NO CLEAN SINGING

GRIFFON – DE REPUBLICA

Feb 192024

(Andy Synn is ready to join the fight for freedom alongside French firebrands Griffon… are you?)

Aux armes! Aux armes! To the barricades my friends, to raise our flags and spit death in the eye once more!

You see, I’ve been on a bit of a Black Metal binge recently – just this weekend I attended a fantastic event in Manchester where I got to see the likes of Andracca, The Sun’s Journey Through The Night, Abduction, Devastator, The Infernal Sea, and Ninkharsag all performing their latest releases in full – and discovering the new album from Griffon early last week has only further helped reignite my passion for the genre.

And so, like any good son of the revolution, I felt it was my duty to spread the word and enlist more names to swell our ranks and bolster our forces!

SHADES OF BLACK: ACATHEXIS, HALPHAS, VETER DAEMONAZ, LVME, DEPARTURE CHANDELIER, BILIOUS MIASMA, THROAT, MORS VITAQUE

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK 5 Responses »

Feb 182024

Like yesterday, I was able to assemble a big round-up of fairly new music for today. It seemed like a way to welcome myself back to doing what I habitually did before I got thrown way off course by my job. And now I’m wondering, as I habitually used to do, whether I’ve overdone it.

What you’ll find below are singles from three forthcoming records, followed by five complete albums or EPs, all of them released this month. I only stopped at the total of 8 so the cover art would line up neatly in the collage I made.

If you have the patience to move through everything, you’ll find as you go deeper that the doors start coming completely off the hinges, in bizarre and even horrifying ways, but with something profoundly dreamlike at the end. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ABORTED, BORKNAGAR, COFFINS, DEICIDE, HIGH ON FIRE, KATAKLYSM, MIDNIGHT, MY DYING BRIDE, ULVER

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Feb 172024

Oh look! I made a round-up of new songs and videos! Make the motion for slapping me on the back from afar, or at least patting my pointy head.

Yeah, it’s been a long damned time since I pulled one of these things together. Beginning in late January I kept thinking my life would get back to normal after 6 or 7 weeks of being ruthlessly pounded by my day job, but the pounding unexpectedly continued.

I’m at the point of doubting everything, but now it really does seem like my long dark night of the soul has ended, and I can resume what passes for normal activity around the ruined halls of NCS. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CELL PRESS — “ORIGINAL URANIUM BABY”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Feb 162024

About 3 1/2 years ago we premiered the self-titled debut EP of the Montreal band Cell Press on the eve of its release. We opened our introduction this way:

“If we could see your faces when you listen to it, there would be a great temptation to write nothing about the music and just watch your expressions change as all the surprises hit you like battering rams, expressions that might range from joy to panic to spine-tingling fear, and perhaps revulsion too. But since we can’t see you, on we go….”

And on we went, somewhat spoiling the surprises by referring to the music as “mad, mauling, and mind-bending — sometimes fiery and frenzied, sometimes cold and brutally destructive, and almost always so viscerally gripping that it makes your whole body want to move (even if some of the movements are spasms)”.

And so we couldn’t help but experience a kind of deviant glee when learning that Cell Press would be releasing their first full-length this March, a work named Cages, and more deviant glee when realizing we’d have the chance to premiere the video you’re about to witness for the second single off the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GÉVAUDAN

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Feb 162024

(The UK doom metal band Gévaudan put out a hell of a good album in Umbra last fall, so good that Comrade Aleks felt compelled to reach out for an interview, and the results are his very engaging conversation published below with Gévaudan bassist Andy Salt.)

The “Beast of Gévaudan” was a nickname of a semi-mythical man-eating wolf from French folklore. The creature made about 250 attacks on people in the Gévaudan region from 1764 to 1767, hence its name.

Several heavy bands are named after the beast, and the Hertfordshire doom metal quartet have carried it since 2013. Gévaudan was the first band for Andy Salt (bass) and David Himbury (drums), as Bruce Hamilton (guitar) had already performed in the stoner band Burn the Yeti, and Adam Pirmonhamed (vocals) had previously sung in the progressive thrash formation Manufacture.

First, the EPs Message for the Damned (2014) and Litost (2016) were released, then the group collected enough material for the full-length album Iter (2019), after which the presence of such a promising doom metal unit could no longer be ignored in the underground. So, by the end of 2023, Gévaudan came out with their second big work – Umbra. The album consists of one track with a duration of 43 minutes, and this is not nearly as scary and depressing as it might seem. This deep, emotional doom metal with epic (as well as progressive and psychedelic) touches has its original blend with recognizable traces of some classic acts.

A few of my doom-hooked friends recommended me Umbra, and it’s something each doom-head needs to know. Andy Salt told us a lot about the band’s and album’s backgrounds, so here we go. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ARIS SHOCK

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Feb 152024

(After some unforeseen delays on our part, today we are honored to bring you Comrade Aleks‘ in-depth interview with Greek metal writer and historian Aris Shock, focusing on his two landmark books about Hellenic black metal, and with hints about the third one to come.)

It’s an extremely rare case, but today we’ll speak not with a musician, but with a journalist. The paper books turn into artifacts, the runs drop low, and you won’t get rich writing about underground metal bands, I know. But some metalheads turn to keeping the old-school attitude, and that’s why we have a kind of small vinyl renaissance, reprinting some old fanzines, and so on.

Today we’ll speak with Aris Shock, who started to release a printed fanzine Shock! Aesthetics in 2001 covering extreme music and horror movies. His interest in both led him to the idea of focusing on covering and supporting the local underground scene. Thus, the Rites of the Abyss book was written. As Aris’ first book explored and revealed the history of such phenomena as Hellenic Black Metal, his second work was the natural continuation of the first one, as The Serpent & The Pentagram is the biography of Necromantia, one of three core representatives of the genre.

We did the interview with Necromantia‘s spiritual leader The Magus a few weeks before this one regarding his new album and this book [published here], so the interview with Aris is one more logical link in the chain of events related to the world of Hellenic Black Metal for me personally. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SUN OF NOTHING — “GHOST”

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Feb 152024

Metal genre labels begin to resemble scrambled eggs cooked with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes, with a sprinkling of cheeses and spices. The thought comes to mind in contemplating “experimental post blackened sludge metal”, which is how some have characterized the music of the long-lived Greek band Sun of Nothing.

But just as a flavorful breakfast scramble causes the mouth to water, Sun of Nothing‘s music is also very enticing, even though it might also make you think it’s the last meal you’ll be eating before the world ends. Continue reading »

ETERNAL STORM – A GIANT BOUND TO FALL

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 152024

(Andy Synn offers some insight into A Giant Bound to Fall, out tomorrow on Transcending Obscurity)

Spanish sensations Eternal Storm have found themselves in an interesting position in the run-up to the release of their long-awaited, highly-anticipated, second album, A Giant Bound to Fall.

The group’s first full-length, 2019’s fantastic Come the Tide, was such a breath of fresh air in a segment of the scene which had, for the most part, grown rather stagnant that many outlets (including this one) declared it to be one of the best albums of the year.

But success like that can be just as much of a curse as a blessing, setting such a high bar – one inevitably raised even higher by the sheer flush of excitement engendered by a new discovery – that nothing they ever do afterwards will ever be judged to match it.

And with the not-insignificant gap between their first and second releases having raised audience expectations ever further, the question now is – can Eternal Storm recapture that same Melodic Death Metal magic from their debut or are they… bound to fall?

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KELEVRA — “CLEANSE WITH FIRE”

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Feb 142024

On March 8th the Canadian metal band Kelevra (from Regina, Saskatchewan) will release a new album named Oneiric, which follows by a significant 8 years their last record, 2016’s Lividity.

For all of us, those 8 years brought an immense amount of change and challenge, and no exception was allowed for Kelevra. Among other hurdles they had to surmount, their bass player Adrienne suffered severe heart damage caused by an extremely rare and usually lethal autoimmune disorder, damage that led to multiple surgeries, the implementation of an electronic device (which powered her heart even as she continued playing live shows), and eventually a heart transplant.

We mention Adrienne‘s experience here at the outset, because she is one of the performers you’re about to see in a guitar-and-bass playthrough video for a thrilling song named “Cleanse With Fire” off Kelevra‘s new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HANDS OF GORO — “DEMONIZER”

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Feb 142024

What shall you give your love on this Valentine’s Day? This person advises against store-bought flowers because they’re not planet-friendly. Boxes of sweets that rot teeth and burgeon butts? Maybe not the best idea either. Is there anything you can do that isn’t damaging in some way (even though love is almost always damaging at some point)?

How about showing your affection with a gift of some thundering music that includes “elements of anthemic, epic, traditional heavy metal with torrents of harmonized savagery and brief ventures into the likes of punk, classic rock, and more”?

That’s the PR come-on for the self-titled debut album by Hands of Goro, which is set for release on March 1st. It’s a seductive come-on, and becomes even more seductive when you see that the band’s three participants include members of Spirit Adrift, Nite, Slough Feg, and former live members of Carcass and Angel Witch. Continue reading »

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