Apr 302026
 

(Andy Synn is here to guide you on a journey… into the woodland realm)

There are lots of different factors one can use to analyse, criticise, and appraise a band… ambition, execution, innovation, intention.

But the one that’s more important than any of them – in my opinion, at least – is passion.

And make no mistake, Eveale is very much a passion-project for its members (whose work you may have heard in bands like Am I In Trouble? and Ashenheart) whose goal on Enter the Woodland Realm – which releases on Friday but we’re premiering exclusively here today – is to channel their love of Black Metal, in all its forms, into nine rich, evocative songs that pay tribute both to the history of the genre and to the glory of nature.

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Apr 292026
 

(Here’s Wil Cifer’s review of the latest album, released last week via Flatspot Records, by the L.A. hardcore band Terror.)

Yeah, I know this is a metal blog, but Terror crosses over enough to give hardcore-leaning headbangers what they are looking for. The focused intention this album (Still Suffer) hits you with is something that would be amiss to not recognize. Ten albums into their career, the band’s origins date back to the band Buried Alive from the ’90s. The caustic elements in motion here are well-balanced for all the thrash metal embraced by the guitar riffage; there are more than enough gang vocals, and the attitude of the lead vocals makes it clear these guys are hardcore.

This band is perhaps even more harcore than most of the bands claiming that title in 2026. Taking you back to the ’90s, when that scene had a vital energy that made you feel like you were a part of something bigger than music. The title track sets the tone with a more groove-driven riff. When you hear it from the safety of your home, you still know this would be a brutal pit. The songs are concise one-two punches, rarely feeling the need to venture over three minutes. Continue reading »

Apr 292026
 

(DGR has a new discovery he wants to share with you from the still-growing realm of melodic death metal, a German trio whose debut EP was released in March of this year.)

It isn’t too often that we get to arrive right at the ground floor of a group’s releases. The number of times we have pulled it off is, frankly, stunning, because we’re in a special circumstance built for discovery and even then… who has the time? The organic act of coming across a project on their first EP feels like one of those mathematical possibilities whose scale is so large that the mind fails to be boggled because it can’t comprehend the numbers to begin with. Yet, it seems like by sheer chance we’ve come across German melodeath group Serpent Icon and their debut EP Tombstone Stories, which saw release at the beginning of March.

This early third of 2026 as a whole has proven to be oddly fruitful when it comes to bands under the melodeath tent; perhaps the planets and nostalgia cycle have aligned just right that we’ve reached a critical mass of sorts, and the dam was bound to break at some point. That same chance at play seems to have made it so that quite a few of these bands hail from Germany, as if there was some sort of conference held and every musician in that region declared that they too could do well in the world of high-tempo thrash riffs combined with scene-stealing guitar lead and folk melodies.

Melodeath’s blueprint has been passed down through so many generations at this point that where we land feels less like ‘influenced by, influenced by’ and more like groups seeking to construct a monolith of their own, each band contributing one more stone to the still-growing colossus known as melodic death metal. Continue reading »

Apr 282026
 

(Andy Synn has found another new favourite and would like to share it with you today)

Every single thing we’ve ever been taught was a lie
The truth we know is the history written by people with money meant to keep the poor weak and preventing us from breaking the barrier between classes
They created the illusion that this country is all powerful and untouchable
Creating the god complex in our minds and being forced to break habits we never want to admit we have
We’re witnessing it first hand
We’re witnessing the collapse of the infinite

This is how Colorado Metallic Hardcore crew Eyes of Salt introduce their debut album, Collapse of the Infinite.

So, obviously, if you prefer music that leans more towards escapism than activism this one may not be for you.

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Apr 262026
 

(written by Islander)

Yesterday I riffed on how my plans for Saturday-morning NCS roundups can fall apart as a result of Friday-night adventures, even when those adventures don’t include self-immolation. Much the same could be said of Saturday nights and their occasional wreckage of Sunday mornings. This has happened again. I’ll spare you the details.

I also forgot that my spouse planned an outing by the two of us this morning. I tried to beg off, but she’s not having it, and I don’t have the strength to resist (it takes a lot of strength even in the best of circumstances). Coupled with my extensive over-sleeping, I just don’t have time to do very much with today’s column. The only reason I’ve done anything is because nature (even mine) abhors a vacuum (horror vacui!). Continue reading »

Apr 242026
 

(Texas-based Neural Glitch released an album last year that ranked high on the year-end list of our old friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth, and just last month they released another full-length that has gotten Grover even more excited. He explains why in this review, which includes info and insights drawn from a dialogue with the project’s mastermind.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. With the sheer quantity of music that I’ve listened to in my many years on this earth, it’s become increasingly rare that I find something that really catches me by surprise these days. And yet, as you’ve no doubt surmised, it does still happen on occasion, as was the case with Neural Glitch’s debut from last year, Convinced To Obey. The absurd mix of technical death metal and sample-heavy glitch electronica reminded me in various parts of a number of different bands while still presenting something really unlike anything I’d heard before, and I was enamored enough that the album landed in the top ten on my year-end list here, standing as the only release from a band with which I was previously unfamiliar in that top ten.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that after only a year and a couple months, the band had released another album. The turnaround is especially impressive given the densely layered nature of the music here. HypNOTic ImpAIrment has actually surprised me once again, representing an impressive step forward in songwriting and general production while retaining the gloriously anarchic spirit of its predecessor. As much as I enjoyed Convinced To Obey, this is undoubtedly a better album. Continue reading »

Apr 232026
 

(written by Islander)

If you heard the Bringers of Disease debut EP Gospel Of Pestilence it’s unlikely you’ve easily forgotten the experience, even though it was released 15 years ago. But maybe you never came across it. In that case, what should quickly seize your attention for the band’s debut album Sulphur are the people who made it.

The lineup includes founding guitarist Jason Phillips (ex-Acheron) and original vocalist Logan Madison alongside Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, ex-Nachtmystium, ex-Wolvhammer), drummer Zack Simmons (Goatwhore, Acid Bath), and bassist Jon Woodring (ex-Usurper, Bones).

On top of that, the album also features guest guitars on “First Born Of The Dead” by Nate Garnett (Skeletonwitch) and on “Flowers Bloom From The Prophet’s Skull” by Sonny Reinhardt (Necrot), and guest vocals on “Sacred Heart Of The Abyss” by Ben Falgoust (Goatwhore, Soilent Green).

Now that we have your attention with that information — which is probably all the inducement any lover of metallic extremity really needs to dive into Sulphur — we’ll present a full stream of the album, on the eve of its release by Disorder Recordings. But in the extremely unlikely event that someone wants to know more before spending time with the album, here’s more. Continue reading »

Apr 232026
 

(Andy Synn closes out his week here at NCS with a name that hopefully some of you will recognise)

The term “Mandela Effect” refers to a mistaken but widely-held belief – originally that Nelson Mandela died in prison, but also more generally applied to such assertions as “the girl in Moonraker definitely had braces” (she didn’t) or “the Fruit of the Loom logo used to have a cornucopia in it” (nope) – that has entered the public consciousness, blurring the lines between what’s actually true and what we remember as being true.

Sure, some of these instances have a relatively prosaic explanation (it’s been shown several times that a run of knock-off or mis-printed “Fruit of the Loom” shirts did in fact use the alternate logo, but it was never officially put into circulation) but others have been ascribed to anything from “mass psy-op” to “glitches in the matrix”.

Why am I saying all this? Well, Colorado-based groovemongers Mire have their own Mandela Effect going on, because depending on how you remember things Pale Reflection is either their second or their third album.

The reason for this, of course, is that their “first” album, Shed, was taken offline not long after its release – Metal Archives still has it listed on the band’s profile page, and my own review is still online, but otherwise evidence of its existence is relatively sparse (though it can, with a bit of searching, still be tracked down on Spotify) – and its six songs re-recorded as part of the band’s real debut, A New Found Rain, making Pale Reflection actually the band’s first album of totally new material since 2018.

Continue reading »

Apr 222026
 

(written by Islander)

For those of us who were electrified and bewitched by Cnoc An Tursa’s first two albums, The Giants of Auld (2013) and The Forty Five (2017), the wait for something more from these Scots has brought its fair share of woe, because the wait has been so long. But even though it’s rarely true that all good things come to those who wait, something exceptionally good has at last arrived from Cnoc An Tursa, a new album named A Cry for the Slain.

The album richly rewards the long-suffering patience of the band’s fans. As their label Apocalyptic Witchcraft describes (and as we might have expected) it is “an evocative tribute to the history, the folklore, the unique magic of their homeland,” a compendium of songs “that bring together mourning and defiance, mystery and fear, pride and passion.” The band themselves have said:

“With this new album we feel like we are going back to our roots with a more guitar-driven style and bringing back some of the folk elements musically and lyrically which was the original inspiration for the band.”

Of course, we have thoughts of our own to share about the album (many of them), though the main purpose of this feature is to provide the chance for you to hear it in its entirety in advance of its release on April 24th by Apocalyptic Witchcraft. Continue reading »

Apr 212026
 

(Here we present Wil Cifer’s review of a new album by Texas-based Portrayal of Guilt, which will be released on April 24th by Run For Cover.)

If you had to ask me what band would be the future of heavy music, I would say Portrayal of Guilt. They are not hampered by being tied to any sub-genre. They are forward-thinking, rather than being bolted to the nostalgia of an era, no aspirations to recreate ’90s Tampa or Bergen. Their album We Are Always Alone stands as a masterpiece that this band’s work is measured against. After releasing that album, they pushed themselves to sonic extremes, and …Beginning of the End finds them pushing themselves into a more experimental direction, while making music that might resonate the most with larger, more mainstream metal audiences without compromising who they are. Continue reading »