FOREVER PLAYING CATCH UP (2023 EDITION) PART 2

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

(Our old friend and former NCS writer Austin Weber is returning to our page today with the second part of a multi-part series of reviews that we plan to run day after day until completed. You’ll find Part 1 here.)

Despite the incredible volume of music covered here at NCS, there remains a plethora of noteworthy releases yet to be shared in this space. Chalk it up to how much damn good stuff deserves the limelight and doesn’t get it because we all know this site already covers more than most as is.

As I’ve done in the past, join me for another multi-part feature that touches on music I strongly believe you should listen to—or at the very least, stuff worth checking out at a minimum. You be the judge. Onwards! Continue reading »

CRYSTAL COFFIN: “THE CURSE OF IMMORTALITY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 012023
 

(Didrik Mešiček wrote the following review of the third album by the Vancouver-based trio Crystal Coffin, which was just released yesterday.)

In my continued search for black metal that’s not quite the typical ’90s second wave sound that we all love/hate (choose whichever applies to you) I’m often intrigued by qualifying words like melodic, symphonic, or folky before the name of the subgenre. This time it’s the Canadian Crystal Coffin that’s caught my attention, a band that supposedly falls into the melodic group, if Metal Archives are to be believed. Their new album, The Curse of Immortality, will be released independently on the 31st of October, two years after the band’s previous album, The Starway Eternal, and that’s what I’ll be talking about today.  Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AEONIAN SORROW — “KATARA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 312023
 

In the Pindus mountains of northern Greece there is a pass called Katara. We are told that according to the legend, “Katara got its name from a despot who around 1800 set out from Ioannina to go to Trikala city, but the bad weather in the area made it so difficult for him that he died on the way and he cursed the mountain”.

Many tragic stories have been written about this pass, and the Greek/Finnish doom-metal collective Aeonian Sorrow have now written their own, although their new album Katara, which will be released tomorrow, includes other stories as well — and it is dedicated to the memory of Georgia and Michail, beloved grandparents of the band’s singer Gogo Melone.

The lyric stories included in Katara do vary across the album’s seven substantial songs, all of them heart-felt, but they are stories of deep loss, despair, and anger — heart-breaking and harrowing, as well as heart-felt. Gogo has explained how they all came to be: Continue reading »

FOREVER PLAYING CATCH UP (2023 EDITION) PART 1

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 312023
 


Paroxysm Unit

(Our old friend and former NCS writer Austin Weber is returning to our page today with the first part of a multi-part series of reviews that we plan to run day after day until completed.)

Despite the incredible volume of music covered here at NCS, there remains a plethora of noteworthy releases yet to be shared in this space. Chalk it up to how much damn good stuff deserves the limelight and doesn’t get it because we all know this site already covers more than most as is.

As I’ve done in the past, join me for another multi-part feature that touches on music I strongly believe you should listen to—or at the very least, stuff worth checking out at a minimum. You be the judge. Onwards! Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: NIGHT HAG AND BURIAL — “UTTERANCES FROM BELOW”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 302023
 

All trve true metalheads have only one favorite holiday, and it’s not Valentine’s Day. It’s the one bearing down on us tomorrow night. Most of us already have our own personally curated playlists of heavy music for Halloween night, but we’ve got something for you today that should lead to a revision of your list.

What we’ve got is the full streaming premiere of Utterances From Below, a new album-length split by Virginia’s Night Hag and Italy’s Burial, which will be released on November 10th by Rotted Life Records. As the label proudly previews, it is indeed “a union of death, doom, and disgust”, one that “bridges the fertile gap between quotidian horrors and supernatural dread”. Continue reading »

FUMING MOUTH – LAST DAY OF SUN

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 302023
 

(Andy Synn gives his thoughts on the new Fuming Mouth album, out Friday)

To describe Last Day of Sun simply as a “post-cancer” album would be overly-reductive.

It’s more than just that, for sure.

But there’s no question that the knowledge of Fuming Mouth frontman Mark Whelan’s battle with, and recovery from, Acute Myeloid Leukemia definitely adds some extra thematic weight to the record’s metallic meditations on mortality and the fragility of existence.

Continue reading »

DISTASTE: “DER ERTRAEGER UND DAS FLEISCH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 302023
 

(In this review DGR revisits an old favorite, the German band Distaste and their new album, released a few weeks ago by FDA Records.)

We’ve had a long history with Austria’s Distaste, as we’ve watched them evolve their form of blast-happy grindcore, relentlessly focused on short songs and straightforward hammering, to a blackened death-inspired group with a light sludge flavoring, to the current incarnation of the band obsessed with fury, hellfire, and portmanteaus of their chosen language.

Previously, Distaste had done pretty well for themselves with albums like Of Abyss-Hearts And Falsity and Black Age Of Nihil but they really started to come into their own along about the time of the Rotten Cold/Distaste split and the Todt EP. Adopting a strong guitar-lead segment did the group well, adding another element to the otherwise whirlwind chaos and well-spoken language of grindcore circle-pit throwdowns, and Deibel was a strong culmination of that. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PHANTOM WINTER, AKVAN, VARATHRON, OLHAVA, A PREGNANT LIGHT, SORT SIND, APANTHROPY

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Oct 292023
 

Yesterday’s roundup was a very, very big one. With so much time on my hands this weekend, I planned to make today’s blackened roundup equally large, paying no attention to whether anyone would have the fortitude to go through a dozen entries yesterday and another dozen today.

When I woke up this morning I somewhat came to my senses and decided to cut this back from what I’d initially selected — providing seven recommendations instead of 12 — mainly because I didn’t think I’d have the time to get a dozen ready to go before I have to go. I hope to say something about the others in the near future.

PHANTOM WINTER (Germany)

I’m going to begin with a regrettably rare example of a great song presented through a great video, each one complementing the other. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AUTOPSY, THE BREATHING PROCESS, BRODER, CATTLE DECAPITATION, CRUST, HEILUNG, JOB FOR A COWBOY, KALANDRA, OPHANIM, PLAGUE OF THE FALLEN, VASTUM, VEMOD

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 282023
 


Autopsy – photo by Nancy Reifert

Prepare for… a lot of sentences that begin “Prepare for….”

It’s a little way for me to say very little about what you’ll hear but without me feeling like I’ve done nothing to induce listening or to thank the bands.

The shorthand is necessary because the past week produced so damn much music I’d like to recommend, and because I got lots of suggestions from other people, including my compadres Andy Synn and DGR. Their picks and mine, which produced a mix of bigger bands and more obscure bands, are arranged here in alphabetical order by band name.

Prepare for… lots of twists and turns…. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HEBEPHRENIQUE — “NON COMPOS MENTIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 272023
 

The Australian band Hebephrenique chose a name that may contort the part of your brain responsible for making sense of letters and checking new words into the vocabulary library. We’ll make it easier, since we’ve already done a bit of research:

Hebephrenique seems to be the French word (without accent marks) for hebephrenic, which refers to a “disorganized” type of schizophrenia, one “typified by shallow and inappropriate emotional responses, foolish or bizarre behaviour, false beliefs (delusions), and false perceptions (hallucinations).” So says this source.

That this is what the band had in mind when they chose their name is guesswork on our part, but their debut EP Non Compos Mentis provides circumstantial evidence that we’re on the right track. Continue reading »

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