AN NCS PREMIERE: ARKHUM — “THE SKIES DO GIVE SUCCOR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jun 012015
 

NCS and Oregon’s Arkhum go waaaaay back. We first featured the band in July 2010 (here) on the strength of rough mixes of their first three songs and the eye-catching artwork for the album on which they were destined to appear — Anno Universum. We’ve written about them many more times since then, and today we’re happy to bring you a premiere of the first new Arkhum music since their second full-length in 2013, Earthling (reviewed here). It’s a pre-production demo of a song named “The Skies Do Give Succor”, which in final form will appear on the band’s third album, projected for release in early 2016.

An aura of gloom and doom shrouds “The Skies”, its grim, dissonant guitar melody writhing around the somersaulting bass notes and the potent drum beats, which move from tribal pounding to bursts of machine-gun blasting. Kenneth Parker’s scathing shrieks tear like claws against skin, relenting long enough for the song to slow and drift into a bass-led interlude whose sombre tones are accented with the clash of a cymbal and Stephen Parker’s delicate guitar work. Continue reading »

GODLESS ANGEL INTERVIEWS… JOHNATHAN MATOS OF ABIOTIC

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jun 012015
 

 

(Our Kansas-based friend Derek Neibarger — the man behind the Godless Angel death metal project and the inventor of the Cat Hand Rest©, brings us his interview of Johnathan Matos of Abiotic.)

April 21st was a great day for technical death metal fans as it brought us the release of Casuistry, the second full-length album from Florida’s Abiotic. Built around furious yet intricate riffs riding atop a pounding and swirling rhythm section and featuring the recording debut of vocalist Travis Bartosek, Casuistry is as complex as it is crushing while still managing to be melodic and catchy.

I recently caught up with guitarist and founding member, Johnathan Matos, to talk about the new album, new band members, and breakfast. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISLOYAL — “MORS IMPERATOR MUNDI”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jun 012015
 

 

Poland’s Disloyal have been recording music since the late 1990s, with three albums to their credit, beginning with 1999’s Pessimistic. There have been significant changes in Disloyal’s line-up over the years, with only drummer “Jaro” Paprota remaining from the group in its original configuration, now joined by guitarist Artyom Serdyuk (Deathbringer, Thy Disease, Amentia, Woe Unto Me), bassist Kolya Kislyi, and vocalist Krzysztof Bendarowicz (Deathbringer). The new line-up have recorded a fourth album entitled Godless, and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s seventh track: “Mors Imperator Mundi“.

With so many changes in the band’s line-up since their last album (2008’s Prophecy), it’s perhaps reasonable to consider Godless a new beginning, and this new song is a sign of the changes. Continue reading »

GHOST B.C.: “CIRICE”

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 012015
 

 

Sunday is an odd day to choose for song premieres. But for a band whose rise to prominence has been as meteoric as Ghost B.C.‘s, I guess it doesn’t really matter — word of a new song will spread regardless of it coming out on one of the sleepiest days of the week. And yes, yesterday Ghost B.C. released a new song, named “Cirice“.

The song will appear on the band’s new album Meliora, which is now scheduled for release on August 21 via Loma Vista Recordings. The new song and the new album feature a new front person, anointed Papa Emeritus III and described as the “three-month-younger brother” of the band’s last Papa Emeritus. What’s more, the song comes with its own cover art — and it’s available for free download, here: Continue reading »

SATURDAY SLAUGHTERING: BEARSTORM AND SVÄRTA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 302015
 

This weekend’s posts at our site will be few and far between. My wife and I will be venturing into the wilds of eastern Washington in a couple of hours to attend a wedding late this afternoon, followed by the usual post-nuptials carousing. I’m not sure when we’ll get back home tomorrow or what condition I’ll be in, but it’s likely that all we’ll have at NCS tomorrow will be another edition of Father Synn’s Metal Confessional (be sure to start mentally enumerating your sins so you’ll be ready to spew them forth in all their vile putridity). Before disappearing, I do have a couple of randomly chosen selections of new music that I came upon in recent days and really enjoyed.

BEARSTORM

As you know, we follow the releases of Baltimore’s Grimoire Records very closely, because they’re so consistently good. The latest release is coming on June 30 (CD and digitally), and it’s an album entitled Americanus by a Richmond, Virginia, band named Bearstorm. I haven’t heard the full album yet, but the one song from it that’s now available for streaming is very good. Continue reading »

NEW THINGS FROM TEMPEL AND ANIMALS AS LEADERS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 292015
 

 

Here are a couple of new things (one new song and one new video) that I thought I’d recommend before the work week comes to an end. They’re both instrumental pieces, but that’s about where the similarity ends.

TEMPEL

A couple of days ago Arizona’s Tempel premiered another new song (“Descending Into the Labyrinth”) from their forthcoming album The Moon Lit Our Path — which will be released by Prosthetic Records on June 16. I meant to write about it sooner than now, but my fucking day job derailed my plans. Better late than never, I hope. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THORNESBREED — “DIVIDUA ANIMA PT I”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
May 292015
 

 

Last month we featured an advance track named “Horns ov Gaia” from GTRD, the second album by Germany’s Thornesbreed and their first in 12 years. Now we bring you the premiere of another track, “Dividua Anima Pt I“.

“Horns ov Gaia” was a very intense, gripping, dark piece of music, with slower, harrowing segments pulling you in, and then rapacious blasting segments proceeding to tear you apart. “Dividua Anima Pt I” makes use of similar weapons. Its beginning is slow, pitch black, and dissonant, the constant vibration of the riffs and the explosive drumbeats accompanying what sounds like the enraged howls of a demonic bestiary to create a supernatural aura of doom and derangement. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AHAB, FALSE, FUCK THE FACTS, GORGOROTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 292015
 

I’m getting a late start on the blog this morning. I spent hours on the phone with world leaders attempting to answer their urgent questions about an array of socio-economic and security crises. After a while I got tired of it and just started repeating a convenient mantra, “FUCK THE FACTS”.

AHAB

That album art up there is fucking fantastic. I have very high hopes for the album, too, which is the first one from German’s Ahab in four years. The title is The Boats of The Glen Carrig and it’s a musical interpretation of a 1907 horror novel of the same name written by William Hope Hodgson (more info about the book can be found here). Continue reading »

DISARMONIA MUNDI: “COLD INFERNO”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
May 282015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Disarmonia Mundi.)

It’s likely that this horse has been beaten to death so much that the goo on the ground is hardly recognizable as a biomass — but it remains true that a six-year gap is a long time to wait between discs. The situation is more common than people think, and some bands will make you wait far, far longer — although by a certain point it’s pretty clear that a group is on “hiatus”. Disarmonia Mundi has provided one of the few times when I’ve personally gotten to be part of the esteemed club of fans desperate for any word.

The two-piece that is the core of Disarmonia Mundi have certainly kept busy, with a whole array of projects that cover the whole spectrum of metal — production work and otherwise, including the Princess Ghibli project and The Stranded. However, even though The Stranded veered far closer to Disarmonia Mundi’s brand of melodeath than likely even its members intended, it’s still not Disarmonia Mundi proper, still not the band that gave us one of my personal favorite melodeath albums of the last decade with 2009’s ugly-artwork-bearing hook-machine that was The Isolation Game.

Cold Inferno, the group’s soon-to-be-released new album, has a lot to live up to and already marks a bit of a shift from the previous disc with a track list slimmed down to ten. Cold Inferno’s appearance may have seemed sudden but this is a disc that has been cooking for a while. Was the time worth it though? Can Disarmonia Mundi prove themselves to still be a melodeath powerhouse already halfway through another decade? Have I jokingly made light of the fact that I’ve been waiting six years for this album? Continue reading »

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