OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 3): GOAT TORMENT, HATE, NECROMANTIA, REEK, REVERENCE TO PAROXYSM

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Sep 182021
 

 

As promised yesterday, I’m continuing to make my way through the metal alphabet, with another slug of songs and videos that I siphoned out of the ongoing flood during the past week. I thought I’d make it to the end of the alphabet today, but now I’m not so sure. The demon alcohol afflicted me last night, and the affliction both caused me to sleep like a hibernating bear and also to wake up in a state of severe brain fog. I’ll just have to see how things go.

GOAT TORMENT (Belgium)

If you’re not already educated about the kind of music Goat Torment make, one long look at the album art will tell you much of what you need to know. There’s one important piece of imagery missing from the artwork though — massed howitzers and machine-guns firing at will. The song you’re about to hear sounds like a mechanized war zone, one that’s also plagued by frenzied demons, who reach heights of mania in a really stupendous guitar solo. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): THE CORONA LANTERN, CRADLE OF FILTH, CYNIC, DAUÞUZ, DOODSWENS, GAYLORD

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Sep 172021
 

 

As I explained in the last post, I’ve collected a massive number of new songs and videos that appeared over the last week. I alphabetized them by band name and then divided them into segments. In this installment we pick up with “C” and make it to “G”. More segments tomorrow.

THE CORONA LANTERN (Czech Republic)

It’s always fascinating to learn what The Corona Lantern have gotten up to when they make a new release, and this first song is yet another fascination. Heavy and plundering, it heaves and hammers, with gloom-drenched and narcotic riffs that scrape, claw, and moan in misery, and flickering leads that wail and become a fever of agony. The wide-ranging yet perpetually terrifying vocals will put the hair up on the back of your neck too. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): AEON, APPARITION, ARS MAGNA UMBRAE, AUTOKRATOR, THE BREATHING PROCESS, CONTRITION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 172021
 

 

In part because the deluge of metal has continued unabated this week, and in part because I had a little more time than usual to keep track of what was coming out, I prepared a truly massive round-up of new songs and videos. To make it possible for me to recommend as much as I can, I’ve again resorted to this stripped-down format, choking down my usual verbosity and not taking time to grab all the artwork.

I’ve again alphabetized my giant list by band name and divided it into segments. I’ll get as far as I can with these segments today, and then pick up the rollout tomorrow. In Part 1 I only made it to “C”.

AEON (Sweden)

We begin with a video, and a sorrowful stroll through a cemetery which becomes a harrowing tale told partially in reverse, a tale that increasingly becomes supernatural and horrifying. The explosive and ferocious music is even more intensely harrowing. Prepare to have all your nerve endings ignited, and to chant: GOD ENDS HERE! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OCCULSED — “CREPITATION OF PHLEGETHON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  8 Responses »
Sep 172021
 

 

We invite you to enter a world of terrors, a world created from sound that spawns electrifying visions of horror and disease, of madness and mayhem, and of blood-freezing intrusions from spectral realms. We invite you experience Crepitation Of Phlegethon.

Through several previous track premieres we’ve already teased what lies within this new album by Atlanta-based Occulsed, but now we reveal the full album in all its macabre glory on the day of its release by Everlasting Spew Records. As someone famously said when contemplating the Brundlefly, “Be afraid, be very afraid”. Continue reading »

CARCASS: “TORN ARTERIES”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 172021
 

 

(The new Carcass album is being released today by Nuclear Blast, and to celebrate the occasion we have a review by DGR that compares them to… well… you’ll see.)

In the before times when restaurants were a thing and you were lucky enough to live in a mid-sized town, then you had an increasing chance of finding a restaurant in town that you loved and that treated everybody like shit. There are, of course, gimmick places like this where the service is a Disney-fied version of the sort of genuine scorn you’d encounter at such a place. But, if you had the real thing, you’d immediately recognize the atmosphere — of you being an inconvenience by being there, and the sort of “get your food and get out attitude” that would color your whole impression of the place.

Usually, places like that made about four or five dishes, tops — the one I frequented only made three, and to be honest, I’m convinced the third one was a myth because I only ever saw the spaghetti and the garlic bread and that was it — but those four to five dishes were really, really good. Those sorts of restaurants were unyielding, in that you as a customer were a known quantity, and likewise, so was how they would treat you. You came to an agreement, though: As long as you understood that, you could generally get by and, dare I say it, enjoy yourself.

Over the years this is how I’ve come to view Carcass. Continue reading »

ROUND FIVE: NCS RETURNS TO GIMME METAL ON SEPTEMBER 17TH

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Sep 162021
 

 

Way back on the 17th of August, 2020, three of the slaves who toil at NCS (Andy Synn, DGR, and Islander) appeared as guest DJs at GIMME METAL, curating a two-hour on-line radio show in which we spun tracks of our own demented choosing, interspersed with our own pre-recorded banter, and also engaged in live on-line chats with listeners. Since then we’ve done it three more times, and as you can see we’re about to show up tomorrow for a fifth episode.

The three of us have so much fun doing this that we confess to experiencing a bit of anxiety, a fear that at some point we’ll fuck it up so badly we won’t be invited back. Hasn’t happened yet (hail Satan), and hopefully it won’t happen tomorrow either. We put a lot of effort into concocting playlists that will hook people and introduce them to bands they might not be familiar with, and we’ve done that again for tomorrow’s two-hour show with a mix of very new songs plus some old favorites spread across a variety of extremist sub-genres.

As before, we will also speak, though the best parts probably got left on the cutting room floor. And as before, we’ll be online to chat with listeners while the music is blasting. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FILTH WIZARD — “TUSKRIDER”

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Sep 162021
 

 

We’re about to make a bit of a detour from the usual pathways of nastiness and gloom that our site tends to follow. To be sure, there’s no clean singing in the song we’re about to premiere — because there’s no singing at all. And the music is still plenty heavy and will get your reflexive muscles in motion. But the band’s interests and talents steer them toward progressive rock and funk, albeit without completely leaving behind the harshness, darkness, and deviance of metal.

The band in question chose the name Filth Wizard, and you’ll probably understand why when you hear the music. They hail from Invercargill on the South Island of New Zealand, and the three members — guitarist Tyler Reynolds, bassist Hanna Ott, and drummer Joseph O’Donnell — originally met through the Southern Institute of Technology’s music and audio courses, and formed the band in 2018. Their debut album, Thor’s Toolbox, was released later that same year.

Since then they’ve played dozens of shows around the South Island, and now they’re focused on the impending October 8 release release of their second album, Sleepeater. It’s that album which is the source of the song we’re presenting today — “Tuskrider“. Continue reading »

INSOMNIUM: “ARGENT MOON”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 162021
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of the new EP by Insomnium, which will be released on September 17th by Century Media Records.)

Insomnium are one of those bands for whom the impact of an addition or change of a lineup member is almost immediately felt. This may sound strange but the two big additions to the group over the years have been on the guitar front, and both the musicians chosen have proven to be quite multi-faceted in their approach to Insomnium’s music.

The addition of Omnium Gatherum’s Markus Vanhala to the fold in 2011 brought his penchant for some glorious guitar leads and solos to the forefront of the band, and giving them ammunition for times when the group weren’t entirely ensconced in their own frozen wasteland of melancholy. The more recent addition of Jani Liimatainen has been a bit more immediately felt, as the band quickly made use of his talent for vocal melody alongside his own guitar writing, such that he was already imprinted into the blueprint of the band for Heart Like A Grave and now is one of the defining elements of the group’s 2021 EP Argent Moon, which sees the band adding four new songs to the overall repetoire – all titled with the formula of “The _______” – for another twenty-plus minutes of distant and lightly depressed music. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IFFERNET — “FAR QUEST FOR A DEAD END”

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Sep 162021
 

 

Almost exactly two years ago we had the privilege of premiering a full stream of the stunning self-titled debut album by the French black metal duo Iffernet, accompanied by a lengthy and enthusiastic review. In the intervening years, the album’s desolating power has not diminished, and today we have a reminder of its enduring strength: Along with the French New Noise Magazine we’re premiering a video of Iffernet in a live performance of the album’s closing track, “Far Quest For A Dead End“.

For those who might be discovering Iffernet for the first time today, it might be useful to excerpt part of what we wrote about their album two years ago:

“It presents emotionally wrenching music that penetrates deeply, relying on continuing cycles of squalling and searing riffs and severely tortured vocals to saturate the mind with changing moods of abandonment, fear, pain, delirious agony, and crushing grief. The album is a colossal panorama of despondency and despair that’s unrelenting in the intensity of its devotion to those visions, and so powerful in its achievements that it won’t leave most listeners unaffected.” Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: VORKUTA

 Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 162021
 

 

(In this new piece Comrade Aleks discloses his interview with vocalist Blizzard from the Hungarian black metal band Vorkuta, who returned with an EP this past spring as the first new music in more than a dozen years.)

You’re wrong if you think from a first glance that the “Vorkuta” name was taken from Tolkien mythology or something like that. This word came from the Nenets language and it means “filled with bears”. It’s a city right in the middle of nowhere — to be precise, in the Russian north, right beyond he Arctic Circle. The city was founded in a place surrounded by coal mines but it’s more infamously associated with “Vorkutlag”, a corrective labor camp, another cold and rotten hole in the Gulag system.

Who could imagine that a black metal band from Hungary would take “Vorkuta” as its name? However such a band has existed since 2002, and though it was silent for nearly 13 years it returned with a new EP, Wandering Alone in the Forest of Transcendence, in March 2021. Taking into account their very underground ethic (there’s just one full-length against eight split-albums in their discography), an EP seems to be a good option. This piece of cold atmospheric black metal could serve as a teaser for something more, and that suggestion was my first reason to get in touch with the band. This conversation with Vorkuta’s voiceman Blizzard may shed some light on the dark history of his creature. Continue reading »

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