CARRION VAEL: “SLAY UTTERLY”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 022026
 

(Today we present DGR’s first review of 2026, a full-throttle rush through the full-throttle rush that is Carrion Vael’s new album, which was released two weeks ago by Unique Leader Records.)

The first few reviews of every year lately have felt like an exercise in madness, an attempt to conjure spirits out of thin air while dressed in the most ritualistic way possible. Me, seated with my skirt of bone and three-times-too-big mask in front of a fire and various runes and sigils that may or may not just be permutations on the Pepsi logo – we can’t all be as creative as The Infernal Sea with their logo or draw inversions of an Asmodeus sigil ala Gaerea – and you wait for the year to speak to you. Last year’s end-list was an exercise in scrying to see what the future holds and now we are waiting for the first spirit to reach across the void and grab us by the throat to compel us into 2026.

So far, in spite of all the varied exhortations and exultations, that has no happened yet to this writer. 2026 remains frustratingly silent and has instead gifted us chances to catch up with late-2025 releases that were absorbed into year-end festivities alongside the initial wave of those brave enough to be the vanguard of a new year. It is the amorphous and fungible time that has us attempting to neatly can one horror only to open up the next can of worms to be unleashed.

It’s similar to how decades never end culturally right when a year turns over; it’s more like there is a two-to-three year hangover period before one finally shuffles out the door and the next dumbass thing the kids repeat ad-nauseum can rule the roost. Eventually life becomes a series of checkpoints where you’re counting decades by being thankful one particular bit of bullshit is done with and you don’t have to hear about it anymore. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GOUR, BERGTAGEN, VAULDERIE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 012026
 

(written by Islander)

January is a schizophrenic month for the release of new music. Labels and bands seem to recognize that people aren’t focusing as much as usual on new music, because they’re diverted by things happening during the “holiday season” and then by the turbulence of returning to work and school, and so the pace of new releases in the early part of January is slower than usual. But after a week or two, the dam bursts, and new stuff starts flooding out in a fury. At least that’s how I see it from where I sit.

I had SO MANY new songs and records I was interested in checking out for purposes of this column, too many for me to realistically investigate, especially since our terribly unreliable internet service has been down since mid-day on Saturday. My phone has worked reasonably well as a hot-spot for some things, like typing what you’re reading now, but it doesn’t provide a very good platform for streaming music.

The result is that I defaulted to music I had already acquired for myself before our net service collapsed. Which is not a bad way to proceed, because there’s a reason why I had acquired all this music for myself — it’s all very good! Each selection is also very different from the other two. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WSTRĘT — “ENLIGHTENED MISANTHROPY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 292026
 

(written by Islander)

Near the end of last summer I came across a two-song debut EP named Subhuman Eschatology by the Polish band Wstręt. As I wrote at the time, it floored me. It was like someone spun the intensity dial until it wouldn’t go any further.

Those two songs warped together ingredients of black and death metal to create body-bruising blows and to inflict mind-shredding, needle-sharp riffing that dug in deep. The songs generated moods that were wrecking and wracked, terrorizing and tormented, exhilarating and oppressive, coupled with ragged, reverberating roars were heartless and harrowing.

Given the nature of that introduction to Wstręt, I found myself simultaneously frightened and thrilled to discover that Godz Ov War Productions would be releasing a second EP from them, this new one a 20-minute affair named Enlightened Misanthropy.

Now you’ll have a chance to form your own impressions about it through our full stream of these five new tracks in advance of the EP’s release tomorrow — though of course we have some impressions of our own to share first. Continue reading »

THIS IS NOT THE FINAL THING YOU’LL READ ABOUT LAST YEAR (meta lists, sub-radar sounds, immaculate conceptions, and a few records of critical acclaim)

 Album Reviews, LISTMANIA 2025  No Responses »
Jan 292026
 

(Our South African contributor Vizzah Harri decided to follow up our 2025 LISTMANIA series with a monumental listmania of his own, which includes various list-assembling calculations and his abundantly illustrated thoughts about three groups of albums he chose to highlight in his own inimitable fashion, respectively anchored in each section by discursive reviews of releases by Demonic Death Judge, Melpomene, and Imperial Triumphant.)

Hi, it’s your non-resident alien. Can someone please remind us of what the time is, last year is over already? Well, I’ve spent too much time as my second favorite spirit animal, the ostrich. You know, sticking my head in the sand and grubbing around for shiny rocks cos the job market is absolutely grade A dogshit.

Yes, year-end mania is over. The train has left the station and all that’s left are the weeds creeping up the platform and the announcement notice is stuck on loop. So, while we’re waiting for that next train and everyone else is racing ahead into the future, here are some uselessly vital statistix for those of us who aren’t quite ready for the new year. NCS doesn’t have a single authoritative take like other ‘happy camper’ sites that deal in the underground, though the Listmania roundup does a good job of covering a lot of bases.

I’m not a threat to anyone’s job dragging cells, I do however excel at stupidly focusing on mindless chores. Before we get into some things from last year that are still worth your time, a quick diversion into; what a meta list of readers’ lists would produce and what a meta list of NCS lists would produce. I tried compiling a meta list of the mind-numbing data of all the other lists including these, but it ended up being futile. There already is a To the Teeth list of lists, which is careful to account for bias. I’m not a data scientist and I’m biased as fvck, I was however able to gather that across the board, there are two albums that got way more votes on way more sites than any others. Therefore a meta meta list, in the Greek sense, of all the motherfuckin lists weighted and scaled together (the link is to Brazilian avant-jazz band Metá Metá’s pandemic album MetaL MetaL) would mean 2025’s Absolute Elsewheres are: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TARLUNG — “AXIS MUNDI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 272026
 

(written by Islander)

As an older person who’s been smoking cigarettes since age 16 I feel like a band named TarLung was made for me. Though they probably have a natural following among coal miners, hash fiends, and people who do enough weed each day to stop a water buffalo in its tracks and haven’t changed their bong water since the Obama Administration.

With a name like that, I also expected this Viennese band’s music would be unhealthy, nasty, and possibly choking. And I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t entirely right either, because while their new album Axis Mundi does deliver crushing (and often nasty) sludge and doom, it includes many other captivating ingredients as well.

You’ll be able to understand that for yourselves because what we have for you today is a full premiere stream of the album in advance of its January 30 release by Argonauta Records. Continue reading »

TOMBSEEKER – TOMBSEEKER

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 272026
 

(Andy Synn presents some meaty Death Metal from an up-and-coming new band)

Well, I think it’s safe to say that 2026 is fully under way now and, while the year – in my opinion at least – has yet to produce an obvious early stand-out, there’s definitely been a bunch of good-to-great records already released, which bodes well for next 11 months or so.

Indeed, just by taking a quick glance at what’s coming up/coming out in the next few months (including a few extremely promising promos currently sitting in our inbox) I can tell you that there’s a lot to look forward to, and that’s without even taking into account whatever unexpected comebacks, surprise releases, brand-new debuts… and whatever other unnanounced albums that are yet to make an appearance.

Our plan, of course, is to cover as many of them as possible – though I’m sure there’ll be a vast array of albums which we’re simply not able to dedicate enough time to – and so, in that spirit, I thought I’d pen a few words about the recently-released self-titled debut from Kansas City crush-mongers Tombseeker.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SKULLD — “ABYSS CALLS TO ABYSS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 232026
 

(written by Islander)

Yeah, Skulld dropped the “e” from their name but it still sounds the same and it still accurately portrays how their music may leave you feeling, i.e., skulled, and you won’t need an exam in a blue concussion tent on your playing field to provide confirmation. Your inability to form a complete sentence will be sufficiently diagnostic (except for those of you have that problem all the time).

But in truth, Skulld’s new album Abyss Calls To Abyss has a great many other things going on in the music besides furiously ramming your head until you wake up to the most abominable conditions of life as many people must now endure it. Unquestionably, it is indeed a loud and angry deathpunk wake-up call, but it has deeper dimensions as well, in both its lyrical themes and its musical spectrum.

Below, we’ll dig into those depths and altering dimensions, but the main thing we’re doing is proudly giving you the chance to hear the album from front to back in advance of its January 30 release by Time To Kill Records. Continue reading »

VOIDHÄMMER: “NOXIOUS EMISSIONS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 232026
 

(We have our contributor Chile to thank for the following vivid review of the debut demo from California’s Voidhämmer, which was released earlier this month by Caligari Records.)

Yes, the temperature outside is about to go down below -20°C or -4 on the Fahrenheit scale for all you non-followers of the International System of Units (which somehow makes it more tolerable on paper, just barely), and with spring thaw still months away, what better way to warm up than to fire up some filthy, rotting death metal.

You could argue that your everyday central heating would suffice, but nothing warms the heart and soul as hearing those riffs pounding down from your speakers and into your orifices. Newcomers in the Californian outfit of Voidhämmer, who are not really newcomers (see below), understand this very well and offer a variety of putrid riffs on their debut EP/demo Noxious Emissions. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TJAKTJADÁLVVE — “ENCOMPASSING NOTHING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 222026
 

(written by Islander)

For most people (definitely including this writer) the name Tjaktjadálvve will be a tongue-twister. Apart from wondering how it is pronounced, I also wondered what it meant, and so I spent some time searching for an answer.

One thing I found was an interview from last fall in a Hungarian publication of Matthew Bell, the Australia-born but Sweden-residing musician behind the black metal project he named Tjaktjadálvve. With some help from an online translation tool, I saw that Bell gave this answer about the word’s meaning:

The word means “autumn winter” in the Sámi language. A lot of my music is based on my experiences in northern Sweden, so the name seemed perfectly fitting. Continue reading »

SEVENGILL – PENUMBRA

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 222026
 

(Andy Synn takes a deep dive into the new album from Greece’s Sevengill, out now)

They say that you should never judge a book – or an album – by its cover.

And while I’ve yet to receive a satisfactory explanation of who “they” actually are – or, indeed, why any of us should listen to “them” – it’s been my experience that they’re not actually wrong.

After all, I’m sure we’ve all encountered an array of albums whose terrible/cheap/tacky (delete as appropriate) cover art has failed to reflect the actual quality of the music contained within (and vice versa).

That being said, an eye-catching album cover… such as, say, the one you can see above which adorns the front of the recently-released new album by Greek Post-Metal trio Sevengill… can definitely help capture the attention of potential new listeners before they’ve even heard a note.

Continue reading »

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