AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SEDNA — “SILA NUNA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 192025
 

(written by Islander)

Based on photographs, Cesena looks like a pretty place. A small city of roughly 100,000 people, it’s near the Apennine Mountains in Italy and about 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the Adriatic Sea on the east coast of the country toward the north. Of course, like every other place in Italy it has an extensive history, and its old architecture reflects that.

Cesena is home to the genre-bending black metal band Sedna. They have a new album that will be released in two days by the Dusktone label. The name of the album is Sila Nuna, a compound word of ancient origin that means “Sky and Earth”. But the language isn’t one of the many that have been spoken over time in the area of Cesena, or anywhere else in Italy. And you probably can’t guess what that language is, because it is so unexpected. Continue reading »

BORE – FERAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 192025
 

(Andy Synn has gone Feral… and thinks you should too)

My love of Hardcore (mostly of the more “Metallic” variety) has been well-documented by now.

After all, many of my earliest, and longest-lasting, musical loves had their roots in Hardcore, and many of the genre’s ideals (or, at least, what I still think of as the genre’s ideals) – of promoting community and collaboration, of building bonds and breaking down boundaries – are ones which still resonate with me today.

That being said, I’d never claim to be an expert on the current state of “the scene”… I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, truth be told, and rarely do I have any idea what (or who) is currently cool (or not), which means I’m often late to the party (if I even get invited at all).

For once, however, I feel like I’ve got my finger if not smack-dab on the pulse (today’s band already have a couple of EPs and splits to their name prior to this release) then at least pretty close to it considering that Bore‘s debut album, Feral, was released just last week but is already making some well-deserved waves.

Continue reading »

CENTINEX: “WITH GUTS AND GLORY”

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Nov 192025
 

(We present DGR’s lively review of the 12th album by the Swedish death metal band Centinex, recently released by Black Lion Records.)

If the smoking rubble of the American public school system and, by some extent given how intertwined they are nowadays, Google A.I., are to be believed, then a famous playwright once wrote that “brevity is the soul of wit”. But, a curious idea arises in reading the quote as literally as possible, and a new quest alights as the result:

Is there wit to be found in something that exists solely for being brief? Are the attempted jokes and madcap hilarity of many-a-plug-and-play grind bands secretly the funniest things metal has to offer? Is there something of wit to be found in an album that has shown itself to be surprisingly and unexpectedly short? Is there wit to be found in that unexpectedly short romp in what might feasibly be some of the purposefully dumbest music put to record?

The Swede-death stomp, writ large, has been the proprietor of hundreds of markedly stupid circle pits, a lowbrow artistic effort of high reward in the unleashing of rotational energy, and the revivalism of the last decade of “old school death metal” has seen the dead walk anew; bands returning from long trips to farms upstate or groups who’ve been in the game for a while yet playing a different subgenre of metal’s increasingly fractalized musical tree declaring to the world “we can make that bullshit too!” and succeeding for the most part. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LOCUSTS AND HONEY — “SHADOW OF MY END”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 182025
 

(written by Islander)

The London band Locusts and Honey released their 28-minute debut record in May 2024. Its title was interesting (and still is): Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave as Little as My Bed. It was “inspired by the bog bodies of Ireland and Denmark – people of the Iron Age who were sacrificially hanged and found extremely well-preserved in peat.” They described it as “a meditation on death and living well.”

That debut release was the work of a duo — composer and instrumentalist Tomás Robertson and vocalist/lyricist Stephen Murray. Since then the lineup has expanded to five members, and the quintet now have a new EP scheduled for release on November 21st by Toronto-based Hypaethral Records. The title of this one is Shadow of My End. Its inspiration, as described by Stephen Murray, is also interesting: Continue reading »

PHOBOCOSM – GATEWAY

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Nov 182025
 

(Andy Synn enters the gateway… and likes what he finds there)

One of the biggest issues, for any band at any level, is finding a way to stand out from the crowd.

I’m not saying that every band has to be totally unique by any means – hell, there’s an argument to be made that the more “mainstream” side of the scene actively favours bands all sounding the same way (that’s how trends work, after all) – but, at some point, you have to have at least something distinctive to offer, right?

It’s an issue that Canadian catastrophists Phobocosm have been dealing with from the beginning, as the sound they’ve chosen – although perhaps “chosen” isn’t the right word, as it’s clearly more of a “compulsion” than a conscious choice – is one that sits smack-bang in the middle of the increasingly crowded and intensely contested sonic territory between Immolation and Ulcerate… two bands who cast some very long shadows indeed.

But while the influence of these two seminal acts has continued to loom large over Phobocosm throughout their career – beginning with their 2014 debut, Deprived, and then continuing to make its presence felt on 2016’s Bringer of Drought (a personal favourite of mine that year) and 2023’s Foreordained – the band have stubbornly persevered, refusing to divert from their chosen path in an attempt to assert their mastery over this particular brand of dense, dissonant, and doom-laden Death Metal through sheer force of will.

And now, with the upcoming release of Gateway, we get to see them take their next step towards domination.

Continue reading »

GALUNDO TENVULANCE: “INSOMNIS SOMNIA”

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Nov 172025
 

(The Japanese melodic death metal band Galundo Tenvulance released a new album on the Spiritual Beast label in September of this year. What you’ll find below is our DGR’s enthusiastic review.)

The universe has its constants – such as the existence of a universal constant concept; in the grand cosmic chaos that many a metal band have drawn from for inspiration, there have been a few things we’ve been able to use as sign posts along the way. Whether it be the classic ‘death and taxes’ or the equally reliable refrain that ‘things can always get worse’, the reliability of them is undeniable.

We would actually propose another, which we’ve covered before here, and that is the idea that you just never, ever, ever forget a band name like Galundo Tenvulance after it goes sailing across your desk even one time. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: THE STONE, ENTHRONED, BURIAL GIFT, WIJRA, MORBONOCT, REMAINING WARMTH

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Nov 162025
 

(written by Islander)

If you missed yesterday’s roundup of new music you missed some very good and very diverse tunes. You also missed my alert about a request for help I’ll be making to our readers tomorrow. Catch up on all of that if you can.

For today’s assembly of black and blackish metal I picked four songs from albums that will be released later this month or in December, plus two EPs that I caught up with in the last couple of days. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: IRREVERSIBLE MECHANISM, NEMOROUS, SATOR, WEFT, PITTS TWYFORD & SINGH, MORAL IMPLANT

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Before I get to the music I’ve picked for this Saturday’s roundup I’d like to alert our followers to something that will happen on Monday, which will involve an appeal for your help.

It’s the time of year when our traditional year-end LISTMANIA series will slowly start lurching forward, building toward a frantic rush. Broadly speaking, it includes three segments: 1) our sharing of YE lists published at certain print mags and “big platform” websites, not because we’re endorsing them but because sometimes they’re useful and sometimes they’re laughable and they provide a gaze into how the broader surface-world of metal reacted to the year’s releases, and in all those way can be entertaining; 2) our posting of year-end lists assembled by our own writers and some special guests; and 3) the one thing I contribute to the exercise — my list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

That infectious song list is the last part of NCS LISTMANIA. I don’t usually begin rolling it out, bit by bit, until after the first of the New Year. But I start thinking about it much earlier. I keep a growing list of candidates all the way through the year based on what I’ve heard, but I don’t hear everything (who could?), and so part of what I always do to get ready for that list is to ask our visitors for their input, for their picks for the most infectious songs they heard that were released this year. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DAWN OF A DARK AGE, ELLENDE, 1914, LAETITIA IN HOLOCAUST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Nov 142025
 

(written by Islander)

This is another rare day when I have no premieres on our calendar and therefore have some free time for other things. Not wanting to spend it paying bills, hand-washing dishes (the dishwasher is busted), doing laundry, cleaning the cat box, or taking calls from world leaders interested in trying to understand what the fuck is going on in the U.S., I decided to get a head start on my usual weekend roundups of new music and videos.

Without further ado, here we go: Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XXII: A BUSY WINTER IS COMING

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 142025
 

(Daniel Barkasi is back with us today, presenting a collection of reviews for a variety of recommended albums released in October 2025.)

As winter approaches – it was 35 F this morning in Florida – and living amongst a sea of boxes and plastic tubs (move prep and all that), the madness for myself and our very large family of animals intensifies. A move with a farm filled with creatures is a challenge that I for one cannot wait to be done, and while we’re chipping away at it, it’s going to take a bit more time. Not in a massive rush, however, so we move forward without panic. With that, the current cooler weather in Florida has been a joy – typically chilly enough for a light hoodie in the evening, and never breaking a sweat by simply opening the house door.

The fall touring season is in full swing, with the next couple of weeks filled with so many shows that there’s no way we’ll be able to do all the ones we’d like. We did, however, just take in Ulcerate and Spirit Possession, which was a flawless evening by two exceptional acts. It certainly brought me back to June and Fortress Festival, where both performed phenomenal sets in what was an incredible experience. It was cool to see Ulcerate headline and add a few additional tracks; this being the first time we’ve seen them here in the US in 9 years, which was last at the legendary Brass Mug with Zhrine and Phobocosm. Continue reading »

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