AN NCS PREMIERE: ISOLERT — “HERALD OF DEMISE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 272024
 

(written by Islander)

I spilled a lot of words about the “devastating magnificence” of Isolert’s last album, 2020’s World In Ruins — words such as “soaring”, “sweeping”, “near-celestial”, “blazing”, and “tumultuous”, but also “crushing”, “stately”, “dolorous”, and “sublime”. It created ruinous maelstroms but also reached epic heights of glory.

It has therefore been quite exciting news to see that Isolert have a new album on the way, the work of a lineup that now includes new guitarist George S. (Kosmovorous, Herald) in addition to Panagiotis T. (vocals), Nick S. (drums, vocals), and Apostolos K. (guitars, bass). The name of their new album is Wounds of Desolation, and it’s set for release on September 13th by the band’s new label Non Serviam Records.

One song from the album has premiered so far, and today we’re fortunate to host the debut of a second one, a song called “Herald of Demise“. Continue reading »

BLACK BIRCH – BLACK BIRCH

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 272024
 

(Andy Synn says the new self-titled album from Black Birch is one you need to hear)

Just recently I was chatting online with a bunch of Metal musicians – all far more famous and prominent in the scene than me – about how difficult it’s become, in an age of constant information overload and what seems like an ever-decreasing attention span, to make your band stand out.

Sure, I’ve seen and read all the well-meaning advice about jumping on the latest social media trends, optimising your “content” for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and so on, but all of it seems so forced and performative and, let’s face it, has less to do with the actual music and is more about turning your band into a “brand”.

Still, there are ways to grab your audience’s attention that don’t involve doing silly dances or otherwise acting like a validation-hungry jackass… and getting yourself some eye-catching artwork is one guaranteed way of getting me to check out your album, at the very least.

And when said artwork (created by Black Birch vocalist/guitarist Gina Wiklund, in this particular case) is accompanied by some absolutely electrifying Black Metal?

Well, then you’ve really got my attention. Continue reading »

ABSENCE OF THE SACRED: “IV: THE HAND THAT WOUNDS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 262024
 

(About 10 days ago the multi-national extreme metal band Absence of the Sacred released their fourth album, IV: The Hand That Wounds, and below we present NCS writer Vizzah Harri‘s enthusiastic and evocative review of this new achievement.)

There is a saying that we die every second we breathe, for each breath that we release back into the air is a small death. In French that translates to petit mort, which in no uncertain terms is slang for sexual release. The immensity of molecules exuded from just the collective sigh necessary to deliver a qualifiable work of art into the world… uncountable. It’s important to put in perspective sometimes where we are at, and how good we have it right at this minute.

In death there is life, yet we consume the art that can un-alive a packed venue for the amount of carbon dioxide released from the breaths it took to create. We consume without sometimes even thinking about that part, and we can masticate on that hard-won elegance made manifest in waves of sound as if it were nothing, but a thing it is. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANCIENT MALIGNITY — “DYSTOPIAN SUBJECTION”

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Aug 262024
 

(written by Islander)

I’m as infected by laziness as everyone else, but I do have my limits. For example, I almost always steadfastly refuse to quote what PR agents write in promoting the music of bands and labels, because copy/pasting that stuff is just… LAZY… even though lots of other metal sites do that routinely.

But today, I can’t resist quoting from the press materials for Ancient Malignity‘s new album Dehumanization Dawn, even though I’m going to eventually follow it with my own garbled verbiage:

Like a lost relic from the mid-to-late ’90s, Ancient Malignity‘s second album surges and slices with both palpitating precision and gangrenous gnarliness.

Those maniacs out there who hold high the torch of such old gods as Order From Chaos, Imprecation, Sacramentary Abolishment, America’s Crucifier, old Vital Remains, and earliest Kataklysm should find red-eyed solace in the blitzed & bleary decibels on display across Dehumanization Dawn.

Even the production itself sounds era-authentic — dank, dingy, and dungeoned, but no less muscular…. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: STILLBORN

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Aug 262024
 

(The Swedish band Stillborn trace their roots to 1984, and in June of this year, 40 years later, the original lineup brought forth a new album named Netherworlds. That was cause enough for Comrade Aleks to organize the following interview with the band’s vocalist and bassist Kari Hokkanen. Credit for all the accompanying photos goes to Bosse Melin.)

The Swedish gothic doom band Stillborn turns forty this year, and no matter what anyone says about “gothic doom”, classifying every other album of Paradise Lost, Theatre of Tragedy, or My Dying Bride as part of this genre, it was these Swedes who technically discovered it.

It was Stillborn who, in their debut album Necrospirituals (1989), mixed Black Sabbath riffs, without bringing them to the scale of Candlemass, with horror aesthetics and a deep low voice in the style of Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy.

Having recorded three notable full-lengths, Stillborn broke up in 1996, and then they were remembered only in connection with Messiah Marcolin’s attempt to return to the scene under the name Colossus, and also thanks to Paradise Lost, who recorded a cover of Stillborn’s hit “Albino Flogged in Black” as a bonus to One Second. Entombed did the same in 2004, and they didn’t hesitate to make a video for the song.

The song turned out to be so influential that Stillborn themselves have now recorded its sequel, “Albino Flogged in Blue.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ARKONA, GROZA, GAEREA, AETHYRICK, SVRM, EZKATON

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 252024
 


Arkona

(written by Islander)

Yesterday I read a story about a recent lobster-boat race across Casco Bay along the coast of Maine. It was won by a man and his 14-year-old daughter, with his daughter at the wheel of their 32-foot diesel-powered fishing boat. The man summarized their race strategy to a reporter: “Point it and punch it!”

Today’s collection includes new music from black metal bands who follow a similar strategy, but it also includes music that reveals a different strategy, something more like “slow it and sink it” (and maybe set it on fire first).

What ties all the music together is the presence of emotionally moving melodies and often the achievement of a certain scale and sweep (vast). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GIGAN, OLD MACHINES, FURNACE, SOLUS REX, ENDLESS CHAIN, LUSCA, KOBOLD, THE HYPOTHESIS, NARKOSE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 242024
 


Gigan

(written by Islander)

Poor you, I had lots of time on my hands yesterday, and so made my way through a lot more music than I’m usually able to do, and even had enough time to spill a bunch of words, like kernels from a violently ruptured grain silo.

With this much music in a weekly roundup, I often default to mentally un-taxing organizational strategies like alphabetization. But not today. I made these choices because of connections, and organized them in the way they connected for me. You’ll get it or you won’t, but as always, I hope you find one or more things you’re really glad you found, in whatever order it comes. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAPIENTIA DIABOLI — “I OV THE DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 232024
 

(Written by Islander)

Despite the fact that the identities of the most infamous progenitors of second-wave black metal, including arsonists, murderers, and the murdered, are very well-known (famous now, as well as infamous), anonymity remains among the more defining characteristics of black metal.

More so than in any other genre of metal, black metal is home to creators who adamantly prefer to let the music speak exclusively for them, without the potential distractions of identity. It’s not just a rejection of “celebrity”, it’s an embrace of obscurity, not just a pervasive use of pseudonyms but a blank space un-filled by any details other than what can be heard.

This iron-clad embrace of an underground ethos where the people making the music allow no light to shine on themselves (and sometimes no light to shine through the darkness of the music) often complicates and almost always undermines the mission of spreading of the word about the music. People who choose not to talk about what they’ve done, or even to tell actual or potential fans anything about who they are, leave more to chance about whether their accomplishments will find an audience.

Which brings us to Sapientia Diaboli, whose name is Latin for “The Wisdom of the Devil”. Maybe it is the Devil’s wisdom they practice by concealing everything except the shuddering impact of their sounds. Continue reading »

SURRENDER TO DEATH: A HISTORY OF THE ATLANTA METAL UNDERGROUND VOL. 1

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 232024
 

(In the following article our contributor Wil Cifer, who spent a lot of years in Atlanta, comments on a compilation set for release on September 6th by Boris Records and Deanwell Global Music which serves as a retrospective of the Atlanta metal underground from 1982 to 1999. It includes remastered original recordings by more than 20 bands from the area.)

In the ’80s Norway was not the bustling mecca for metal the media tries to portray it as today, so even Atlanta, Ga was impressive to me at 12 years old when I began visiting my grandparents in the States for a few weeks in the summers at their Stateside home just outside the city limits of Atlanta. My first exposure to what the music scene in America was like in the flesh is captured in Surrender To Death: A History of the Atlanta Metal Underground Vol. 1, a compilation by Boris Records and Deanwell Global Music. For me, it’s a fun indulgence of nostalgia for those summers spent venturing into the city for all-ages shows. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SINISTRO — “ELEGIA”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 222024
 

We’re about to premiere a video for the second advance song from Sinistro‘s new album Vértice. But before we get to it, let’s take a few steps back.

This Portuguese band’s last album, 2018’s Sangue Cássia, made a big and favorable impact around our crumbling and gore-streaked halls, and a very distinctive one given that their music was a very big exception to the permeable “rule” in our site’s title.

Our Andy Synn named Sangue Cássia to his year-end list of 2018’s “Critical Top 10” albums, calling it “one of the most intensely intimate, moodily mesmerising releases of the year.”

For us (and for many others) it was therefore very exciting and intriguing to learn that Sinistro would be returning this year with a new album, with a new singer (Priscila Da Costa) and a new label (Alma Mater Records), masterminded by Moonspell singer Fernando Ribeiro. Continue reading »

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