GADGET: “COERCED”

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May 062026
 

(The Swedish grindcore veterans Gadget are returning with a new EP set for release on May 8th (on vinyl via De:Nihil Records), and what we have below are DGR’s enthusiastic thoughts about it.)

While it isn’t that long in terms of grindcore bands, given their “jump in and jump out just as quick” nature and the way so many grind projects are ephemeral blasts of sound that seem to appear and burn to the ground just as quickly, five years is a good-sized gap for new music from a project. Sweden’s Gadget haven’t had it easy either.

A period of lineup changes saw the group without a full-time vocalist for a bit and their first release post-2016’s The Great Destroyer was a split with Retaliation that saw Gadget contributing four songs, each with a different vocalist. The fire was still there and each song punched in at sub one-minute-and-thirty seconds. That was five years ago, though.

One of the highlight songs that did emerge from 2021’s Gadget/Retaliation split was “Intenso”, which featured vocalist Emilia Henriksson stepping behind the microphone for fifty-seven seconds of manic and relentless energy that was everything you might’ve wanted out of the blastbeat-driven firestorm style of grind that is composed entirely on the high-end, high-tempo side of things with little room for groove or chest-thumping low-end.

Emilia would eventually take over the vocals segment of the band in 2023 and be joined by Kristofer Jankarls on guitars as well as vocals for a double-headed attack, cementing Gadget in stable form for the three years since. 2026 marks the newest release for this lineup in recorded form, an eight-song and thirteen-and-a-half-minute blast of music known as Coerced. Continue reading »

PANOPTICON – DET HJEMSØKTE HJERTET

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May 062026
 

(Andy Synn steps again into the light with the new album from Panopticon, out this Friday)

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that there are no bad Panopticon albums.

This doesn’t mean, however, that all Panopticon albums are created equal – indeed, Austin Lunn’s willingness to explore different facets of his musical identity on different albums has always been one of the project’s most laudable features – and different listeners will definitely have different favourites.

For myself …And Again Into the Light remains the album I most listen to and most connect with, although both the seminal strains of Kentucky and the ambitious double-album The Scars of Man… are also held in the highest of esteem.

Which, as it turns out, bodes very well indeed for Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet (aka The Haunted Heart), which not only completes the “Laurentian Trilogy” of …Into the Light and The Rime of Memory but was also – by Lunn’s own admittance – inspired by, and expands upon, themes espoused on both the former (specifically the song “A Snowless Winter”) and Part 1 of The Scars of Man…, thus bringing things full circle and closing the book on this particular era of the band.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VOIDTHRONE — “DREAMING RAT”

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May 052026
 

(written by Islander)

If we think of ourselves as listener-fish scurrying through the sea of our days and music-makers as throngs of fishers trying to catch our attention, what lures work best? For some fish it might be affectionate familiarity with a band’s previous music. Lacking such familiarity, it might be a genre description or a “for fans of” reference or an al-luring piece of cover art.

In the case of Voidthrone from the Pacific Northwest and their new album Dreaming Rat (set for release on May 8th), it might be all of that, but they have one additional lure — an intriguing concept underlying the album (or overarching it). They organize the album’s nine songs into a triptych of parallel “Arcs” which together create “a three-part cosmic death ritual”. Each numbered Arc has its own title, and we’ll get to those, but the three could be summed up with these words:

“a solar system burning through its lifespan, a civilization collapsing under its own complexity, and a parasite replicating itself across language, culture, and flesh”

Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 052026
 

(Andy Synn has six stellar recommendations for albums from last month to share with you)

It’s always difficult to pick what bands I’m going to include in these monthly catch-up articles – I only have so much time, and so much space, I can give them, after all – but I’m pretty pleased with the variety of different styles on display across the six entries which make up today’s column.

That being said, if you’re still craving more new music from last month that you may have missed, I’d encourage you to also check out Astraya, Atlantic Ridge, Carrion Spring, Heiden, Maranatha, Sewer Altar, and The Saddest Landscape.

But first…

Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, APRIL 2026

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 052026
 

(April was a sorry month in many ways for many people, but it still yielded a lot of good heavy albums, and in his latest monthly roundup of reviews our friend Gonzo picks out four of them.)

These days, it feels like I’m behind on everything: Behind on new heavy music, behind on listening to it, and most certainly behind on writing about it.

I guess there’s a reason for that. Not to delve too far into a sob story, but this is mostly because my day job decided to callously and haphazardly lay me off last week. Having this happen so abruptly is one thing, but the fact that this unceremonious ending was the third layoff in a row for me is another. Screaming into the void is therapeutic, and by that measure, my yearly pilgrimage to Roadburn a few weeks ago turned out to be more necessary than ever.

So, fuck the corporate grind. My venom for capitalism knows no bounds. Being forced to repeat the Sisyphean and futile exercise of finding another job in this hellscape has only tempered said venom in something even more vitriolic. For these reasons, I’m sad to say I’ll be missing this year’s Northwest Terror Fest in the coming days. That bums me out more than anything else.

In the meantime, here’s some new music to keep your ears busy. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): IVOIRE — “URAGANO”

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May 042026
 

(written by Islander)

On May 8th the Italian metal band Ivoire will release their debut album Uragano. It began a long process of taking shape more than four years ago through a series of personal reflections written by the band’s founder Nicolò Lenoci, and then gradually evolved as he sought musical expressions for those ideas — musical expressions that ultimately moved between post-metal, sludge, and black metal influences.

When the time arrived for fully fleshing out the music and recording it, Nicolò (performing guitars and bass) was joined by vocalist Antonio Caggese, drummer Giovanni Solazzo (Turangalila, Duocane), and some guests whose contributions we’ll identify a bit later. Afterward, the band found its definitive line-up for live performances, with members we’ll also identify below.

Here is how Nicolò introduces the album: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FAUSTIAN, VERZAUBER, ISHIMURA, VERTEBRAE, NECROBEAST, SVRM

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May 032026
 

(written by Islander)

As you can see, I have selected the music of six bands today, all of them coincidentally brandishing one-word names. I’m leading off with a group of singles from forthcoming records and concluding with a recently released EP that I think qualifies as “saving the best for last”.

In the case of those singles, I arranged them in a way that creates some musical connections (at least in my own head) between the opening pair and then a different kind of connection in another pair, with a ruinous barrage standing between the two groupings.

I’ll also take this opportunity to inform visitors that the coming week at NCS will create a bit of a break. Beginning on Wednesday I and my old friends Andy Synn and DGR will be in Seattle working on Northwest Terror Fest (they will be doing a lot of heavy lifting while I provide essential supervision and autographs). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: INFERNO, SCARAB, A BAND OF ORCS, EX CINERE, IEROFANIA, [4672], BEWARE OF GODS, THE DEVIL AND THE ALMIGHTY BLUES, STYGIAN BOUGH

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 022026
 

(written by Islander)

My selections today were guided by strong memories, many of them quite distant and others more recent. And the music below is strong enough to make new memories. I’ll explain as we go along.

P.S. Be forewarned: There’s more than a little singing in this Saturday’s collection, especially in the closing segments, and it’s all very good! Continue reading »

COGNIZANCE: “IN LIGHT, NO SHAPE”

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May 012026
 

(Today Willowtip Records is releasing a new album by the UK band Cognizance, and that means it’s time for our tech-death-addicted scribbler DGR to hold forth on its abundant merits.)

A two-year turnaround on a Cognizance album is exciting news. The UK-based group have been one of tech-death’s semi-unsung heroes since they started releasing full albums in 2019 after having existed prior on a string of EPs. They play a style of tech-death so tightly wound and with such precision that – as has been a constant worry – one would think that even the slightest change would be the equivalent of a butterfly landing on a car aiming to set a landspeed record, even the slightest weight sending the thing toppling end over end and into fiery collision. Sometimes, one can listen to a Cognizance song, hear how surgically precise they are, and think that such a thing might even happen within the boundaries of the same song.

Which is why it is impressive that on a first pass with Cognizance’s newest album In Light, No Shape – soon to be released by Willowtip Records – you would never guess that the band were now operating as a four-piece with long-tenured vocalist Henry Pryce having stepped down, because on In Light, No Shape, Cognizance sound just as fierce and knife-sharp as they’ve ever sounded for 10 songs and thirty-seven-and-a-half minutes of deft guitar work, head-twisting drums, and ground-cracking bass, all punctuated by an equally surgical vocal attack on top of it. Somehow, the machine that is Cognizance remains as tightly wound as ever. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: WAMPYRIC RITES AND NOIRSUAIRE — “CONSECRATION OF NOCTURNAL ENTITIES”

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May 012026
 

(written by Islander)

Two steadfast standard-bearers of vampyric black metal mysticism and nocturnal transcendence have joined forces on a new album-length split that will be released on May 5th by the Lithuanian label Inferna Profundus Records. These two are Wampyric Rites from Ecuador and Noirsuaire from France, and the authentic name of their split is Consecration Of Nocturnal Entities.

Each band has forged three songs for the album, for a total of 34 minutes of galvanizing, glorious, and grievous music, and it truly is a union of kindred spirits. On this Bandcamp Friday we’re giving everyone a chance to listen to all of it. Continue reading »

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