NO CLEAN SINGING

MARTRÖÐ – DRAUMSÝNIR ELDSINS

Dec 032025

(Andy Synn sneaks in one last review just under the wire before drawing a line under the year)

With this being my last review prior to next week’s take-over of the site for my annual round-up of “A Year In Review(s)”, I knew it had to be something special.

And what better than the long-gestating, and highly-anticipated, debut album from a band – or, to be more precise, a duo – who seem set to take their place as the tip of the spear in the ever-expanding, and ever-abrasive, sphere of “dissonant” Black Metal.

So, please, allow me to present Draumsýnir eldsins… a vision of fire that will soon burn itself into your brain.

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, NOVEMBER 2025

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Dec 022025

(Here’s Gonzo’s latest monthly collection of reviews, this time focusing on three albums released during November 2025.)

Historically, November has a distinct way of fucking up my yearly Listmania plans, and this year is probably no different. It hardly makes sense to even start the hilariously brain-melting exercise of compiling my yearly list before December 1 anymore, because some band will be inevitably lurking just out of sight until the sun starts setting before 5 p.m. every day, waiting to skull-fuck my carefully concocted assemblage of heavy hierarchy into oblivion.

How does this always happen? Am I asleep for 11 of 12 months of the year? Is everything a joke? Well, yes, but that’s another topic entirely. It’s a good thing heavy music even exists at all, otherwise I’d probably intentionally maroon myself on some remote island and hunt billionaires with a crudely assembled spear.

Right. I think we got off topic here. My day job is rapidly approaching “let’s revisit this after the holidays” territory, leaving me with more time to scream into these hallowed pages about death metal. At least two of the records I included this month have a nonzero chance of showing up in the vaunted list of lists next month, and we’ll get to that rotten task soon enough. For now, allow me to regale you with three albums that are all but guaranteed to leave an impression on unsuspecting family members if played loud enough at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SOREWOUND — “ESPANTO”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Dec 022025

(written by Islander)

Like almost all genres of metal, sludge has evolved and branched in numerous directions since origins that saw hardcore bands slowing down and delving into doom. These days, calling a band’s music “sludge metal” is still useful in some measure, but still leaves a lot un-said because the musical variations within that broad genre have become so wide-ranging.

Which brings us to Sorewound, a Costa Rican band that seems bent on turning back the clock by a couple of decades. Their music, as represented in their debut EP Espanto, is by some current measures primitive and “stripped down,” ugly and corrosive, punk-influenced and capable of creating grisly harmonies that might be abysmal in one minute and feral the next — but always seem horrifying.

Here’s how Sorewound’s label, Cursed Monk Records, introduces the EP: Continue reading »

WRETCHED: “DECAY”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Dec 022025

(Below we present DGR’s review of the long-awaited fifth full-length by North Carolina’s Wretched, released on October 17th by Metal Blade Records.)

I’ve thought a lot about legacy and what I admire in a band when they decide to return after an extended period of silence. It may just be that this year has been a prime fruiting ground for such bands to find their way back into the eternal heavy metal fray, but the thought has danced on the edges of the intellectual periphery for a while now.

When the subject of what a band has left behind and what they are returning to comes back again – which has proven to be the worst mental dam in the history of man, as I’ve been waiting for thoughts to congeal into something resembling cogent writing – it is mostly couched in the ideals of expectation and what their fans may want from them. This is where the intellectual breeding ground has run wild.

The one overriding thought I’ve come back to is I admire many of the approaches available to a band returning to music after an extended hiatus, though part of that may just be that I’m a barely evolved chimp who is just happy to have his favorite band logos appearing on tour posters again, and among those are exceedingly difficult choices that lie in either the chase of where the group left off last – picking up a baton long covered in dust and left roadside – or the return, but as something different and unexpected, which is where I have found myself standing with North Carolina’s newly resurrected as a four-piece Wretched and their new album Decay. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews No Responses »

Dec 022025

(Andy Synn is hoping to cover as many in as possible before “List Week”… so here’s four you may not have checked out)

As the last edition of “Things You May Have Missed” before my epic, week-long round-up of “the year in Metal”, this particular article has a fair bit of pressure on its shoulders, and deciding who to feature wasn’t easy.

Suffice it to say, however, that I’ve done my best to once again cover the spread as well as I can, which this time means a late-in-the-year highlight from the Hardcore scene, an absoutely killer Death Metal debut, some gloriously riff-happy Blackened Stoner Metal from Canada, and a slab of deathly Slovakian Tech/Prog extremity from a band who have, from my perspective at least, flown under the radar for far too long!

So, withour further ado, let’s get to it. After all, time is running out…

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LEYLINES — “ABBERATION”

Premieres No Responses »

Dec 012025

(written by Islander)

In October of this year the New York punishers Leylines dropped a devastating new EP named Sepulchral, which follows up their 2024 self-titled debut. It discharges a mix of heavy-grooved bludgeoning, freaked-out but surgically executed tech-metal, madhouse vocal savagery, and unexpected haunting clean passages.

To help spread the word about these “tech groove deathcore juggernauts”, today we’re premiering a horrifying video for what is probably the new EP’s most destructive song — “Abberation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DOMHAIN — “MY TOMB BENEATH THE TIDE”

Premieres No Responses »

Dec 012025

(written by Islander)

We’re about to premiere a beautifully made short film that’s mysterious, haunting, and harrowing, paired with a song by Domhain (from Northern Ireland) that channels those same feelings… and more. Together, they create a completely engrossing and emotionally compelling experience, one we predict won’t be soon forgotten by anyone who watches and listens.

The song is “My Tomb Beneath the Tide“. It’s from Domhain’s new album In Perfect Stillness, which will be released by These Hands Melt on February 20th, 2026. Spoilers follow, so feel free to scroll down to the video now. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 189): CZERNINA

THE SYNN REPORT No Responses »

Dec 012025

Recommended for fans of: Shining, Maladie, Der Weg Einer Freiheit

It was just last year when I stumbled across Polish Black Metal madmen Czernina for the first time, and quickly fell in love with their absolutely scorching delivery, whose impressively heavy sound was tempered – and by this I do mean strengthened – by a strain of subtle stangeness woven deep into the warp and weft of their sound.

And when I randomly discovered that the band’s third album, Oszukać Listopad, had been released just last week (and right in time for the end of the month) I knew it was their turn to be on the receiving end of another one of my discography deep-dives.

So if you’re looking for a dose of unflinchingly causitc, yet also unusually creative Black Metal (there’s a reason, after all, that the above “for fans of” references are all for bands who err towards the proggier, yet also punishing, side of the genre)… well, here’s not one but three lethal injections to stick straight into your veins.

LISTMANIA 2025: AN INVITATION FOR READERS’ LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

LISTMANIA 2025 26 Responses »

Dec 012025

(written by Islander)

As of today we are entering the final month of 2025, and that begins the final countdown to the end of the year. In the world of metal, this month we’ll also start seeing more and more lists of the year’s best releases.

Back in 2009, when this site was just a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end list of best albums. However, we publish the picks of each of our regular staff writers as well as a group of invited guests, in addition to lists that we re-post from a few print zines and “big platform” online sites.

Every year we also invite our readers to share their lists and we’re doing that again right here, right now.

If you’ve been pondering what you’ve heard this year and have made your own list of the albums, EPs, or splits released in 2025 that you think are the best of what you’ve heard, we invite you to share it with everyone in the Comments section to this post. And if you haven’t made a list yet but want to, there’s still plenty of time (read below). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: POPMATTERS’ LIST OF “THE 20 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2025”

LISTMANIA 2025 3 Responses »

Dec 012025

(written by Islander)

We’ve all now breached the wall into December and the year-end lists will start rolling like an avalanche. For example, later today we’ll post our annual invitation to readers to share their YE lists with all of us. But for now we’ve got another installment in a different segment of the NCS YE extravaganza.

As part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy we re-publish lists of the year’s best metal that appear on web sites which appeal to vastly larger numbers of readers than we do — not because we believe those readers or the writers have better taste in metal than our community does, but more from a morbid curiosity about what the great unpoisoned masses are being told is best for them. It’s like opening a window that affords an insight into the way the rest of the world outside our own disease-ridden nooks and crannies perceives the music that is our daily sustenance.

One of those sites is PopMatters. It has been in existence since 1999. In its own words, the site “is an international magazine of cultural criticism and analysis” with a scope that includes “most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, sports, theatre, the visual arts, travel, and the Internet”. PopMatters, which has been independently owned and operated since its inception, claims that it is “the largest site that bridges academic and popular writing in the world”. Continue reading »

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