SHADES OF BLACK: CALLOUS MASTER, VAITARANA , SKJOLDEN, DEATHISTHEMASTEROFTHEWORLD

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 192026
 

(written by Islander)

I had to hurry to finish yesterday’s roundup due to excessive partying the night before and excessive sleeping through the next morning. Not having learned anything, I repeated myself last night and this morning, and am paying for it by having to truncate this Sunday roundup.

I mean, it wasn’t wild partying. There was no rowdiness, no fights. No one went to jail. It was just me and my wife and a bunch of other gray-hairs enjoying each other’s company over a grilled salmon dinner and maybe a few more drinks than was strictly advisable.

In figuring out what to include today, and what to leave behind for now, I decided to give you a charred-black roller-coaster ride. It’s only three songs and an EP, but none of them sound anything alike. I also decided to root this collection deep in the underground — these aren’t “big name” bands, but their music makes big impressions, at least on me and I hope on you too. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ETERNAL MOURN — “WINDS OF SORROW”

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Jul 162026
 

(written by Islander)

The Italian metal band Eternal Mourn is a new name, but their lineup is a group of experienced musicians whose resumes include participation in Black Oath, The Rite, Extirpation, Funest, Araphel, and Demonomancy. In this new formation (as their name suggests) they’ve paid homage to the great death-doom traditions of the ’90s as expressed through the music of Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Anathema, and Cemetary.

Of course, many other bands have drawn upon those august influences over the past decades, with widely varying degrees of emotional power and memorability. Eternal Mourn’s debut EP Winds of Sorrow stands out from the pack. These first three songs don’t sound like a debut release. They are so well-crafted and so expertly executed that they sound like the work of people who’ve been delving into this kind of music for a long time, and the results are unmistakably desolate but still head-hooking, spine-shaking, and even mystically beautiful. They are also immediately memorable.

Those are among the reasons we quite enthusiastically agreed to premiere the EP today in advance of its July 21 release by Terror From Hell Records. More reasons follow…. Continue reading »

KILL BY MOUTH: “NECESSARY EVIL”

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Jul 162026
 

(Wil Cifer has caught up to a debut EP by the British band Kill By Mouth, and enthusiasticaly recommends it in the following review.)

The biggest hindrance to the thrash revival has been how tied to ’80s nostalgia it is, while the bands that defined the genre got the memo and progressed. This plays into why a band like Power Trip made such an impact, because they were not trying to dial in the sound, but took the sound of modern hardcore and made great thrash albums with it. This British band, Kill By Mouth, wisely do not try to turn back time, but find their own place in the genre. They do this by blending some of the darker corners the genre had evolved into by the time the ’90s rolled around.

This EP was released back in March, so went under the radar, but is a worthy entry in today’s thrash scene and deserves more recognition. Pre-nu-metal-leaning Prong can be heard in the thunderous syncopation they kick into at this album’s powerful onset.The vocals are howled in a baritone bark to accent the commanding grooves they deal in. They also keep things at a deliberate headbanging tempo rather than getting lost in breakneck punk frenzies. This can be heard in the chug of “228“. They use admirable restraint and never give into the urge for speed that might forsake the purpose of the songs. This makes for catchier songs, though you can still hear the influence of both S.O.D and Sepultura here, but without the devotion that solely pays homage to an era. Continue reading »

CLEARING THE SLATE ISSUE ONE

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 162026
 

(DGR is playing the game of review catch-up. Is today’s four-album installment the first inning of nine, or the first half of two? We shall see.)

I say this every time I’ve done it in its twice-yearly fashion, but smaller review collections like this are not ones that I feel good about doing. It doesn’t feel fair to the bands not paying the imagined debt I have with them, that I’ve done something so criminal as enjoy their music and yet not find the time within myself to dedicate toward the usual essay-long dissection and exploration of their newest release.

Yet, it is festival season now in Europe which means that metal’s biological clock is seeing fit to give birth to a ton of new releases. You may have noticed during the last month or so there has been a steady drip of reviews coming from my corner of the world, but truth be told, all of those were done just prior to our unwitting heavy metal May that we’ve created. The assumption being that they would run once a day so the site would always have something to post while we were out and about witnessing music or drinking ourselves into apocalyptic stupor.

You’ll note, that’s not how it happened, and instead the collective of releases that I had fished up from the world’s murky musical depths ran well into June. That doesn’t mean the exploration and listening stopped, either. Just as many were caught up in the nets or came out while we were on that aforementioned vacation, and we now find ourselves at the doorstep of a collection of music spanning months that needs to be caught up on.

You, dedicated reader of the site that you are, know next what is coming. It has traveled by many names: review roundup, things you may have missed, clearing the slate, material befitting the ethereal, music by swedes for long-haired plebes, a million other names that all translate to one basic idea – we need to catch up on stuff so we can maintain some semblance of being current yet refuse to leave these albums sitting in the dust. Continue reading »

FUMING MOUTH – THE RINGING BELL

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Jul 132026
 

(Andy Synn asks for whom the bell tolls… and it turns out it’s for him)

There are lots of different ways we could begin a review of the new Fuming Mouth (which comes out Friday).

We could, of course, talk about frontman Mark Whelan’s diagnosis with, and subsequent recovery from, Acute Myeloid Leukemia and how this has – unsurprisingly – influenced the band’s musical and lyrical approach.

We could also just as easily talk about how divisive the band’s second album, Last Day of Sun was, due to its more Punk/Hardcore influenced approach – though I still think that tracks like “Out of Time”, “The Silence Beyond Life”, and “I’ll Find You” are absolute bangers – and occasional (if not always successful) dash of moody melodic crooning.

But instead I’d like to start off by mentioning the one and only disappointing aspect of the record… which is the underwhelming cover art (which, to be fair, I’m sure must have some deeper significance to the group, but which really doesn’t live up to the high bar set by the eye-catching artwork of Lewandowski and Todorovic that adorned their first two albums, respectively).

Thankfully, however, this is one occasion where you definitely can’t judge the proverbial book by its literal cover.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LABOR OF THE NEGATIVE, AURI, TEARS OF NEMAN & СХИЗМА, MIASMES, HAMMERFILOSOFI, DRAPE, ORANSSI PAZUZU

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 122026
 

(written by Islander)

As you can see, I have a lot of new music to recommend today. I hope the volume won’t deter you from investigating each entry. I will say that I’ve arranged the selections in a way that my cause your head to whirl around as you move through them. At least I hope that will happen!

Because there’s so much to discuss, I’ll dispense with further introductory comments and get right to it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: NORILLAG, POACHER, LITOST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 112026
 

(written by Islander)

My spouse and I are going to an early lunch with a friend we’ve known for… ahem… decades. She’s always a ton of fun to be with, but the timing’s not great for this column. I had added dozens of new songs and complete releases arriving over the past week that I intended to check out. And I didn’t get a head-start yesterday because I spend a chunk of the afternoon and early evening watching a Mariners baseball game that was… ahem… dispiriting. Don’t ask me why I did that, because I knew our opponents were very good and the odds were very high that my team would… ahem… suck (again).

Anyway, I had a lot of hard choices to make this morning and a rapidly vanishing amount of time in which to make them and then peck out some thoughts. I hope I’ll be able to catch up with more new music for the usual Sunday collection. Continue reading »

INFERNO: “THE ANTHROPIC SOPHISMS (ON THE HEIGHTS OF DESPAIR)”

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Jul 092026
 

(We present Daniel Barkasi’s evocative review of a new album by the Czech band Inferno, which will be released on July 17th by Debemur Morti Productions.)

If you search for a band named Inferno on Encyclopedia Metallum, you’ll unsurprisingly get a lot of results. All of these are not created equal, of course. When we think of a band of that name, there’s only one that comes straight to mind – the gnostic black metal Inferno hailing from Czechia.

Having been in existence for over three decades, their works speak for themselves, though they’ve experienced quite a musical metamorphosis over those years. Earlier releases were much more straightforward second-wave black metal with a certain rawness and regional authenticity that added to their proverbial charm. A hint of a more expansive direction could be sniffed out on Black Devotion in certain aspects, but that change truly came to fruition on the nightmarish Omniabsence Filled by His Greatness in 2013, a record filled with dreary, unpredictable atmospheres resembling a thick fog that gives no chance of seeing anything but nothingness.

From that release, Inferno have been wildly experimental, carving out a truly singular sound and presence, not unlike contemporaries Blut Aus Nord, Cult of Fire, and a select few others. They also don’t tinker for the sake of it – the upper crust quality of each release exemplifies creative zeal to a level that few achieve. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEHUMANIZING ITATRAIN WORSHIP — “2D COMPLEX”

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Jul 082026
 

(written by Islander)

The best anime death metal from China! That sounds like a narrow niche, doesn’t it? It’s also a description that leaves some big unanswered questions about what the music sounds like – questions we will help answer today.

But first, there’s a question about the meaning of this band’s name – Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship. They have answered that question: “The band name ‘Itatrain’ actually comes from a viral 2012 incident in Shanghai: a fan was caught kneeling and worshipping a train decorated with ‘LoveLive!’ characters. We thought that kind of fanaticism was both stupid and hilarious at the time, so we decided to name the band after it.”

The LoveLive! multimedia anime universe has also played a role in the music of Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship. Their vocalist Kiryu Zhang admits that “on our previous efforts, people probably saw us as just that ‘weird anime slam band’ sampling LoveLive! for shock value.” But what began as a “meme” bedroom project has survived for a decade, and the music has considerably evolved as well.

Perhaps one sign of that is the fact that it’s our site that was invited to premiere the band’s new album, 2D Complex (二次元コンプレックス), in advance of its July 10 release by Stillbirth Records and Gore House Productions. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 082026
 

(Andy Synn has four more albums from last month that he needs you to check out)

I’m in a bit of a rush today, so don’t have time for much of a preamble here… suffice it to say that June was a very busy month, for everyone here at NCS, which has left us with a lot of stuff to catch up on.

Which is why you’re getting a second edition of “Things You May Have Missed” today, following on from last week’s equally killer quartet of recent releases.

Continue reading »

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