AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NO LIVING WITNESS — “AEONS OF DISINTEGRATION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 022026
 

(Today is the day when the Washington State extreme metal band No Living Witness are releasing a new EP named Aeons of Disintegration, and to help spread the word our contributor Obsolete Mystic is hosting its full streaming premiere, preceded by an enthusiastic review.)

Today’s subject, No Living Witness, caught my attention from the first few seconds of their 2026 single “Dehydrator”. It had elements of Suffocation, Behemoth, Shade Empire, and a good bit of influence from the early work of all those PA-centered death metal bands we were all hyped for, like Rivers Of Nihil and Black Crown Initiate. It caught my attention immediately, and held it, and then I saw the criminally low numbers on their platforms and wanted to both review this EP and also give you readers a chance to hear it yourselves — and so I talked No Living Witness into exclusively streaming Aeons Of Disintegration here on the day of its release. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ARCHITECT OF SETH, CLØUDY SKIES, DUMAL, DUNGEON SERPENT, IMMORTAL DISSOLVER, MESSE DE MINUIT, OUTER HEAVEN, TEMPLE OF VOID, VELNIAS, WITCH RIPPER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 192026
 

(written by Islander)

It has been quite a while since I’ve done this, 92 days to be precise — “this” being to use the OVERFLOWING STREAMS banner for one of these Saturday roundups instead of the usual SEEN AND HEARD. I don’t have a precise dividing line between them, it’s more of a gut feel, but my gut tells me that 10 selections is an overflow.

Beyond using the different banner name for collections of this size, I also dispense with the time required to download, upload, and re-size album art, and I put the release info in lists instead of sentences. I also had delusions of trying to be a bit more concise in my comments about the songs and videos, too, but for the most part I didn’t succeed.

I also didn’t spend time trying to figure out a flow for the music, a sequencing that would generate either companionability or stark contrasts among the songs (or both), but instead put everything in alphabetical order by band name.

The objective of all this was to be more efficient with the time I’ve got this morning so I can include more instead of less. In some settings less can be more, but not today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BONE EATER — “PARASITES OF DEAD EARTH”

 Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 152026
 

(written by Islander)

Bone Eater is a New Brunswick-based death/doom/sludge unit, led as a solo outing by the multi-instrumentalist Scott Miller. Formed in 2021, it takes its name from a worm that bores into the bones of rotting whale carcasses to feed off of them.

Bone Eater released its debut EP MMXXII in 2022. And now, on September 18th, Bone Eater will release its second EP, MMXXVI. This one will be compiled with the debut release and put out via Ancient Temple Recordings and Phage Tapes on vinyl and CD, and through Doomshire Tapes and Crypt Death Mortuary on tape.

The new EP is a two-song offering, but it’s a substantial one, with each song reaching beyond the 10-minute mark. The EP is also a devastating, take-no-prisoners destroyer, as you’ll begin to discover through our video premiere of its first song, “Parasites of Dead Earth“. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CONTENTION / FROM BELOW / GOD’S HATE / INITIATE / JUDICIARY / VILE MIND

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 102026
 

(Andy Synn presents six short-but-sweet releases from across the Hardcore spectrum)

A book I read recently (and I’m just now realising that “recently” was actually months ago) brought up the topic of “overflow”, particularly as it pertains to the impact – or impacts, plural – of simply having too much information.

And while the original focus of the discussion was more about how an excess of scientific data, leading to a glut of scientific publications, can potentially devalue the resultant perception of the work, the theme also transfers over nicely to the topic of reviews (and, particularly, review scores).

Put it this way, with more and more music being released (and, importantly, made more widely accessible) each year, and more and more reviews of said music being written in response, it’s inevitable that there’s going to be more albums receving higher scores, which will in turn give the audience the impression that reviewers are being too generous and that scores are being devalued… even if the normal distribution remains the same.

It’s a problem, even if it’s not one people think about very often, and one reason I’m glad we don’t do ranked scores here at NCS, as our role is more to curate the vast array of new releases each month and help them find their audience, not put them against one another in competition.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NAILS, THRONEHAMMER, NIHILO, MORGUE SUPPLIER, PLUTONIAN SHORE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 042026
 

(written by Islander)

It’s a Bandcamp Friday. But you probably knew that. I failed to put it on my calendar but the engorgement of our in-box over the last 24 hours reminded me. So even though we’ve already published our usual three features for the day I decided to do this fourth one so I don’t feel quite as overwhelmed in preparing the usual Saturday roundup.

Be forewarned: you might experience whiplash as you move from song to song today (and within some of the songs too). Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STYGIAN — “HUNT THE DIVINE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 042026
 

(written by Islander)

On this day (a Bandcamp Friday for those who pay attention to such things) the Italian band Stygian are releasing a new two-song EP named Hunt the Divine. It follows their 2025 debut album Dreadlands, which we had the pleasure of premiering and reviewing. As we wrote then, Dreadlands presented “an intersection or fusion of two worlds, a hybrid of crust punk and black metal” that proved to be “as fierce, as wounded, and as defiantly resilient as the album’s thematic insights”.

As for those thematic insights, they reflected “serious thought, scorching insight, and honest rage”. To quote the band:

Dreadlands explores the contrast between two spiritual worlds: the harmony-centered pagan traditions and the legacy of Abrahamic religions, which often channel humanity’s most violent instincts. While pagan rites served to express and contain primal forces, maintaining balance between humankind and nature, monotheistic dogmas have frequently justified war and destruction in the name of faith. This work stands as a tribute to life, to the sacred bond between people and the natural world — a bond shattered by centuries of religious conflict.

Now we return to Stygian with our premiere of the new EP on the day of its release. Here’s the description we received of the EP’s themes: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: KOSTNICA, LAUGH TRACK, OAKENTHRONE, I HELVETE, THERMIDOR, HALO OF TEETH

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Aug 302026
 

(written by Islander)

As I did yesterday morning, I began today by again bleakly staring at my enormous list of links for new music. I could hear the list chortling at me. “You fool,” it muttered in between cackles, “you won’t even scratch the surface.” The truth of that mockery made it no less degrading. (Let’s put aside any concerns about hearing voices from a typed list.)

On days like this I often resort to time-savers, one of which is to prioritize recommendations from people I trust, a kind of life-line to a beleaguered soul.

(The Associated Press reports that on this day in 1916 explorer Ernest Shackelton successfully returned to Elephant Island in Antarctica to rescue 22 of his stranded crew members, who had survived on the barren island for four and a half months after the sinking of their ship, the Endurance. I feel this is not a coincidence.)

The recommendations proved to be worthy. Beyond those I resorted to impulse, and fortune smiled upon my scattershot urges. Here are the resulting choices I made for today; if you think of yourself as a trve cvlt listener, be forewarned that many of them challenge black metal orthodoxy in varying (and very interesting) ways: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLACK ROYAL, MOTHER OF GRAVES, ANAGNORISIS, OFFERNAT, STATIC ABYSS, LACONIST

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Aug 222026
 

(written by Islander)

My short vacation which spanned last weekend prevented me from writing both this Saturday column and the usual one on Sunday. So for today I had two weeks’ worth of possibilities to choose among, along with many more on my list from previous weeks. Deciding what to recommend is always difficult, but today’s decisions were monumentlly difficult. That will be true for tomorrow’s column as well.

I think I’m best advised to cut this introduction short and get right into the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TERATUM — “ORDNANCE OF SPIRITUAL WARFARE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 192026
 

(written by Islander)

The Swedish group Teratum rose up from the ashes of the band Beastiality in 2024, and the next year they viciously announced themselves with a two-song promo tape made available in extremely small quantities. They are now following that with a debut EP named Ordnance of Spiritual Warfare, which will be widely released by Dying Victims Productions on August 21st.

The EP includes re-recorded versions of both songs from the demo, and two more. For those who weren’t exposed to the demo tape, Teratum’s music does draw upon the violent black/thrashing antecedents of Beastiality, but it has other dimensions as well — and we’re revealing all of them in our premiere of the EP in its entirety. Continue reading »

SEPULTURA: “THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 182026
 

(What follows is TheMadIsraeli’s review of an EP announced as the final release by Sepultura. It came out in April of this year via Nuclear Blast.)

Some of us here at NCS are believers in modern Sepultura. I’ve always come to bat for them because the thing that spoke to me of a band who shamelessly and uncompromisingly followed their creative instincts was how, even by the sub-genres of metal they are considered part of, they have chosen to take progressive off-kilter approaches to all of it.

Ever since Max’s departure, and especially from Roorback onward, Sepultura have chosen the hard path. I’m not saying that to imply that Against and Nation aren’t good in and of themselves, by the way, but there is a definitive locking-in that occurs at Roorback. I’d chalk this up to those two records being the warm-up, adapting to Derrick’s inclusion and trying to find who they wanted to be. Some people may not fully appreciate what Sepultura was faced with when Max left and Andreas Kisser had to overcome the perception which had taken over that Max WAS Sepultura.

Andreas Kisser will forever be one of my favorite songwriters and guitarists in metal purely because his answer to that challenge was to not play the fame game at all. He essentially ditched the band’s previous legacy for a new one. I think this decision obviously paid off, but they’ve had to deal with a never-ending barrage of people crying about how this wasn’t the old thing anymore. Continue reading »

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