NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ABORTED, BAT, DARKTHRONE, HÄMND, MY DYING BRIDE, NECROPHOBIC, TERMINAL NATION, ULCERATE

Mar 162024

A hell of a party awaits below….

All the “big” names in this Saturday roundup of new songs and videos were suggested by my old friend and fellow NCS slave DGR — “big” in quotation marks because no surface-dwelling listener would remotely consider the music “radio friendly”.

But I still decided to throw in a few more subterranean offerings of my own choosing, all of it presented in alphabetical order by band name. That arrangement turned out to create some big twists and turns in the music.

ABORTED (Belgium)

First up, feast your eyes and ears on the music video for “Condemned To Rot” from Aborted‘s guest-studded new album Vault of Horrors. The guest stud on this one is Francesco Paoli from the NCS house band Fleshgod Apocalypse (does anyone remember when I used to call them that every time I mentioned them?). I’ll crib from my friend Andy‘s review of this album: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HERESIARCH — “NOOSE ABOVE THE ABYSS”

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Mar 152024

Seven years have passed since Heresiarch‘s last album Death Ordinance (reviewed here), a long gap in new music segmented only by a pair of splits in 2019 and 2020 (the second of which, with Antediluvian, we premiered here). Now, at last, Heresiarch‘s second album Edifice is on the way, with a release date of April 12th established by Iron Bonehead Productions.

Our review of Death Ordinance referred to the music as “belligerent and bestial”, “militant, violent, and ruthless”, “an obliterating war metal juggernaut”, a “fusion of bloodthirsty primitivism and inhuman mechanisation”, and “a genuine tour de force”, with emphasis on “force”.

Even seven years later, no one would expect Heresiarch to make peace with the world or with their listeners, and on Edifice they haven’t. But as we’ll explain in more detail at a later time, the album’s unforgiving assault on the senses is a multifarious as well as nefarious experience, and the song we’re premiering today — “Noose Above the Abyss” — is a vivid and extremely unsettling sign of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEVOTION — “HORROR BEYOND THE STARS”

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Mar 152024

Having been first formed in 2012, the Spanish death metal band Devotion haven’t churned out their releases at a breathless pace. Their devotion to the old metal of death has been expressed more deliberately, and both the pacing of their releases and their stylistic evolutions have been influenced by lineup changes along the way.

What 2024 will bring us is the band’s third album in their dozen years of life, a record fittingly entitled Astral Catacombs that will be released by the Memento Mori label on April 22nd. To help introduce it, today we present a song whose title — and music — spawns thoughts of Lovecraftian terrors. Continue reading »

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHIES OF ’23 — PART VI

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2023 No Responses »

Mar 152024

(Our editor Islander wasn’t able to compile a list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs from 2023, but our supporter Vizzah Harri, a resident of Hanoi, Vietnam, has stepped in to fill the void. We’ve already published Parts 1-5 of his list (find those here), and now we’re proceeding with Part 6 — almost the final part.)

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies of ’23 – Part VI (of 6.16… because the sacred number is 13, my mom is – no word of a lie – the 13th child and even though they grew up rather Christian, French-influenced paganism still had a strong hold and they called themselves the 12 after you-know-who’s acolytes, seeing as baby #12 sadly didn’t make it. 6+1+6 equals 13 and if isopsephy is mangled by the kind of imposter disordered numerologist that tattooed a clock pointing to 3:37 on his left shoulder seeing as his idol growing up was Anthony Kiedis and Scar tissue was exactly that length, then why not use that number as the final installment?

This gives you an idea where my style sprouts from, ‘that’ Riot Hyatt McCarthy–word-salad spitter, sprinkle in some filth, and garnish it with the dust of your dreams served next to a walled orchard and you get my meander. 666 added up is just eighteen, ask the Greeks, they would know. And yes, I’m therefore doing an Islander and adding one more with links to all the tracks that there is not enough sand in the hourglass for to keep writing about last year. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BACKSTABBER — “PATTERNS OF DOMINATION”

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Mar 142024

On March 15th — tomorrow! — the Quebec band Backstabber, now featuring a revised lineup since their last album, will release their new EP, a four-song assault called Patterns of Domination, but today we’re giving you a chance to hear all of it without delay.

Before we get into some detailed thoughts about the music, here’s the band’s description of what the EP represents:

“Loosely based on James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, Patterns of Domination delves into the 4 patterns that serve as means to canalize someone else’s attention and energy. Together, they form an endless cycle of consumption that completely breaks down the victim from the inside out. Like fresh air. These are the first songs with the new members of the band and they contributed a lot to this album.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VNDER A CRVMBLING MOON — “BREACH THE SKY”

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Mar 142024

On April 5th Ripcord Records will release II: Aging & Formless, the second album by the UK band Vnder A Crvmbling Moon, whose lineup features members of Garganjua, Conjurer, and Codex Alimentarius, and whose music could be thought of as a formulation of post-metal that incorporates elements of sludge and doom.

No music from the new album has yet been revealed, and so today’s reveal is a big one — the first single from this 7-song opus. Its name is “Breach The Sky“, and it comes in the middle of the album’s running order. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AL-NAMROOD, BLACK TUSK, DEAD FLESH, DVNE, GATECREEPER, HALNY, JORDSJUK, KULT IKON, RIITASOINTU, SIX FEET UNDER, SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI, WARM GADGET

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Mar 142024

What I’ve assembled for visitors today is an even dozen songs and videos from bands spread across six countries and a variety of genres (and at least one that’s not really metal), including death metal, black metal, sludge, doom, post-metal, progressive metal, deathcore, folk-metal, and some things that are harder to pin down. If you don’t find something to like, it must be because you searched for “no spring cleaning”.

One thing you’ll figure out fairly soon is that a lot of today’s songs rock out, providing some very catchy head-movers. There’s also singing (or close to it) in some of them (gasp!). But of course I’ve sprinkled in some ravagers too, and because I’ve arranged these songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, one of those comes first.

AL-NAMROOD (Saudi Arabia)

The first song is “Lisan Al Nar” (Tongue of Fire) from AlNamrood‘s new album Al Aqrab, to be released by Shaytan Productions on June 9th. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: MASTIFF / MIDAS FALL / SLIMELORD

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 132024

(Andy Synn highlights three more home-grown heroes)

Some of you may have noticed (or maybe you haven’t, I don’t know how much attention you all pay to what we do around here) that my “Best of British” articles rarely feature any of the “bigger” names (relatively speaking) from the UK scene.

Partially that’s because, obviously, the site’s general ethos is to dedicate more of our time and energy to the less-exposed, less “mainstream-friendly” bands out there, but it’s also because, to be honest, a lot of the bigger names and famous faces just… don’t really do it for me.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of bands whose “mainstream-friendly” sound still appeals to me – bands who play and perform with just as much conviction and creativity as any of their more self-consciously “underground” cousins – but there’s a certain formula for success, carefully curated and algorithmically adjusted for maximum appeal, that some groups follow which simply sounds hollow to my ears.

But I think it’s safe to say that none of these three bands – one we’ve covered here before, one we’ve clearly overlooked for far too long, and one making their highly anticipated (and already highly praised) full-length debut this year – are what you would call “formulaic”.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: IRON VOID

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Mar 132024

Photos by Robyn Benson / Black Earth Photography

(Last year the British doom band Iron Void celebrated their 25th anniversary and released a stellar fourth album, and in belated honoring of those events Comrade Aleks conducted the following very engaging interview with all three of the band’s members — Jonathan ‘Sealey’ Seale, Steve Wilson, and Scott Naylor.)

Iron Void from West Yorkshire is one of the most focused and active doom metal bands among those that present a “traditional” scene. Being formed in 1998 and disbanded in 2000, Iron Void didn’t hurry to record a full-length album even after their reunion in 2008, but here they are with four albums in the discography now, and the most up-to-date release IV saw the light of day in January 2023.

Yes, it happened one year ago, and we’re a bit late with this interview, but it’s never too late to support the band that deserves wider exposure. After all, heroic, quite old-school, and damn heavy IV was one of the best doom albums of 2023. Also, besides other things, you’ll learn from this interview what “Street Doom” stands for! Continue reading »

NCS PRESENTS: CULTHE FEST 2024

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Mar 132024

Last year Culthe Fest made its triumphant return to stages in Münster, Germany, after
a covid-induced hiatus. It featured a very impressive lineup of bands over two days last April, and we helped spread the word about it then. For the good of fans and bands, Culthe Fest is back this year, and we’re again helping to spread the word as one of the fest’s international partners.

This year, on March 30 and 31 in Münster, Culthe Fest will present performances by 16 bands from 9 countries on three stages, headlined and co-headlined by Downfall of Gaia, Sylvaine, Wiegedood, Solbrud, Ophis, and Predatory Void.

The lineup is exceedingly strong from top to bottom and spans a range of metal and metal-adjacent sub-genres, and below we’ll provide notes about all the participating bands scheduled to play on each of the two days, and how to get tickets (there aren’t many left!).

We’ll also provide notes about the Dark Arts & Crafts Exhibition, which will again be part of this festival presentation. Continue reading »

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