AGELESS OBLIVION: “PENTHOS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 312014
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the UK’s Ageless Oblivion, which was released March 17.)

It’s been some time since we’ve checked in with the boys from Ageless Oblivion. After rattling more than a few cages with their stellar debut Temples of Transcendent Evolution, the band have now returned with their sophomore release Penthos, expanding on and redefining their esoteric, atmospheric death metal delivery into something utterly malevolent.

Way back in August 2012 I had the (dubious) pleasure of interviewing AO guitarist Dave Porter, during which we touched upon the ongoing process for this album. His response was illuminating, stating that:

“So far the songs have been a lot more focused on creating a mood and a vibe of tension/release. We’re focusing a bit more on melody… in the hypnotic or generally claustrophobic sense… we’re aiming to write the darkest and most vicious record we possibly can.”

And I’m more than happy to tell you that the band have done exactly what they set out to do. This is a phenomenal album, in the truest sense of the word. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND REVIEW): OWL — “INTO THE ABSOLUTE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Mar 272014
 

I discovered Germany’s Owl and their 2013 album You Are the Moon, I Am the Night through a guest post on our site last summer by KevinP. That was Owl’s second album, and I was hugely impressed by it. Now, this two-man band have completed a four-song EP entitled Into the Absolute, and I’m hugely impressed by it as well — so much so that we obtained the privilege of premiering its title track for you.

Owl’s Christian Kolf says that if that last album was drenched in the atmosphere of night, the new EP is “set right before dawn, when the first light appears,” with “a feeling of a new awakening”.  There are in fact moments of beauty in the music, most strikingly in the latter part of the long, stately closing track, “Unearthly Arcana”, but when these moments come, the atmosphere is one of deep melancholy. And if the EP as a whole stands on the brink of dawn, it is nevertheless still very much wrapped in the mantle of night. Continue reading »

BEYOND GRACE: “MONSTROUS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Mar 262014
 

My friend and NCS colleague Andy Synn is the vocalist for Beyond Grace. My objectivity about the band’s new EP, Monstrous, could therefore be called into question. But the truth (so help me Satan) is that I’m writing about it for the same reason I write about every other song, EP, or album I choose to write about: I’m enthusiastic about the music. (Andy, by the way, doesn’t even know I’ve written this review.)

The three songs on Monstrous represent a change of course for this band formerly called Bloodguard, so if you happen to be familiar with their work, its time to turn the page and listen again. What you will hear is something like Spawn of Possession with more convulsive grooves, or Blotted Science with unexpected digressions and more sharp teeth, or The Black Dahlia Murder with an added progressive bent.

If you’re up on those references, then you may be ready for the combination of jabbing, jamming riffs, serpentine melodies, sparkling solos, and an enveloping atmosphere of alien menace that make up Monstrous. Continue reading »

ANCIENT ASCENDANT: “ECHOES AND CINDER”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 252014
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming second album by the UK’s Ancient Ascendant.)

“Raise the crone to burn again!”

So begins the opening track of Ancient Ascendant’s second full-length opus, Echoes and Cinder.

The song in question, “Crones to the Flames,” is a mammoth concoction of dense, tightly welded riffage and scorched-earth vocals, propelled by a series of unerring, martial drum beats and an undercurrent of writhing, prominent bass work.

Cold, calculating, and crushingly heavy, its razor-edged death metal hooks, seething tremolo melodies, and even lithe touches of acoustic harmony all add their poisonous flavour to this bubbling cauldron of pure molten metal.

A savage statement of intent, if ever there was one. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORBID FLESH — “EMBEDDED IN THE OSSUARY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 252014
 

Spain’s Morbid Flesh are about to follow up their 2011 debut album Reborn In Death with a new EP — Embedded In the Ossuary — and in cooperation with Germany’s Unholy Prophecies, we’re bringing you a full stream of the EP, right here, right now.

I was already primed to like this EP without hearing a note, based on the grim cover art (by Javi Castaño) and the fact that the band includes members of two other excellent Spanish death metal groups — Graveyard and Insulters. My interest was peaked by the first single from the EP — “Charnel House” — which we featured in this post in February. As it turns out, the rest of the EP fully justifies all those optimistic expectations.

Morbid Flesh have a potent ability to unleash rampaging death metal in the vein of Dismember, Entombed, and Grave, with huge grinding riffs, punishing percussion, spitfire soloing, and cruel, savage vocals — all of which unite to create an atmosphere of dread and menace. But the band bring something more to the table as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE — MORDBRAND’S “THAT WHICH CRAWLS” — AND A REVIEW OF “IMAGO”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Mar 252014
 

I’ve been waiting eagerly for the time when Sweden’s Mordbrand would release a full album’s worth of songs, and that day is finally approaching. After a string of well-regarded splits and EPs (most of which we’ve praised in reviews on this site), their debut album Imago is projected for release in late April by Deathgasm Records and Doomentia Records. One song from Imago has already premiered, and today we’re sharing with you a second one: “That Which Crawls”.

But first, a review of Imago.

If you’re a Swedish death metal addict, Imago is your fix. It is both steeped in the familiar musical traditions of the genre and enlivened by Mordbrand’s own creative twists and turns. If you think you’ve heard it all before, think again. Listening to Imago is like spending time with an old friend you thought you knew inside and out, and then being surprised by something you hadn’t noticed before. Continue reading »

LORD MANTIS: “DEATH MASK”

 Album Reviews  25 Responses »
Mar 242014
 

(In this post NCS writer BadWolf reviews the new album by Chicago’s Lord Mantis – Death Mask).

There is something deeply wrong with the minds and hearts of Charlie Fell, Andrew Markuszewski, Bill Bumgardner, and Ken Sorceron, who together form Lord Mantis. I’m not sure how we didn’t know before—each of these musicians has made waves in the underground for quite some time as members of Nachtmystium, Avichi, Indian, and Abigail Williams, among other bands. But there’s just something deeply upsetting about the music they make together as Lord Mantis on their new album, Death Mask.

At this point, people probably know the Chicago-based black-sludge outfit best for their filthy taste in cover art. 2012’s critically-acclaimed album Pervertor featured a limbless, vaginal Jesus being gang-penetrated by some Lovecraftian tongue beasties. Death Mask might be even worse, sporting a sickly-green big-bushed hermaphrodite sewing a death mask (get it?) onto his/her own face. The image has already stirred some controversy (see this and this). For my money, I feel the artwork has about as much artistic depth of content as Lady Gaga getting covered in vomit. As a PR move, however, it’s adept, since Death Mask is such an inaccessible album that it requires some sort of outside hook to get listeners interested.

I have no idea what they’re putting in the waters of Lake Michigan, but it seems like this year has marked release after release of well and truly unsettling music, including Catharsis Absolute by Avichi (a solo project by Markuszewski), and From All Purity by Indian. Death Mask might be the best record of the bunch—it’s the one I’ve revisited most, at least, and it probably has the most hooks. But make no mistake, this is a difficult album to listen to. Almost the whole of the record comes coated in distortion and noise—industrial effects pepper the background, while several digital filters mask the blackened shriek vocals that populate Death Mask. Continue reading »

PHYLLOMEDUSA: “PUDDLE DEPENDENCY”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 232014
 

Here’s how this story goes:  Late yesterday afternoon I posted that photo up there on Facebook. I just wanted to make sure I had saved it because I think the sight of those two frogs fucking will always cheer me up on those rare occasions when I’m feeling down. And no sooner had I done that than Utmu suggested I needed to listen to Phyllomedusa while gazing upon the fucking frogs. So I did, and holy frog copulation, did it pulp my brain into pond scum. I wanted to turn it off, but I couldn’t.

The Phyllomedusa album I started cranking is called Puddle Dependency, and the cover is a photo of a frog. But of course it is. I’ll show it to you after the jump. I think the photo above would have been a better choice, but it’s a new pic (taken by Jana Miller) and wasn’t available when Puddle Dependency was released in January, so all is forgiven. Also, I don’t think these frogs belong to the right genus (more on that later).

There are 15 tracks on Puddle Dependency. Some are slower, some are faster, but otherwise they’re kind of hard to tell apart. However, they are all goddamn obliterating. Utmu told me the style of music is called “gorenoise”. I suggested that “frogrind” is better, especially since it’s one of the labels that Phyllomedusa uses. Utmu countered with “croakslam”, and that works, too. Be sure to pay attention to the song titles. Continue reading »

DOOM, DOOM, DOOM, DEPRESSION AND BEING DOOMED

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 212014
 

(In this post DGR takes us on a globe-hopping tour of recent releases that fall within the varied realms of doom.)

It’s hard to believe that it is already March. Of course, I say that every year because February feels like a bullshit month with its short amount of days, but still. Sacramento has decided to park its hot ass right at about eighty degrees for the next week or so, yet I still find myself feeling bleak and down. Maybe it was the promise of grey skies and rain, but I found myself surfing the web seeking out doom in all its various forms and today I’d like to share with you some of the discoveries that I made.

A couple were found by just wading through circles on Facebook and by the random band button on Metal-Archives, which is always an interesting experiment in its own right. You could probably do a whole feature on that some day with the right amount of time and investment. As I wrote this over the past week or so, I kept adding more and more bands that I was coming across and wanted to talk about, so I apologize if this gets a little too verbose, but I figured it might be worth it to concentrate a bunch of smaller reviews into a post than spread out a bunch of giant tomes on a group of really good EPs.

Plus, maybe we’ll expose people to multiple groups in this one post. On top of that, I’m going to add in a little mini-review of an artist we’ve covered before in one of our ‘free music’ updates — as they released a new album earlier this year and it’ll be a good change of pace from all the roiling waters and restless seas you’re about to get dragged through. If anything, the tempo change will probably be appreciated. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IMBALANCED — “ASSIMILATION OF THE ENSLAVED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  9 Responses »
Mar 192014
 

(Our man Leperkahn reviews the new EP by San Diego’s Imbalanced., and delivers a full stream of the EP to boot.)

If you’ve followed NCS for a decent amount of time, you may remember the Imbalanced name from when I covered them in my second post for the site, a San Diego death metal/Bob Filner-themed affair. Luckily for us, the trio have returned with a new mini-slab of their blistering technical death metal for us all, in the form of a new EP entitled Assimilation Of The Enslaved, replete with the intriguing cover art of David Correa.

When describing Imbalanced’s sound to interested parties, I’ve pretty much always used Arsis as a reference point, and that point still stays. However, the grittier production of this EP (as compared to most of Arsis’ output), whether by design or necessity, has helped these guys create a different sound, a sound that is wholly and uniquely Imbalanced. Continue reading »

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