NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: WALKING CORPSE — “NOTHING GROWS HERE”

Oct 092023

To be honest, we’re used to over-the-top exaggeration when we get descriptions of music from PR agents, labels, and even bands. It comes with the territory, when the territory is so deluged with releases fighting for attention. At times, however, over-the-top descriptions turn out to be accurate.

Take, for example, what Transcending Obscurity Records has written about the Swedish grindcore band Walking Corpse and their new album, the beautifully named Our Hands, Your Throat:

Walking Corpse step on the accelerator till your hair starts to tear off, deviate from the path abruptly, and before you know it, jump back on the track with increased neck-snapping speed. There’s a twisted, dissonant edge to the music here as it rampages with abandon, borrowing elements of death metal and even a bit of sludge, and throws everything at you faster than you can flinch…. This is cerebral grind delivered with spine-rupturing mayhem.

Sounds over-the-top, right? Yeah maybe, but if anything, it turns out to be an understatement, as you’ll discover from the song we’re premiering today: “Nothing Grows Here“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SUOL — “OVER DE GEUTE”

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Oct 092023

The two Dutch musicians J. and P. have had no shortage of personal projects and bands through which to express their creative impulses, usually channeled in variants of black metal. Between them they have made music under the names Shagor, Ossaert, Dinbethes and Weerzin. But they’ve also joined forces in a new entity named Suol.

What inspired this new union? The answer is that J. and P. have a shared passion for local myths, sagas, and historical stories surrounding the Dutch town of Zwolle and the nearby river IJssel, which ultimately discharged into a shallow bay in the North Sea once known as the Zuiderzee.

Suol became their vehicle for exploring these old tales and historical events through black metal, and the results are captured in a self-titled debut album (which included participation of other musicians from their local region) that will be released on October 27th via Swarte Yssel.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video for a song from the album named “Over de Geute“. Given the nature of Suol‘s inspiration, it’s no surprise that the lyrics are in Dutch, not English, but we do have Suol‘s English explanation for what the song is about: Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Oct 092023

(Andy Synn highlights four albums from last month you need to listen to)

There’s two things you need to know about this column.

It’s usually done sooner than this but, since I didn’t get back into the country until Wednesday last week, I didn’t have chance to write everything up until now.
I normally try and present a pretty varied grab-bag of albums and artists in each article… but this time I’ve dedicated it solely to some of the nastiest, gnarliest, and most unfriendly sounds from September.

So, with all that in mind, let’s see what this latest edition of “Things You May Have Missed” has to offer, shall we?

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SULPHUR AEON

Interviews 1 Response »

Oct 092023

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ recent interview with members of the German extreme metal band Sulphur Aeon. Their new album Seven Crowns and Seven Seals will be released on October 13th by Ván Records.)

Sulphur Aeon is the one of most productive extreme metal bands among those which spread the ruinous gospel of Lovecraftian cosmic horror and crawling chaos. They’ve treaded their path with absolute dedication, and they’ve provided three quite individual full-length albums since their foundation in 2010.

The band’s new release Seven Crowns and Seven Seals seems to be going off H. P.’s plots, but things aren’t as simple as they seem sometimes, and it’s always interesting to know what lies beneath the surface.

Sulphur Aeon’s members are known mostly just as T. (guitars), M. (vocals), D. (drums), S. (bass), and A. (guitars). So let it be, as the music is what really matters. Though the official release date was set on the 13th of October by Ván Records, we got in touch with Sulphur Aeon almost immediately, and M. along with T. replied. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WAYFARER, ENDOLITH, TROUNCE, KRÂEL, KING KAOS, DOMINION OF SUFFERING, PHOBONOID

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Oct 072023

Wayfarer – photo by Frank Guerra

Another Bandcamp Friday again overwhelmed the NCS in-box as bands, labels, and PR agents sought to capitalize on Bandcamp’s reduced take from sales. A similar deluge washed through social media, and every other channel where I look for new music.

It really is overwhelming, and probably self-defeating. Ironically, releasing new music on a Bandcamp Friday is probably the best strategy for getting overlooked — drowned in the flood.

It certainly adds to the stresses of creating this weekly column. I fantasize that the point of it is to help guide people toward musical gems, even though in even a normal week I know it’s still a very random process because I can’t listen to everything that might interest me or you. In a week like the last one, the process of sifting becomes an even more ridiculous challenge.

All I can say is that I enjoyed what you’ll find below, and hope that you make some valuable discoveries from it too. (And don’t bash me for overlooking a couple dozen more songs, not to mention complete albums and EPs, that would have been just as worthy of attention.) Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PATHOGENIC — “DEAD BUT NOT AT REST”

Premieres 1 Response »

Oct 062023

Massachusetts-based Pathogenic have been active since 2004, with a discography that includes a pair of albums, a trio of EPs, and a handful of singles, including two released last year. And today we’re helping them spread the word about yet another single, “Dead but Not at Rest,” which comes with an official video.

This new song is described as “a musical foray into the depths of pandemic-induced isolation”. For some of us, those times are already beginning to seem like ancient history, while others may still live with the debilitation and death spawned by the virus (and it’s a history that could easily repeat itself with the rise of a new pathogen). For some of us the dark days had silver linings, while for others it was a sinkhole of disconnection and depression.

In the case of Pathogenic‘s newest single, the eloquent lyrics are harrowing, perhaps finding in the depths of the pandemic a metaphor for other forms of depletion and hopelessness. No silver linings here. The music also has its own harrowing aspects, but turns out to be a multi-faceted experience, an amalgam of melodic and progressive death metal that’s much more electrifying than grim. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TEMPLE OF SCORN — “BEGOTTEN BY THE ENVENOMED”

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Oct 062023

What we have for you here today is the advent of the third single from Funeral Altar Epiphanies, the debut album by the Danish death metal group Temple of Scorn. While it’s a debut for this collective, it’s no first start for the band’s members individually. Their resumes include previous participation in these other well-known bands:

Baest
Bloodgutter
Dawn of Demise
Exmortem
Horned Almighty
Invocator
Kampvogn
Sylvatica
The Arcane Order

That list is a good clue that this quintet know what they’re doing. But what have they done together in Temple of Scorn? Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 163): SVALBARD

THE SYNN REPORT 1 Response »

Oct 062023

Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Oathbreaker, So Hideous

First off, I have to apologise for the lateness of this particular edition of The Synn Report – I simply didn’t have time to write very much while I was overseas last week.

However, considering that Svalbard are releasing their fourth – and arguably finest – album today, it seemed like an opportune time to take a deep-dive into their discography (and, potentially, reassess some of the words I’ve written about them previously).

There’s no question that the Bristol-born quarter have proved somewhat divisive at times – their punky fusion of Post-Metal, Post-Hardcore, and Post-Black often causing consternation amongst the “purists”, while their poignant, painfully honest lyrics have sometimes been accused of being a little too on the nose – but the raw energy, and equally raw emotion, underpinning everything they do is something that simply cannot be denied.

So if you’re a looking for a band who wear their collective heart on their sleeve, but also don’t pull their punches – musically or lyrically – then Svalbard should be just what you’ve been searching for.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEGATIVE VORTEX

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Oct 062023

(Today we present another interview by Comrade Aleks, and this time he spoke with both members of the California-based death metal band Negative Vortex, whose debut album was released earlier this year by Sentient Ruin.)

Negative Vortex is a Brazilian, US-based doomed death metal duo created by M.Feschner (guitars, vocals) and Libra (drums, bass, guitars, keyboards) a few years ago. Both men had years of experience in the extreme metal underground, and Negative Vortex’s full-length album Tomb Absolute is their most focused, matured work.

These nine songs aren’t just a nihilistic, intense, and depressing experience of analyzing modern human society performed in the vein of Autopsy and Celtic Frost, but a thoughtful and complex view of it through the prism of literature and socially important cases.

The songs’ lyrics include excerpts from William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe as well as lines from the last woman executed in Czechoslovakia, Olga Hepnarová’s original letter on “Cease to Exist”.

And last but not least, Tomb Absolute includes a good list of honourable guests, like Kam Lee, Nick Holmes, Vik Whipstriker, Moyses Kolesne, Leon del Muerte, and Caleb Bingham, who left their special mark on the album’s songs.

We have done a pretty good interview with both M.Feschner and Libra for the Spanish magazine This Is Metal, and I’m glad to share its full version here. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MORNE, BEYOND GRACE, AUTARKH, PYROLATROUS, NÁSVELGR, CONVOCATION, BLUT AUS NORD

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Oct 052023

September 16th was the last time I was able to assemble one of these roundups of new music and videos, partly due to my missing four days at the site while attending a recent wedding in California. Needless to say, the backlog of new music that interests me swelled to enormous proportions in the interim.

In deciding what to recommend today I defaulted to the most recent releases. Prowling back through everything of interest that emerged over the last three weeks was just too daunting a task, which tends to be Sisyphean even when I’m not missing in action. Hope you get a kick (in the ass or head) from what I chose.

MORNE (U.S.)

Morne’s 40-minute new album plays out across only four songs, which tells you that they’re all substantial in length. One of those premiered this week, along with a very good video, and when I heard it the first time I felt both emotionally and physically crushed. Of course, therefore, I liked it immediately. Here’s what Morne‘s Polish-born guitarist/vocalist Miłosz Gassan said about it: Continue reading »

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