AN NCS INTERVIEW: DETHRONED

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Feb 082024
 

(Today we bring you Comrade Aleks‘ interview with guitarist/drummer Barkayal of the German black metal band Dethroned, with roots in the ’90s and a new album released in December 2023 by Dominance of Darkness Records.)

Germany’s Dethroned was founded in 1991 under another name, Mysticism. They changed it to Dethroned only in 1995 and continued to record demos until their split-up in 1999. A reunion in 2007 wasn’t fruitful at first, and it took ten more years to record the band’s first full-length Bluontrunst. But six more years passed, and now Dethroned have returned with their sophomore work A Bridge to Eternal Darkness.

The band consists of its original guitarist and drummer since 2007, Barkayal, his bandmate (vocalist and guitarist) since 1995, Nebulah Danyal, another vocalist Golzarath, the guitarist John Never, and bass player Corpse. Together, they provided quite a convincing act of blasphemy, and Barkayal has a few things to say about it. Continue reading »

206 BLAST FEST!

 Metal News  No Responses »
Feb 072024
 

(Chris Luedtke wrote the following come-on for a fest set to explode this coming weekend in the Seattle area. Check it out and come if you can.)

For those out in the Pacific Northwest, specifically those in the Seattle area, if you are looking for some blasting, thrashing, grinding live music, look no further than 206 Blast Fest.

What’s 206 Blast Fest? A grindcore, noisecore, hardcore festival featuring twenty-two bands. Some you may recognize, some you may not. I’m not going to give a complete breakdown of everyone playing, so I encourage interested parties to investigate anything not covered here. And I encourage you to go if you possess the ability to support live and underground music. The festival is presented by Audio/Violence Productions and is also the medium where you can get tickets to the fest. A link will be provided at the bottom of this article, but first an overview of a few bands playing. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FROZEN WINDS — “THEOSPHOROS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 072024
 

Freezing winds howl through the Earth’s atmosphere in the far northern and far southern latitudes, but they can howl through our minds too, regardless of where we dwell. In realms of music, black metal brings the howling cold in ways more biting and dreadful than most genres, with the gales often whipped by the furious wings of fallen angels.

And so it’s not so perplexing to find a black metal band named Frozen Winds that originated on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, no matter the usual sun and warmth of those climes. They delved into occult subjects and found ancient expressions of the Left Hand Path that led them into the gales, and also into the ritualism of mystics.

More than 17 years into their existence, Frozen Winds have moved their music to evolve, building upon their previous releases as well as live performances, sharing stages with the likes of Rotting Christ, Kawir, Septic Flesh and The Dead Creed. Where the movements have now taken them will be revealed in a new album (only their second) named Keys to Eschaton, and is partially revealed today through our lyric-video premiere of the first single from the album, a fabulous song named “Theosphoros“. Continue reading »

HULDER: “VERSES IN OATH”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 072024
 

(This is Todd Manning‘s enthusiastic review of the new album by Hulder, which will be released on February 9th by 20 Buck Spin.)

 It is the critics’ temptation to always glorify the radical and experimental, but sometimes it’s important to realize genius when it is executed within a genre’s traditional confines.  Such is the brilliance of Hulder. Their latest full-length, Verses In Oath, is an exercise in everything that has made black metal such an addictive sound. The embrace of ancient violence and forest mysticism is strong here and they don’t radically deviate from the template, they are just doing it better than almost anyone else right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DUSK

 Interviews  1 Response »
Feb 072024
 

(December 2023 brought us a new album by Dusk, one of the true cult doom bands from the ’90s, and it proved to be a tremendous full-length return to form, 28 years after their debut album. We proudly premiered a video for one of the new songs last year, and now follow that with Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Dusk co-founder Steve Crane – with apologies to the two of them for how long it took us to publish this.)

Back in the early ’90s, the North American death-doom scene was neither diverse nor rich. The bands that made this music in this period can be counted on one hand, but the first among them would be Avernus, Evoken, Morgion, Winter, and Dusk. Each band has its own history, and as for Dusk, they lasted only five years from their formation in 1995, leaving behind the now cult full-length …Majestic Thou in Ruin and a couple of smaller releases.

Somehow the band managed to reunite in 2015 with an almost entirely original lineup, only changing the drummer: Tim Beyer (guitars, keyboards), Steve Gross (keyboards, guitars), Steve Crane (vocals, bass) and Sean Smith (drums). Dusk recorded a mini-album Withdraw in 2018 and laid low for a while. It was a question of time, and now the second full-length album, Dissolve into Ash, was released in December 2023. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME II: A QUICK BEGINNING TO 2024

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 062024
 

(Daniel Barkasi returns today with the second of his monthly NCS columns devoted to spreading the word about musical obscurities. What you’ll find below are reviews and streams of 8 records released from around the globe in January.)

To begin, thank you to all who read the first edition of this monthly column. I’m glad folks seemed to enjoy the musical expeditions of my often wacky brain. May you discover something to your liking that’ll (hopefully) give you plenty of enjoyment and respite from the madness of the everyday hustle.

This edition covers records that were released in January, which is how we’ll be covering things month-to-month. This time, we have a cornucopia of flavors to indulge; from atmospheric, epic, and relaxing, to the downright filthy. True that the first month of the calendar is typically a relatively slow month in terms of memorable releases, but this year has started off quite favorably. Plenty of under the surface delights to tear into, so let us begin faster than Jerry Seinfeld’s supposed claim of being quite fleet of foot. We choose to run! Continue reading »

METH. — “SHAME”

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Feb 062024
 

(We present Wil Cifer‘s intriguing review of an album by the Chicago band meth. that was released last Friday by Prosthetic Records.)

Imagine a band that does not feel the need to adhere to any of the conventions we have heard a thousand times over from all the other bands that push the limits of heavy. Chicago’s meth. is such a band.

Less unsettling evil haunts their new album Shame than say a band like Portrayal of Guilt, who are not far removed from their sonic zip code. You can pinpoint the sub-genres they touch upon, such as the deliberate pound of dense distortion that could be called sludge. Most of their vocalist’s screams carry an anguish that is similar to what we hear from black metal vocalists. Yet unlike those bands, they do not just relegate themselves to doing it throughout the entirety of a song much less the entire album. Continue reading »

CHAPEL OF DISEASE – ECHOES OF LIGHT

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Feb 062024
 

(Andy Synn tries his best to embrace the new album from Chapel of Disease, out this Friday)

A lot of people, including yours truly, will tell you that Chapel of Disease‘s 2018 album, …And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye, is one of the best Death Metal albums of the last decade.

And even those who don’t agree with that statement generally have to concede that it’s definitely one of the most unique Death Metal albums they’ve heard in a long, long time.

But the band’s upcoming fourth album (the final recording of the group’s original line-up) is neither of these things.

Because it’s not really a Death Metal album at all.

Continue reading »

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHIES OF ’23 – PART 1 (OF AN UNKNOWN NUMBER)

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2023  No Responses »
Feb 052024
 

(Vizzah Harri was not necessarily invited to write about the most virulent verses and lullabies of the year just past, but he did ask rather nicely (read: forcefully) whether he could give it a shot in the dark. This guest says he works in education, is an occasional scribbler of self-proclaimed abstract poetry bordering on obscurantism and his only real skill is that of finding mistakes in the work of his (su)peer(ior)s. Not to mention his affinity for keyboard-racing. He resides in Hanoi, Vietnam.)

According to the CDC, infectious diseases can be either bacterial, viral, fungal or parasitic in nature (other than the CDC link, unless you somehow reverted back to troglodytical proclivities and missed it completely this time ’round last year, them be the greatest hits of 2022’s most infectious lists). There also exists a rare group of mephitic and contagious diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.

TSEs or prion diseases are a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative brain disorders with long incubation periods; progressing rapidly once symptoms develop, they are always fatal. I’m not saying that this list is so noxious it might kill you, but something has to kill you in the end, albeit the biggest predator here is the presence of overlong sentences. Full disclosure and disclaimer up next: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOUNDS — “ZOOPHAGIST”

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Feb 052024
 

It’s always a pleasure to come across a song name that sends us running for the dictionary, even when it’s a name whose meaning we might be able to guess after dividing it into its component parts. If you guessed that “Zoophagist” refers to an animal that eats every other animal available to it, you get a gold star.

However, in the case of the song you’re about to experience courtesy of the Chicago band Wounds, that creature isn’t one you can find in any zoo or earthly wilderness. As the song’s chilling lyrics describe, it is instead a collective of lethal things that have captivated the mind of their captor in a lab in outer space and thereby achieved their escape.

In the words of the song, these things eagerly anticipate what will come next after they make their way to our solar system: Continue reading »

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