AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LIE IN RUINS — “DEMISE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 132018
 

 

When I learned that Dark Descent Records would be releasing a new EP by the Finnish death metal band Lie In Ruins, I had one of those wide-eyed, take-a-big-gulp moments you get when the unexpected hits you like a piece of lumber on the back of the neck. In other words, it was a big surprise — but in this case a very welcome one. And then the waiting began, to find out exactly what these men had done with their time away from the studios.

Four years have elapsed since this band’s last album, Towards Divine Death, which was very good (and if you haven’t heard that album, quit screwing around and get your butt over here sometime soon). This new EP, Demise, is also the band’s eighth release overall in a career that began in roughly 1993 under the name Dissected, halted for many years after a few rehearsal tapes were recorded, and then resumed for real in about 2002.

What we have for you today is a full stream of Demise a couple of weeks before the official release date. Rather than a collection of clearly segmented songs, it is instead presented as a single track nearly 29 minutes in length. And I do believe it’s the best thing this band have ever done. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK MASS PERVERTOR — “LIFE BEYOND THE WALLS OF FLESH”

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Apr 092018
 

 

With a history that can be traced back to 1998 and a sound that has evolved over the course of a demo, a previous EP, and a 2016 album (Phanerosis), the Finnish black metal band Black Mass Pervertor have reached an apotheosis of devilment with their new EP, Life Beyond the Walls of Flesh.

It’s a fiendishly infectious romp that, in the accurate words of the public relations campaign paving the way for its release, bows reverentially to “Belial, Barathrum, and especially early Impaled Nazarene whilst nodding to the early-Noughts work of Horna, Sargeist, and Behexen.”

It has, in short order, become a deliciously deviant pleasure of mine, a pleasure I get to share with you today in advance of its release by Blood Harvest Records on Friday the 13th of this month. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FOSA — “DEMO MMXVI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Apr 032018
 

 

This isn’t a premiere in the usual sense of the word, or the usual way in which we use it. The recording is a 2016 demo, first released digitally, and even the tape release that’s the occasion for this feature is a couple of months old. But I’m calling it a premiere anyway because the odds are that this is the first time most of you will be hearing the music. I can promise you that you won’t soon forget it.

Demo MMXVI is the first release by a Chilean band named Fosa, and it’s also the first release by a new Santiago-based label and distro named Unpleasant Records (a name that you’ll see again quite soon here, because we’re also hosting a stream of the label’s second release.)

There’s no satisfying short-hand genre phrase for Fosa’s music on this demo. Crust and black metal are probably the dominant ingredients, but there are others, including sludge, harsh noise, and regular doses of lysergic acid. The end result is an experience that’s incredibly intense and undeniably traumatic. The sounds are primally powerful, titanically heavy, and murderous in their attempts to fracture the listener’s sanity. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): QUANTUM HIERARCHY — “NEUTRON BREED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Mar 302018
 

 

Neutron Breed is so blindingly explosive, so uncaged in its dedication to sonic violence, and so eye-popping in the speed and technical precision of its execution that it has the capacity to suck the air from your lungs while it turbocharges your own pulse rate. Worry about breathing later… prepare now to give yourself over to a maniacally vicious death metal rocket ride.

Neutron Breed is the new EP by the Italian band Quantum Hierarchy, which is being released today by Everlasting Spew Records, and it’s our privilege to help spread the word through the premiere of a full music stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MYRHOLT — “MØRKETID”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 272018
 

 

The Norwegian musician and vocalist Ole Alexander Myrholt has had a long and prolific career, one that began more than two decades ago and ranged across a multitude of groups and personal projects, but seemed to enter a hiatus around 2011 when his band Tremor was put on hold indefinitely. However, something changed when Myrholt stepped in to play drums for the Norwegian black metal band Mork in December 2016.

Since then, adopting the name Myrholt, he has been recording again, performing all instruments and vocals. Myrholt released a multitude of singles and two albums last year, as well as a two-track EP named Vinter earlier this month. And now a new EP entitled Mørketid has been readied for release, which we are happy to present it to you through a full stream of its five tracks. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ALTAR OF PERVERSION, NIGREDO, HÄXENZIJRKELL, MORTUUS UMBRA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Mar 252018
 

 

One benefit of Andy Synn’s new Waxing Lyrical series as a regular Saturday post at NCS is that it has freed me to do other things, since I no longer feel compelled to concoct something of my own on Saturdays. Most “normal” people might take advantage of the opportunity to indulge in slothfulness. It seems that my own “abnormality” instead leads to two-part SHADES OF BLACK posts on Sunday.

ALTAR OF PERVERSION

The most recent interview posted at the on-line edition of Bardo Methodology was an especially thought-provoking one, a discussion by proprietor Niklas Göransson with Calus, one of the two men behind the Italian black metal band Altar of Perversion. The on-line version of the interview is only an excerpt from a much longer and even more in-depth conversation in the print edition of Bardo Methodology #3, which I will be anxious to read when my copy arrives in the mail.

What I read on-line revived some of my own lines of thought about the intellectual and emotional inspirations and underpinnings of black metal, which I might finally decide to write about in the near future. But it also contains a fascinating segment on the audio frequency of 432 Hertz (referred to as “Pythagorean tuning” when applied to the tuning of musical instruments) and its connections to nature, as well as its numerical synchronicities with a host of ancient writings and esoteric teachings. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: WITCHTRIP — “COSMIC CAULDRON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 142018
 

 

We were told that the Canadian band Witchtrip includes all the members of Winnipeg’s Occvlt Hand other than the vocalist — so, basically the same band with a different singer. That was reason enough to check out the two tracks on Witchtrip’s debut EP, Cosmic Cauldron, because we were big fans of Occvlt Hand’s 2017 album, Not Everyone Deserves A Happy Ending. We gleefully premiered a track from that album, and put that same track on our list of 2017’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Now, one would expect that Witchtrip’s music would be different from Occvlt Hand’s, despite the significant overlap in members. Otherwise, why choose a different name? And in fact, the music is quite different. And perhaps it should also come as no surprise that the music is nevertheless really, really good — as you’re about to discover for yourselves through our premiere of Cosmic Cauldron in advance of its release on March 16th by Possessed Records. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BLACK MARE AND OFFRET — “ALONE AMONG MIRRORS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 032018
 

 

If the two songs on this new split aren’t a perfect match, I don’t know what is. It’s not that they’re twins, not even fraternal twins. It’s that they complement each other so beautifully. I don’t know to what extent the artists shared their ideas before completing the compositions, but the experience of listening to the two songs together is so enthralling that you might think they were working together through a Vulcan mind meld.

Entitled Alone Among Mirrors, the split consists of one song by Black Mare, the solo project of L.A. musician Sera Timms (Ides of Gemini, Black Math Horseman), and one song by Offret, the solo project of Russian musician Andrey Prokofiev. It was released just yesterday on 7″ vinyl and digitally by Dark Operative. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP ON 2017: CORAXO / DEADSPACE / SUCCUMB TO DEMISE

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 232018
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews three 2017 releases, by Coraxo (Finland), Deadspace (Australia), and Succumb To Demise (Kentucky).)

 

Despite the fact that I’m already overwhelmed by new and upcoming releases – next week alone I have Slugdge, Ancst, and Rites of Thy Degringolade lined up to review – I’ve decided to take some time out of my busy schedule to catch up on three albums which were released late last year and which, as a result, didn’t necessarily receive the coverage they deserved. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: REBEL WIZARD — “GREAT ADDICTIONS TO BLINDINGLY DARK, WORLDLY LIFE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 202018
 

 

The first track on the new Rebel Wizard EP, “The sickness of all knowledge“, begins with an excerpt from a recording of a public talk given in 1981 in Amsterdam by the philosopher, speaker, and writer Jiddu Krishnamurti (b.1895 – d.1986). It reads as follows:

So knowledge has become all important
but knowledge is never complete.
Knowledge about anything is still incomplete,
will always be incomplete.
Therefore knowledge always goes with ignorance,
knowledge always lives within the shadow of ignorance.

Except you never make it to the final word “ignorance” at the opening of this EP. The word is cut off by a shocking explosion of sound. It’s as if you were calmly unlocking the door to your home while thinking deep thoughts, and becoming immolated by a blast furnace upon opening it. Continue reading »

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