LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40 FOR 2024

 LISTMANIA 2024  20 Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(written by Islander)

Well, holy shit, is it already time to begin our site’s annual LISTMANIA orgy? Lo and behold, it is.

It has become an annual (and reflexive) tradition at our putrid site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list, because they always seem to burst from the starting gate sooner than anyone else — and they’ve done it again this year, even earlier than they did in 2023.

I need to repeat, of course, that the reason we also use their list as the launching point for all of our own forthcoming YE features is because, in my humble opinion, DECIBEL is still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal. Their list also always generates healthy discussions (and sometimes unhealthy ones), so it’s still a fitting way to launch the latest LISTMANIA season apart from the list’s early-bird status.

The DECIBEL 2024 list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2024 edition (with Cirith Ungol on the cover), which hasn’t yet hit my own mailbox, but DECIBEL again decided (for the tenth year in a row) to scoop their own list rather than letting leeches like me leak it. They published the list on-line yesterday, and so I can now again re-publish their list without too much guilt, beyond the sheepishness that comes from being one of the factors that forced them to start outing themselves in the first place. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TOXAEMIA — “REJECTED SOULS OF KERBERUS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(written by Islander)

Four years ago we premiered a couple of songs from Where Paths Divide, the eye-opening debut album of the Swedish death metal band Toxaemia that was ultimately released by Emanzipation Productions. We began one of those premieres with the following paragraphs, which four years later are still relevant:

“What causes a cult Swedish death metal band to come back to life after almost 30 years of silence? Not fame and fortune, at least not in the case of Toxaemia. Their roots go back to 1989, and their early demos and other recordings in 1990 and 1991 can legitimately be considered part of the pioneering sound of early Swedish death metal, but they’re not a household name in 2020. Rather than trying to cash in on a name, it’s a much better guess that this revival was spawned by one thing and one thing only: passion for the music.

“Sure, you might guess that nostalgia had something to do with it, but when you hear the music they’ve now made on a debut album that gestated this long, what you feel is fire and fury.”

Why are those words still relevant? Because the creative fire that fueled Where Paths Divide didn’t die away to embers. If anything, it has blazed higher in a new Toxaemia album named Rejected Souls Of Kerberus that we’re proud to present today, in full. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NARRENWIND — “KONIUGACJA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(written by Islander)

The Polish band Narrenwind was started by Ævil and Klimørh back in 2018, and since then they’ve released four albums and a few EPs through Pagan Records and Ævil‘s Wheelwright Productions. In that time the style of their music has changed through experimentation with different facets of metal, and it will change again with the release of their fifth album, Gorzkie Plony, which the band call “a return to the spirit of our inaugural work”.

What we have for you today is the premiere of the album’s first single, “Koniugacja“, which will be released across most streaming services on December 15th. Notably, it features session drum-work by Anti-Christian, known for his work with Doedsvangr, Beaten to Death, and formerly Tsjuder.

The song draws attention for other reasons as well, including the lyrics, which are unusual for a blackened heavy metal band, and we’ll start there. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DRAGONCORPSE / GLASSBONE / MINUALA / SALLOW MOTH

 SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(Andy Synn dives into four recent short-but-sweet releases)

There’s been a lot of truly excellent EPs released this year, with at least a few more still to come (as a matter of fact, we’ve got our own new EP coming out just next week).

And although, for reasons previously stated, my time is probably going to be a little more limited than usual over the next month or so, I’m hoping to at least cover a few more of them before “List Season” officially kicks in.

Beginning with the four succulent morsels of metallic goodness that I’ve elected to feature here today.

Continue reading »

HALIPHRON: “ANATOMY OF DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 122024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the sophomore album by the Dutch symphonic black/death metal band Haliphron, which was released a few weeks ago by Listenable Records.)

Truth be told, I hadn’t expected to see a second release from Haliphron to go sliding across my desk so soon after the first album had hit. Of course, it is often said that you have forever and a day to write your debut, and sometimes you have people who can’t seem to stop writing once that initial spark has been lit, and they burn brighter than a star lightyears away. Sometimes you’ll have people join the band with a bevy of ideas already percolating in their heads, as in Soilwork and Aborted‘s tendencies to have someone join and release a new EP soon after. And sometimes groups will wind up with an excess of material and it would be a shame to let that go to waste.

There’s a multitude of the cases available with Haliphron‘s lastest release via Listenable Records, Anatomy Of Darkness, but picking one certainly does help to mentally square the fact that we’re looking so soon at a second album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AUGUST MOON — “EXITUS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 122024
 

(written by Islander)

Perhaps especially to those of us whose hair is now majority-gray, it’s always inspirational to see people who first started making metal when they were still “wet behind the ears” get that itch again many decades later — but most especially when they scratch the itch in ways that should make people of any age sit up and take notice. And that’s what happened with the three Finns who make up August Moon.

As teenagers, they first came together (along with other friends) in 1992, and under the name As Serenity Fades they put out a trio of demos and an EP from ’93 to ’96. But in that same period two of those people formed August Moon as a second band with a third friend, and that also resulted in a pair of demos in ’93 and ’94.

But both bands faded away… until the August Moon trio of bassist/vocalist Mikko Sorja, drummer/vocalist Tom Henriksson, and guitarist Peter Viherkanto started writing music again in 2014. This time, it took 10 years to release anything.

The first signs of what they’ve done in their revival were manifested in a four-song EP self-released this past January, and then a further single the month after that. And now they have a debut album, Something Eldritch and Macabre, set for a December 13 release by the distinctive Personal Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEXENBRETT — “WOZU DIE ANGST?”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 122024
 

(written by Islander)

The Hexenbrett duo of Josto Feratu and Scarlettina Bolétt are returning with a second album entitled Dritte Beschwörung: Dem Teufel eine Tochter. According to Google Translate, this means “Third Summoning: A Daughter to the Devil”.

In the PR materials for the album, it’s described as a “devilish and drama-filled rollercoaster ride through cult metal and cult cinema alike,” and as “a wide panoply of sounds and sensations [that] swarm the listener, wrapping them in a wild and bewildering but above all kaleidoscopic headspace that easily avoids simple categorization.”

That all proved to be a good preview of the video for the album’s first single, “Um Mitternacht” (which translates to “At Midnight“). You’ll see the basis for the cult (horror) cinema references in the film excerpts. As for the music, it’s a wild hybrid, or maybe I should say hydra, pulling together ingredients of black metal, gothic horror, psychedelia, and classic heavy metal and rock. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ANTE-INFERNO

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 122024
 

(On November 22nd Vendetta Records will release a new album by the UK black metal band Ante-Inferno. Probably intrigued by certain Lovecraftian imagery hovering around the album, our interviewer Comrade Aleks reached out to the band’s lyricist, vocalist, and guitarist Kai, and that led to an excellent discussion, which we now present below.)

Founded in Scarborough, 2017, Ante-Inferno have performed their black metal almost without stop, and there’s just a normal two-year-long break between their second album Antediluvian Dreamscapes and the new one – Death’s Soliloquy.

This is a sort of concept album based on traditional black metal sound with atmospheric touches and a depressive message of self-destruction. Vendetta Records has scheduled Death’s Soliloquy for release on November 22nd, and the interview we’ve done with Kai (vocals, guitars) should shed some light on this grim dramatic work. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GÖDEN

 Interviews  1 Response »
Nov 112024
 

(Delayed by both external events and our editor’s foot-dragging, we finally present our Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Stephen Flam, an original member of the seminal NYC band Winter and a founder of Göden, whose second album Vale of the Fallen (the main subject of the interview) was released by Svart Records last May.)

About thirty-five years ago, the heavy, rusty, clanking Winter thundered through the New York City underground. Over time, the young trio, making sloppy death-doom, entered the pantheon of genre pioneers whose names are known mostly to doom-heads, but then the band simply fell apart after their first album Into Darkness (1990).

Winter’s guitarist Stephen Flam returned with two confederates as Göden in 2020: Betty (“Vas”) Lakkas aka Nxyta (Goddess of Night) on vocals and Tony Pinnisi aka The Prophet of Goden on keyboards. With the new album Vale of the Fallen, Göden continued this year the direction they took on their debut, Beyond Darkness (2020): unusual, but uncomfortable and categorically gloomy post-apocalyptic doom with hoarse female vocals. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LURING — “BORN WITH THE DEVIL’S MARKING”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 112024
 

(written by Islander)

Today we happily help spread the word about Malevolent Lycanthrophic Heresy, the forthcoming third album by the Pennsylvania-based black metal band Luring.

For those listeners who haven’t yet encountered Luring‘s previous releases, the album’s name and cover art may point you in one direction of expectations, perhaps envisioning raw and racing lo-fi viciousness, perhaps laced with sounds of ancient horror that cause the skin to crawl.

Such expectations aren’t completely off-base, but the song we’re premiering today is proof that there’s a lot more to Luring‘s new album than those facets.

What “Born With the Devil’s Markings” reveals is a band capable not only of launching malevolent full-bore assaults, but also creating captivating melody, muscle-moving punch, and mood-moving atmosphere of an unearthly origin. Perhaps unexpectedly, there is (dare we say it) an elegance and refinement in key components of this song — as well as indomitable thrust and lycanthropic savagery. Continue reading »

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