NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: ADVERSARIAL — “CURSED BLADES CAST UPON THE SLAVESCUM OF CHRIST”

Jul 172015

The last two releases by Adversarial have been short ones — a split with Paroxsihzem last year (Warpit of Coiling Atrocities, reviewed here) and another one with Antediluvian in 2012 (Initiated In Impiety As Mysteries, reviewed here). Both of them were stunningly good — and so I’ve had supremely high expectations for the band’s second full-length, Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism. As high as they were, those expectations were elevated even further after I saw the band’s obliterating set on the final night of this year’s Maryland Deathfest.

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, when you have such high hopes for a new release, you find yourself at least somewhat disappointed when it finally arrives. Not this time.

Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism will be essential listening for fans of black/death. It’s Adversarial’s best work to date, which is saying something — a journey into a vortex of lightless chaos that’s both terrifying and somehow entrancing. Today we are privileged to unsheathe this black knife as we premiere one of a very strong album’s strongest tracks, “Cursed Blades Cast Upon the Slavescum of Christ“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GRIFTEGÅRD

Interviews 3 Responses »

Jul 172015

(A day late because of my own screw-up, here’s the second of three interviews we have this week from Comrade Aleks — and today he talks with Ola Blomkvist of Sweden’s Griftegård.)

“G” is for Graveyard in English. “G” is for Griftegård in Swedish, and it means the same thing, I swear! So Griftegård is a universal name for any really heavy band. This one was born in 2004 in the Swedish city of Norrköping, “Swedish Manchester”, as it’s said.

The band’s main features were crushing and depressive doom metal and lyrics dealing with Christian images and their interpretation. Well, it’s a strong combination and it works well if you have no prejudice. But what kind of prejudice can we talk about, considering the world of professional heavy music?

Griftegård had only one weak point – for ten years of the band’s existence they had only one full-length album, Solemn Sacred Severe, but good news came in April 2015, as I discovered that Ván Records is going to release something new from these men. What kind of news are they ready to share? Ola Blomkvist, the band’s mastermind, is here to tell us. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST CONFIRMS 45 MORE BANDS FOR MDF XIV

Metal News 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

No one is going to bitch about not getting their money’s worth at MDF XIV. Today, the organizers of Maryland Deathfest announced the names of 45 more confirmed bands for the 2016 edition of the best metal fest in the U.S. (and one of the best in the world). This humongous list of new entrants swells an already impressive (and impressively full) list of previously announced bands. Here are the new names:

The Afternoon Gentlemen (UK)
Buzzov*en
Centinex (Sweden)
Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin (Italy)
Crypt Sermon
Dehumanized
Demonical (Sweden)
Demonic Christ
Deranged (Sweden)
Discharge (UK)
DOOM (UK)
Dopethrone (Canada)
Dragged into Sunlight (UK) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIABOLUS ARCANIUM — “HERALD OF DARKNESS”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Jul 172015

In this post we present the premiere of “Herald of Darkness”, a song from the forthcoming debut album Path of Ascension by Diabolus Arcanium from Chennai, India.

The orchestral component of the band’s music makes its presence known immediately in a waltz-like melody augmented by choral voices. The orchestration remains a dominant and dramatic feature of the song, becoming more sweeping and bombastic after the metal instruments come in and lead vocalist Hex begins to snarl his lyrics with bestial vehemence. The power and bombast of the symphonic sound lends a theatrical air to the song, with a heavy, jagged edge added by the metal riffing, the thrumming bass line, and the rumbling drumwork.

But the aural spectacle of the orchestration (arranged by keyboardist Archon) is matched by Hex’s extended guitar solo — a fiery, flamboyant performance that works hand-in-glove with the pageantry of the symphonic music. Continue reading »

SARPENTRA: “SUPERNOVA”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by Russia’s Sarpentra, which is out now.)

Hyperbole is a funny old thing. On the one hand it’s kind of fun to engage in, particularly if done so in a knowing, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, kind of manner. We love this music, so why not go all out? It’s an extreme genre, so let’s go wild!

But, on the other, when misused it definitely has a tendency to be more than a little misleading and to set up unreasonable expectations (something which I’ve been accused of myself only recently).

To wit, one of the reasons I elected to review Supernova was to try to counter some of the hype I’ve seen being thrown around, with words like “genre-redefining” and “revolutionary” being bandied about as if they were going out of style.

So I suppose what I really want to do with this review is to encourage you to take this album on its own merits, and not as if it’s the second coming of [Insert Famous Band Here]. Heck, if you really want to you can just scroll down to the bottom and listen yourselves, without taking any account of what I’ve written.

But for those of you who maybe want a little more context to inform your listening, or who simply enjoy reading articles about killer Death Metal albums… read on! Continue reading »

AUSTIN WEBER’S BEST OF 2015 SO FAR: PRIME CUTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND (PART 2)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Jul 172015

(In this multi-part post, Austin Weber brings us his recommendations for some of the best albums released during the first half of the year. Part 1 is at this location.)

Lever Of Archimedes

Today we start off with Lever Of Archimedes, a death metal trio from Washington, D.C. Triptych Disentanglement is the band’s first release, and in just three songs and a a brief 13 total minutes the band proves themselves to be a technical tour de force in the vein of Archspire and Beneath The Massacre, while mixing in a Conducting From The Grave melodic feel and grit at times. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SADISTIC RITUAL — “FUNERAL RAID”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Jul 162015

Unspeakable Axe Records is on the verge of releasing a new EP named Edge of the Knife by Atlanta’s Sadistic Ritual, and today we’ve got for you the premiere of the EP’s second track: “Funeral Raid“.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sadistic Ritual, they claim inspiration from such old-school slaughtering thrashers as Kreator, Sodom, Razor — and of course Slayer. And when you hear “Funeral Raid”, you’ll appreciate that Sadistic Ritual isn’t yet another straggler in the gaggle of new-school re-thrash bands. Listening to this song is like grabbing a severed power line, jamming it down your throat, and experiencing the thrill of your head bursting into flames.

The incendiary riffs erupt right out of the gate and don’t let up. Augmented by a couple of white-hot whammy-bar solos and a rancid, mad-dog vocal attack, “Funeral Raid” is a full-on adrenaline rush fueled by the spirit of old-school savagery. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MORDBRAND, SLIDHR, PLAGUE RIDER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Jul 162015

I’ve spent so much time since last weekend writing my own reviews (which isn’t a weekly occurrence) and scribbling words to accompany premieres that I’m afraid I’ve fallen down on the job of rounding up new music to throw your way. Because the never-ending flood of new metal doesn’t pause for me, I’m now very far behind, with a list of new tracks that would stretch from here to that distant planet NASA finally caught on film this week.

Okay, that last part may have been a slight exaggeration, but it really is a long list. Rather than throw up my hands in despair, I decided to make a start and at least feature new songs from three bands this morning. They’re all really worth hearing.

MORDBRAND

I think I’ve written about every release that Sweden’s Mordbrand have ever delivered, and not just because the band’s name means “arson”. The main reason is because they’re all so very good. The latest offering is a song named “Order of the Formless”, which appears on a split with the band Rite that’s been expected for a long time and is finally being released this month by Doomentia Records. Continue reading »

AN INTERVIEW WITH MOREAN — PART 3: ALKALOID

Interviews 3 Responses »

Jul 162015

Photos accompanying this interview by Christian Martin Weiss

(Andy Synn had the chance to interview the Dutch artist Morean about the three bands in which he is currently involved — Dark Fortress, Noneuclid, and Alkaloid. We’ve divided the interview into three parts, which will appear on three successive days. Today’s focus is Alkaloid. Check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

All jokes aside, all three of the bands discussed in this interview have a certain “Progressive” edge to them (though I’m trying not to over-use that word if at all possible) – Dark Fortress are a Black Metal band, and Noneuclid tend (at least in my mind) towards the Thrash-y end of the Metal spectrum. However your latest band, Alkaloid, is probably the most Progressive AND the most Death Metal focussed group of the lot. Was this something you were always aiming for?

M: You put your finger right on it. Not everyone in Dark Fortress and Noneuclid is equally into Death Metal and shred orgies. And despite all the artistic freedom we take in those bands, there were quite some things Alkaloid wanted to do that would never have fit with the other bands, and I think the same is true for Obscura. So we wanted to give it one last shot to start something fresh from the beginning, where we have complete freedom to do what we want without having to fit our ideas into 10 or 20 year old band concepts – even if they’re our own. In my own artistic development, I feel that with Alkaloid many things that have been growing in the other bands finally are falling into place. And the personnel in Alkaloid [Linus Klausenitzer, Danny Tunker, Hannes Grossmann, Christian Münzner] are very inspiring, there are very few limits to how far the composers in the band can go. It’ll be exciting to see where this band will end up going in the future. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISPLAY OF DECAY — “CREATED TO KILL”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Jul 152015

Almost exactly one year ago we premiered the title track from a new EP — Outbreak of Infection — by Display of Decay from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Since then the band have completed work on a new album (their second full-length) entitled Dust of Existence, and today we’ve got for you the first single from the record, a head-wrecker named “Created To Kill“.

You can’t accuse the band of false advertising, that’s for sure — the song’s title is a completely accurate description of the music. It’s a title that’s also linked to the song’s lyrics, which are based on events from 19th-century Europe, with references to the origination of Frankenstein’s monster and attempts at resurrecting the dead. As a whole, the album continues the narrative begun in Outbreak of Infection, relating the aftermath of a devastating virus that has annihilated humankind. Continue reading »

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