NO CLEAN SINGING

STRANGULIATORIUS: “FLIES DON’T LIE”

Feb 042026

(In January Horror Pain Gore Death Productions released a new album from the Lithuanian death metal savages Stranguliatorius, and below we present our Norway-based contributor Chile’s review of this new full-length atrocity.)

It is not surprising that metal, one of the shining lights of postmodern art, that paragon of human creativity, has made a foothold in many different places around the world, and is luckily not limited anymore geographically or in any other way.

Hailing from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, Stranguliatorius is another one of those worthy entries in our everlasting, world-encompassing quest for all things filthy and deadly. No strangers on these pages, we have been visited by these death dealers before.

One of their previous albums got plenty of love here back in 2018, and deservedly so, with our editor calling the band “damned clever songwriters,” managing to concoct “a toxic brew of old school death metal, grindcore, doom, and d-beat crust”. Sounds good to me.

Now, I’ve been to Vilnius some years back and it really is a nice place, but there’s obviously something in the water, as they say, judging by the savage intensity on display.

While some death metal bands have that distinctive stench arising from the decaying, rotten flesh with the imagery and riffs that go with it, some acquire a different perspective and put themselves in the role of the cold-blooded, flesh-cutting pathologist himself.

Sister, pass the scalpel, please.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: LONE WANDERER

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Feb 042026

(Just a handful of days ago High Roller Records released a new album by the German funeral doom band Lone Wanderer, and that provided the occasion for Zoltar to conduct the following interview with the band. Doom on….)

Silent hooded sinister figures in line disappearing into the mist next to a cenotaph as cover artwork, a nearly 25-minute opening track titled “To Rest Eternally”… Even before pressing play, you more or less know that you’re treading here on funeral doom territories, and that’s somehow exactly what Lone Wanderer proudly deliver with Exequiae, their third album.

But what’s interesting with those Germans is that besides their unusual background – three out of four members also played pure classic ’80s heavy-metal with Kerrigan – and the fact this is being released on High Roller Records, a well-established label and mail-order whose well-deserved reputation was built on high-quality classic metal vinyl reissues — they’ve managed to somehow tweak their genre’s otherwise firmly established assets into something quite personal, albeit still pretty much in debt to Mournful Congregation, whose mastermind Damon Good actually mixed their first two records. The band collectively agreed to lift the veil on their funeral obsessions… Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CEPHEIDAE VARIABLE — “THE CONDUIT”

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Feb 032026

(written by Islander)

Fans of astronomy may pass their eyes over the name Cepheidae Variable, pause, take a second look, and come away puzzled. But the band’s solo creator, Ryan Koepke from British Columbia, Canada, has an explanation:

The name “Cepheidae Variable” is a bit of nonsense. I wanted to name the project “Cepheid Variable”; however, I quickly realized every word and combination of words under the sun has been used at this point. So it became a play on words, and now it’s about a family of jellyfish.

Nonsense it may be, but the story brings a smile — and so does Cepheidae Variable’s music, though it’s far away from nonsense. As captured on the project’s debut album Primordial Reverie (released last November), it’s a head-spinning but carefully plotted amalgamation of varied inspirations and stylistic ingredients. Ryan’s identification of bands whose music has heavily influenced him gives some sense of that: Dream Theater, Haken, Intervals, Wintersun, and Caligula’s Horse.

The album is itself carefully plotted and tells a story, even though it doesn’t include vocals. As he has explained: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISGUSTINGEST — “DIGITAL CYST”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Feb 032026

(written by Islander)

Look around and you can find forms of entertainment (as well as real-world events) that are disgusting. Keep looking and you can find things that are more disgusting. And then there is Disgustingest.

Dictionaries and grammarians would frown on that word, but as metal band-names go, it works a lot better than MOST DISGUSTING.

But what were these Coloradans thinking when they picked that name? After all, the history of death metal is filled with big rotting piles of maggot-ridden, stomach-churning musical foulness. It’s a high bar to surmount (or if you prefer, a really low one to crawl under) to hold yourself out as Disgustingest. But these people do their damnedest to live up to the challenge, as you’re about to find out.

Today we’re helping announce that on February 20th Paper Wings Records will release Disgustingest’s second EP, aptly named Coagulating Putrescence, and we’re also premiering its first single, “Digital Cyst“. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE COMPLETE LIST

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025 3 Responses »

Feb 032026

(written by Islander)

Last Friday I posted the final installment in our list of 2025’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, the one part of our year-end LISTMANIA series that I alone am responsible for. In compiling that list I wound up with 64 songs before forcing myself to stop. That compares to 69 songs on the 2024 list.

As always, putting together the list was both fun and stressful — fun to re-listen to lots of good music and get reminded of what a good year it was for metal, stressful because list-making of any kind is so difficult for me. Also as usual, my list didn’t cover the entire waterfront of metal genres, given the limitations of my own (still very expansive) tastes,

And of course, as is true every year, I really wasn’t finished when I stopped. A lot of candidates just as worthy as the 64 I chose were left by the wayside when I hit the February wall. Maybe some others will be honored by other writers (last year, for example, both DGR and Andy Synn added addenda to the list), but I don’t know if or when that might happen this year, so I’m doing this wrap-up post now. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 032026

(Andy Synn selects 4 albums from last month that may have flown under your radar)

January of 2026 was a very busy month… not just in terms of the number of albums being released but on a personal level as well (did I mention I’ve got a brand new song out this Friday from my own band, being released as part of a massive charity compilation?).

As a result it feels like I missed out on covering more releases than usual last month, meaning that this is going to be the first of two separate “Things You May Have Missed” columns this week, as there’s simply too many albums (and I still won’t be covering everything I’d have liked to) requiring your (and my) attention to fit into just one article.

WORM: “NECROPALACE”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Feb 022026

(Here’s Wil Cifer’s first NCS review of the new year, and he has chosen to focus on the new album by the Floridian necromantic black doom band Worm, which is set for release on February 13th by Century Media.)

Be the change you want to see in the world. I want to hear more of doom’s despair injected into black metal, so I am going to write about blackened doom. In particular, the band Worm.

Two songs into the new album Necropalace and it’s clear that they have grown as songwriters. Refining what they do with a larger-than-life dynamic range to the dramatic swells of guitars, it pretty much sounds the way the album cover looks, music for vampires ruling a cosmic portal in Dungeons and Dragons. Continue reading »

CARRION VAEL: “SLAY UTTERLY”

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Feb 022026

(Today we present DGR’s first review of 2026, a full-throttle rush through the full-throttle rush that is Carrion Vael’s new album, which was released two weeks ago by Unique Leader Records.)

The first few reviews of every year lately have felt like an exercise in madness, an attempt to conjure spirits out of thin air while dressed in the most ritualistic way possible. Me, seated with my skirt of bone and three-times-too-big mask in front of a fire and various runes and sigils that may or may not just be permutations on the Pepsi logo – we can’t all be as creative as The Infernal Sea with their logo or draw inversions of an Asmodeus sigil ala Gaerea – and you wait for the year to speak to you. Last year’s end-list was an exercise in scrying to see what the future holds and now we are waiting for the first spirit to reach across the void and grab us by the throat to compel us into 2026.

So far, in spite of all the varied exhortations and exultations, that has no happened yet to this writer. 2026 remains frustratingly silent and has instead gifted us chances to catch up with late-2025 releases that were absorbed into year-end festivities alongside the initial wave of those brave enough to be the vanguard of a new year. It is the amorphous and fungible time that has us attempting to neatly can one horror only to open up the next can of worms to be unleashed.

It’s similar to how decades never end culturally right when a year turns over; it’s more like there is a two-to-three year hangover period before one finally shuffles out the door and the next dumbass thing the kids repeat ad-nauseum can rule the roost. Eventually life becomes a series of checkpoints where you’re counting decades by being thankful one particular bit of bullshit is done with and you don’t have to hear about it anymore. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HYVER

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Feb 022026

(With apologies for our own delay, today we present Comrade Aleks’ very lively interview from late last year of Léon Guiselin, the proprietor of the always-interesting Antiq Records and a figure in many bands of his own. The broad focus is on his philosophy as a label curator and artist, but with a particular emphasis on the fascinating new album of his project Hyver.)

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been paying more and more attention to releases from the French label Antiq Records, run by Léon Guiselin. Antiq tends to release albums with a story behind it, and whenever I’ve interviewed these bands, the lyrics have been wonderful!

Stylistically, the label focuses on old-fashioned black metal with elements of folk and dungeon synth, which is unsurprising, as Léon himself plays in a number of projects and bands of this kind. One of his solo projects, Hyver, released a new full-length album Shaâtaunoâr in November 2025, the structure of which resembles an old computer adventure game set in a medieval setting. You even have a choice of actions! But first of all, it’s a proper black metal album with good dungeon synth layers!

We did a pretty in-depth interview with Léon in the end of 2025 covering the themes of Shaâtaunoâr, black metal in general, and Antiq itself. And I’m pleased to share it with you. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GOUR, BERGTAGEN, VAULDERIE

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Feb 012026

(written by Islander)

January is a schizophrenic month for the release of new music. Labels and bands seem to recognize that people aren’t focusing as much as usual on new music, because they’re diverted by things happening during the “holiday season” and then by the turbulence of returning to work and school, and so the pace of new releases in the early part of January is slower than usual. But after a week or two, the dam bursts, and new stuff starts flooding out in a fury. At least that’s how I see it from where I sit.

I had SO MANY new songs and records I was interested in checking out for purposes of this column, too many for me to realistically investigate, especially since our terribly unreliable internet service has been down since mid-day on Saturday. My phone has worked reasonably well as a hot-spot for some things, like typing what you’re reading now, but it doesn’t provide a very good platform for streaming music.

The result is that I defaulted to music I had already acquired for myself before our net service collapsed. Which is not a bad way to proceed, because there’s a reason why I had acquired all this music for myself — it’s all very good! Each selection is also very different from the other two. Continue reading »

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