NO CLEAN SINGING

SULPHUR AEON – SEVEN CROWNS & SEVEN SEALS

Oct 172023

(Andy Synn catches up with NCS favourites Sulphur Aeon following the release of their fourth album)

I doubt there’ll be many people willing to argue against the statement that Sulphur Aeon have long-since proven themselves to be one of the best bands in Death Metal – hell, in Metal in general – operating today.

After making an impressive impact with their 2012 debut, Swallowed by the Ocean’s Tide, they then blew practically everyone away with the inhuman intensity of 2015’s Gateway to the Antisphere, only to then turn around and knock people’s socks off all over again with the more epic and melodic strains of The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos in 2018.

So to say that the band have set themselves a very high bar would be an understatement, and I want to make it clear that when I tell you that Seven Crowns & Seven Seals isn’t quite the quantum leap that …Scythe… was from Gateway… (or Gateway… was from Swallowed…) that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It simply means that Sulphur Aeon are finally settling into their own strange and sinister skin.

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOICE OF RUIN — “THE LAST FEAST”

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Oct 162023

At our site we’ve been enthusiastically following the progress of the Swiss band Voice of Ruin since 2014, which was when we hosted the first of two premieres we’ve done for them over that span of time — and now we’re adding a third one.

The occasion for this latest revelation of new music is the approach of the band’s fourth album, a record entitled Cold Epiphany that’s now set for release on December 1st. It follows by four years the band’s last full-length, Acheron, a record our review described as “melodic death metal’s melody mixed with thrash’s technicality and hardcore punk’s energy and punishing aggro beatdowns”.

As even that brief excerpt suggests, and as our review of Acheron explained in greater detail, the music of Voice of Ruin has always been difficult to classify, and the new album hasn’t made the task any easier. But the band’s willingness to pull from different stylistic wellsprings in different ways has also been a continuing source of their appeal.

That remains true on the new album, for reasons you can begin to appreciate through our premiere of a video for a song named “The Last Feast“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ASKESIS — “BEYOND THE FATE OF DEATH”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Oct 162023

Today marks the third time we’ve premiered and reviewed a release by the Venetian band Askesis. The first was their 2016 debut EP The Path to Absence (here), and we followed that with their 2018 demo Black Ontology (here). Now we have a full stream of their debut album Beyond the Fate of Death, which is set for release on October 20th by Time To Kill Records. It’s a concept album inspired by “The Myth of Sisyphus”, a 1942 essay written by the philosopher Albert Camus.

“Dawn of the Current Inferno” was the first single from the album. The band described its inspiration in these words, which we share here because they also seem to provide insights into the album as a whole (as we hear it):

“‘Dawn of the Current Inferno‘ serves as a testament to the power of artistic expression to push boundaries and challenge societal norms. It encourages us to embrace the enigmatic and the unexplained, reminding us that within chaos, there’s a hidden order waiting to be discovered. This composition is an invitation to embark on a journey of introspection, where we confront our own biases and preconceptions, and ultimately find a deeper connection to the world around us”. Continue reading »

EXHUMED: “BEYOND THE DEAD”

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Oct 162023

(Below is DGR‘s review of a new EP by Exhumed, which is out now on Relapse Records.)

Still catching up on everything that has passed through the void between the two eardrums in the last few months. This is going to be a weird/wild journey by the time we call it.

Exhumed‘s sudden release of their new EP Beyond The Dead came as a pleasant surprise. Their album To The Dead ranked pretty high with yours truly, and just about any time the band are tearing through a bevy of death and thrash riffs with a high-low vocal interchange tends to leave us in a happy place.

Exhumed have traversed through a few genres over the year but always within a familiar heirarchy; that a band calling themselves Exhumed are familiar with the worlds of deathgrind and goregrind should come as no surprise. Beyond The Dead comes from the grindcore songwriting philosophy of sudden-appearance/sudden-exit, and that includes the way Beyond The Dead appeared, with the band releasing it at the tail end of August just as they were gearing up to hit the road. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SEA MOSQUITO, NINKHARSAG

SHADES OF BLACK 3 Responses »

Oct 152023

After failing to write anything this usual Sunday column for the last two Sundays I was really determined to get one finished this week, and to make it extra-large. But then I had some unexpected family activities this weekend which shoved that plan into the ditch.

Consequently, this column isn’t extra-large, it’s extra-short. Apart from the usual desire to help spread the word about worthy music, I’m mainly doing this (quickly) to avoid three Sundays of failure in a row.

SEA MOSQUITO (UK)

I discovered the music of Sea Mosquito through their 2021 EP, Fire, Magic & Venom (four other EPs and a split had preceded that one). It was just a single 23-minute song. I spilled a lot of words about it here, ending with these:

“The song is absolutely, stunningly, mad. It makes you quiver and dance like a puppet on a string in a hellish theater, manipulated by a team of demon princes. (Given more time, I would come up with a dozen more metaphors, but maybe the song title says all that needs to be said.) It left me wide-eyed and jaw-dropped.”

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: A HILL TO DIE UPON, PHOBOCOSM, VASTUM, AKOUPHENOM, THE INFERNAL SEA

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Oct 142023

This would have been an outstanding week to compile a roundup of new songs and videos before now, to make a dent in the towering wall of new music that’s arrived since last Saturday. Alas, I couldn’t manage it.

The wall still towers, even higher now. This is a very small dent, though a lot of the music will likely put a big dent in your skull — though not at first.

A HILL TO DIE UPON (U.S.)

Based on their past work, which we’ve lauded repeatedly around here, the news of new music from A Hill To Die Upon would be eagerly welcomed, but the interest level has gone up even further because of the guest appearances on their new album, The Black Nativity, which include Karl Sanders (Nile), Ole Borud (Extol), Bruce Fitzhugh (Living Sacrifice), and Sakis Tolis (Rotting Christ). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRUEL FATE — “DESCENTE AUX ENFERS”

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Oct 132023

The name of the song you’re about to hear is “Descente aux Enfers“, which translates to “descent into hell”. The Canadian death metal band Cruel Fate, who included the song in their forthcoming second album Destin Cruel, chose the title well, for it truly is a descent into the realms of Inferno.

The song is less than four minutes long, but Cruel Fate still make it a journey, with each stage of the descent capturing a different manifestation of hellish horrors, all the while shaking and bludgeoning the listener like a ragged toy in the grasp of a demonic child. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOID — “SELF ISOLATION”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 1 Response »

Oct 132023

For people who suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia today is a very bad day, a Friday the 13th, and one that dawns in the spookiest month of the year. But in the pentagram-loving world of metal, of course, it’s an excellent day to reveal new music, perhaps exceeded only by Samhain itself.

New music is indeed what we have for you today, a song from a new album by the UK avant-garde black metal pioneers Void, whose lineup features members of Dødheimsgard, Atramentum, and Dreams of the Drowned.

The album’s name is Jadjow, and it’s set for release on December 7th by Brucia Records. The song we present today is “Self Isolation“. Continue reading »

THE AMENTA: “PLAGUE OF LOCUS”

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Oct 132023

(On October 19th Debemur Morti Productions will release a new EP by The Amenta (albeit a 40-minute “EP”). We’ve already showered its advance tracks with attention, but today we have a review of the entire release by DGR.)

The fun part about any release from Australia’s avante-garde black metal clusterfuck The Amenta has always been the opening paragraph wherein the author spends a good five or six sentences tripping over their own feet while attempting to describe what The Amenta is. To say that the band have existed off the beaten path would be putting it politely; instead it’s more like The Amenta saw the ‘path’ and proceeded to beat it to death.

Early on, the group saw various permutations into and out of the symphonic black metal scene and their first few albums are jammed full of big sweeping synths, various noises, and plenty of riffs for their chosen vocalist at the time to soar over, but there’s always been a stubborn part of the band that has refused to be put down, and beginning with their V01D EP, the band have long settled into ‘fuck it’ mode and let their artistic tendencies run mad. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THETAN — “GRAND OLE AGONY”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Oct 122023

Genre descriptions throughout the vast world of music can be useful. The micro-world of metal alone has dozens, many of them segmented by hyphens or backslashes in an effort to put a little more flesh on the linguistic bones. As an enticement (or a warning) they’re better than nothing at all for fans harried by time, but they can be deceptive too, because of their limitations.

“Powerviolence”, for example, is the most common descriptor used for the music of Nashville’s Thetan. To flesh that out, you might also see references to early hardcore or even European black metal from the ’90s.

But whatever thoughts those descriptions might provoke, consider also that this duo have crossed over to work with hip-hop emcees such as Kool Keith, Ultramagnetic MC’s, and LIL B. Consider further that the opening track of Thetan‘s new album, which will be released on October 13th, includes a monologue by Tennessee rap icon Crunchy Black of Three 6 Mafia.

Then contemplate the fact that the album also includes cello performances by Leslie Fox-Humphreys (a.k.a. Americana/folk soloist The Bandit Queen Of Sorrows), violin performances by Ashley Mae of Lost Dog Street Band, and the sounds of a harmonica being played by Benjamin Tod of the Lost Dog Street Band.

And wait ’til you find out who appears and what happens in the album’s closing track. Continue reading »

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