NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BACKSTABBER — “PATTERNS OF DOMINATION”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Mar 142024

On March 15th — tomorrow! — the Quebec band Backstabber, now featuring a revised lineup since their last album, will release their new EP, a four-song assault called Patterns of Domination, but today we’re giving you a chance to hear all of it without delay.

Before we get into some detailed thoughts about the music, here’s the band’s description of what the EP represents:

“Loosely based on James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, Patterns of Domination delves into the 4 patterns that serve as means to canalize someone else’s attention and energy. Together, they form an endless cycle of consumption that completely breaks down the victim from the inside out. Like fresh air. These are the first songs with the new members of the band and they contributed a lot to this album.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VNDER A CRVMBLING MOON — “BREACH THE SKY”

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Mar 142024

On April 5th Ripcord Records will release II: Aging & Formless, the second album by the UK band Vnder A Crvmbling Moon, whose lineup features members of Garganjua, Conjurer, and Codex Alimentarius, and whose music could be thought of as a formulation of post-metal that incorporates elements of sludge and doom.

No music from the new album has yet been revealed, and so today’s reveal is a big one — the first single from this 7-song opus. Its name is “Breach The Sky“, and it comes in the middle of the album’s running order. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AL-NAMROOD, BLACK TUSK, DEAD FLESH, DVNE, GATECREEPER, HALNY, JORDSJUK, KULT IKON, RIITASOINTU, SIX FEET UNDER, SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI, WARM GADGET

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Mar 142024

What I’ve assembled for visitors today is an even dozen songs and videos from bands spread across six countries and a variety of genres (and at least one that’s not really metal), including death metal, black metal, sludge, doom, post-metal, progressive metal, deathcore, folk-metal, and some things that are harder to pin down. If you don’t find something to like, it must be because you searched for “no spring cleaning”.

One thing you’ll figure out fairly soon is that a lot of today’s songs rock out, providing some very catchy head-movers. There’s also singing (or close to it) in some of them (gasp!). But of course I’ve sprinkled in some ravagers too, and because I’ve arranged these songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, one of those comes first.

AL-NAMROOD (Saudi Arabia)

The first song is “Lisan Al Nar” (Tongue of Fire) from AlNamrood‘s new album Al Aqrab, to be released by Shaytan Productions on June 9th. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: MASTIFF / MIDAS FALL / SLIMELORD

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 132024

(Andy Synn highlights three more home-grown heroes)

Some of you may have noticed (or maybe you haven’t, I don’t know how much attention you all pay to what we do around here) that my “Best of British” articles rarely feature any of the “bigger” names (relatively speaking) from the UK scene.

Partially that’s because, obviously, the site’s general ethos is to dedicate more of our time and energy to the less-exposed, less “mainstream-friendly” bands out there, but it’s also because, to be honest, a lot of the bigger names and famous faces just… don’t really do it for me.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of bands whose “mainstream-friendly” sound still appeals to me – bands who play and perform with just as much conviction and creativity as any of their more self-consciously “underground” cousins – but there’s a certain formula for success, carefully curated and algorithmically adjusted for maximum appeal, that some groups follow which simply sounds hollow to my ears.

But I think it’s safe to say that none of these three bands – one we’ve covered here before, one we’ve clearly overlooked for far too long, and one making their highly anticipated (and already highly praised) full-length debut this year – are what you would call “formulaic”.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: IRON VOID

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Mar 132024

Photos by Robyn Benson / Black Earth Photography

(Last year the British doom band Iron Void celebrated their 25th anniversary and released a stellar fourth album, and in belated honoring of those events Comrade Aleks conducted the following very engaging interview with all three of the band’s members — Jonathan ‘Sealey’ Seale, Steve Wilson, and Scott Naylor.)

Iron Void from West Yorkshire is one of the most focused and active doom metal bands among those that present a “traditional” scene. Being formed in 1998 and disbanded in 2000, Iron Void didn’t hurry to record a full-length album even after their reunion in 2008, but here they are with four albums in the discography now, and the most up-to-date release IV saw the light of day in January 2023.

Yes, it happened one year ago, and we’re a bit late with this interview, but it’s never too late to support the band that deserves wider exposure. After all, heroic, quite old-school, and damn heavy IV was one of the best doom albums of 2023. Also, besides other things, you’ll learn from this interview what “Street Doom” stands for! Continue reading »

NCS PRESENTS: CULTHE FEST 2024

Metal News No Responses »

Mar 132024

Last year Culthe Fest made its triumphant return to stages in Münster, Germany, after
a covid-induced hiatus. It featured a very impressive lineup of bands over two days last April, and we helped spread the word about it then. For the good of fans and bands, Culthe Fest is back this year, and we’re again helping to spread the word as one of the fest’s international partners.

This year, on March 30 and 31 in Münster, Culthe Fest will present performances by 16 bands from 9 countries on three stages, headlined and co-headlined by Downfall of Gaia, Sylvaine, Wiegedood, Solbrud, Ophis, and Predatory Void.

The lineup is exceedingly strong from top to bottom and spans a range of metal and metal-adjacent sub-genres, and below we’ll provide notes about all the participating bands scheduled to play on each of the two days, and how to get tickets (there aren’t many left!).

We’ll also provide notes about the Dark Arts & Crafts Exhibition, which will again be part of this festival presentation. Continue reading »

JUDAS PRIEST – INVINCIBLE SHIELD

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Mar 122024

(Andy Synn has a lot of love for the new album from a little band called Judas Priest)

It’s been well-documented by now, I’m sure, but it’s worth reiterating that – despite our slowly growing profile (and, as an aside, let me say thank you to all of you for continuing to read, and recommend, our various well-intentioned witterings) – our focus here at NCS is more on covering and critiquing (positively, for the most part) less well-known and more underground/under-exposed acts, rather than the big names and famous faces.

So when a little bird told me about a new album from a bunch of up-and-coming young whippersnappers by the name of Judas Priest – great name by the way guys, I’m surprised it wasn’t already taken – I decided to take a chance and give Invincible Shield a listen, since it’s always cool to be able to say you were into a band right before they blew up, right?

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ORNAMENTOS DEL MIEDO — “ESCAPANDO A TRAVÉS DE LA TIERRA”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Mar 122024

We are very pleased today to premiere a complete stream of the newest album by the Spanish death/doom metal project Ornamentos del Miedo. Entitled Escapando a Través de la Tierra, it will be released by Tragedy Productions and Meuse Music Records on March 15th.

This stunning new opus is again the solo work of Angel Chicote from Burgos, who was responsible not only for all the vocals and instrumentation but also the mixing, mastering, and artwork.

Lyrically, the songs address “interest disguised as friendship, mental illness, forgotten memories”. “Here there are no more demons, monsters or fantastic beings than those that life gives us”. But while the lyrics may express recognizable vagaries of human life, the intensely atmospheric and emotionally moving music transports the listener to realms far, far away from the mundane. Continue reading »

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHIES OF ’23 — PART 5

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2023 No Responses »

Mar 122024

(Our editor wasn’t able to compile a list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs from 2023, but our supporter Vizzah Harri, a resident of Hanoi, Vietnam, has stepped in to fill the void. We’ve already published Parts 1-4 of his list (find those here), and now we’re proceeding with Part 5.)

This series can be seen as a coagulation of forms on psychological de-fractured symbiosis. As in, this isn’t some SCP level troll, I tried to bring the avant-garde into writing about music that appeals to me but on songs from genres and locations that are varied enough that it would appeal to most readers of this site (yes it’s still heavily biased with 14 from the USA, six from Germany, 3 each from Norway and England, two each from Vietnam, Sweden and France, while Denmark, Canada, China, Australia, Hungary, Italy, Belarus, Poland, Wales, India, Russia and Finland each were represented by one band – math ain’t my strong point, there’s a miscount in there somewhere). Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PUTRID TORSO

Interviews No Responses »

Mar 112024

(Belatedly, we are still catching up with interviews conducted by Comrade Aleks at a time when our editor was too incapacitated by work to publish them in a timely manner, and today we catch up to his discussion with Ion Santos from the Basque Country brutal death metal band Putrid Torso.)

About a year ago we did the interview with Hopelessness, a melodic death metal band from Basque Country. And somewhere around November 2023 I got the message from their guitar player Ion Santos. He said that he’s also involved in the brutal death act Putrid Torso and that Trails of Hypnotized Human Veins had just been released by Pathologically Explicit Recordings.

And, honestly, brutal death isn’t my cup of tea (even Lovecraftian brutal death), but we’re just mere puppets in the hands of Ruinous Powers. So here’s the interview with Ion for those who are into extreme and misanthropic metal. Continue reading »

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