AN NCS INTERVIEW: ALAN “NEMTHEANGA” AVERILL (PRIMORDIAL)

 Interviews  8 Responses »
Dec 112014
 

 

(Wil Cifer brings us an interview with Primordial’s main man, Nemtheanga.)

I had the honor of recently getting the chance to catch up with Primordial’s lead singer Alan Averill and talk about the success of the new album (Where Greater Men Have Fallen), the pitfalls of touring in America, and the state of black metal. It went a little something like this.

*****

Wil– So this is your 8th album. How has the songwriting process changed from the first album to the eighth?

Alan – In no way. The same thing. The only difference is there is not an old school tape machine in the middle of the room. We write in our rehearsal room. We do send files to each other over the internet and tell each other what to do. We do what we do. We do it when it feels right. Not when we need an advance from the record company.

 

Wil– You changed producers this go around and recorded out in the Grouse Lodge; how was that different from how you have done things in the past ?

Alan- It is more of fact that every two albums you need to change producers and change studios. You need to change the routine. Routine is death. It is very important to step out of your comfort zone to create. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMBRIONAL — “IN DARKNESS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 112014
 


photo by Semen Turkowski

Embrional’s 2012 debut album Absolutely Anti-Human Behaviors was a strikingly impressive debut, a death metal barrage that was equal parts suffocating old-school brutality and technically impressive high-speed chaos. This Polish band have now recorded a follow-up album entitled The Devil Inside that shows every sign of being just as powerful, distinctive, and attention-grabbing. But judge for yourselves — you are about to hear our premiere of the album’s first advance track, “In Darkness”.

The song sounds absolutely monstrous, with a grit-caked, grinding tone that bespeaks a mountain of skulls being ground into splintered fragments — yet the production is also clean enough to ensure that every scalpel-sharp note and destructive drum strike hits home with unerring accuracy. The grim, serpentine melody in the song’s early minutes oozes an atmosphere of suppurating illness and inhuman malice, but the music also eventually explodes in a flurry of blazing fretwork and a barrage of drum munitions that is both frenetic and surgically precise. Fittingly, the vocal tirade is tyrannical and caustic. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ETHEREAL, OUROBOROS, IBEX ANGEL ORDER, CODE, DEATH GRIPS

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Dec 112014
 

 

I’m really backlogged in listening to new music, and the list of things worth checking out grows on a daily basis. Last night I did manage to sift through part of my collection of enticing links and found this quintet of tracks that I thought were worth throwing your way. Diversity is again the organizing principle.

ETHEREAL

The UK’s Ethereal, about whom we’ve written frequently in the past, have been signed by Candlelight Records, and the first release for their new label will be an album entitled Opus Aethereum (due in February 2015). The very cool cover art for the album is above and was rendered by Tripple Seis Design.

But the first song in this collection isn’t from the new album. It’s a cover of Darkthrone’s “Fucked Up and Ready To Die” from 2003’s Hate Them. Ethereal recorded it for a Darkthrone tribute album named One Cold Night In Norway, which will be released as a free download through Speed Slaughter Productions on December 13. Ethereal recently uploaded their cover to YouTube, and it’s excellent — dark, ravenous, brooding in its atmospherics, heavy as granite yet ghostly in its void-faring journey — and ultimately a swarming assault on the senses. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE UNIVERSE DIVIDE — “DAY 4”

 Free Shit, Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 112014
 

 

(Austin Weber brings us the premiere — and a free download — of a new song by The Universe Divide from Atlanta, Georgia.)

In their heyday, Canvas Solaris were an instrumental act of considerable skill and prowess, taking a death metal, jazz, and prog-infused path of constructing instrumental metal music that was far ahead of its time. It’s been a few years since that group bit the dust in 2011, though the band is writing new material, but that is a long ways away from coming to life.

What people familiar with that group may not know, is that two of its members, guitarist Chris Rushing and bassist Gaël Pirlot, have been crafting a new instrumental metal vision in their latest group, The Universe Divide. The band previously released an impressive EP in 2011 called Dust Settles on the Odontophobes, and they certainly carry over some of the aggressive nature of Canvas Solaris that is missing from a lot of instrumental metal. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SICKENING AND MARDUK

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Dec 102014
 

 

Things have been busy around our metallic island, and I’m afraid I still haven’t been able to catch up on all the new songs and videos I want to hear that have rolled out over the last week. But rather than just throw my hands up in surrender, I at least want to call your attention to two new tracks I heard this morning that brightened my day. And by “brightened”, I mean “blew it to smithereens”.

SICKENING

Man, times flies. More than four years have passed since our last (and only) mention of this band from Firenze, Italy. Four years ago I posted about a song from their then-forthcoming second album (Against the Wall of Pretense), likening it to “the demonic offspring of some unspeakable three-way orgy among Suffocation, Dying Fetus, and Devourment.” Now, Sickening have finished recording a third full-length entitled The Beyond, which is described as a concept album based on the 1981 horror movie of the same name directed by Lucio Fulci. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BEWITCHER — “SPEED ‘TIL YOU BLEED”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 102014
 

Bewitcher is a two-man band from Portland, Oregon, whose third demo release — a three-song offering entitled Midnight Hunters — will be coming your way on January 5, 2015. A few paragraphs from now, we’ll give you a chance to sample the demo as we premiere a stream of one of the new songs, “Speed ’til You Bleed”.

As you’ll soon find out, that’s an apt title for the song. It’s a rocking blast of thrashing blackened speed metal, a dirty, alcohol-fueled homage to the spirits of Venom and Motörhead that will get its hooks in you right from the get-go. The production is gritty enough to ooze old-school heavy metal vibes but not so rough as to obscure the shotgun drumming, the shine of the cymbal smashes, the spitfire soloing, the abraded filthiness of the raving vocals, or the sing-along compulsiveness of the lyrics. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CHALICE OF BLOOD — “SHEMOT”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 102014
 

 

Sweden’s Chalice of Blood announced their arrival in the occult realms of black metal with a three-song demo in 2005 (Angelus Diaboli) and followed that with two split releases, including their excellent 2014 split with Israthoum on the Daemon Worship label. Early next year Daemon Worship will release the band’s most accomplished work yet, a five-song EP entitled Helig, Helig, Helig, and today we bring you the first taste of the new music through our premiere of a track entitled “Shemot“.

Those in search of “atmospheric” black metal or sweeping melodies that tug on the heartstrings will have to look elsewhere. “Shemot” is red of tooth and claw, a predatory assault that’s more interested in ripping out the heart and devouring it. Driven by relentlessly blasting drums and the buzzing whir of fiery tremolo riffs, the music radiates venomous energy, its dark melody full of malevolent threat, the cracked-glass vocals uttering hateful proclamations with bestial vehemence. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JESSE ZURETTI (THE BINARY CODE)

 LISTMANIA 2014  8 Responses »
Dec 102014
 

 

(For the second year in a row, we asked guitarist and songwriter Jesse Zuretti of The Binary Code — who have a new album of their own headed our way — for thoughts about his favorite albums of 2014, and he provided this list.)

 

1. Animals As Leaders – The Joy of Motion

Stand-out album for me, since I’ve never really been a fan (as much as I appreciated just about everything these guys can do as musicians). This album, to me, defines talent that reaches beyond the confines of the stereotypical “metal” nomenclature. The R&B jams, the unbelievably creative drumming, the song-writing — it’s all just sitting perfectly with me. I really think it’s going to be hard to top this one, should they choose to put out another album. This was my #1 played metal (new) album of 2014, and for good reason. Continue reading »

INTERVOID: “WEAPONIZED”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Dec 102014
 

(Guest writer Booker returns to NCS after an extended hiatus with this review of the new album by Intervoid from the wilds of northeast Ohio.)

There are those who follow, and then there are those who take another path. We probably all like to think that the world of metal is made up of people who fit into the latter group. Maybe you like to think you’re part of that group, too, and that this bent in your character has made you take the red pill and set in motion a series of events that has led you, inexorably, here. But there’s an even more extreme group who throw all semblance of caution to the wind, raise middle fingers to the gods, and have the temerity to… release an album in December.

I can hear you screaming in disbelief, “Who would do such a thing?!”. Yes, who would… who would violate the sacred sanctity of the year-end list, which now has spread into November like an out-of-control blob consuming ever more months in an ever-increasing race to be first. Maybe these people know something we don’t? Maybe they’ve just got better things to do than to schedule their musical creations around the whims of the internet metal nerds? I have another idea – they are not human. And this brings us to Intervoid, whose debut LP just dropped as a late-breaking treat to top off the year. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, WOLFHEART

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 092014
 

 

I thought that once I got back to Seattle on Sunday from my two-week sojourn to the East Coast, things would return to normal. That hasn’t happened. The old fuckin’ day job has continued to have its way with me like a lonely shepherd on a tethered goat. Between that kind of raw treatment and getting other people’s year-end lists ready for posting, I’ve had precious little time to write about new music and videos. I do have a very long list of new things to check out, but I’m afraid all I can do at the moment is toss these two excellent videos your way.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

These Italian maestros of blistering symphonic death metal have just released an official video for the song “Epilogue”, which appears on their latest album, Labyrinyth. The video was directed by Francesco Paoli and Salvatore Perrone and features special guests soprano vocalist Veronica Bordacchini (who was a fine addition to the band’s live show when she accompanied them on their NorthAm tour earlier this year), guitarist Marco Sensi, and cellist Shamatiyenko Kostyantyn. Continue reading »

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