SHADES OF BLACK: PILORI, SAILLE, DOODSWENS, FOGHAZER, PETRICHOR, 3 T

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Feb 082026
 

(written by Islander)

I was out with my spouse and two other couples last night. Didn’t get to bed until after midnight, didn’t wake up until the morning hours were well underway, didn’t feel very human at that point or at any other points leading up to the present.

Fortunately, I had already made my choices for this column yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I would be in the best position this morning to explain why I like them so much. But in listening to the songs again, they completely blew away the mental cobwebs. Continue reading »

FINAL DOSE: “ENDLESS WOE”

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Feb 062026
 

(Below we have Todd Manning’s review of a new EP by London’s Final Dose, released in late January by Wolves of Hades.)

Less than a year after the release of their full-length Under the Eternal Shadow (premiered and reviewed here at NCS), London’s Final Dose is back with a new EP, Endless Woe. Under the Eternal Shadow made it on my year-end list for 2025, so this latest release deserves some attention.

Most press refers to Final Dose as hardcore-influenced black metal. While that’s not necessarily wrong, it definitely minimizes what the group actually does. Certainly, they deliver the visceral assault such a descriptor implies. Opener “Golden Chalice” blends d-beats and punk moments with savage black metal, but Final Dose manages to maintain the atmosphere of black metal as well. The opening guitar figure evokes all the frost-bitten phantoms one can hope for, and then they segue into icy blasts. But just under two minutes in, a riff enters that splits the difference between Darkthrone and Minor Threat. It all works, whether one is meditating by candlelight or dancing in a pit; these guys have the magick. Continue reading »

BLACK RABBIT: “WARREN OF NECROSIS”

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Feb 052026
 

(Below we present our warren-dweller DGR’s review of the most recent release by the Dutch band Black Rabbit.)

Reminder for self at end of year when going backwards for year-end purposes: This is a review for a 2025 release.

I find myself musing on this constantly, if not just because it serves as a suitable cattle-prod to the brain to lure me from my “catch up on a whole year’s worth of sleep in two-weeks” stupor that the post-holiday season seems to have lulled me into. It is interesting that the first few releases of the year always find themselves entangled with a demented form of catch-up from the previous year.

Time being the non-infinite resource from a mortal standpoint, it has not allowed us to cover the myriad things we wish to write about. There will always be one more, one late discovery, and often we invent excuses to continue looking backwards because a signal cast off into space still exists in some form of radio wave. We quest to find it and ackowledge it, and so the tail end of one year hangs on like the most stubborn bastard out there, refusing to let us continue forward into the next series of unending car-crashes that we adoringly refer to as our favored musical genre.

We also, as a result, have compulsions and imagined debts that must be repaid and a mused-over line in a year-end list quickly becomes a one-way directive of something owed, whether a band is aware of it or not. Thus, it was promised that we would dive into Black Rabbit’s December-released EP Warren Of Necrosis and goddamnit here we are, only two months later – as opposed to say five or ten as our previous records have been – looking at the continuation of the death and thrash metal act’s conceptual universe, the follower EP to May 2025’s Chronolysis. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISGUSTINGEST — “DIGITAL CYST”

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Feb 032026
 

(written by Islander)

Look around and you can find forms of entertainment (as well as real-world events) that are disgusting. Keep looking and you can find things that are more disgusting. And then there is Disgustingest.

Dictionaries and grammarians would frown on that word, but as metal band-names go, it works a lot better than MOST DISGUSTING.

But what were these Coloradans thinking when they picked that name? After all, the history of death metal is filled with big rotting piles of maggot-ridden, stomach-churning musical foulness. It’s a high bar to surmount (or if you prefer, a really low one to crawl under) to hold yourself out as Disgustingest. But these people do their damnedest to live up to the challenge, as you’re about to find out.

Today we’re helping announce that on February 20th Paper Wings Records will release Disgustingest’s second EP, aptly named Coagulating Putrescence, and we’re also premiering its first single, “Digital Cyst“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GOUR, BERGTAGEN, VAULDERIE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 012026
 

(written by Islander)

January is a schizophrenic month for the release of new music. Labels and bands seem to recognize that people aren’t focusing as much as usual on new music, because they’re diverted by things happening during the “holiday season” and then by the turbulence of returning to work and school, and so the pace of new releases in the early part of January is slower than usual. But after a week or two, the dam bursts, and new stuff starts flooding out in a fury. At least that’s how I see it from where I sit.

I had SO MANY new songs and records I was interested in checking out for purposes of this column, too many for me to realistically investigate, especially since our terribly unreliable internet service has been down since mid-day on Saturday. My phone has worked reasonably well as a hot-spot for some things, like typing what you’re reading now, but it doesn’t provide a very good platform for streaming music.

The result is that I defaulted to music I had already acquired for myself before our net service collapsed. Which is not a bad way to proceed, because there’s a reason why I had acquired all this music for myself — it’s all very good! Each selection is also very different from the other two. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WSTRĘT — “ENLIGHTENED MISANTHROPY”

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Jan 292026
 

(written by Islander)

Near the end of last summer I came across a two-song debut EP named Subhuman Eschatology by the Polish band Wstręt. As I wrote at the time, it floored me. It was like someone spun the intensity dial until it wouldn’t go any further.

Those two songs warped together ingredients of black and death metal to create body-bruising blows and to inflict mind-shredding, needle-sharp riffing that dug in deep. The songs generated moods that were wrecking and wracked, terrorizing and tormented, exhilarating and oppressive, coupled with ragged, reverberating roars were heartless and harrowing.

Given the nature of that introduction to Wstręt, I found myself simultaneously frightened and thrilled to discover that Godz Ov War Productions would be releasing a second EP from them, this new one a 20-minute affair named Enlightened Misanthropy.

Now you’ll have a chance to form your own impressions about it through our full stream of these five new tracks in advance of the EP’s release tomorrow — though of course we have some impressions of our own to share first. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GUYOĐ / LOW / NIGHTMARER

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Jan 282026
 

(Andy Synn recommends you carve out some time in your schedule to check out these 3 EPs)

Last year, after several years of promising – but, ultimately failing to deliver on those promises – I actually managed to listen to (significantly) more EPs than the year(s) prior.

So in 2026 I’m going to try and continue that trend – or, at the very least, try to stay about on a par with last year’s numbers – beginning with this terrifying triptych of deathly delights from Guyođ (AUT), Low (NL), and Nightmarer (US/DE).

Continue reading »

VOIDHÄMMER: “NOXIOUS EMISSIONS”

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Jan 232026
 

(We have our contributor Chile to thank for the following vivid review of the debut demo from California’s Voidhämmer, which was released earlier this month by Caligari Records.)

Yes, the temperature outside is about to go down below -20°C or -4 on the Fahrenheit scale for all you non-followers of the International System of Units (which somehow makes it more tolerable on paper, just barely), and with spring thaw still months away, what better way to warm up than to fire up some filthy, rotting death metal.

You could argue that your everyday central heating would suffice, but nothing warms the heart and soul as hearing those riffs pounding down from your speakers and into your orifices. Newcomers in the Californian outfit of Voidhämmer, who are not really newcomers (see below), understand this very well and offer a variety of putrid riffs on their debut EP/demo Noxious Emissions. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MATRIPHAGY — “FROM NOTHING TO NOTHINGNESS”

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Jan 212026
 

(written by Islander)

On January 23rd, just a couple days from now, Iron Fortress Records will release a new EP by the Massachusetts brutal death metal trio Matriphagy, digitally and in a CD edition that also includes songs from a previous Matriphagy split and an EP as bonuses. What we have for you today is a premiere stream of all the songs on the new EP.

This EP, titled From Nothing to Nothingness, includes three tracks, the last of which is Matriphagy’s demented and demolishing re-working of the Cryptopsy song “Benedictine Convulsions“. All three songs are ruinously punishing, unhinged in various ways, and frequently as head-spinning as they are traumatic. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BONG-RA, UDRĘKA, VERDUN, FERNDOM, SEAR, LUCERNA MUNDI

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 182026
 

(written by Islander)

Two days ago people in the tiny Spanish village of San Bartolomé de Pinares renewed a tradition that’s purportedly five centuries long — building bonfires in the central streets and riding horses through the flames. This is done on the eve of the festival of Saint Anthony the Abbott, the patron saint of domestic animals, because what honors domestic animals better than forcing some big ones to hurtle through an inferno?

I always look for photos of the event because they’re typically amazing and because they’re usually pretty good metaphors for people here and around the world trying to brave whatever fiery hells are burning around us. Lots of those to choose from these days.

Oddly, when I went looking for photos of this year’s ritual I had to wade through snowy photos of armed Greenlandic polar bears and sled dogs. What the hell was that about? (Well, I knew, and I guess it’s proof that AI is good for something besides kicking people out of work and threatening humanity with extinction.) Continue reading »

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