GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, SEPTEMBER 2025

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Oct 032025
 

(September 2025 is in the books, and so Gonzo is back with us to share his recommendations of five albums released in that month.)

It’s probably a pretty clear indicator of the world we’re living in when not one, not two, but three albums released in the same month are some of the most intense emotional experiences I’ve had all year. And friends, let me tell you—it’s been a year.

It’s with albums like the newest from Sundrowned and Heretoir that provide comfort in the darkest of times. Whether or not these are a direct result or response to world events is anyone’s guess, but music in 2025 has hit decisively differently than years previous.

All this being said, if you’re looking for coping mechanisms, emotional catharsis, or just a goddamn wild-ass ride you won’t forget, I can’t recommend my picks for September highly enough. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MERFOLK — “CASTAWAYS”

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Oct 022025
 

(written by Islander)

More than seven years having passed since the Montréal-based progressive death metal band Augury released their last album Illusive Golden Age, which itself was released a lengthy nine years after the one before it (Fragmentary Evidence). But although we can happily disclose that Augury are recording their fourth album and are half-way there, their leader Patrick Loisel has continued to make music on his own in recent years through his intriguing solo project Merfolk, which divulged the Demersal demo in late 2022 and released the debut full-length Sundaland this past May.

Sundaland is obviously an entirely personal creation, one in which Loisel wrote everything, performed every instrument, engineered and mixed every sound, and directed all the visuals. Those instruments included not only conventional metal accoutrement (though a fretless bass is not entirely conventional) but also classical instruments such as violin, cello, double bass, and piano.

It’s also worth giving you the following statement regarding the album’s inspiration, before we share with you a new video for the album track “Castaways“: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DWELLING BELOW — “SACRAMENTS”

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Oct 022025
 

(written by Islander)

The lineup of Dwelling Below — drummer/vocalist Jared Moran, bassist Anthony Wheeler, and guitarist Nicolas Turner — overlaps significantly with those of the bands Hierarchies and Acausal Intrusion. United in Dwelling Below, they create a variant of doom/death metal. But if you’re at all familiar with their work in those other bands, you can guess (correctly) that their version of doom/death is a twisted one, occupying an ever-changing intersection of the conventional and the unconventional, with results that are as unpredictable as they are abominable.

Dwelling Below made their advent with a self-titled debut album in 2023, and now they’re back with a second head-warper named Wearisome Guardians, which will be released on October 31st by Transcending Obscurity Records. What we’ve got for you today is the third song from the new album to be disgorged so far, a mind-ruiner named “Sacraments“. Continue reading »

VALDUR – GUILDED ABYSS

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Oct 022025
 

(Andy Synn gazes deep into the Guilded Abyss in advance of its release tomorrow)

I’ve spoken before, both briefly and at length, about how thankful I am that NCS is a wholly incompetent independent entity.

Don’t get me wrong, when I actually wrote for a physical magazine I was still pretty much left to my own devices, but the fact that we have no advertisers to placate, no industry higher-ups to fellate, and for the most part aren’t reliant on PR reps/divisions to feed us potential content (which often comes with an assumed quid pro quo that future access will be contingent on positive coverage), means that Islander, DGR, and I are essentially a law unto ourselves.

And because of this, because we make our own rules and don’t have to answer to anyone else, we’re able to do things like start the week off by reviewing the already incredibly popular album from future mainstream Metalcore darlings Dying Wish and end it by telling you all to save space for the latest slab of suffocating Black/Death savagery from underground iconoclasts Valdur.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FER DE LANCE

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Oct 012025
 


photo by Matt Chains

(Comrade Aleks has brought us a truly excellent interview with members of Chicago-based Fer de Lance, whose enthusiasm for metal and their own music-making is highly infectious. Their latest album, which is an exception to the not-entirely-serious rule in our site’s title, is also an excellent one, and worth checking out before, during, or after this very engaging discussion.)

Around 2019, MP Popeye (vocals, guitar) and Pat Glockle aka Rüsty (bass) left the Chicago heavy doom band Professor Emeritus, so it took their friend Lee Smith another six years to find a new lineup and record a second, and by the way, very cool, album. But it was all part of a cunning plan, as MP and Rüsty quickly found collaborators (Scud on drums and J. Geist on guitars) and formed their own band, Fer De Lance, and in 2020 recorded the EP Colossus, followed by their full-length debut, The Hyperborean, in 2022.

To Fer de Lance‘s credit, they didn’t waste any time and are already thundering along with a second, more powerful album. Fires on the Mountainside combines a number of musical concepts, among which are doom metal, classic heavy metal, even some elements of Mediterranean folk, and the epic nature of Viking-era Bathory. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARAPHEL — “SCENTLESS EPOCH”

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Oct 012025
 

(written by Islander)

Samhain is of course a prime occasion for the release of new music in the realms of metal, a time entirely fitting for the emergence of spirits (musical and otherwise) through parted veils that will no longer conceal them. This year one such release is the debut album of the Italian band Araphel, a record named The Endchanter.

It has been an eagerly awaited release in these quarters ever since learning that Araphel‘s veteran lineup includes members of Into Darkness, Thulsa Doom, Black Oath, and Extirpation. The intrigue increased when we read that while the music is rooted in black metal (of varying shades), its themes depart from cliched tropes of the fantastical and instead delve into more human realities and realizations — “a critique of society and the dullness of our lives and rules we are forced to live by.”

We’ll share these further words from the press materials: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CONVOCATION — “EMPTY ROOM”

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Oct 012025
 

(written by Islander)

Spring has begun to bloom in the southern hemisphere but here in the far northern latitudes fall is creeping ahead and winter looms behind it. It is time to bid farewell to summer, even if many of you closer to the equator are still baking in the sun’s oven. Time to welcome the fall of dead leaves, the chill that cools the skin, the spreading blanket of night. What better way to greet the circling of the seasons back into gloom than with a split recording named Latitudes of Sorrow by two formidable bands proficient in the alchemies of doom?

Surely these two bands will be known to a great many discerning listeners based on their previous discographies, and certainly well-known to our own visitors based on how often we’ve written about them here. One of them is the Italian band Shores of Null, and the other is the Finnish band Convocation. Their music is distinctive, and distinctively different from each other, and yet the pairing of them together in this new split was an inspired choice: They are kindred spirits.

To help introduce this compelling new split in advance of its November release by Everlasting Spew Records, what we have for you today is the premiere of one of Convocation‘s songs, one named “Empty Room“. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 187): TITHE

 THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Oct 012025
 

Recommended for fans of: Full of Hell, Wake, Of Feather and Bone

I must admit that Grindcore is not a genre I tend to spend a lot of time with… although I do dip my toe into the filth every now and then (mostly when a band comes along who mixes in some of the ol’ Grind with other, equally metallic, elements).

Case in point, Portland, Oregon trio Tithe – aka Matt Eiseman (guitar/vocals), Alex Huddleston (bass/vocals), and Kevin Swartz (drums) – first caught my attention with the release of 2023’s Inverse Rapture, whose hideous Death/Black/Sludge/Grind hybrid ultimately earned them a place on my list of the year’s “Great” albums (which you can check out here, if you’re curious).

And with the group having just released their third album, Communion In Anguish, a few weeks ago now seemed like the perfect time to introduce you to (or remind you of) the group’s grindy greatness.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HETEROPSY — “MEMENTO MORI”

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Sep 302025
 

(written by Islander)

After four EPs and a split since their formation in 2020, the Japanese death metal band Heteropsy will make their full-length debut with Embalming, an album set for release on October 31st by Caligari Records. The music is described on behalf of the label as a “mix of old-school Swedish death, melancholic vibes, and soulful edge” — death metal first and foremost but (in Heteropsy‘s words) with “vague madness and sadness.”

Further clues to what lies within can be found in the band’s identification of their influences as “sometimes” Dismember, Autopsy, Rippikoulu, Switzerland’s Sadness, and Sweden’s Naglfar: “We mixed our favorite death metal sounds, simmered them, sharpened them, stripped them bare, and then converted them into SAMURAI SWORD.”

The influences are indeed decipherable in the music, but make no mistake, Heteropsy‘s music isn’t some kind of paint-by-numbers copy. Rather than displaying rote fealty to death metal from an old age, they’ve created songs that manage to surprise as well as crush and slaughter. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DROFNOSURA — “THE WELL OF SEVEN HEADS”

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Sep 302025
 

(written by Islander)

Let’s begin with these words from Transcending Obscurity Records, because they effectively create justifiable intrigue about what you’re about to hear:

Drofnosura from Canada are a strange beast and they’re comfortable in their own iridescent, translucent skin. They have taken elements from multiple styles such as sludge, doom, black, and even post metal, finely ground them, and used the material to sculpt a new body entirely. The influences are not as distinct any more but the entity nonetheless is able to shape-shift and display the tendencies of those styles.

That passage is part of how T.O. introduces Drofnosura‘s second album Ritual of Split Tongues, which will be released on October 24th. They also characterize the music as “whimsical, rhythmic, and elegant,” but as you ponder those adjectives don’t lose sight of the album’s cover art, because like that ghastly image the music is also quite capable of becoming horrifying — as you’ll soon learn for yourselves. Continue reading »

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