AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IMPURIST — “EVOLVING CORTEX”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 032025
 

(written by Islander)

Impurist are a new death metal band formed in Hull, England in 2023. Their lineup features former and current members of Extreme Noise Terror, Gorerotted, Winterfylleth, and Introrectalgestation. They proudly proclaim that they have taken influence from the bands they grew up listening to, and they obviously must have grown up listening to violent horrors.

Impurist made their recording debut in April of last year with an EP aptly named Punishment Without Mercy. Since then they’ve recorded a second EP entitled Evolving Cortex. It will be released by 783label on CD, cassette tape, and 12″ vinyl — and the vinyl edition will include the band’s debut EP as the B-side.

The new EP, Evolving Cortex, includes three songs, and we have some thoughts about each of them — along with the premiere of a frightening animated lyric video for the title song. Continue reading »

VACUOUS: “IN HIS BLOOD”

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Feb 032025
 

(Here we have Wil Cifer‘s review of the second album by the UK death metal band Vacuous, which is set for release on February 28th by Relapse Records.)

Death Metal continues to gain popularity with bands like Cannibal Corpse as festival headliners and playing arenas. Its aggressive release makes it perhaps the most fun of all metal sub-genres yet it is all too often stuck in its ’90s nostalgia. This leads to bands idolizing the Morbid Angel‘s and Obituary‘s of the past and not always pressing forward with fresh new sounds and songwriting that moves beyond the bounds of its double-driven and growled vocals.

The sophomore album of Vacuous, In His Blood, finds the band breaking out from the pack to create their niche and find their way without leaning too heavily on their influences. Sure, guttural vocals are the main narrative, but other anguished vocalizations are employed, to give the tormented-larynx approach more purpose, rather than an obligatory gurgle underlying the frantic din. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MNAJDRA, PLUTONIAN SHORE, PURE WRATH, SIVYJ YAR, SLEEP PARALYSIS, SVRM, UTHULLUN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 022025
 

(written by Islander)

In both these Sunday columns and the more genre-scattered ones I do on Saturdays I tend to write about individual songs more than complete EPs or albums. That allows me to cover more ground, and to bring more bands and their forthcoming releases to people’s attention.

The downside is that lots of listeners don’t really put much weight on individual songs. They want to know about the complete record, maybe through a review or more likely by listening to all of it when that becomes possible.

I don’t have any way of knowing whether the pluses of my strategy outweigh the minuses, but I’m wedded to it for better or worse. Today’s column is a classic example of that, though I have included a trio of complete but short EPs in the mix. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, BALMOG, JUODVARNIS, DARK MEDITATION, GRAVEWITCH, MESSA, MARES OF THRACE, IMPURITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 012025
 


These are bathrooms I visited in Port Orchard, Washington

(written by Islander)

It’s been a hell of a week hasn’t it? More like a week from hell. The daily news has become a series of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the ghastly ones whose details have frequently appeared on the cover of metal albums.

On the other hand, it’s been a heavenly week if you focus on the kind of music that typically makes its way into these Saturday roundups. So let’s forget about the news for now and move right to that!

MANTAR (Germany)

I’m never going to not rush to check out new music from Mantar. (Forgive the double-negative, I guess I haven’t completely forgotten about the news.) Especially when it’s prefaced by this kind of statement from guitarist/vocalist Hanno Klänhardt: Continue reading »

THE GREAT OLD ONES – KADATH

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 302025
 

(Andy Synn traverses the dreamlands in search of the meaning and measure of Kadath)

My history with the musical cult known as The Great Old Ones is a long and storied one indeed.

Way back in 2014 I selected their stunning second album (and still their finest hour, in my opinion) Tekeli-li as one of the best albums of the year, and not long after that I was enraptured by the band’s headlining performance at The Black Heart in London (a show which, despite them moving on to bigger stages, remains their most iconic performance in my mind).

In the years since then I have written about the band multiple times, offering my thoughts on both their live shows and their subsequent recorded output – 2017’s bigger and more bombastic EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy and 2019’s more furious and ferocious Cosmicism – and remained a faithful acolyte through it all.

And yet there’s always been a part of me wondering, and worrying, if they’d ever be able to recapture that same sense of magic – that immersive, otherworldly atmosphere – which permeated their early work(s).

But… perhaps the stars have finally aligned once more?

Continue reading »

WARDRUNA: “BIRNA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Jan 292025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile prepared the following extensive discussion of Wardruna‘s just-released new album Birna.)

Bears have been a constant presence in our minds, stories, and myths from the times undreamed of. It was those first encounters between our ancestors and the majestic dwellers of the forest that shaped our very understanding of nature. For the bears, so perfectly aligned with the changes of the seasons, were like a beacon that shone its light on our wandering hearts and thus setting us on a path of revelation, a path from which we have strayed away in our complacency. Time has come again to take the road less traveled and return to the shade of the trees and the rustling of the leaves.

If there is one band in existence today that we would call upon to take us back into nature’s realm, there is no other better candidate than Wardruna. This Norwegian force of (and for) nature needs no particular introduction, as they have forged their own blazing trail from the noctilucent North into the hearts of the world. Their Runaljod trilogy is a towering achievement in modern music and serves both as an inspiration to many and as a reminder that we belong to the Earth and not the other way around.

Released on January 24th by Sony Music and By Norse Music, the sixth studio album by the band is called Birna and sees their mastermind Einar Selvik reaching for inspiration deep into the dens and the burrows of the earth where the hibernating bears dream on their moss-covered beds. The concept behind the album is best described by the band itself: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBSCURE SPHINX / SLAUGHTERSUN / ΘΛΊΨΙΣ

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 282025
 

(Andy Synn promises to review more EPs this year… we’ll see about that!)

Every year I promise that I’m going to feature and review more EPs here at NCS… and every year I fail spectacularly at this, and have to jam in all the short-form releases of the year into my annual “List Week” instead.

But, mark my words, this year things are going to be different! Although, I might have said that before…

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PRAETORIAN — “PYLON CULT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

At the end of this month APF Records will release Pylon Cult, the debut album by Praetorian from Hertfordshire in the UK. The label describes the album this way:

A new lesson in vile, disgusting and gruesome blackened sludge metal, mixed in a volatile cocktail of death metal, thrash and hardcore. Praetorian are here to take you on a wild ride with an album that fluctuates between hi-octane energy, colossal doomy riffs, a savage dual-vocal attack and insane tempo changes, all culminating in a violent, nightmarish thrill ride.

That provides a faithful description of the brutalizing but mind-bending sonic nihilism provided by Pylon Cult — a title that comes from contemporary British author David Southwell’s imagined county Hookland, in which a so-called cult begin to worship pylons in order to harness their energy.

But we have our own thoughts to share about this ruthless but consistently fascinating album — in addition to the main attraction, which is our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2025

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)

Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.

So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.

Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CONAN, GREY AURA, SEPULCHRAL CURSE, NITE, DEATH OBVIOUS, ABRAXAS HORN (AND MORE)

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 252025
 

(written by Islander)

In the early part of this month, as the old year moved into the new, the volume of new album announcements and new songs subsided. For people like those of us at NCS, things got kind of slow and comfortable.

Well, of course that turned out to be comparable to a “negative storm surge,” a phenomenon in which waves recede before a typhoon strikes, the water being pulled away from the coast by the storm’s low pressure system before the ocean comes rushing back when the typhoon strikes in full force.

Which is what is now happening in the music we pay attention to. Everything is in full force, and I’m drowning in new music. I know it gets repetitive and possibly mind-numbing when I share the count, but I’ve got more than 60 open tabs on my computer, each one linked to a song that came out just this past week which I was curious to check out in planning today’s column, on top of a lot more from last week.

Obviously, I didn’t listen to all of them. Obviously, I wouldn’t have liked all of them if I had. I liked the ones below that I did get to. How did I get to them within that great mass of tabs? I admit I gravitated to bands I’ve liked in the past — though I did take a few shots in the dark that also paid off. And I decided to add some music at the end without commentary (due to vanishing time).

P.S. In the early evening I’m going to an annual party in Seattle across the water from my home. I’m sure that if I make it back home, it won’t be until close to 2 am. I’m also sure I won’t make any effort to wake up before noon on Sunday, and will be woozy when I do. So, don’t expect a SHADES OF BLACK column this weekend (I won’t have enough time to pull it together before leaving home this afternoon). Continue reading »

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