(Andy Synn goes all in on the unforgettable new album from Monosphere, out Friday)
If yesterday was all about turning OFF your brain and cranking UP the volume (and the violence) – check out my review of the new album from Acranius for more info on that – then today is all about getting those synapses firing on all cylinders again with the latest slab of cerebral-yet-crushing Prog Metal from Monosphere.
(Andy Synn says get ready to turn off your brains and turn up the volume with Acranius)
It’s pretty well-established that we tend to favour music of the more cerebral and artistic type… while still, for the most part, being heavy as hell… here at NCS.
In fact, it’s almost become something of a running joke (just take a glance at any handful of my most recent reviews, such as the artful blackened beauty of Miserere Luminis, the abrasive, pitch-black anarchism of Trespasser, or the complex Prog-Tech contortions of Cryptic Shift) that the older we get the more “progressive” (or “pretentious”) our tastes are getting.
But there’s a time and a place for proggy pretensions and artsy indulgence… and this is not one of those times.
(Here we have DGR’s review of the latest album from Exhumed, which is out now on Relapse Records.)
When you start writing you assume you won’t ever be on the journalistic “beat” of some bands, yet somehow you seem to fall into a routine and over time wind up covering their releases far more than you’d expect. For this writer, Bay Area death metal veterans Exhumed are one such band. Such a long-running hallmark of an act isn’t one you’d expect to be continually checking in with, as they’ve been able to develop a large enough catalogue of music that they could coast for a lifetime bouncing between albums they put out up to a decade ago.
Yet the crew behind Exhumed remain fiercely creative and infected with an inability to sit still for even a second, spreading themselves far and wide among a baker’s dozen of projects and even then still finding time to launch the occasional new one, and then somehow after all of that… loop back around to Exhumed. Even when they share lineups among other different projects, it seems that the foundational spirit of the band still calls to them as something to be unified around. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
For reasons I explained yesterday in details verging on the tedious (if not tipping all the way over), I’ve again confined myself to music that I’ve been able to download and listen to on a music player rather than stream online. In one instance where a haunting video was available (for a Trelldom song) I came back to it often enough that I was able to see it during one of the few episodes of internet connectivity.
The first two choices were records I intended to include at the end of last week’s edition of this column, to complete a triptych of releases I was drawn to because of the cover art. I ran out of time last Sunday before I could get to them, so I’m starting with them today. And to complete a new triptych I followed them with a song where the cover art was also the first seduction.
After those first three you’ll find three others, one from a legendary name, another from a very new name, and a third from a band whose notoriety is in between.
And by the way, I forgot to set any clocks ahead last night, including the one at my bedside. Of course I did. My wife forgot too, but she’s married to me so her judgment is already suspect. Thus, this column is arriving later than I thought it would, and although there’s still a lot here, there’s not as much as I’d planned. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I’m experiencing technical difficulties. For the second time since February 1st, our DSL service shut down. The last time we waited two weeks for the DSL company to send out a repair technician. He got it going again. He explained that a pair of wires in the main line to which our house was connected had shorted out. He connected us to a different pair, but said there were a bunch of other pairs in the line that were also shorted out.
He said he would report the need for maintenance, but I got the impression this need for maintenance is widespread around the island where we live and that we shouldn’t get our hopes up. I guess there’s not enough money to be made here for the DSL company to spend money. And so, 16 days after the last repair, the DSL service stopped working again. It’s been out since last weekend. A repair technician is supposed to visit us again on Monday. Just a one-week wait this time instead of two weeks.
No DSL means our TV is useless for streaming. It also means no internet connectivity except what I can get from my phone. I’ve been using that as a hotspot for my desktop computer. The cell service is good enough that I can get online and do most of what I can do when the DSL is working. But there’s one drawback: a lot of the time the cell service isn’t good enough to stream music and videos, in part because my wife piggy-backs on my phone too since she uses a different cell service that’s borderline useless where we live. Kind of a big drawback for a music blog like ours. Continue reading »
(Below is Wil Cifer’s review of No Peace, a new album by D.C.-based No/Más that’s set for release on March 13th by Redefining Darkness. The cover art was created by Brian Sheehan.)
There could never be a more fitting soundtrack for the world today than this album. NO/MÁS are angry as fuck. They are not here to spread good news. They are bringing their apocalyptic message to you with a perfect guitar sound for it, that is a balance of brutality which is refined enough to keep the riffs in focus, rather than just being a raw outburst.
At times, grooves slide into the riff. They write songs with an ear for detail, and maximize the two-minute runtime of these songs, cramming more punch in under three minutes than some bands can pack into an entire album. A Slayer influence certainly looms over this album. They throw in guitar harmonies into “Blood Soaked Soil” to break up the feral explosion and breakdowns. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
On March 6th (a Bandcamp Friday) the Rotted Life label will release a rotten and ruinous new EP by Baltimore’s Putrisect, their third EP overall and their first new music since 2018’s Cascading Inferno. The label previews it this way:
Six tracks (including a cover of Machetazo’s “Espectro”) of crushing, malevolent, death metal, rife with darkened melodies and sinister, doomy atmospherics. With it’s tank-like tremolo passages, Putrisect no doubt work off an early ’90s template carved by heavyweights such as Bolt Thrower and Incantation but come fully equipped with a sound all their own.
We have our own more detailed preview to offer, but the main attraction is a full stream of the EP which we’re offering you below. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn encourages you to embrace the mellifluous black magic of Miserere Luminis)
I have no problem at all acknowledging that one thing I’m not great at is making predictions… or, at least, a certain kind of prediction.
There have been bands that I was sure would see massive success who have continued to labour in obscurity for years after what should have been their break-out moment, just as there have been bands who have suddenly blown up out of nowhere… even though that’s exactly where I expected them to go.
But while I’m not all that good at prophesying future fame and success (honestly, I’m not even sure what “success” looks like for bands these days, as most of the old metrics have been rednered obsolete) I like to think I’m at least pretty good at scrying out those albums, regardless of genre, that have the requisite depth and potency to have real staying power.
And Sidera is definitely one of them.
(In this latest of Daniel Barkasi’s monthly reviews for NCS he focuses on records released in February 2026.)
With the snow thawing in our area – a much different tale for many in the northeast US – leaving the house has become much more of a normal feat, without the risk of slipping on an ice sheet. I should have whipped out my ice hockey skates when we had sub-freezing temperatures, and made a complete ass of myself. Well, you know, in a different way than normal.
The lessening presence of arctic cold in the air hasn’t slowed the release calendar, with proceedings picking up with an icy bluster of quality releases in the year’s shortest month. For the “bigger” releases, Mayhem put out what has been one of the most dynamic and intriguing releases of their existence, while Worm went symphonic with dazzling results, and vets Converge bestowed an all-timer upon us.
While we’ve only got six spots to bestow in this column, there were several strenuous omissions, not due to a lack of quality of course, but fierce competition amongst a bevy of top level records. Mors Verum’s death metal manifestation is ever intriguing, Howling took me by surprise with their abrasive black metal, and The Magus and Nazghor provided contrasting-yet-gripping slabs of the dark arts, whereas Bizarrekult and Diabolus, Mecum Semperterne gave their own inspiring and undeniable viewpoints on all things black. Hell, there’s a full slate for this monthly exercise that would have been fantastic, but therein lies the strength of February’s offerings. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
The Eternal Death label bills the debut demo from NYC’s Absent Ritual as “outsider black metal”. But what does that mean? Isn’t all black metal “outsider” music at its core? Wasn’t that indeed what spawned it so many decades ago, as a rebellious reaction to death metal and other musical genres that were then captivating listeners?
Well, times do change, don’t they. You could make a claim that the bones of black metal have become ossified in some respects, to the point when many bands in the genre seem more conformist than they do rebellious. And so here in the current day, the description of Absent Ritual’s music as “outsider black metal” signifies that the band are following an unorthodox, idiosyncratic approach that isn’t hemmed in by strict genre boundaries, perhaps more true to the original animating spirit of the genre even though the music reveals surprising twists and embellishments.
You’ll understand what we mean when you listen to all three songs on their demo — The Cryptic Descent: A Compilation of Madness — which we’re now premiering in advance of its March 6 release date (a Bandcamp Friday, btw). Continue reading »