SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: INCANTATION, KATAKLYSM, OSSUARY, CRUCIBLE OF HATE, GHOST HOLLOW

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jul 012023
 


Incantation

When I started this blog 13 years, 7 months, and 10 days ago (but who’s counting?) I had very few ambitions. One of them was to continue posting about metal straight through the weekends for as long as this NCS lark might last, no days off.

Back in those days of the internet’s infancy, blogs devoted to metal were few in number (none of them were fancy enough to call themselves “web sites”), and I thought being the only such place with something new on the weekends would attract a few more visitors. But my main motivation was to tangibly demonstrate that NCS wasn’t a business, and writing for NCS wasn’t a job, and never would it be. Because if it were a job you’d get the weekends off, right?

13 years, 7 months, and 10 days later, I’m still not pausing NCS on the weekends. In all that time we’ve had some weekend days where nothing new went up, but not many. Maybe a dozen days, certainly not more than two dozen. Illness, injury, and apocalyptic hangovers have taken their tolls, but not nearly as often as you might think. However, weekends like this one pose a special challenge. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GROTESQUERIES — “VILE CREMATORY”

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Jun 292023
 

In their current promo photo the members of Grotesqueries look serious, quiet, maybe a bit withdrawn — but that’s what the neighbors always say about the serial killers who lived down the block after the awful truth comes out. Grotesqueries probably didn’t actually kill anyone in the making of their debut album Vile Crematory, but it sure as hell sounds like they did, and in the most horrible ways you can imagine.

As they did on their debut EP Haunted Mausoleum from last year, this Boston-based quintet devote themselves on the new album to a particular kind of death metal, the kind where almost nothing is clean and almost everything is vile. The kind where the guitars are tuned to sound like manifestations of flesh-eating disease, the vocals are possessed by monstrous horrors, the grooves are calculated to inflict bone-smashing trauma, and the moods are malign, maniacal, and miserable.

But as you’ll also discover for yourselves through our premiere of the album today, on the eve of its release by Caligari Records, Grotesqueries are also very adept at getting the blood of listeners racing, as well as causing it to congeal. Continue reading »

EKOSA – EYE FOR I

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Jun 292023
 

(Andy Synn travels back to early May to heap praise upon the debut album from Australia’s Ekosa)

Although I do sometimes miss writing for print (despite everything that happened I did genuinely enjoy my time writing for Terrorizer back in the day) I must admit… the sheer freedom afforded to me here at NCS is something I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.

Case in point, the debut album from Progressive/”Post-” Death Metal quintet Ekosa was released at the beginning of May, but I only discovered it a week or so ago.

Anywhere else, anywhere that focusses more on hard deadlines and keeping on top of the endless release schedule, and we’d probably have missed out on writing about it – but while we do love getting a good scoop now and then, there’s no insistence that we only write about up-and-coming albums, which means I’m free to tell you how much I enjoy Eye for I even though I’m coming late to the party.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANOTHER BLACK AUTUMN — “RESPLENDENT APPARITIONS AT THE DAWN”

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Jun 262023
 

You’re about to hear an album that we hope you’ll find as stunning as we have. “Atmospheric Black Metal” is the simple label, but not an adequate one. It’s inspired and informed by Nature, but anyone who thinks that will lead to an experience of tree-hugging boredom will be shockingly mistaken.

The moods are almost uniformly dark, but the pathways constantly branch and the tonal ingredients, both instrumentally and vocally, are multitudinous. The music fires the senses in harrowing and thrilling ways, and it’s also capable of emotionally felling listeners in a multitude of ways, like trees brought down by both raging chainsaws and old hand axes passed down through generations. It creates sensations of confusion and distress, of chaos and terror, of loneliness and grief, and of haunting ancient mysteries that hide behind the world we see.

The two people responsible for this extraordinary experience are Meghan Wood from Crown of Asteria and Todd Paulson from Canis Dirus. They’ve taken the name Another Black Autumn for this project, and their debut album Resplendent Apparitions at the Dawn is what we’re now presenting in advance of its June 30 release by the always distinctive Fiadh Productions. Continue reading »

KRIGSGRAV – FIRES IN THE FALL

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Jun 262023
 

(Andy Synn would like to recommend this gourmet feast from long-time NCS favourites Krigsgrav)

Recipe for success:

  • Start with a base of moody, atmospheric Black Metal – ideally with overtones of Agalloch and undertones of Enslaved
  • Add a dash (and a half) of doomy darkness of the post-Paradise Lost or Daylight Dies variety (other, equivalent substitutes are acceptable)
  • Top it off with liberal layers of majestic (ideally Finnish-flavoured) Melodic Death Metal melancholy

And then, if you’re very lucky, you might just end up with something half as good as Fires in the Fall.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): G.N.L.S., SACRENOIR, VITAPHOBIA, D.R.E.P.

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Jun 252023
 

As forecast in Part 1 of today’s collection of blackened sounds, this Part compiles a small mountain of music — three complete albums and one complete EP. As also forecast, the music is nightmarish in different ways — some of it capable of causing skin to crawl, some of it blistering the flesh, and some of it accomplishing both objectives. But I also think the music is just as fascinating as it is frightening. I hope you’ll feel the same way.

G.N.L.S. (Greece)

Two weeks ago I wrote (here) about an album named Asphyxiating Late Night Sessions, which was a collaboration between Dødsferd‘s mastermind Wrath and m.Sarvok. But it wasn’t the sole result of their working together. Even earlier this year they released another collaborative album under the name G.N.L.S. (Geometric Nictation of Lament’s Space), and it’s a very different experience from the more recent release. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): IMPERIAL CRYSTALLINE ENTOMBMENT, WYRGHER, ASUNDER

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Jun 252023
 

Yesterday my spouse left me home alone for most of the day (the feline creatures were still there but they mostly left me alone too). That allowed me the time to do some deep diving in a search for music to write about today. Purely by coincidence, much of what I found turned out to be… nightmarish. Some of the songs make the skin crawl, others blister it, some do both, and almost none of it seems connected to what passes for reality in our world.

What I chose adds up to an unsettling but electrifying trip of significant proportions — three individual tracks (two from forthcoming records and one standalone single) and then a plunge into the depths of longer-form madness with three complete new albums and a new EP. Hopefully you won’t find this an endurance test but instead a relentless journey of mind-altering discovery.

To get things started before too much of the day gets away, I’ve divided it into two Parts, launching the individual tracks now so I can then turn back to finishing the much larger second installment, which will come later today Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALKALOID, FILTH IS ETERNAL, OMNIVORTEX, TÁLTOS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 232023
 

Once again I’m beginning what I hope will be a three-stage march backward through some of the better metal I came across over the past week, most of it brand new and some of it only newly discovered. Stage One is today, with the next two stages planned for the weekend. (None of the stages will include the bludgeoning and blistering new Cannibal Corpse song, but only because you probably already know about that one).

ALKALOID (Germany)

The last time I included Alkaloid in one of these round-ups we had news and cover art to share, but no music from their forthcoming third album Numen. Now we do. You might assume from the song’s title — “Clusterfuck” — that Alkaloid are going to throw your head into an instrumental blender set to liquefy, but if so you might be surprised.

I read this in a press release before listening to the song: “‘Clusterfuck‘ might have a clean and catchy chorus, but even the fiery, finger-tapped solo that squiggles loose around the four-minute mark is crushed like an ant between colliding moons”.

I also read the following comment from the band (now a quartet consisting of Morean (vocals, guitars, concepts), Hannes Grossmann (drums), Christian Münzner (guitars), and Linus Klausenitzer (bass)), which reveals that the song’s title has perhaps more to do with its subject matter than its sounds: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WILT — “HUGINN”

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Jun 232023
 

Today the Canadian atmospheric black metal band Wilt and their label Vendetta Records are releasing a new album named Huginn (though some purists may prefer to label it an EP). It comes as something of a surprise, since it wasn’t preceded by a single or advance publicity, but it is a very welcome surprise.

It’s certainly a welcome development here, as anyone would know who has come across our previous writings about Wilt’s music, including our comments about their 2015 debut album Moving Monoliths or our review of their second album Ruin in 2018. To pick out just a few choice words from the latter:

“[T[he masterful blending of dark metallic melody and dreamlike serenity found on Ruin makes a very good case that this undeniably talented (though underwhelmingly named) Canadian quintet deserve serious consideration as potential heirs to Agalloch’s vacant mantle (pun very much intended). Of course it’s not so much that Wilt sound exactly like Haughm, Dekker, and co., it’s more that the group’s sombre, evocative style examines and explores many of the same musical themes and ideas, although never in exactly the same way”.

Five years on from Ruin, and Agalloch have reassembled themselves, but Wilt have returned as well. These haven’t been five good years for the world at large, and all the dire and dreadful experiences they delivered have influenced what you will hear on Huginn. Here is what Wilt have told us about it: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CREPITATION — “MONSTROUS ERUPTION OF IMPETUOUS PREPOSTEROSITY”

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Jun 222023
 

It will come as no great surprise to people who’ve been fans of Crepitation for the last 17+ years to see how preposterously wild the title of their new album is. It is, in fact, Monstrous Eruption of Impetuous Preposterosity. The trip through the new album’s song titles is perhaps an even more gonzo ride. When words recognized by dictionaries and phrases acknowledged by grammarians aren’t up to the task, just scramble the fuck out of them over a high flame and season with gobs of syllables and a heavy salting of hilarity. That’s how you get things like this:

“Vicious Entwattering of Obstinant Nepotistic Shithouses”
“Priapismic Whisking of Mucilaginous Concrete Slurry”
“Devourification of Skewerised Rottiserie Hominids”
“Superkalifragelisticexpibabyshakeus”

Even when you can find the words in dictionaries, Crepitation have a knack for stitching them together in evocatively foul ways. For example, “Methanated Propulsion of Gaseous Levitation“. What better way to name a song that was inspired by the kind of wet farts that provide a queasy recurring lift to your stride? Continue reading »

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