SEEN AND HEARD ON A TUESDAY: KUNTARI, MOUTH OF MADNESS, VERMINGOD, PLUTONIAN SHORE, SETH, HYENISM

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 152025
 


Kuntari

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere responsibility today and nothing else in the queue from our other writers, I had just enough time to compile a rare weekday roundup of new songs and videos. I think many of the songs that follow include aspects of the exotic, or at least that’s the best word I can come up with. The collection is book-ended by a couple of things I found thanks to someone else’s recent collection.

KUNTARI (Indonesia)

Last October I came across the Indonesian musical project Kuntari (the duo of Tesla Manaf and Rio Abror) based on a fascinating collaboration Kuntari did with an Indonesian “Post-Black Metal/Crust/Shoegaze” band named Avhath. I included a bit of background info about Kuntari and a lot of enthusiastic words about just one head-spinning song from the collaboration here. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STOMACH — “LOW DEMON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 142025
 

(written by Islander)

Miserable and merciless, doomed and depraved, an exorcism of inner demons. Those are among the descriptions you may have seen if you’ve come across the news about a new album from Chicago-based Stomach. You may have also seen the album’s name: Low Demon. And man, is it ever that.

The album will be released this coming Friday by Hibernation Release. It will likely turn the end of the week into a smoking crater, from which horrid smoking things will crawl. But hell, why wait to see what happens? Let’s see what happens today. There’s no good reason to let this week pretend to have a positive start (we know better than to be fooled that way), and so we’ll drop Low Demon on your heads right now. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XVIII: THE HALFWAY POINT

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 142025
 

(Below you will find Daniel Barkasi’s monthly collection of NCS album reviews, this time recommending six records released in June 2025.)

It’s the middle of the year, and boy are my… everything tired. Time always seems to move fast, because it does. We don’t need reminders of the all too limited amount of it, but sadly they happen regularly. Since our last installment, a major news story that affected me as a Liverpool FC supporter – but more so as a human – was the death of brothers Diogo Jota and André Silva in a driving accident, traveling from Porto to Liverpool for the start of training for Diogo.

The most heartbreaking part, other than him only being 28, was that he had gotten married a week prior, with three very young children. Furthermore, he came across as a lovely fellow that didn’t fall into the egotism that many professional athletes fall into. A humble guy who loved his life, and showed it all the time. LFC classily will pay out the remainder of his contract to his now widow, and will fully fund his children’s education. They also retired his #20 kit number – all-around class from a classy club. RIP Diogo and André – YNWA. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LUCTUS, NATÜRGEIST, MANIA, ARKHAAIK, TRYPANON, DOWNWARD

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Although this Sunday’s collection includes varying shades and phases of black metal I would say they have unsettling sensations of madness and murder in common, and most of them feature a muscular heart-hammering punch as well as abundant doses of crazed ferocity and mind-bending psychosis.

In many instances you’ll also encounter some of the most unhinged vocals you’re likely to find outside the hideous real-world history of self-immolation.

Only in extreme metal could an introduction like that qualify as “enticing,” but I know our audience well enough that I’m sure it will be. Continue reading »

EMBERTHRONE: “CURSIVE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 112025
 

(Sacramento-based DGR reviews a very recently released EP by Sacramento-based Emberthrone, and comes away happy.)

Sacramento’s Emberthrone are one we’ve kept a curious eye on for a little bit now. Part of a small-town-sized wave of deathcore-leaning projects that sprang up in the lockdown years wherein a lot of people suddenly had a bunch of free time out of nowhere for some reason, Emberthrone seemed like a solid union with a lot of potential just based off of its lineup alone at the time. Uniting some of the scene’s workhorses for vocals and drums in the form of Monte Bernard and Gabe Seeber, the group’s complete portrait included bassist Quentin Garcia and guitarist Martin Bianchini.

Their group’s four-song debut Godless Wonder found them a home on Seek & Strike, a label that has slowly developed an arc for being the home of boutique ass-kickers in prefix-core heavy form. Godless Wonder was a reliably solid brick of music that fell perfectly in line with a lot of the bruisers that’ve emerged from California’s filing cabinet over the years. In the three years hence, though, the lineup for Emberthrone has remained fairly solid save for what seems to be a new face behind the kit, translating into an interesting round two for the band.

Now more matured and gelled together as a band, Emberthrone returned in early-July with a second EP bearing the name Cursive that seems to be forged by experience and a stronger vision of what sort of project they want to be, while also much more determined to throw its heft around than they did before. Continue reading »

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS – A VOID WITHIN EXISTENCE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 102025
 

(Andy Synn provides some advance insight into the new album from Abigail Williams, out 18 July)

Let me be frank about something… I have been lucky enough to have had access to this album for much, much longer than most people.

Long enough, in fact, for me to fall in love with it, fall out of love with it, rediscover it all over again, and have the opportunity to totally reappraise it in light of my long-running relationship with the band and their music.

And, let me tell you, there’s a chance that maybe… just maybe… this will finally be the album which garners Abigail Williams the respect they’ve long deserved.

Continue reading »

IN THE COMPANY OF SERPENTS – A CRACK IN EVERYTHING

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 092025
 

(Andy Synn has thoughts to share about the new album from In The Company of Serpents, out Friday)

This genre that we call “Heavy Metal” (including its various more “extreme” and esoteric sub-genres) is a style of music often acutely aware of its own history and legacy (sometimes to its detriment… but that’s a whole other discussion we won’t be having here).

That doesn’t mean that other artists other genres aren’t just as knowledgeable about their past by any means, it’s just worth pointing out that – in my experience, at least – most Metal bands, and most Metal fans, tend to have a deep appreciation for the acts who went before them and paved the way.

What’s less-commonly talked about, however, is the variety of inspirations these self-same seminal names (you know the ones) took from all sorts of other different styles of music – since “Heavy Metal” itself had, of course, yet to be invented (and there’s still some discussion to this day about who really did it “first”) – and the ongoing role these ancestral, pre- or proto-Metal, influences continue to have on the genre to this day.

But this is something you can’t help but consider when listening to the latest album of sludgy, doom-laced grooves and moody, Americana-tinged melodies from In The Company of Serpents.

Continue reading »

DEFILED SERENITY: “WITHIN THE SLUMBER OF THE MIND”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 082025
 

(NCS writer DGR pays a debt today, finally reviewing a debut album released five months ago by Finland’s Defiled Serenity that he’s been enjoying since then.)

Just in time to be late enough for the bus tracks from the public transit we missed to not only fade away but also be paved over again as the street is resurfaced!

Just before we set off on our jet-setting lifestyles that had a block of this website traveling coast to coast in May to take in only the finest vintages of heavy metal on stage, yours truly set out with a machine to absorb an equally large block of the heavy metal that had been released throughout the year in order to queue up the website to always have something to chat about while we were off wandering venue to venue.

The result was a wide snapshot of the world of underground heavy metal as it had existed so far in 2025, a disorganized ball of chaos that didn’t really have much of a throughline existing in it so far. Some years become reflective of society at large, others take after more recent events, but 2025 has been as odd as your more avant-garde wings of an art museum — somewhat unnerving and almost surrealistic horror-movie in that sort of way. Whatever themes may be developing to define this year musically — not socially, we’ve already landed on “hell” there — they just haven’t congealed yet and are almost refusing to do so.

We have, however, landed within a realm of a few amusing statistical blobs for those who love themselves some numbers nerd-ery, such as how it seems a contingent of Finland decided that all of their projects should see a release in some form or another within the first half of this year. Granted, it’s a wide net to be casting but it’s a pattern I’ve been joking about for months now. Continue reading »

PATRISTIC: “CATECHESIS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 072025
 

(What follows is DGR‘s review of the stunning debut album from the Italian band Patristic, out now on Willowtip Records.)

The evolution of black metal as a genre remains as constant as ever. Its grasp is one that artists cannot seem to escape; there is an unholy draw to the offerings of the dramaticism, high-end shrieking, and outwardly reactionary and purposeful abrasiveness of the style. Each person approaches it as if they have something different to lay at its altar (offerings small or large) and thus the genre continues to find itself in a steady yet chaotic rate of high-speed metamorphosis. New ideas are interjected, rejected, stitched onto, and forced into place at times, but all creates this whirling sphere of metal that could eclipse galaxies in utter darkness.

Not every group is original or looking to change the book on things, which is how we’ve wound up with generational views of a genre that is also now well-aged. We’ve codified and crystalized certain styles — hell you could argue some have even ossified to the point of near parody. But the infernal harvest does remain forever fruitful, and whenever an artist you’ve been following for a while decides to take a crack at it, you can’t help but be intrigued.

How does a genre emerge once it is filtered through that particular creature’s viewpoint? Are there changes? Do they seek to just replicate and add to the pile of skulls already creating the throne or are they looking to adapt and bend it to their own ways? Is there a statement to be made in any regard that black metal becomes the only screen through which they push their own music? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PESTILENTIAL SHADOWS, SEA MOSQUITO, PROFANE ELEGY, CRUENTATION, BEANNACHD LEIBH, MORTE TRIUNFANTE, ROUGAROU

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 062025
 


Pestilential Shadows

(written by Islander)

I’ve been distracted by the tragic flooding in Central Texas, where I grew up. I still have a brother and sister-in-law in that area. Their property has been hit hard, but they are alive and whole, unlike a lot of other people. The rains continue, and so will the death count.

Nothing much I can do about this up here in the Pacific Northwest other than worry and grieve. The music provides a temporary distraction, and even some moments of catharsis. I hope what I picked today will do you some good too. The collection includes five individual songs, an EP, and an album. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries