THE LURKING FEAR: “OUT OF THE VOICELESS GRAVE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 082017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli prepared this review of the debut album by Sweden’s The Lurking Fear, released on August 11 by Century Media.)

Let’s revisit what Swedish death metal royalty group The Lurking Fear had to say when they announced their formation:

“We want our Death Metal ugly, twisted and possessed. We miss the urgency, intensity and ‘realness’ in a lot of the modern Death Metal, therefore it is natural for us to stray away from the streamlined sounds of today, but rather focus on bringing sheer, natural weirdness and horror back to the table…””

This band has a ton of prestige-level pedigree behind it. Besides being fronted by Tomas Lindberg, the king of the mid-range vomitus bark, the members have history in bands such as The Crown, Edge Of Sanity, Marduk, Cradle Of Filth, God Macabre — the list is fucking long. I also appreciate very much TLF’s mission statement because I agree that death metal nowadays is very much lacking the urgency, intensity, and realness it speaks of. I’ve reviewed, and others here have reviewed, plenty of exceptions to this rule of course — our site thrives on the deathly arts — but trust me that what we give praise to here is a baffling minority. Continue reading »

SEPTICFLESH: “CODEX OMEGA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 082017
 

 

(DGR wrote this extended review of the new album by the Greek band SepticFlesh, which was released on September 1 in North America by Prosthetic Records.)

It’s hard to believe that three years have already passed since yours truly was given the opportunity to review Greece’s symphonic death metal arbiters SepticFlesh and their album Titan. Since then, I’ve dedicated a fair share of words to the band, as their brand of orchestra mixed in with crushingly heavy death metal scratches just the right itch, but I always wind up musing about the same subject, which is how the band’s chosen genres combine in order to form the band as it is today.

It’s interesting to me because, pulled apart, the orchestral music genre and metal genre are two gigantic beasts in their own right, so the thought of combining them makes sense. It’s been done for years, of course, but the gentlemen in SepticFlesh have developed a unique mastery of it. Even in the hands of masters it can occasionally get a little unwieldy — because although the two combine well, in the world of SepticFlesh they are also treading a very thin line, and depending on what side of that line they land on is the version of SepticFlesh you’ll be getting at that point in time. Continue reading »

RASTER DENSITY: “MOTHER OV MANKIND”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 072017
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by the Finnish band Raster Density, which was released in May of this year.)

It’s been something of a banner year for the Technical side of the Death Metal spectrum so far, with new releases from both established luminaries (Decrepit Birth, Origin, Inanimate Existence) and up-and-coming acts (Replacire, Enfold Darkness) grabbing hype and headlines for their furious fretsmanship and shameless dedication to crushing complexity.

And while this torrent of technical tumult doesn’t show any signs of abating any time soon – with new albums from Archspire (which I should be reviewing next week), Fleshkiller (aka Extol 2.0), and The Faceless (which, yes, I have heard) all on the horizon – the sheer array of impressively OTT offerings clamouring for our attention means it’s inevitable that some bands will slip through the cracks.

Which, until now at least, had very much been the case with Finland’s Raster Density. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEVIL’S EMISSARY — “DEMIURGE ASCETICISM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

Offered in praise of the Harvester of Worlds, the great Swallower of Suns, the new EP by the Polish band Devil’s Emissary is a stunning amalgam of black and death metal that shocks and seduces in equal measures. It’s due for release on September 9 by Third Eye Temple, but we present a full stream of the EP today. Its name is Demiurge Asceticism.

This new three-song work follows the groups’s second album by two years, and reflects an evolution in sound, one in which staggering doses of heaviness have been blended with spine-shivering eruptions of black fury. The result is a changing pageant of armageddon-like chaos, pestilential doom, and blood-freezing grandeur, a tale of destruction and resurgence. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET — UNBEHELD — “DUST”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

(DGR reviews the new EP by Unbeheld from British Columbia, which was released near the end of July.)

Something happened in the three years since their self-titled EP in 2014 that caused Canadian death metal band Unbeheld to develop a nihilistic streak that has spilled over into their music. The group’s latest EP, Dust, features seven songs and not a friendly thought amongst them. The band themselves even explain this upfront on the Bandcamp page for Dust, stating:

Dust is lyrically based on thoughts rooted in depression and anxiety. The sort of feelings that one dealing with such mental conditions goes through on a daily basis. The sense that nothing ever quite feels “right”. The fact that that exists in itself is an absurd phenomena. It also deals with the usual death metal themes of death and violence; but instead of being about the process of these things, it more so deals with the thoughts that go through ones mind during death and or while performing acts of violence as well as a general fear of fading away into nothingness. That is to say that after we die; nothing we did really mattered.

I’m not a gambling man but I’d guess that “friendly” and “approachable” will likely not be the words attached to Unbeheld’s music, and to be fair, the artwork for Dust matches the music within — intense and violent. Continue reading »

PSYGNOSIS: “NEPTUNE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 052017
 

 

(DGR prepared this extended review of the latest album by the French band Psygnosis, which was released in May.)

I tend to approach French now-instrumental band Psygnosis with something of an art-house cafe motif in mind. Over the years, the group have slowly morphed into a project that has combined quiet, minimalistic tendencies — mostly credited to small electronics usage — with fierce blasts of heavy metal, and a love of inserting movie samples into their songs so that they become something of a story that you’re only getting a partial glimpse of.

The overall picture is usually spread throughout the whole disc, but even then it often feels like something you’ve entered into in medias res so that it isn’t just the music you’re enjoying, you’re also getting the soundtrack to a series of events that you’re not witnessing. There’s no picture except the one that Psygnosis chooses to paint, and so the music takes on a dreamlike quality, in between the heavier segments — which, as they’ve gone later in their career, have become a little bit less of the focus and more the backing foundation.

Psygnosis really nailed this formula with their release Human Be[ing] in 2014, and afterward would make a drastic change in sound, which saw their vocalist bowing out in favor of becoming an entirely instrumental group, and a cellist stepping in to take the lead spot – with the extra strings now serving to take over the vocal lines. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ENTOMBMENT / IRON FLESH / SEPREVATION

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 042017
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three recent EPs, with music streams of course.)

Phew, time really flies doesn’t it? I mean, somehow it’s already September and although we still have a huge number of releases to look forward to before the year’s end, I find my mind already turning towards the upcoming Listmania with an equal mix of anticipation and trepidation.

Thankfully that particular furore is still a little way off and, although work is keeping me pretty darn busy at the moment, I should be able to fit in quite a lot of reviews and features before the time comes for our annual wrap-up.

So, without further ado, get ready to wrap your earholes around three short, but succulent morsels of Thrash, Death, and Death-Thrash courtesy of Entombment (USA), Iron Flesh (FR), and Seprevation (UK). Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 25): VENENUM, SOIJL, IN REVERENCE, ATREXIAL

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Sep 042017
 

 

(Our ally Gorger from Norway reaches the quarter-century mark in his series, continuing to shed light on underground gems that our all-seeing eyes have somehow failed to spot. To find more of his discoveries, type “Gorger” in our search bar or visit Gorger’s Metal.)

Oh, my… has more than two months passed since my last post already? Holy fuck. I keep promising myself to make at least one of these appearances each month, but it’s as if people around me can smell it when I’ve got time to spare. Maybe it’s time for that semi-annual bath. To paraphrase Mr. J. Lennon: “Life is what happens when you sit your tired ass down”.

Oh, well. Here’s another four chunks of metallic meat that you shouldn’t miss out on. And since there was no protest last time around, I’ll attempt at shortening down on the initial overloaded writing, whilst leaving a shrouded clue of a link for the utterly nerdy connoisseurs. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALL PIGS MUST DIE, LO!, INSURRECTION, REAL COPS, CAPTURE THE SUN

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 012017
 

 

I finished my work on the U.S. east coast last night, and for reasons I won’t bore you with, it turned into a sucky day. A few stiff drams of the amber bead improved my mood, which improved further as I listened to the music collected here. This was one of those interesting listening sessions where the things I picked to stream just kind of fit together (at least in my addled brain), as if someone had chosen them for a playlist.

I’m going the airport now for the trip home. There’s a premiere coming your way a bit later this morning, but otherwise this will be another short day for posts at our site. Things will get back to (ab)normal around here this weekend and next week.

ALL PIGS MUST DIE

I discovered All Pigs Must Die for the first time watching them kick the holy bejesus out of an audience at a Seattle club back in August 2011. They were taking part in Southern Lord’s The Power of the Riff tour. The next month they released their debut album, God Is War, which was a hard-to-define amalgam of punk, hardcore, crust, black metal, and death metal that was downright beastly. Continue reading »

ANCST AND KING APATHY: A SPLIT

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 302017
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the just-released split by the German bands Ancst and King Apathy.)

If you’ve been hanging around NCS for a while you’ll doubtless be familiar, at least in passing, with the names Ancst and King Apathy.

Both are part of a loose-knit scene of Post/Black/Hardcore influenced Metal bands operating in and around Northern Germany, and both have been featured on this little blog of ours several times before, the most recent of which was my review of the latest Ancst EP, Furnace.

However, on the off chance that you don’t recognise the latter name perhaps it’s worth me pointing out that, until very recently, King Apathy were actually called Thränenkind, and released two albums under this particular moniker, the most recent of which (reviewed here) was itself called King Apathy.

Confused?

Don’t be. All you really need to know is that both bands make some intensely emotional, and emotionally intense, music, and that they’ve now teamed up for a split EP. Continue reading »

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