AN NCS EP PREMIERE: MALAURIU — “DE NATURA OBSCRURITATIS”

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Aug 242022
 

The Sicilian band Malauriu have been a prolific source of black metal and dark experimental sounds for almost a decade. As detailed in an interview of mainman Schizoid published here at the beginning of 2022, Malauriu have tended to release their music mainly through EPs and splits. In March of this year they departed from the tradition by releasing their second (self-titled) full-length, but they now return to shorter works with a new EP named De Natura Obscuritatis that’s set for release on September 15th by the Italian label Black Mass Prayers.

To help spread the word about this new EP, we have already premiered a profoundly disturbing yet also frighteningly spellbinding song from it named “The Locust“, and today we reveal the whole soul-staggering work. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: EMASCULATOR — “DEPRAVED DISFIGUREMENT”

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Aug 232022
 

(It appears that DGR has become captivated by the recently released debut demo from the brutal death metal band Emasculator, and he explains why in this review, hopefully with gonads still intact.)

Let’s try something shorter for a little bit, huh? Especially since we seem to have been caught in a vortex of hour-plus releases recently.

The world of brutal death metal remains as lively as ever, with musicians willing to forever add to the endlessly squelching pile of musical gore that is the endless barrage of drumming, literal guitar shredding, car-engine bass tone, and earth-rumbling vocals that the genre entails. Emasculator represent a recent addition to the pile, comprising musicians based out of the US and Czech Republic, issuing forth their first demo Depraved Disfigurement at the beginning of August. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INDUSTRIAL PUKE — “INDUSTRIAL PUKE”

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Aug 112022
 

This is one of those song premieres where it’s tempting for us to just tell you, “Here — listen to this!“, because reading much more than that would probably take you longer than listening to the track. After all, the song barely clips the minute-twenty mark. But writing is what we do, and write we shall, but in a way that might give you a bit more to chew on than our impressions of this one song.

The song in question shares the name of this Swedish band — Industrial Puke — and it’s the one that slams the door shut on their debut EP Where Life Crisis Starts, which is coming out on September 16th via Suicide Records. The EP itself is a swift kick in the jaw, four songs that collectively fight with you for less than eight minutes. And hell yes, it’s a fight. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: TOMBS — “EX OBLIVION”

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Aug 102022
 

(We continue a week-long run of reviews by DGR, and this one takes stock of the latest release by the always-interesting NY crew Tombs.)

Tombs have made a name for themselves as more than just a black metal collective out of the East Coast. Whether through the rotating cast of band members or influences pulled from all around the underground scene, Mike Hill and gang have absorbed a lot more into their sound, evolving Tombs past a post-metal/black metal hybrid and into an art collective where you never fully know what to expect next.

Tombs have kept busy as well, especially in recent years, because, save for 2019, every year has seen some sort of release from them, whether it be an EP, full-length, compilation, or a single. There’s always something to keep them out there and show that maybe the constant refresh works for them.

Mid-June of 2022 saw the release of the latest addition to the group’s collective musical works with the EP Ex Oblivion, which contains one new song, one ambient block of experimentation, a remix/housewrecking of a track from Under Sullen Skies, and two cover tracks – for a combined total of three cover songs within the last year, if you caught their cover of Samhain‘s “The Shift” in 2021 – for twenty-two minutes of music. Continue reading »

SVART CROWN: “LES TERRES BRÛLÉES”

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Aug 082022
 

(NCS writer DGR has been on a roll, clearing out a backlog of reviews, and our plan is to publish them on a daily basis this week. We begin with his thoughts about the final recording from the French band Svart Crown, which was released in June by Nova Lux Production and Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions.)

In all honesty the events that took place after the release of Svart Crown‘s newest EP Les terres brûlées kind of took us aback when it came to writing about it. Granted, we were already late on reviewing it because it arrived in the post-MDF/pre-NWTF hangover period, but who would’ve guessed that in the time since its release the group would hang it up two weeks later? Yet here we are, now almost two months since its release, and the world is less one Svart Crown project.

Thus, writing about Les terres brûlées now is a little strange because it feels partially like we’re going to be praising the band for recognizing that it was time to call it quits and partially mourning the potential that Les terres brûlées promised, since the four songs and cover track here are some of the more ferocious material within the Svart Crown playbook.

Wolves Among The Ashes may have been divisive among the writers here (I enjoyed it, Andy ranked it as ‘disappointing’), but it’s hard to imagine anyone making it through even just the first song of this final EP without becoming convinced that Svart Crown sound absolutely mean this time around. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BLEEDING THROUGH — “RAGE”

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Aug 042022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of a new EP by Orange County’s Bleeding Through, their first new music in four years and out now on Sharptone Records.)

The fact that this site’s roots grew out of an in-joke born from early-aughts metalcore is always an amusing one, especially given the many pathways into things way, way heavier that we’ve taken in the decade-plus since. Yet we – and especially yours truly – would be lying if we said we didn’t still have a soft spot for a lot of those bands. That was partially why we found ourselves so oddly interested in the resurgence of MTV2 Headbanger’s Ball-era dominating bands beginning a few years ago as a lot of them decided that would be the time within the nostalgia cycle to mark their returns.

A few of those releases were legitimately good – we’ll still go to bat for The Agony Scene’s Tormentor release – and the rest at the very least were solid returns to what you’d always expect for that style of band. Bleeding Through‘s 2018 album Love Will Kill All somewhat stradled the line between the two, wherein there were a handful of truly ferocious and jaw dropping songs but also many other that sounded like Bleeding Through getting used to being Bleeding Through again.

They played what they’ve always done, and weirdly enough it made Love Will Kill All play out like an unintentional career retrospective…run backwards. It started out with their blisteringly fast and heavily chugged-out death metal leanings that colored their later releases and slowly became the more brawny and breakdown-filled style that made them a hallmark of the early 2000s. It was a weird dynamic for sure, but also one that made it perplexing to know what Bleeding Through‘s gameplan was for the future. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ABIGORUM, MISERY, RAAT, OBLITI DEVORAVIT

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Jul 242022
 


“Dracula’s castle” by Daniele Serra

I’m afraid I have no time to set the stage today with introductory comments, other than to fore-warn you that the moods of today’s selections are intensely dark and packed with pain. Paradoxically, the intensity may make you feel terrifyingly alive and perversely spellbound.

ABIGORUM (Georgia/Germany)

In 2021 Abigorum released their latest album, Vergessene Stille. On that record, the band had been reduced to the size of a duo, combining the talents of Russian musician Aleksey Korolyov (who now lives in Georgia) and German guitarist/vocalist Tino Thiele (from Wulfgar and Metamorph).

In the lead-in to that album we premiered a song named “Erhebt eure mit Blut gefüllten Hörner“, which managed to create an experience that was both hypnotizing and nightmarish, both hauntingly seductive and terrorizing. It was not alone in those respects, as we’ve been reminded by a new video for another song off that album. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DEATH BREATH, VORLUST, CONSUMPTION, ILUNA PERPETUA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, Movie Reviews, Premieres, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 232022
 

 

Would one four-song roundup yesterday have been satisfactory? Were two of them too many? Is it overkill to add music from four more bands today, for an even dozen of them? I hear your answers to those questions, all those deafening howls of “NO!!! WE WANT MORE!!!””

So, on we go….

DEATH BREATH (Sweden/U.S.)

It took me almost a week to catch up to Death Breath‘s two-track EP, The Old Hag, but once I did I haven’t been able to get enough of it. It does its dirty work in just a bit more than 7 minutes, which makes it really fucking easy to keep going back to it whenever I need a musical riot to rocket me out of the doldrums and make me feel like fighting the bastard world. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GALUNDO TENVULANCE — “THE DISRUPTOR DESCENDS”

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Jul 202022
 

(DGR enjoyed the first EP by the Japanese band Galundo Tenvulance, released last year, and as recounted in the following review he seems to be enjoying the second one too.)

Only a handful of months ago while in a fit of caffeinated pique did we check in with Japanese -core band Galundo Tenvulance. The young group were on their second EP way back in ye’ olden days of 2021, yet for some reason the idea of reviewing it right before jetting out to go catch covid see MDF this year was very, very funny. It’s not the bands fault at all, just the fun of finding something that was fairly good – if full to the brim with style and genre-tropes – from a group who were clearly still finding their feet style-wise. So much so, that this is the sort of early state a band can be in where sounds differ drastically between releases as they add new influences to the overall course.

Not even a month and a half after we ran that review though, which we did in an attempt to buttress the site while we were out standing in one very long line of Edison Lot shade courtesy of a billboard pole, laughing about how some people forget that Coroner get kind of weird at times and have long keyboard breaks, or dodging thunderstorms, did the crew behind Galundo Tenvulance release a new EP in the form of The Disruptor Descends.

The question with The Disruptor Descends is that with a whole year between their releases and now functioning as a four-piece, what sort of stylistic jump did the band make? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: REVOCATION, WOLFBRIGADE, TEETHGRINDER, HELLFUCK, CONSUMPTION, AURIFEROUS FLAME, ASTRAL HORROR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jul 082022
 

 

The theme of today’s collection of new songs and videos is: THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES!

Today is my birthday, and as a gift, my employer has decided to beat me until my morale improves. Therefore, this collection isn’t as large as I would wish, but tomorrow is another day, and I expect I’ll have another collection then.

REVOCATION (U.S.)

We may love Revocation around here (we DO love Revocation around here), but they have repaid all our affections with “Diabolical Majesty“, a merciless new song that invokes champions of hell “to crush the cursed creatures of the Christian right”. “Onward to victory! Set their commandments ablaze!” Continue reading »

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