“, which we reviewed here. In November we presented the second half of the other two-part song, “A New Life“, which like the first single was presented with its own artwork. And in December we added to these musical revelations with the premiere of the album’s title track, “Sacred Ashes“. Now, at last, we  have the opportunity to deliver a full stream of the entire album, which enables us to discover how these pieces and others all fit together. Continue reading »

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

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 032020
 

 

“W.T.C. Productions is proud to present Vaeok‘s striking self-titled debut EP. A duo whose members currently hail from such highly regarded hordes as Sargeist, Kult ov Azazel, Nightbringer, Adaestuo, and Demoncy among others, Vaeok nevertheless emits its own nightsky majesty and mysticism.”

That was an announcement we and others in the metal press received last year, alerting us to the January 7 release of this debut EP. The mention of those other names with which the Vaeok duo of M.S. and VJS have been associated was enough to generate intense intrigue in these quarters about what they had achieved through this new collaboration (which we’re told actually had its genesis in the distant past). We eventually had our answer, and now you will have it too, through our complete stream of the EP’s four ravishing tracks. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON CHRISTMAS EVE: REPLICANT, NYLITHIA, WAKE, PERMADEATH, OBDUKTIO

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Dec 242019
 

 

Contrary to an accusation that one of my NCS comrades recently leveled at another one, I don’t hate fun. In fact, I love it, and I enjoy seeing other people have fun. And so, although the imminent Christmas holiday means nothing to me, I’m sure I speak for all of us here (except maybe one of us) in wishing you some joy.

To ameliorate the possibility that you will have nothing in your stocking but a lump of coal because you’ve been so baaaad, and to help relieve the brain death that the stresses of the holiday season demonstrably produce, here are a few gifts from us to you.

REPLICANT

This New Jersey death metal band turned out a hell of a debut album in 2018’s Negative Life, which Steve Schwegler (of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores) beauatifully reviewed for us. I’ll excerpt just a few of his thoughts about that album: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLACK AEVUM, NECROBODE, TRENCHLUNG, TOUNDRA, DEAD SERENITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 212019
 

 

With the new year rushing to an end and the holiday season rushing toward us even faster, it will become even more difficult for me to compile these collections. Among other things, our annual LISTMANIA orgy consumes a lot of my NCS time. Even though I don’t prepare my own list, I do track down album art and embed codes for album streams for the lists made by others, and conform the formats to our usual style, and do lesser or greater amounts of text editing. And speaking of year-end lists, I’m sitting on a slate of eight of them by both musician guests and NCS writers that I’m planning to begin rolling out next week, with a few more yet to come.

New music, of course, doesn’t stop appearing just because the holidays and the end of the year are almost upon us. In fact we’ve been getting recent reminders that maybe a lot of year-end lists were made too soon, as well as indications that 2020 is going to start off with a BANG!, at least in terms of forthcoming metal albums, if not in terms of North Korean missile launches, or maybe that too.

Anyway, to underscore that last observation I’ve chosen a couple of very impressive late-year releases, a few tracks from 2020 records, and one new stand-alone single — and as usual I’ve mixed things up a bit just so you don’t get too comfortable.

BLACK AEVUM

This new Black Aevum EP is one of two releases in today’s collection that Rennie (starkweather) messaged me about just yesterday. He wrote about a third one, too (by Reasoning Reflections), but I haven’t made it to that one yet — because I got completely drawn into the two you’ll find here. In fact, in the case of Black Aevum I only intended to quickly check out one song just to see what was going on, and the next thing I knew 23 minutes had passed and I was tempted to start again from the beginning right away. Continue reading »

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