KRIGSGRAV – FIRES IN THE FALL

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 262023
 

(Andy Synn would like to recommend this gourmet feast from long-time NCS favourites Krigsgrav)

Recipe for success:

  • Start with a base of moody, atmospheric Black Metal – ideally with overtones of Agalloch and undertones of Enslaved
  • Add a dash (and a half) of doomy darkness of the post-Paradise Lost or Daylight Dies variety (other, equivalent substitutes are acceptable)
  • Top it off with liberal layers of majestic (ideally Finnish-flavoured) Melodic Death Metal melancholy

And then, if you’re very lucky, you might just end up with something half as good as Fires in the Fall.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FORMLESS OEDON

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Jun 262023
 

(Not long ago we had the good fortune of premiering a tremendous song from a great debut album by Formless Oedon from the Philippines, coming out July 24th via their label Memento Mori, and now we have more good fortune — an interview by Comrade Aleks of all the band’s members.)

It’s a really curious case as all of our respondents today — Andrei Alemania (drums), Jonathan Miranda (guitars, bass), Rozel Nikko (vocals, guitars, bass), and Jayson Gonzales (guitars) — play in three different bands at the same time all together. They perform death metal in Nullification, they practice a sort of death/thrash metal in Desolator, and Formless Oedon became a vessel of their death metal ideas with slightly progressive and doomy edges.

Being formed in Laguna, Philippines, Formless Oedon seemed to have caught some luck and signed with the Spanish extreme metal label Memento Mori, which is preparing to release their Streams of Rot full-length album in late July. However, right now you can not only listen to their first tracks “Heavenly Abomination” and “Calcine Purification“, but also read this interview with Formless Oedon members. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): G.N.L.S., SACRENOIR, VITAPHOBIA, D.R.E.P.

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jun 252023
 

As forecast in Part 1 of today’s collection of blackened sounds, this Part compiles a small mountain of music — three complete albums and one complete EP. As also forecast, the music is nightmarish in different ways — some of it capable of causing skin to crawl, some of it blistering the flesh, and some of it accomplishing both objectives. But I also think the music is just as fascinating as it is frightening. I hope you’ll feel the same way.

G.N.L.S. (Greece)

Two weeks ago I wrote (here) about an album named Asphyxiating Late Night Sessions, which was a collaboration between Dødsferd‘s mastermind Wrath and m.Sarvok. But it wasn’t the sole result of their working together. Even earlier this year they released another collaborative album under the name G.N.L.S. (Geometric Nictation of Lament’s Space), and it’s a very different experience from the more recent release. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): IMPERIAL CRYSTALLINE ENTOMBMENT, WYRGHER, ASUNDER

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jun 252023
 

Yesterday my spouse left me home alone for most of the day (the feline creatures were still there but they mostly left me alone too). That allowed me the time to do some deep diving in a search for music to write about today. Purely by coincidence, much of what I found turned out to be… nightmarish. Some of the songs make the skin crawl, others blister it, some do both, and almost none of it seems connected to what passes for reality in our world.

What I chose adds up to an unsettling but electrifying trip of significant proportions — three individual tracks (two from forthcoming records and one standalone single) and then a plunge into the depths of longer-form madness with three complete new albums and a new EP. Hopefully you won’t find this an endurance test but instead a relentless journey of mind-altering discovery.

To get things started before too much of the day gets away, I’ve divided it into two Parts, launching the individual tracks now so I can then turn back to finishing the much larger second installment, which will come later today Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FALSE GODS, VENOMOUS ECHOES, DECOHERENCE, NUCLEAR WINTER, RITUAL DICTATES

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 242023
 


False Gods

“Excess is best?” Well, sometimes it is. In fact, given how much music NCS throws at people every day, one might even say that should be this site’s sub-header (remember when we used to change the sub-headers every week?). But today the latest edition of Rennie Resmini‘s starkweather SubStack, which landed in our in-box overnight and which asked that question in its title, made me think, “No! Not this morning!”

I already had some ideas for this round-up, and then saw Rennie‘s recommendations and bookmarked a dozen of them that I hadn’t been aware of — too many to explore in full, unless I was willing to delay this collection for many more hours, which I’d be anxious about doing. I did investigate a few of them, and you’ll see two of those below, followed by a few I’d previously found in other ways.

Hope you find something to brighten, or ruin, your weekend, even including the astonishing curveball I’ve thrown you at the end. More selections of a blackened variety coming tomorrow…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALKALOID, FILTH IS ETERNAL, OMNIVORTEX, TÁLTOS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 232023
 

Once again I’m beginning what I hope will be a three-stage march backward through some of the better metal I came across over the past week, most of it brand new and some of it only newly discovered. Stage One is today, with the next two stages planned for the weekend. (None of the stages will include the bludgeoning and blistering new Cannibal Corpse song, but only because you probably already know about that one).

ALKALOID (Germany)

The last time I included Alkaloid in one of these round-ups we had news and cover art to share, but no music from their forthcoming third album Numen. Now we do. You might assume from the song’s title — “Clusterfuck” — that Alkaloid are going to throw your head into an instrumental blender set to liquefy, but if so you might be surprised.

I read this in a press release before listening to the song: “‘Clusterfuck‘ might have a clean and catchy chorus, but even the fiery, finger-tapped solo that squiggles loose around the four-minute mark is crushed like an ant between colliding moons”.

I also read the following comment from the band (now a quartet consisting of Morean (vocals, guitars, concepts), Hannes Grossmann (drums), Christian Münzner (guitars), and Linus Klausenitzer (bass)), which reveals that the song’s title has perhaps more to do with its subject matter than its sounds: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WILT — “HUGINN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 232023
 

Today the Canadian atmospheric black metal band Wilt and their label Vendetta Records are releasing a new album named Huginn (though some purists may prefer to label it an EP). It comes as something of a surprise, since it wasn’t preceded by a single or advance publicity, but it is a very welcome surprise.

It’s certainly a welcome development here, as anyone would know who has come across our previous writings about Wilt’s music, including our comments about their 2015 debut album Moving Monoliths or our review of their second album Ruin in 2018. To pick out just a few choice words from the latter:

“[T[he masterful blending of dark metallic melody and dreamlike serenity found on Ruin makes a very good case that this undeniably talented (though underwhelmingly named) Canadian quintet deserve serious consideration as potential heirs to Agalloch’s vacant mantle (pun very much intended). Of course it’s not so much that Wilt sound exactly like Haughm, Dekker, and co., it’s more that the group’s sombre, evocative style examines and explores many of the same musical themes and ideas, although never in exactly the same way”.

Five years on from Ruin, and Agalloch have reassembled themselves, but Wilt have returned as well. These haven’t been five good years for the world at large, and all the dire and dreadful experiences they delivered have influenced what you will hear on Huginn. Here is what Wilt have told us about it: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MEGALITH LEVITATION

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jun 232023
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of SAA, vocalist/guitarist of the Russian band Megalith Levitation, whose newest album has now been out in the world for less than three months.)

Megalith Levitation stands firmly on Chelyabinsk’s soil, remaining one of the few most active Russian doom/stoner bands. The three musicians keep hiding their identities and are known as SAA (vocals, guitars), PAN (drums), and KKV (bass, contrabass). Their third album Obscure Fire was released by Aesthetic Death on the 31st of March, and you see the master plan behind it when you witness the album’s sick psychedelic artwork and its inner layers. They truly know what they want to so, so Obscure Fire will burn you with the vibes inspired from beyond this world.

Let the grim psychedelic pilgrimage start with the guidance of the band’s singing guitarist SAA. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CREPITATION — “MONSTROUS ERUPTION OF IMPETUOUS PREPOSTEROSITY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 222023
 

It will come as no great surprise to people who’ve been fans of Crepitation for the last 17+ years to see how preposterously wild the title of their new album is. It is, in fact, Monstrous Eruption of Impetuous Preposterosity. The trip through the new album’s song titles is perhaps an even more gonzo ride. When words recognized by dictionaries and phrases acknowledged by grammarians aren’t up to the task, just scramble the fuck out of them over a high flame and season with gobs of syllables and a heavy salting of hilarity. That’s how you get things like this:

“Vicious Entwattering of Obstinant Nepotistic Shithouses”
“Priapismic Whisking of Mucilaginous Concrete Slurry”
“Devourification of Skewerised Rottiserie Hominids”
“Superkalifragelisticexpibabyshakeus”

Even when you can find the words in dictionaries, Crepitation have a knack for stitching them together in evocatively foul ways. For example, “Methanated Propulsion of Gaseous Levitation“. What better way to name a song that was inspired by the kind of wet farts that provide a queasy recurring lift to your stride? Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NERVOCHAOS

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jun 222023
 

(In March of this year Emanzipation Productions released a new album by the long-running Brazilian death metal band Nervochaos, and more recently our Norway-based interviewer Karina Noctum was able to catch up with the band’s drummer Eduardo Lane to discuss the album and many other topics in the interview we now present.)

Nervochaos released their latest album Chthonic Wrath back in late March and then embarked on a European tour with their fierce discharge of Death and Thrash metal.

Continue reading »

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