AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAMHAIN — “THE COURIER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 032023
 

Our subject today is The Courier, Emanzipation Production‘s forthcoming deluxe vinyl reissue of demo tapes first released by the Danish band Samhain in the mid-’80s, now remastered by Tue Madsen. The advertising for this special album-length release (and the extensive liner notes accompanying it) refer to is as “a piece of metal history“. It further includes these quotes:

“Samhain helped us kickstart our career because they believed in metal! Forever thankful and I‘m happy to see their music being re-released. Hail Samhain!” Mille Petrozza, Kreator

“This is the kind of riffs bands like Obituary have made a career out of touring with for 30 years. Samhain played those riffs way earlier. And Obituary fucking rules!” Tue Madsen, producer, Antfarm Studio

“Way better musicianship and production than on the first Hellhammer demos. You guys were already way ahead of them. This shit is heavy as shit. In a primitive, good way!” Monte Conner, metal industry legend

All of this is entirely appropriate, but let’s be real: There are vast numbers of metal fans out there, old as well as young, who will greet this kind of prose with a shrug. There’s a musty smell to history, and a question about why people who aren’t history buffs, collectors, or folks trying to re-live a vital time in their own past, should pay attention to music created by teenagers 40 years ago, given that we’re already drowning on a daily basis in non-stop typhoons of music that’s brand new.

For people like that, we say: Forget about everything you’ve just read above. Pretend that Samhain is a brand new band who is just now releasing The Courier for the first time, and listen to what they’ve done. It will make you forget about history right damned fast. Continue reading »

HARBOURED: “HARBOURED”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 032023
 

(DGR fervently hopes that ‘better late than never’ holds true here, because the Harboured album he’s now reviewing below has been out in the world since mid-March via the Lost Future label.)

Though we’ve tried to prevent it from happening, it seems that as the years have gone on we’ve grown accustomed to pulling back the veil on the well-intentioned chaos that runs this site. Bare with us then, as we’re about to do it again in regard to the March release of Colorado’s Harboured.

You’ll recall that Labor Day weekend was host to Northwest Terror Fest up in Seattle, and we’ve intertwined ourselves with it more and more each year. As a result, the site tends to go quiet as three of us get wrapped up in working on and attending said show, especially since travelling with a laptop is a veritable pain in the ass and as a result yours truly does not fly with one anymore. Which means that I’m restricted to my phone for writing, which for lack of better terms ‘is not happening’.

Like previous years I tried to build up a massive review document I could chip away at and then backload into the site before leaving, so that there would always be ‘something’, even for days when we were all away from the internet as a whole. 2023 provided the fantastic opportunity of having a tiny release-window lull then, which allowed for a massive amount of musical catch up, and those of you who saw the site around that time likely saw the results of twelve or thirteen different writeups – some of which were still rolling out by the time yours truly had returned home.

Colorado’s Harboured were part of that initial review document, and up until the literal moment that I walked out the door to drive to the airport, were ones that I was wracking my brain around getting something said. I had listened to their self-titled release so much that it felt wrong not to get it out there for other people to experience before I left — but that didn’t happen.

Now months later, ham-handed as it may seem, we’re going to try to rectify that wrong. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVEW): BLIGHT HOUSE — “BLIGHT THE WAY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 022023
 

“Frank Owen Gorey is not a well person. Frank Lloyd Blight is not a well person either. Physical illness provided the genesis for their collaboration. Mental illness has kept it going…. Would it be too un-empathetic to say I hope the two Franks never get well? I’m only being honest about my greediness for their music. Wellness is overrated anyway, especially when it comes to death metal.”

Those were among the words I spewed in the context of premiering a song from Summer Camp Sex Party Massacre, an album by the two Franks under their chosen band name Blight House that Nefarious Industries released almost exactly five years ago.

Back then it seemed evident that these two had either shunned, or been shunned by, the outer world, preferring the confines of a swampy basement and whatever collection of mechanical and unspeakable organic materials they used in making their thoroughly demented and disgusting death metal. How delightful it must have been for them to see almost everyone else forced by the pandemic into a similar isolated existence!

Well, they must have taken some delight in that state of affairs, because now Blight House is returning with a thoroughly macabre new album. While others may be fumbling about looking for something to light the way out of all the dark tunnels in which we find ourselves, the two Franks have rediscovered how to Blight the Way — and you will learn how they’ve done this through our premiere stream of the new album that bears that name, in advance of its August 4 release by Syrup Moose. Continue reading »

AETHERIAN: “AT STORM’S EDGE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 022023
 

(DGR won the cordial wrestling match among us NCS slaves for the fun of reviewing the eagerly awaited second album by Aetherian, just recently released by Lifeforce Records.)

If this is your first exposure to Aetherian, with no idea where the group hailed from or what they looked like, we’d be curious what would happen if you hit play on the group’s newest album At Storms Edge and tried to guess those answers.

We wouldn’t fault you one bit for looking into the colder European climes for your answer, as Aetherian are especially good at the sort of melancholy-infused doom hybrid that has worked its way into the melodeath scene proper over the past few years. We’d even forgive you if you too had thought of the same vein that Insomnium mine their music from being threaded throughout At Storm’s Edge. But Aetherian don’t come from the cold north. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DECOHERENCE / DEITUS / THE SUN’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE NIGHT

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 022023
 

(Andy Synn presents a killer collection of British Black Metal to tantalise/traumatise your ears)

As I may have mentioned a few times already, my experience of 2023 so far has been that the proggier side of the spectrum has been producing a lot of the most interesting and impressive albums of the year.

Sure, I know there’s been a lot of digital ink spilled about the health and fertility of the Death Metal scene as well but, to my ears at least, most of it has erred more towards just “good” rather than “great”, with a lot of the praise seemingly confusing “quantity” for “quality”.

But we also shouldn’t count out our more blackened brethren either, as there’s been a slow but steady drip-feed of absolutely fantastic Black Metal albums coming out over the last six-seven months too, and today’s edition of “The Best of British” features three more examples that could well throw some discord into your end of year lists come December time.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KAAL AKUMA

 Interviews  1 Response »
Aug 012023
 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks spoke with the Bangladeshi death metal band Kaal Akuma, who have already made a very strong favorable impression with both their 2021 debut album and a new EP released this past April by Nuclear Winter Records.)

Kaal Akuma appeared in one of the March Seen and Heard issues here – the death metal band from Bangladesh with a new EP Turiya released in April by Nuclear Winter Records. Their fierce, savage, and chaotic full-length In the Mouth of Madness (Dunkelheit Produktionen, 2021) didn’t pass unnoticed either, but this band needs wider exposure and so we do what we can.

The last known line-up is Rivoo (vocals, bass), Ah Puch (drums), and Akif (guitars), and this trio surpassed the rawness of uncontrolled anger embodied in the debut and made Turiya not only authentic but a more dangerous and focused entity. Just three tracks grant a 21-minute experience of macabre death and madness. Let’s learn more what Kaal Akuma hide behind these songs.

(We thank Nathan Birk (Suspicious Activities PR) for organizing the interview.) Continue reading »

SHADOW LEGION: “SHADOW LEGION”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 012023
 

(Today we present the following guest review by Lonegoat [from the Necroclassical project Goatcraft] of the forthcoming debut album by Pittsburgh-based Shadow Legion.)

The enigmatic genesis of “Dark Metal” traces back to the murky depths of the underground past, entered into lexicon by Bethlehem‘s daring 1994 opus, fittingly titled Dark Metal. Closer inspection of the “Dark Metal” categorization reveals a bewitching amalgam; an alchemical union merging the raw essences of heavy metal, death metal, and black metal, seasoned with an infusion of epic and pagan elements.

While Aeternus remains cryptic on the matter, they undoubtedly embody this heterogeneous blending, as do other bands such as Mefitis, who enthusiastically embrace the appellation to chart their own perplexing course within this realm. Pendath, a luminary of Mefitis, also corroborates this perspective, adding that “Dark Metal” defies codified classification while displaying an ineffable melancholy that transcends the rational mind, arousing an intuitive sensibility positioned beneath the surface. In addition, Serpent Ascending‘s acclaimed 2022 opus, Hyperborean Folklore, dutifully explores this synthesis as well.

Shadow Legion‘s lengthy debut album, which comes out on August 9th, firmly embeds itself in the domain of “Dark Metal.” At its molten core, a blistering display of guitar virtuosity rivals the legendary mastery of Trey Azagthoth, setting the band apart from their peers and charging the music with electrifying transcendence. The dance of visceral, melodic, and warlike percussive riffs, often extant for prolonged periods, casts a dark martial atmosphere. As is the trait of “Dark Metal,” the influences of epic heavy metal, death metal, and black metal coalesce seamlessly in an intuitive framework, and palatial acoustic sections offer moments of majestic respite. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IRON ALTAR — “MORTALITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 012023
 

In their new song “Mortality” the Scottish band Iron Altar musically harness their own four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although one might imagine the ravages of the biblical foursome of Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, the song spawns powerful visions of Rage, Madness, Desolation, and Despair, inflicted not by some world-ending divinity but by a deeply flawed humanity.

As you will soon discover for yourselves through our premiere of a video for the song, Iron Altar create such harrowing impressions through a relentlessly dynamic and multi-faceted piece of heavy-grooved deathly sludge that hits very hard on multiple levels. And it’s no outlier, because the band’s new album Promethean (their second full-length) is a powerhouse experience all the way through. It’s set for release on September 29th by Trepanation Recordings. Continue reading »

THE ZENITH PASSAGE: “DATALYSIUM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 012023
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new second album by L.A.-based The Zenith Passage, recently released by Metal Blade Records.)

A few specters are hovering around tech-death group The Zenith Passage and their newest release Datalysium. One of them is the surprising amount of time that it took for The Zenith Passage to reach their sophomore full-length release. In what seems to be a recurring theme with 2023, a large block of time has passed between releases here; the group’s prior album Solipsist arrived in 2016 and it is only now at a little over seven years later that the band are on their second album.

The second specter is something that everyone is going to bring up at one point or another when discussing them. Given the group’s pedigree, it is hard not to imagine this playing out as one of the background narratives surrounding the record: When three of the four musicians involved in a new release were at one point or another involved in the revolving door of The Faceless over the years, it’s difficult to avoid drawing comparisons. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CAVEMAN CULT, CULT BURIAL, MAIRU

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 312023
 

On Saturday morning I mentioned that I would be involved in an Event that I expected would consume the weekend, and so it did. I didn’t fall into any fires, which is a minor miracle given the volume of intoxicants I consumed, but I didn’t have time for NCS after that brief Saturday morning roundup.

In a rare display of wisdom, I didn’t agree to do any song premieres today, anticipating that I would still be trying to recover from a weekend of debauchery. But of course I did feel the old obsession today – how could I let a day go by without recommending something musical at the site, even though we did share Andy‘s latest Synn Report and a good interview by Aleksey? Well, as you can see, I couldn’t.

CAVEMAN CULT (U.S.)

Eventually, my eyes were able to focus this morning, so I decided to take a quick look at what landed in the NCS in-box since Saturday morning. There I found a notice of a new post at the starkweather SubStack. I slowly read through it and bookmarked some music I hadn’t been aware of, to explore when my brain was less fogged in. Then it dawned on me that something I discovered there would probably blow the fog away like a hurricane, along with my brain itself. A rough cure, to be sure. Continue reading »

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