NO CLEAN SINGING

CUNABULA – THE WEIGHT OF SLEEP

Aug 152023

(Andy Synn would like to draw your attention to the debut album from Lithuania’s Cunabula)

Common wisdom would tell you never to judge a book by its cover.

And while that’s true, I can’t begin to tell you the number of times an eye-catching album cover – such as the gorgeous one which adorns The Weight of Sleep – has drawn my attention and acted as the catalyst for me to check out (and subsequently review) a band’s new record.

Of course, it’s important that the band in question have the music and songs to back it up… and Cunabula definitely do.

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLOOD OATH — “THE JOURNEY INTO THE DEPTHS”

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Aug 142023

We’re going to cut to the chase right away, because that’s what the song we’re premiering does. We’ll come back to provide some concrete information, but only after “The Journey Into the Depths” (and one other wild song) have flooded your body with adrenaline and thoroughly scrambled your brain (you probably weren’t using it for anything important anyway). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SEPULCHRAL CURSE — “ONWARD THE LEGIONS”

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Aug 142023

Transcending Obscurity Records introduces Abhorrent Dimensions, the forthcoming second album by Finland’s Sepulchral Curse, by drawing a picture of contrasts in the music — an integration of “crushing and domineering” sensations with others that are “intricate and complex” and still others that weave together “various shades of emotion” that create “engrossing tales” within the songs. Nuance, in other words, coherently co-exists with robust power, and in this way the new album represents an advance in the band’s songwriting.

Of course, as intriguing as those descriptions are, we prefer to form our own conclusions, and no doubt you prefer to form your own too. The conclusions based on the disclosure of individual songs become stepping stones toward the final judgments that will arrive after the album’s complete release, which in this case will happen on October 27th.

Today we can all take another step, courtesy of the band’s official video for the song “Onward the Legions“. Continue reading »

ASTRAL AUGUST

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Aug 142023

Astral Tomb

(After a bit of a hiatus, Gonzo returns to NCS today with a pair of reviews for albums released last month.)

So, here we are again. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been able to post on these venerable pages; the reasons for which are now, thankfully, in my rearview mirror. Alas, despite being in the recent past, said reasons are no less infuriating, and a grim reminder of how chaos and discord can overtake your life in the span of one simple afternoon. But we won’t get into that mess here.

It’s been a stressful summer, to be sure, but forcing myself to withdraw from the world and delve into music has always been a sacred source of therapy for this maladjusted writer. (People I work with would refer to this as “disassociating,” but I call it…well, shit, you got me in a box here, forget it.)

In a few weeks, I’ll have my yearly end-of-summer roundup ready to post here, supplanting my usual monthly column. There’ll be plenty for you to sort through when that happens.

But for now, I thought I’d preempt that with two albums that share at least one thing in common: The new albums from Denver’s Astral Tomb and Toledo’s Astralborne. Besides sharing the word “astral” in their respective band names, these two acts have unleashed searing new records that deserve to be heard. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ARIDUS, MAGNITUDO, COME HORRID SIGIL, NEKROFILTH, RUNESPELL

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

Aug 132023

Sorry for whining about my damn cold yesterday. I did feel better as the day rolled on, good enough to spend a lot of time listening to music. This morning was better still, so I kept at it. Maybe all the sleep has helped.

Feeling hopeful that maybe this nasty bug is finally on the run, maybe I’ve also bitten off more than I can chew for today’s selections. There’s a lot here, and some of it is a bit outside the usual black metal boundaries, but to be fair, those boundaries have always been fluid, hence the name of this column.

ARIDUS (U.S.)

This first album isn’t outside the usual boundaries, but it’s an unusual pick for a different reason: Rather than a forthcoming record or one that was very recently released, it’s been out since early May (on the Eisenwald label). Like so many other albums, I had it on a long list of things to check out and never found time to get to it. But a friend happened to remind me of it yesterday. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: RILE, TRANSGRESSOR, I HELVETE, TORPOR

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Aug 122023

What do you get when you mix a lingering cold, nighttime cold medication, and way too much wine on a Friday night? In my case I got 12 hours of sleep and coma-like brain fog when I woke up this morning.

Strong coffee has amazing restorative powers, but this morning was nearly all gone before it started to work, and unfortunately it’s not a cure for colds, nor is anything else. This infection just refuses to crawl away, and there’s nothing I can do to make it retreat. It even seems to have laughed off 12 hours of sleep.

On wrecked Saturdays like this one, which thankfully have been rare over the last 13+ years of NCS, I usually just throw in the towel and accept that we’ll have a day with nothing new on the page. However, I’m just obstinate enough today that I turned seething anger over the virus into a selection of angry music, even if it arrives here much later than usual.

RILE (U.S.)

A link to this first song, “Climb Out“, landed in our in-box three days ago, and the comparative references to Converge and Trap Them caused me to bookmark it. The reported fact that this Salt Lake trio includes members of Cult Leader and that the song is from a debut album which will be released by Church Road Records provided extra incentives. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AFTER EARTH — “LEGIONS”

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Aug 112023

The Swedish band After Earth haven’t had the smoothest road forward. They released a favorably received EP named Before It Awakes during 2020 — in the midst of the pandemic — then suffered some lineup changes but managed to release the 2022 single “From Age to Aeon“. And then, in early 2023, just a few weeks before the recording of their debut album, two of the band’s guitarists departed.

Rather than abandon the enterprise, the remaining three members — Marcus Rydstedt, Anton Vehkaperä, and Olof Öman — forged ahead, picking up additional roles, and managed to get the album recorded (with some guitar solos outsourced to Christoffer Nilsson). And now that album, The Rarity of Reason, is set for release on August 18th, timed to coincide with After Earth‘s European tour supporting Swedish death metal band Mara.

To help spread the word about the album, today we’re premiering a lyric video for a song from it named “Legions“. As the band explain, this song “showcases a heavier side to us than our previous music”, showing “a bit more of our inspiration from purer “death metal”, while preserving the band’s emphasis on melody. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DANTALION — “SOUNDS OF BELLS AND OPEN SCISSORS”

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Aug 112023

Since the release of their debut album When the Ravens Fly Over Me in 2006, the Spanish band Dantalion have followed a winding path through time, one that has seen them release seven more studio albums and a compilation record across a changing array of labels.

It’s also a path that for a time led them away from their black metal origins and into music that Metal-Archives has characterized as “Melodic Death/Doom Metal”. However, with 2018’s The Seventh Wandering Soul they began returning to those black metal roots and did so even more decisively with 2021’s Time To Pass Away.

On September 8th of this year Non Serviam Record‘s will release this band’s ninth record overall, a full-length named Fatum that Dantalion call “the declaration of our comeback” and “the definitive confirmation of the true identity of the band”. There’s also a good argument to be made that it’s the band’s best work yet.

As evidence of that, what we have for you today is a lyric video for Fatum‘s second single, and what an evocative name it has: “Sounds of Bells and Open Scissors“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE RITE — “THE ASTRAL GLOOM”

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Aug 102023

We invite you into The Astral Gloom, as today we pull back the veil between worlds and allow you to gain entry. But pay careful attention to those chosen words: Deep shadows lie in wait, but things move within them that aren’t the living things which might lurk around you in a midnight stroll through the woods or dimly lit urban canyons. Chilling dangers await, as well as chilling wonders, and little of it seems to have an earthly origin.

We’re speaking of the forthcoming second album by the international collective known as The Rite, a band first spawned in 2017 through the collaboration of A.th (Black Oath) and Ustumallagam (Denial of God) and now fully fleshed out to include drummer War D. (Morbus Grave), and guitarists Gabriel (Black Oath, Morbus Grave) and M. Desecrator (VomitVulva, Funest).

In listening to the new album it’s easy to fall into the kind of fumbling poetic reveries you saw in the first paragraph above, and a few more of them will follow in our introduction to the full album stream we’re presenting below on the eve of its release by Iron Bonehead. In much more mundane terms, you can expect an alchemical interaction of black metal, old-school doom, and (for want of a better term) “classic heavy metal”, equally prominent in nightmare atmospherics and imperious head-moving heaviness.

There’s also a cover of “Naked When You Come” by The Lollipops. More on that later. Continue reading »

THE CIRCLE – OF AWAKENING

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Aug 102023

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album from The Circle, out 18 August)

While we try our best here at NCS to keep up with everything that’s coming out, the truth is we’re easily distracted by shiny things and loud noises, so we don’t always catch every new release before it comes out.

But we do try our best, at the very least, to keep an eye on bands and artists we’ve written about before – case in point, check out The Circle‘s first EP, Metamorphosis, which I reviewed here back in 2021 – to see how they grow and develop over time.

So how does the band’s new album, Of Awakening, compare to their debut?

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