AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WITCHGÖAT — “REJECTED BY THE DEMIURGE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 012023
 

Composed of four members with extensive resumes in extreme metal, the Salvadorean band Witchgöat made their advent with the 2018 demo Umbra Regit and then soon followed that with their 2019 debut album Egregors of the Black Faith.

Now, on the other side of lockdown times, they’re returning with a second full-length of black/thrashing mayhem. Entitled Altars of Necromancy, it’s set for release on the last day of this year by Morbid Skull Records (El Salvador) and Deathrockersorrow Records (U.S.). To help spread the word, today we’re revealing a lyric video for the song “Rejected by the Demiurge“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MUSIC IN LOW FREQUENCIES — “THIS CORPSE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 012023
 

Today we’re presenting one of the most intense, most wholly absorbing, and most uncomfortable audio-visual experiences we’ve encountered this year. The song itself is overpowering, and shattering. The video magnifies that experience, like turning up the dial on electrodes in your spine that are already delivering tremendous voltage.

The song is “This Corpse“, and it’s one of seven on a new album named Catharsis by the Portuguese trio Music in Low Frequencies. It will be released on December 8th by Raging Planet Records. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: AN INVITATION FOR READERS’ LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

 LISTMANIA 2023  86 Responses »
Dec 012023
 

Today we are entering the final month of 2023, 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 2023 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 »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSAL TOMB — “BURIED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 302023
 

We’re ghoulishly happy to help spread the word today about a new Australian death metal band, Abyssal Tomb, and their debut 5-track demo Buried, which will officially be released tomorrow.

Though the band is new, the members aren’t newcomers. The lineup consists of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Callinan from Galaxy and Sylvan Awe (whose fantastic new album we premiered here just yesterday), lyricist/vocalist Rohan Buntine (Battlegrave), and drummer Tim Wright (Munitions / Blunt Shovel).

They describe their aspirations simply and directly — to “celebrate death metal in one of its early forms, honouring bands such as Obituary, Morta Skuld and early Six Feet Under“. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 165): BULL ELEPHANT

 THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Nov 302023
 

Recommended for fans of: Yob, Baroness, Boss Keloid

It takes balls… huge, pendulous balls… to go all in on not just one concept album but a full-on trilogy, especially when your creative concept begins with the story of an undead elephant, resurrected by Nazi occultists and infused with Lovecraftian energies, which then (due to some timely intervention by a vengeful shaman) turns against its masters and goes on a fascist-stomping rampage… and then only gets crazier from there.

It’s good then that enigmatic UK unit Bull Elephant have the necessary testicular fortitude required to tackle such an epic (and, let’s be honest, utterly ridiculous) story, as well as the necessary instrumental abilities and songwriting skills to ensure that their pachyderm-based Prog Doom (which also incorporates touches of Sludge, Death Metal, and Thrash) is more than up to the task in a musical sense as well.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SOLBRUD — “SJÆLESKRIG”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 302023
 

The number 4 is a recurring theme in the new album by the Danish black metal band Solbrud, which is set for release in February by Vendetta Records. It is the band’s fourth album, and thus its title is IIII. In addition, the band has 4 members, and for the new album they altered their usual compositional process by having each member individually compose music and write lyrics for one vinyl side each (though the full band performs all the songs) — and yes, the new album consists of 4 vinyl sides.

Moreover, the 4 classical elements of Wind, Water, Earth and Fire are vital parts of the album’s universe, and each member’s compositions thus constitute one element each.

One song from the album (“Tåge“) has debuted so far, and today we’re presenting a second one, an instrumental piece named “Sjæleskrig“. Continue reading »

SAVAGE LANDS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRK VERBEUREN AND SYLVAIN DEMERCASTEL

 Interviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Nov 302023
 

About 10 days ago we were halted in our scurrying tracks by a video for a song called “The Last Howl” from Savage Lands, a metal charity project whose goal is to help preserve the forests of Costa Rica and the creatures that live there.

Savage Lands and that song have already gained a lot of attention, in part because of the people who participated in making it. The Savage Lands project was founded by drummer extraordinaire Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth, Scarve, etc.) and musician-turned-activist Sylvain Demercastel (a current resident of Costa Rica). For “The Last Howl” they brought in guitarist Andres Kisser (Sepultura) and vocalist John Tardy (Obituary), as well as vocalist Poun and bassist Etienne Treton from the French band Black Bomb A.

The song was great, and so was the video (and we said so here), and so we jumpted at the opportunity to interview Dirk and Sylvain as a way of helping to spread the word about a very worthy cause, and very worthy music. That conversation follows, but you really should take in “The Last Howl” first: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VORGA, MOURNING DAWN, CHAPEL OF DISEASE, EXITIUM SUI

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 292023
 

Oh look, what a surprise, another roundup!

After months of posting 3-5 musical features a day, we’re in a bit of a lull here. Life has thrown boulders at some of our writers and I think others are focusing on year-end lists. I’m still writing premieres every day of course, but still feel compelled to try to have more than just one or two of those as the sole content of our site on a given day, and I happen to have had more time than usual for roundups over the last week or two. So, here’s another one!

Most of these are “hot off the presses”. I think they will all cause you to catch your breath or your breath to catch, albeit in different ways.

VORGA (Germany)

I had to start with the song “Voideath” so I could stick Adam Burke‘s fabulous cover art for Vorga‘s new album Beyond the Palest Star at the top of this page. Can you blame me? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SYLVAN AWE — “PILGRIMAGE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 292023
 

The artwork on the front of Sylvan Awe‘s new album Pilgrimage (their third) is one that will make most people stop in their tracks and stare for a while. It’s a slightly cropped and inverted image of a 1920 painting by the German artist Ferdinand Leeke, who died three years after completing it. The title is “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle“.

Leeke seems to be best known for his depiction of scenes from Wagnerian operas, most of them commissioned by Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried after his father’s death. “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle” doesn’t seem to be one of those 10 commissioned paintings, but may have been similarly influenced, given that Wagner did compose an opera called Parsifal, based on the legend of the Grail Knight.

What that legend has to do with Pilgrimage is open to conjecture, though Parsifal himself engaged in a pilgrimage back to the sanctuary where ailing Grail Knights kept watch over the Grail, after Parsifal vanquished the necromancer Klingsor and retrieved from him the Holy Spear (which pierced the side of Jesus as he died on the cross), ultimately reuniting it with the Grail. Continue reading »

PHOBOCOSM – FOREORDAINED

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 282023
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album from Phobocosm, out next week on Dark Descent Records)

With all the digital ink that’s been spilled about Death Metal this year you’d think that more of it would have been dedicated to Canada’s Phobocosm.

Then again, perhaps the band’s gloomier, doomier brand of oppressive, post-Immolation heaviness is just a little too dark, and a little too demanding, to receive the same sort of wider acclaim which has been lavished on many of their more popular peers.

But the fact that it demands a little more from its audience also means that Foreordained offers more rewards in the long run.

Continue reading »

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