AN NCS INTERVIEW: GORLEBEN

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Sep 252025
 

(On October 15th the German band Gorleben will have their second album released by Darkness Shall Rise Productions. The music and other aspects of the album are fascinating (as we’ve already previewed), and so is the following interview conducted by Comrade Aleks with Gorleben member 235U.)

Gorleben was named after a municipality in Saxony, next to which an ill-famous radioactive waste storage facility is located. Hence the radioactive hazard sign in the logo, hence the nicknames of the participants taken from the names of radionuclides, hence the themes of the songs.

43 minutes of Menetekel are divided into four tracks. “Countdown” begins with a dreamy psychedelic theme accompanied by the sounds of nature, but gradually “the electricity turns on” and the melody becomes doomy, menacing, and heavier. It’s strange, but at some point it seems that two different tracks are playing: something like mid-tempo gothic metal and melodic death-doom in the vein of Katatonia. Gorleben know how to keep their identity yet also keep to the “Katatonia” scenario, further adding to their palette a duet of growls and harsh female screaming.

Suddenly, electronic samples penetrate the composition, and the riffs become chopped, industrial, and the male growl is replaced by a heart-rending black scream. In short, a lot happens in the first thirteen minutes of the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KARATE STEVE — “TIME UNDER TENSION”

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Sep 252025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re latecomers to the talents of the Boston-based quartet KARATE STEVE, but thanks to the song and video premiere we’re now hosting, we’re enthusiastically on board. Latecomers, because the song is the title track to the band’s forthcoming third album, Time Under Tension, and we overlooked the first two. On board, because it’s a hell of a good song, one that gets the blood pumping and nerves jangling.

By way of background for others who might also be newcomers, the band was formed about a decade ago and consists of guitarist/vocalist Ben Davis, lead guitarist/vocalist Robb White, bassist Earl Brown, and drummer Zach LeWinter. They’ve drawn from a wide array of influences, from ‘90s death metal and hardcore to thrash, sludge, and more, and the album title-song you’re about to hear is a good example of how well KARATE STEVE mix and match those influences. Continue reading »

ASHBREATHER – LA GRANDE BOUFFE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 252025
 

(Andy Synn has spent the last week or so gorging himself on fine food and drink… which makes the new album from Ashbreather an interesting, if not entirely inappropriate, choice for his return to action)

Well… here we are again, almost (but not quite) back to normal operation (that’ll probably end up being next week after we’ve recovered from all the travelling and/or revelling we’ve been doing recently).

So, as we gear up to get ourselves back to speed (although thanks to DGR you might not have noticed too much difference, considering the number of reviews he was able to put together to cover our recent down-time) I’ve decided to turn my attention to a band we’ve only covered once here before (back in the tail-end of 2022) and whom I/we sadly kind of lost touch with in the intervening years.

And, let me tell you this… whatever happened to Ashbreather in those years (which included both an EP and a collaboration which I missed) has only made them stronger/stranger.

Continue reading »

SYNESTIA: “PREMONITIONS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 242025
 

(This is DGR‘s lavish review of a new EP released earlier this month by Minneapolis-based Synestia.)

Symphonic deathcore group Synestia have had an interesting arc to their career. Existing by pure force of technology with members initially spread far and wide around the world, the group have been generally consistent with their release timeframes.

However, despite being something of an undercurrent on their own in the particular branch of the immensely spastic, adhd-inflected branch of the deathcore tree, the band themselves are just as known for multiple collaborations with musician/producer Blake Mullens who performs under the name Disembodied Tyrant.

This in itself means the band are part of a much larger orbit of surgical and synthetic-feeling and symphonics-reliant deathcore groups that all seem to both appear, contribute, and feature on one another’s works. It has to be difficult to break out on your own in such a way, when your logos all seem to be blurring together into one old script and sharpened stylized mass of words, and so a new EP from the group with a now more localized lineup and mostly them on their own is an interesting proposition. Continue reading »

DISSOCIA: “TO LIFT THE VEIL”

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Sep 242025
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the debut album by the Spanish band Dissocia, released last spring by Willowtip Records.)

Dissocia’s To Lift The Veil is a release that has been hanging around the NCS collective office for a while. To Lift The Veil was released in March of this year and we’re only just now getting around to a full-album deep dive.

Yes, this is one of those that we refuse to let go of for a few reasons. The compulsion to have something to say even though it’s been out for a while often wins over our feeble minds in that case, and as you can see here, we are once again battered and bruised by our own brain chemicals.

Not that we haven’t had anything to say in regard to this project before though; we were lucky enough to run a premiere of the song “Samsara” back in February when 2025’s overall musical arc was still a nebulous ball of chaos that had yet to take shape. But in order to understand all of this we need to run backward even further than just this introductory bit because it is likely that some of you may not be aware of what Dissocia and their debut album are just yet. Continue reading »

EVOKEN: “MENDACIUM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 242025
 

(We present Wil Cifer‘s evocative review (couldn’t help that) of Evoken‘s new album Mendacium, which will see release on October 17th via Profound Lore.)

It’s been 7 years since Evoken released the masterfulHypnagogia. It was an album that found the band changing what they felt the funeral doom genre could be, with some riffs that were in equal parts epic and melodic. They are taking another creative shift, though this time it lies in the spacious mix and stark composition choices they are making that give an even darker and more dismal sound here.

It’s not big, the way the cavernous echoes are captured by bands on the more deathly end of the doom spectrum embrace. Instead, the guitar haunts liminal spaces. There are none of the lush layers of sound you expect, but a creepy, sparse emptiness that sonically conveys a loneliness not heard in their previous work. The album is still characterized by great guitar work, it is just handled differently. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: EMISSARY

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Sep 232025
 

(In this new interview our Comrade Aleks talked with Michel Regueiro from the Spanish thrashing death metal band Emissary, whose debut album was released last March by Fetzner Death.)

Michel Regueiro (guitars, vocals) and Hlib Overchuk (drums) from Barcelona got together in 2023 in the name of old-school thrash/death metal, and believe me, they wasted no time recruiting Philip Graves (guitars) and Cosmil Martin (bass) and soon had eight tracks for their debut album Eldritch, which came out earlier this year.

The telling cover-art and track titles “The Shadows Lengthen in Carcosa”, “Hobb’s End,” and “At the Throne of Chaos” promised Lovecraftian horror in slightly atypical form. Indeed, I’ve gotten used to hearing Lovecraftian mythology in black, death, or at least, doom bands, but Emissary play their variations on themes in a completely traditional thrash vein with a bit of death overload. Continue reading »

LUNAR BLOOD: “ANOR” & “ITHIL”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 232025
 

(In this article DGR vividly reviews the two EPs released this year (so far) by the New Jersey extremists Lunar Blood.)

The initial plan for tackling New Jersey-based Lunar Blood’s newest EP Anor was to do so soon after I had returned from the May festival run. Anor was released on May 2nd, 2025 and was swept up in the great content maw that is my dragnet, but the opportunity to tackle its three songs wouldn’t present itself until after I returned home closer to the end of the month.

However, like many reviews, best laid plans are often laid to waste instead, and so Anor – alongside a few other victims that I keep swearing up and down that I’ll get to goddamnit – found itself backburnered up until Thursday, September 11th, when I finally found the time post-work – as nothing else important had happened that day other than me taking my team out for breakfast for clearing 1,000 days safe at work – to dive headfirst into its three songs and really come to grips with what the Lunar Blood crew were attempting to create here… only to discover that they had released a follow-up four song EP that same day entitled Ithil. Continue reading »

WE INTERRUPT YOUR USUAL FLOW WITH THE SOUR RISKS OF A CEMETERY TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 232025
 

(We are delighted that Vizzah Harri (South Africa born and Vietnam resident) has returned to us after some time away, and has brought with him a typically distinctive review of Sour Risk, a new album released in September by Cemetery Trip, preceded by typically distinctive reviews of all the Cemetery Trip releases that have preceded it.)

There are times when we just want more of the same, stuff of old that we grew up with or last year’s best but perhaps by now worn out overplayed. We are all creatures of habit and we can all fall for the trap of thinking deviating from course would be less fruitful than staying it. In metal lore there are the supposed big shifts of note when bands take an avant-garde or post-ish turn, perhaps they stopped growling or even using riffs for that matter! Gasp, the horror.

There was a time that I was appalled by the idea of change. Continue reading »

INTERNAL BLEEDING: “SETTLE ALL SCORES”

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Sep 222025
 

(Wil Cifer penned the following very enthusiastic review of the first Internal Bleeding album in 7 years. It will be released by Maggot Stomp on October 17th.)

Whenever I hear the term “deathcore” being used to describe a band, it normally turns out to sound more like something left over from the Myspace years, rather than the blend of hardcore and death metal that a band like Internal Bleeding kicks up on their new album Settle All Scores.

These guys have been around since the ’90s and have always been ahead of their time. Now, perhaps the kids call this sort of thing “Slam,” but the reality is it’s just hardcore-influenced death metal. Not sure what it is about places like Long Island and Buffalo, New York, but it makes people angry, considering how Cannibal Corpse formed in Buffalo three years before these guys. When it comes to being hyper-aggressive, the two bands are cut from a similar cloth, though Internal Bleeding does not invoke splatter horror vibes, but a gritty street-wise feel. Continue reading »

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