AUTOKRATOR: A “GET TO THE POINT” INTERVIEW AND A REVIEW

 Album Reviews, Interviews  3 Responses »
Apr 162015
 

 

Editor’s Note: KevinP and I are sharing this post, even though he doesn’t know he’s having to share it with me. In the first part you’ll find another installment in his “Get To the Point” interview series, in which he puts a handful of questions to Lioc F., the main man behind the multinational industrial/death/drone/doom band Autokrator. And after the interview, I have a few thoughts about Autokrator’s self-titled debut album, which was released digitally earlier this year and is due for physical release by Iron Bonehead on May 29.

 

“GET TO THE POINT”

K:  Since you are a fairly new band, (formed in 2014) and I know nothing about your origins, please tell us about Autokrator?

L:  Autokrator was born out of the ashes of my former project, N.K.V.D.  I wanted to turn on a death-drone side for years, still with industrial influences, so I created Autokrator. And I recorded the album with musicians I was in connection with. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CROM DUBH — “HEIMWEH”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 162015
 

 

Exactly two weeks ago our Norwegian friend Gorger provided us with a glowing review of the debut album by London’s Crom Dubh. Lo and behold, now we have the chance to share with you a full stream of Heimweh.

I could stop there and simply let the music speak for itself, but some of Gorger’s words of praise deserve repeating, because this album genuinely is unusual — and unusually good:

“Someone put the band in the black cubicle on Encyclopaedia Metallum. I can only acknowledge this as long as we add that the band has torn down the decayed walls to some adjoining cubicles. Crom Dubh is a band that must be heard. The music the band plays is founded in black metal, but with so much more to offer. The sound has a dirty dissonant touch, and a certain timbre that is unique in itself. The band mixes atmospheric, melodic, and folk-metallic elements, but with a complete lack of respect for genre conventions…. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERPENT NOIR — “AL RUNA”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 162015
 

 

The creative flames that light the imagination of black metal bands in Greece seem to have become bonfires over the last year, as we have been the beneficiaries of one stellar release after another from that country — and now one more is on its way: The Athenian dragon cult Serpent Noir are poised for the release on Walpurgis of their second album, Erotomysticism. It will be delivered via Daemon Worship Productions, and today we present to you the premiere of one of the new rituals, a song named “Al Runa“.

Serpent Noir have crafted this new album through a Draconian collaboration, following the Left Hand Path — the path of the Red Dragon — through gateways into other worlds of spiritual freedom and hidden potential. When you listen to “Al Runa”, you do get the sense of participating in a ritual, and of a gateway opening.

At the beginning, the pace of the song is stately, the deep bass tones and measured drum beats providing the rhythm of a processional, the dissonant guitar harmonies preparing the way forward, the chanted words providing the incantations. But soon enough, the music catches fire — the riffs begin to writhe and the drums to hammer as the intensity of the music grows. The chants don’t disappear entirely, but they’re joined by echoing, inflamed exhortations and the piercing voice of a shimmering lead guitar, which creates eerie melodic traceries, like spiraling smoke in a vaulted cavern. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROSY — “PERDITION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 162015
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a full stream of Perdition, the debut album by Italy’s Necrosy.)

In recent years the Italian metal scene, and specifically the death metal scene, has been taking the metal community by storm with a never-ending barrage of top-notch releases and a seemingly endless supply of new bands popping up all the time.

Here at NCS, we’ve kept our eye on this region and have written about it countless times, from the country’s most well-known powerhouse acts to its plethora of new talent. In the spirit of our love affair with the rampaging and vicious death metal that Italy churns out with ease, we bring your attention to an up-and-coming new band called Necrosy, with this early stream of their soon-to-be-released debut full-length, Perdition. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WRVTH — “HARROWING WINDS”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Apr 152015
 

 

At the end of this post we bring you the premiere of a multifaceted song named “Harrowing Winds” from the self-titled third album by California’s WRVTH, which will be released in June.

WRVTH (pronounced “wrath”) were once known as Wrath of Vesuvius, and this new record follows a 2009 EP (A World In Peril) and two previous albums, Portals Through Ophiuchus (2010) and Revelation (released by Mediaskare Records in 2013). But even if you are familiar with the band’s previous efforts, the new album reflects some changes in musical direction, along with that alteration in the band’s name — and “Harrowing Winds” is a signpost to those changes.

When I first heard the opening minute of the video clip for the song, I was having trouble squaring it with the little “Unique Leader” logo in the bottom right of the video frame. The shimmering, reverberating guitar harmony is tranquil, even transcendent. But as the song evolved, that Unique Leader connection became more understandable, just as the song became darker, more extreme, and more unpredictable. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTIVERSUM — “TOTAL VACUUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Apr 152015
 

 

Those with long memories may recall that last October we reviewed two tracks that had surfaced from a forthcoming demo by the Swiss band Antiversum. Since then the Irish label Invictus Productions has arranged for the release of the demo — entitled Total Vacuum — and we now bring you the premiere of all four of its songs, in all their horrifying glory.

The demo is well-named in one sense: Total Vacuum creates an atmosphere of bone-freezing gloom, summoning immense vistas of a heartless, malignant cosmos. The demo begins and ends with eerie ambient sounds that include deep groaning tones and piercing electronic shrieks, effectively summoning sensations of dread and implacable menace. But in between those chilling bookends, Antiversum embark on a void-faring excursion that’s loaded with harrowing encounters. There is life in this vacuum, even if it is utterly alien and frighteningly voracious. And unlike a vacuum, it’s massively heavy and disturbingly oppressive. Continue reading »

KRODA: A REVIEW OF “GINNUNGAGAP-GINNUNGAGALDR-GINNUNGAKAOS” AND A PREMIERE OF “CARPATHIAN BLACK SPINES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  8 Responses »
Apr 152015
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming sixth studio album from the Ukrainian band Kroda — GinnungaGap-GinnungaGaldr-GinnungaKaos — and we also have for you the premiere of the album’s fourth track, “Чорні Хребти Карпат” (Carpathian Black Spines).

There are some albums you just never really get on with. Not that they’re necessarily bad, but albums you just don’t “click” with, for whatever reason. Where the pieces just don’t seem to line up properly and the overall package just seems lacking.

Then there are albums that you fall in love with instantly, where even their tiniest flaws seem to have a necessary place in the grand scheme of things.

This is one of those albums. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: GRUESOME, SHINING, SKINLESS, UNLEASHED, SLUGDGE, VARGNATT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 152015
 

 

Yes, it’s true, we shove about 100 new songs in your face on a daily basis, but we know your face holds a lot of songs, so we need to keep shoving. Be sure to chew them well and don’t try to talk while you’re doing it, ’cause you could choke to death.

GRUESOME

Surely you know about Gruesome by now, because we’ve certainly written about them enough, and we even premiered a song from their debut album Savage Land. They give new meaning to the phrase Total Death Worship.

As of yesterday, the whole album became available for streaming. I don’t know why you wouldn’t go listen to it, unless you’re in a coma, in which case we wish you a speedy recovery and a pain-free removal of the catheter. Don’t forget to share photos of that for our collection. We’re thinking about turning them into a large-format NCS coffee-table book, The Art of Catheter Removal.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, there’s a stream of Savage Land at Decibel. It’s an exclusive, so you and your catheter will need to go here to listen, and you’ll both be glad you did: Continue reading »

ÁRSTÍÐIR LÍFSINS: “ALDAFǪÐR OK MUNKA DRÓTTINN”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Apr 142015
 

 

(Wil Cifer reviews Aldafǫðr Ok Munka Dróttinn (“Óðinn and the God of the Monks”), the new album by the Icelandic/German pagan metal band Arstidir Lifsins.)

This trio features members of Helrunar and Carpe Noctem, so you know they are going to get at least the Viking parts right.

It starts with a twelve-minute epic, with the first three minutes building up to the metal being introduced. Largely there is a chorus of baritones bellowing out the vocals, but these give way to black metal snarls. The first and second songs run into each another, as if this were a Wagnerian opera. Like opera, the sensual magnitude of the scenes they are creating here is impressive.

At times you might be inclined to refer to the music as blackened folk metal — the third song has some old-school black metal nastiness to it — though the bass playing is raised to an audible level, where many black metal bass players stay submerged beneath the waves. Here the theatrics that take center stage, rather than trying to recreate any pagan folk elements, more often work within the song rather than making it feel overblown, though in some portions of the album they come across more like interludes rather than the style of a band like Negura Bunget, who use those elements more fully as working parts of the song. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEATHHAMMER, VIRVUM, OUTRE, DEHUMAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 142015
 

 

As usual, I’m drowning in excellent new metal. There seems to be no ebb and flow this year — it’s a flood tide all the time. And so, perhaps even more so than usual, what I’m collecting in these round-ups is the result of impulsive choices. “Random Fucking Music” indeed.

DEATHHAMMER

The Norwegian duo known as Deathhammer have a new album named Evil Power set for international release by Hells Headbangers on June 30. Having been a big fan of Onward To the Pits (their last album, from 2012), that date can’t come soon enough for me.

This morning I heard the first advance track from the album, a tornado named “Warriors of Evil”. It’s the first song on a Soundcloud compilation of 2015 music created by Fenriz (of Darkthrone fame). There happens to be a ton of other good music on this playlist, and I’ll include the song list below, since the stream isn’t divided into separate tracks. But as for “Warriors of Evil”, it’s thoroughly electrifying black thrashing speed metal with thoroughly rancid vocals and the kind of riff mastery that causes furious headbanging followed by a desire to prostrate yourself in humble worship and pathetic pleading for MORE OF THIS! RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Continue reading »

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