AN NCS PREMIERE: BIRKENTAL — “SUPERBIA”

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Oct 082024
 

(written by Islander)

The German black metal band Birkental started as a one-man project by bass player Raug after a band break-up during the covid pandemic around the end of 2021. He wanted to create a project to experiment with bass-only black metal.

The drummer Zlam joined the project after about a year of its existence, and from then on Birkental has been a two-man project with Raug writing the songs, playing bass, and performing vocals and Zlam playing drums and keyboard. After about another year, they finished a debut album named Peccatum Mortiferum, which will be released on December 13th by Void Wanderer Productions.

Today we’re premiering the first advance track from the album, an intriguing song named “Superbia” that furiously assaults with visceral power but also proves to be both gloom-ridden and eerily otherworldly. Continue reading »

DEADFORM: “ENTRENCHED IN HELL”

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Oct 082024
 

(Here’s Wil Cifer‘s enthusiastic review of the debut album by Oakland-based Deadform, which is set for release by the Tankcrimes label on October 25th.)

Entrenched in Hell is the first full-length from this Oakland-based trio. If you are a fan of crust punk, this should be considered the upper crust of the genre.

Dino Sommese from Dystopia is playing drums and sharing vocal duties with Brian Clouse from Stormcrow. Clouse is playing bass in this project, with Judd Hawk (ex-Laudanum) laying down the guitars.

Hawk cranks out a vicious guitar tone, and phrases his riffs in a manner that gives you everything one might want from the grim world-ending metal. The production is raw, but feels like you are in their practice space having your eardrums ruptured. It certainly highlights the things I love about this sub-genre as it carries a stormy fury but grooves into the dark apocalyptic mood of the songs. The disdain projected into these songs makes for the perfect soundtrack to the world around us, with lyrics shattering the false hopes we try to fool ourselves with. Continue reading »

FERAL LIGHT – A RECKONING WITH THE INTANGIBLE

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Oct 082024
 

(Andy Synn celebrates, and mourns, the end of an era)

Well, this… fucking… sucks.

Not the release of a new Feral Light album – that’s always something to get excited about – but the fact that A Reckoning with the Intangible (which dropped last Friday) is going to be the band’s final album.

We’re not happy about this, obviously, but sadly there’s nothing we can do about it, so I guess all that’s left for us is to see whether they’ve elected to go out with a bang or a whimper?

Spoiler alert… it’s the former.

Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2025!

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Oct 072024
 


Poster art by Jacqui Alberts; layout by Emily McCafferty

Once again we are very proud and very excited to help present Northwest Terror Fest in its next edition on May 8-10, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Today NWTF revealed the first group of bands scheduled to play at next year’s fest (with more to be announced), along with more info.

Here’s that first group of bands — 22 of them — and it’s a tremendous lineup, including headliners Agalloch, Demolition Hammer, and Gorguts: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: AVERNUS

 Interviews  1 Response »
Oct 072024
 


Photography by Gene Ambo

(In mid-September we had the privilege of premiering Grievances, the comeback album of the Chicago doom band Avernus, a few days before its release by M-Theory Audio. And now our Comrade Aleks presents an extensive interview he also conducted in September with Avernus members Rick McCoy and James Genenz.)

Avernus from Chicago is considered one of the first bands to consciously mix influences of gothic rock and death-doom, as they did it in the early ’90s. Working on a series of demos and singles helped them digest this experience and come to the most effective expression of these ideas in the full-length release …of the Fallen (1997), which fans still remember with warmth.

Seventeen years have passed since then. The band managed to break up, re-form, and gradually record the second album Grievances. The line-up of Avernus has undergone minimal changes since 1993, and the latest “newcomer” is guitarist James Genenz (also Jungle Rot), who joined the guys in 1998. Other men are Rick Yifrach (drums), Rick McCoy (vocals, guitars, keyboards), and Erik Kikke (guitars).

An old horse does not spoil the furrow, as we say here, and in Grievances Avernus do not copy themselves, essentially moving along the path of melodic and atmospheric death-doom. It is curious, but in general the material is close to the fresh album of other luminaries of the scene – Officium Triste rather than to …of the Fallen. The similarity lies in the general tendency towards magnificent guitar melodies (there are three guitarists in Avernus), towards concentrated-in-power riffs, and in Rick McCoy‘s thunderous growl. Continue reading »

BLOOD INCANTATION – ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE

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Oct 072024
 

(Andy Synn dons his sceptic hat to see whether Absolute Elsewhere is everything people say it is… or perhaps something more)

Some have said – perhaps not unreasonably – that over the years I’ve had a tendency to treat Blood Incantation a little more harshly (or, at least, be a lot less effusive with my praise) than many other writers.

It’s not that I don’t like the band by any means – I’ve reviewed them positively a number of times, in fact, and have largely enjoyed it when I’ve caught their live show (even if I’ve never been as blown away by their “Morbid Angel on mescaline” vibes as a lot of others seem to be).

It’s just that the hype – “the next big thing“, “the future of the genre“, “a paradigm shift in Progressive Death Metal“, and so on – has always (in my opinion) seemed to outstrip the music, such that with every new release it’s felt more and more like the band are trying to play catch-up to everyone else’s expectations (and demands).

But, wouldn’t you know it, it’s when the band finally stopped trying so hard (and, make no mistake, Absolute Elsewhere is the sort of introverted, art-for-art’s sake, album they absolutely needed to make) that Blood Incantation finally, and fully, caught up with all the hype around them… and then some.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: THY CATAFALQUE, ANOMALIE, ANGANTYR, SPIDER GOD, ACID COFFIN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 062024
 

“Tenterhooks” is an exceptional word, even though I’m confident I’ve never used it in any conversation and even though it hasn’t appeared in a single one of our 15,889 life-to-date posts before this one (a suspicion confirmed by a computerized search of our entire site).

In its original meaning, which dates back to at least the 1600s, a “tenterhook” was a hooked nail used to affix washed woven fabrics to a wooden frame called a “tenter”, on which the woolen cloth could dry outdoors — stretched, straightened, and under tension. But, as The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us, “By the mid-18th century, the phrase on tenterhooks came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness, anxiety, or suspense, i.e., figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter.”

Why did this word pop into my head today? Well, because some of the music below put me on tenterhooks, and expressing those feelings in any other way would seem slightly drab by comparison, when the music itself is definitely not drab. (By coincidence, “drab” is another old English word dating back to the 1600s which also had something to do with woven cloth; it was the name for undyed, homespun wool with colors that were dull brown, yellowish, or gray.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLACK CURSE, GREAT FALLS, DROWNSHIP, POLEMICIST, THE WEIR, LYSERGIC

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 052024
 


Black Curse – photo by Brendan Macleod

A few times a year my spouse leaves town without me, jetting away to have fun with one of her sisters or a friend. I could join if I wanted to, but have figured out that giving her some breaks from me is a good idea. I give her some other breaks when I go off to metal fests without her (she’d rather be punched in the kidneys than go to a metal show).

These times when I’m home alone are clouds with silver linings. It doesn’t take long before I start really missing her. The sudden and prolonged silence around the house starts weighing on me. One of the silver linings is that I fill up the silence with music whenever I want to (my kind of music), and fill it up some more by spilling out thoughts about what I’m hearing.

You could guess that my spouse has been gone on one of those trips since early last week, given that I’ve now managed to pull together three roundups of new music and videos in the space of the last four days. She’ll be back home this afternoon, so I’ll most likely be back to doing these once a week on Saturdays until she plans another jaunt. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BEHEMOTH, PESTILENT HEX, DEIVOS, SOUL DEVOURMENT, CKRAFT, SOULSKINNER, TALES OF BLOOD, THORNLORD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 042024
 

“BC Friday. Go spend money.” That’s what a fellow metal writer posted early this morning in a chat group I’m part of, populated by a bunch of other metal writers from print and on-line spaces. From my observation, they do that every Bandcamp Friday, sharing in the group what they’ve bought, proving they did it and suggesting spendy ideas to the others, even though all of them get free promos of most records they’re interested in.

Well, I’m not going to exhort all of you to go spend money on Bandcamp today. Ends must be made to meet, and for some, the ends don’t include paying for music you can listen to for free. But for those who do like to take advantage of these Fridays and shove a few extra coins across the table to needy metal bands and labels (which is about 95% of them), I’ve got a few more ideas for you — in addition to the gazillion other ideas we’ve offered up on every one of the 28 days since the last Bandcamp Friday. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORISKA — “BISMUTH”

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Oct 042024
 

(Written by Islander)

The world as we know it is a bleak place, our inner worlds too often beset by turmoil and disappointment, and the outer world too savaged by humanity’s abundant, never-ending flaws. To be sure, we have glimpses of beauty and hope, but much of the time it’s a struggle to see them through the new and continuing ruins each day brings, inside and out.

Some metal bands succeed in creating diversions from the darkness, others seem to embrace it with a kind of nihilistic joy, and still others ruefully capture the grimness of what they see and feel in the most honest and powerful way they can, creating a staggering and shattering catharsis for others and for themselves as well. Oriska is that last kind of band.

This collective is headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota, but with members dispersed across California, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Their lineup features former members of Battlefields (Init Records, Translation Loss), Dispensing of False Halos, and Sleeping in Gethsemane (Init Records).

Oriska‘s self-titled debut album is now set for release on November 15th by Mind Over Matter Records and Init Records. “Blackened post-metal” is a shorthand description of the album’s music, but like many succinct genre terms it leaves a lot to the imagination. Better to see what that really means in the context of a song, and today we have one for you. Entitled “Bismuth“, it’s the album’s centerpiece and a formidable basis for the thoughts we tried to express above. Continue reading »

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