NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: SACRIFICIUM CARMEN — “VERIALKEMIA”

Sep 292015

The first minute of the new song we’re premiering today by Sacrificium Carmen reaches out and seizes the listener by the neck immediately. Its huge, rolling riffs, massive drum strikes, and grim melody (both doleful and ominous) — capped by a protracted lycanthropic howl — compel attention and will get your head moving, too. And the song does nothing but tighten its iron grip as it continues to unfold.

The name of the song is “Verialkemia” and it’s the sixth track on this Finnish black metal band’s debut album Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa, which is set for international release by Saturnal Records on October 30th. Continue reading »

CRYPTIC HYMN: “GATEWAYS”

Reviews 2 Responses »

Sep 292015

(Grant Skelton reviews the new EP by Kentucky’s Cryptic Hymn.)

Paducah, Kentucky’s Cryptic Hymn formed in 2014. In January, they released a demo for the song “Revel In Disgust.” That song now appears on Gateways, the band’s first official release.

Earlier this year (here), I wrote that the strength of an EP is that a band has no room for mediocrity. Since EPs offer a brief taste of what a band has to offer, every song needs to be memorable. Cryptic Hymn’s Gateways delivers five tracks of superior blackened death ‘n’ roll (or black ‘n’ roll if you prefer). The tracks vary enough to show that Cryptic Hymn are certainly capable of experimenting with progressive melodies. Notwithstanding, the tracks do not diverge from the soul of the band’s sound to the point of being unfamiliar. Continue reading »

BRINGERS OF DEATH: PRION / BLACK TONGUE / THE HUDSON HORROR

Album Reviews 8 Responses »

Sep 292015

(Andy Synn brings us a trio of reviews.)

I must admit, 2015 is the first year since I’ve been writing for the site where I’ve truly felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of music out there. I know of so many bands and albums that have slipped through the cracks over the last nine months or so, simply because there’s not enough time in the day/week to cover everything we want to.

As you undoubtedly know already, the ethos here at NCS is to cover and offer exposure to as many bands as we can, informed by a slight preference towards writing about less well-exposed bands over some of the more famous names.

This isn’t down to any form of “elitism”, and we’re not the sort of people who declare that a band has “sold-out” just because they’ve finally managed to make a name for themselves outside of the toilet circuit. It’s simply that, when it comes right down to it, the bigger bands are going to sell their albums regardless of whether we cover them or not… whereas the smaller bands will probably benefit far more from us writing about them. As such we’d rather target our limited support towards where it can do the most good! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 3): WOMBBATH, ABBATH, WORSHIP, NYLITHIA, THE INFERNAL SEA, ACHREN

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Sep 282015

Well, some days around here (like last Friday), it’s a drought. But when it rains, it pours. Already today we’ve posted a two-part round-up of new music and videos by DGR (here and here), along with KevinP’s list of top albums released this month, including still more music streams (here). And I’ve found time this morning before leaving town again for my fucking day job to compile this additional collection of new streams (along with one doomy news item contributed by Grant Skelton).

I do worry that on days like this we’re subjecting readers to absolute sensory overload. But I obviously don’t worry too much about it… so here we go:

WOMBBATH

I’ve been singing the praises of the Wombbath’s new album Downfall Rising since hearing the first teaser from it, and now the entire album is out and available for streaming — so I’m posting the album stream as the first item in this round-up. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EVERTRAPPED — “ARISE FROM THE ASHES”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Sep 282015

On October 16, Hellstorm Recordz will release the third album by Montreal’s Evertrapped. Entitled Under the Deep, the album “is an exploration of the deepest reaches of human madness” — not clinical madness, “but simply the darkest regions of the soul and the blackest part of the human heart from a mind found to be socially functional, but is really way too far gone”. Today we bring you the premiere of a track from the album named “Arise From the Ashes“. As vocalist James Brookes explains:

“‘Arise From The Ashes’ is a depiction of someone who has actually reached the bottom, so their rise from there so to speak. Like the king of their own universe broken by all clawing it’s back, but fueled by an ever-consuming hatred.”

The music certainly fits the thematic content — it’s a raging, jolting, hammering piece of savagery that explodes from the gates immediately. But while the music is ferocious as hell (the ferocity enhanced by the extremity of the vocals), and never really pauses to give you a breath, there’s more going on than sonic decimation. Continue reading »

KEVINP’S ALBUMS OF THE MONTH — SEPTEMBER 2015

Listmania 10 Responses »

Sep 282015

(Here’s the latest installment of KevinP’s series in which he runs down his list of the best releases from the preceding month.)

I screwed up last month. And not just a minor oversight, but in a fairly big way. It wasn’t until after August’s column was posted that fellow contributor/friend Dan Barkasi messaged me that he was surprised I didn’t have Wolfheart on my list. My response was, “the album comes out in September”. Then I checked and realized I was wrong. URGH. I’m gonna assign partial blame to Mr. Saukkonen though, since he sent me a copy of the album many months in advance and mentioned September as the release date. Assuming his infallibility (based on his musical pedigree), I never bothered to double-check and learn that the label would change it.

So how do I address this grave misdeed? I was going to include it as part of this month’s Top 5, but that really wouldn’t make sense or be fair to the other releases. I’ll simply say this: Shadow World eclipses the debut. It’s another masterstroke in the arsenal of Tuomas the Finnish Freeballer who simply seems to be able to mine the same well and keep extracting new and exciting sounds from it. Would it have been the Number 1 album last month? It certainly would have been a toss-up between that and Majestic Downfall. Continue reading »

DEAFHEAVEN: “NEW BERMUDA”

Album Reviews 10 Responses »

Sep 282015

(Wil Cifer reviews the new album by Deafheaven.)

Deafheaven are not the first black metal band to inject elements of post-rock and shoe-gaze into the mix, things that bands like Amesoeurs and Agalloch are praised for. Deafheaven did this without the use of clean singing as well. They became a point of contention with their 2013 album Sunbather. It was praised by the more mainstream press and found the band bringing their brand of so-called black metal to such questionable audiences as Bonnaroo. Accusations of the band being “Hipster Metal” flew on message boards everywhere.

Then there are those who could not put Sunbather on enough top ten lists and listed this new one as one of the most anticipated albums of 2015, before the band stepped into the studio. Can this album live up to the hype? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SHINING (NOR), PRAETORIA, NAMI, MASTIC SCUM

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Sep 282015

(DGR steps up for round-up duty, and he prepared a really big round-up, so big that your humble editor decided to divide it into two parts. Part One is here.)

In case you missed it, Friday was a kind of slow date for the site. We’ve had times like this before, where various outside influences conspire to make sure that we post with the speed at which animals are able to escape the La Brea Tar Pits. That doesn’t mean we weren’t up here in space, lookin’ down on you and keeping track of various rumblings going throughout the web.

I’ve gathered together eight fairly recent developments in the heavy metal world for you all to enjoy. As usual, I’ve tried to catch stuff that has flown under the radar and mix it in with a few things that have likely made a big splash across the web already. This collection of stories covers a pretty good swath of the globe in terms of distance but has a foot heavily planted in the death metal and doom metal realms, making a few labored grasps to the outside genre world.

SHINING

We turn next to Norway’s blackjazz entourage Shining. The group have been building up to the release of their new disc International Blackjazz Society, and recently the song “Last Day” found its way to the web. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): ENSHINE, CRYPTOPSY, NECROSAVANT, FOREVER OBSCURED

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Sep 282015

(DGR steps up for round-up duty, and he prepared a really big round-up, so big that your humble editor decided to divide it into two parts.)

ENSHINE

In case you missed it, we here at NCS have a bit of a soft spot for the melo-doom band Enshine and all their related shenanigans. The group recently allowed us to premiere their song “Adrift”, and that song was an awesome teaser of things to come for the group’s upcoming album Singularity. Recently, Enshine uploaded another song to the web in the form of “Resurgence” and boy, in NCS parlance, is it a doozy. Continue reading »

CHECKING IN AFTER CHECKING OUT

Mosh Pit 16 Responses »

Sep 272015

I’m never quite sure whether anyone notices when things take an unusual turn around here, but since Thursday morning they have.

On Friday we had only one post on the site (Andy Synn’s review of the new Abigail Williams album) and only one yesterday (the premiere of an Invoker song). The Rearview Mirror post from earlier this morning plus this thing you’re now reading are all I can manage for today. And on top of all that, I’ve been unable to do my usual daily searches for new songs worth sharing around in our “Seen and Heard” posts, or even read most of the hundreds of e-mails we’ve received since Thursday.

Whether anyone has noticed or not, I figured I’d give a brief explanation and let you know what’s happening this coming week. Continue reading »

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