AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: OROMET — “THE SINKING ISLE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 032025
 

(written by Islander)

I’m part of a chat group with some long-distance friends who also write about metal (outside the cohort here at NCS). Some of them had listened to Sacramento-based Oromet’s new album The Sinking Isle before I had. One of them acclaimed it as the best funeral doom album of the year, and others agreed.

I thought that was a bold claim, given that this fall had already brought forth a new album by the old gods Evoken and will soon see a tremendous half of a split by Convocation. But while I couldn’t completely avoid some skepticism (not the band) about the assertion, I was certainly left eager to find out for myself what kindled such enthusiasm.

Not that I wasn’t already pretty taken with Oromet, based on their self-titled debut album from 2023 and their phenomenal cover of Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone” released just this past July (which I had some things to say about here). But still, standing toe-to-toe with those other bands mentioned above (and other fine groups not mentioned) would be no mean feat. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, OCTOBER 2025

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Nov 032025
 

(October 2025 is done and dusted, Gonzo has survived another month, and so he surfaces here to present reviews of four recommended albums released in the year’s 10th month.)

At the risk of sounding cliched, it’s always a depressing reality when Halloween comes to an end. It’s even worse when daylight savings time kicks in on the same weekend, reminding us that the Big Dark is already upon us, signaling the months of snow and rain and subzero temperatures that lurk around the corner.

Choose your coping mechanism as you wish, but whatever they are, I recommend you add these four new releases to distract you from the horrors. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 032025
 

(Andy Synn highlights six gems from October you may have overlooked)

I’m going to say something controversial here, but… if you see someone talking a big game about how they “listened to 500 albums this month” they’re probably lying.

Ok, maybe not lying (though some are probably doing it just for clout and clicks) but definitely stretching the truth a little, because there’s a big difference in my book between hearing an album and actually listening to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do wish I had time to listen to that many albums each month, and I’m sure there are other writers/reviewers out there who legitimately rack up bigger numbers than I do, but chances are that anyone making a hyperbolic claim like that isn’t giving the albums in question the time and attention they deserve… especially if they’re a writer/reviewer who is supposed to actually be offering some insight into the albums/artists in question (something which takes more than just a couple of cursory spins to do).

So while I can’t, at the moment, give a full-throated and whole-hearted recommendation to everything I heard last month – the ones I’ve chosen to feature here are the ones I feel most qualified to comment on, but there’s still many more I need to spend time with and process properly – I would encourage you, once you’re done with this article, to go check out the latest releases from Galge, Scorching Tomb, and Torture Machine (if you’re of a Death Metal-y persuasion), Haeresis, Scalding, and Sunken if you’re more into Black Metal, and Mriodom and Stonebirds if you’re looking for something on the groovy, Stoner-y side of things.

Before then, however, here’s some albums I definitely can recommend to you.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER), MISOTHEIST, DARVAZA, MARTRÖÐ, JZOVCE, ARCANE MARROW, SEDNA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 022025
 

(written by Islander)

Like yesterday, today I had enough time to include a lot of new music and to spill a great volume of words about almost all of it.

For reasons I’ll explain, I’m beginning with a new album that’s well outside the usual parameters of this column, but then launching straight into a sequence of black metal songs (in varying shades of course) that are fantastically thrilling, and sometimes unexpectedly sublime. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MUERTO, LEPRETHERE, ROTTEN SOUND, HEXJAKT, PËRL, MASSA NERA

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 012025
 


artwork by the legend Frank Frazetta

(written by Islander)

I hope those of you who celebrated Halloween got through it with all your fingers intact. Oh wait, that’s a different holiday. But the wish still holds, even if the risks of losing digits might not have been as great. It all depends on where you put them and what you hold and whether some masked goon is firing rubber bullets at your raised fists.

I got through Halloween with all my digits intact, and the three I use for typing have been busily pecking away at this Saturday collection. It comes later than usual because I got a late start and was really confounded in deciding what to pick.

I was pretty thorough in saving links and files this week, which meant there were a fuckload of them staring at me this morning, and I had only sampled a small number of them during the week. I would say that more than half of them were of the black metal persuasion, so I shoved off a lot of those candidates (but not all of them) for tomorrow, which is also therefore guaranteed to be confounding. And there’s a bit of a curveball at the end, of course.

On we go…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAŁ● — “LUDZIE BŁĄDZĄCY W NOCY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 312025
 

(written by Islander)

The Polish musician (or musicians?) Ø Grémium  has (have?) many guises, creating music under the names of such bands and projects as Ùna, Toska, Nocte, and Etěr (whose debut album of avant-garde death metal we recently reviewed here). And now another name will be added to that list: CAŁ●.

On November 3rd, the debut album of CAŁ● — Ludzie błądzący w nocy (“People wandering in the night”) — will be released by Devoted Art Propaganda in the EU and by Fiadh Productions in the U.S. As for what inspired it, we’ve seen this cryptic question: “Can the band’s ethos be captured with the words: ‘In rapture, against unity, before the guards, it drips inwards, CAŁ●?” And we’ve seen this statement by CAŁ● (translated from the Polish):

Standing on the shoulders of giants: Jan Kasprowicz, Jerzy Żuławski, Józef Jedlicz, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jorge Luis Borges, Teofil Kwiatkowski, Władysław Wankie, Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Kawalerowicz

As for the music, we’re premiering a full stream of the album today, preceded by more than a few thoughts about its dark and unsettling and equally invigorating sounds. Continue reading »

YELLOW EYES: “CONFUSION GATE”

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Oct 312025
 

(written by Islander)

In June of last year Gilead Media announced that it would be releasing a collaborative album by Mizmor and Hell (Alluvion, which hit the streets in April 2025) — and explained that it would be one of three final new releases leading up to the label’s closure. Whenever that day comes, it will leave behind for me, and for many, many others, a host of great memories assembled over the course of dozens of records wonderfully curated and provided by Gilead over an almost 20-year period, as well as some equally indelible memories of Gilead Fest.

One more powerful memory is about to be added to all the others.

Today, October 31st, Gilead Media is making a surprise release of the second of those three final albums, Confusion Gate by New York’s Yellow Eyes. It marks a continuation of a relationship between the band and the label that led to Gilead‘s release of Sick With Bloom (2015), Immersion Trench Reverie (2017), and Rare Field Ceiling (2019), as well as vinyl editions for Hammer of Night (2013). I’ve been fortunate to hear Confusion Gate before today, and have some thoughts to share. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DE PROFUNDIS / PLAGUE PIT / SOULFRACTURE

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 292025
 

(Andy Synn recommends three short-but-sweet releases from the UK Metal underground)

Let me start off today with a little announcement of my own… sadly, for reasons beyond our control the third and final part of the Beyond Grace EP trilogy (which will also, Voltron-style, form our third album when all connected together) won’t be out this year.

I know, I know… I’m as disappointed as you are… but having lost most of September due to two different weddings (including my own) and their accompanying stag-dos/bachelor parties, and then struggling to book studio time for the drums, it really couldn’t be helped.

We’ll still be releasing another cover track, most likely at the start of January (and quite possibly as part of an awesome charity compilation), and then following that with another video prior to the EP/album release (where you’ll be able to get the digital version of the new EP and the collected CD/LP version, at the same time) but I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a little longer for your next fix.

But don’t worry, because today I’m bringing you three other short-form releases from three other killer British bands – including one we’ve toured with before, plus another that we’re hoping to tour with next year – that I’m hoping will help ease your obvious disappointment!

Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “DRACONIAN DARKNESS II”

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Oct 292025
 

(DGR continues his very long history of writing about the music of Finland’s Wolfheart at NCS with this review of their new EP Draconian Darkness II, out now via Reigning Phoenix Music.)

Wolfheart have developed many patterns for themselves over their career and we have dove headlong into them many a time with each successive album. One of the more common ones for the Wolfheart crew in recent years, since their Napalm Records and then current Reigning Phoenix signings, is to hammer together an EP or single in between albums and unleash it closer to the end of summer.

The name Wolfheart remains in constant discussion then, with releases like Skull Soldiers carving the path for the EP segment of the crowd and songs like “Iku-Turso” laying the groundwork for the occasional loose-laying single. It’s meant as a sort of comfort food for those of us who’ve taken to the band’s formulation of melodic death metal, forged in fire yet epic enough to soundtrack mountain climbing in a blizzard, something present that is consistent in quality with the album prior but still has a shiny newness to it to tide people over.

Wolfheart‘s latest gathering of material of this ilk arrived in late-September, entitled Draconian Darkness II, offering up a continuation of the group’s 2024 release Draconian Darkness and containing an oddball mixture of material to satiate the completionist in us all: Two new songs, one live track, an acoustic take on a Draconian Darkness song, and the orchestral segment of a different one of the same album. Continue reading »

AZELL – ASTRALIS

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 282025
 

(Andy Synn has some very nice words to say about the second album from Kentucky’s Azell)

I do love a good concept album, don’t you?

A lot of that I attribute to my dad’s influence, as he was (and is) a big Prog fan, which meant I grew up being viariously exposed to the likes of The Wall, Tales from Topographic Oceans, and Quadrophenia.

And while some of my turn to Punk and Hardcore (and then Metal) in my teenage years may have been a form of rebellion against the outlandish excess and indulgent extravagance of these sorts of records, over time I’ve come to appreciate them as an art form more and more.

Note, however, that I explicitly said good concept albums, because there’s also been a lot of bad ones – from self-indulgent fantasy fan-fiction to shamelessly generic sci-fi schlock to badly-plotted (and barely coherent) political allegories, and everything in between – and it’s important to draw a distinction between the two.

Thankfully, however, the new album from sludge-slinging husband-and-wife duo Azell falls firmly on the former side of the divide.

Continue reading »

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