AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GEIST — “PANIC ADDICTS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 092023
 

If you’ve been a regular visitor to this site over the last 7 years you’ve seen the name Geist a lot, because over that span of time we’ve published a multitude of Geist song and video premieres, record reviews, and show reviews. The reasons for all that attention can be summed up in a few quotes pulled from some of those articles:

“Coming across like a younger, hungrier, and – more importantly – groovier, sibling to bands like Cursed and Converge, the Newcastle-based quintet strike a careful balance between raw intensity and pinpoint precision….”

“…delivering an absolutely stunning set of pissed-off, punk-fuelled polemic and scalding sonic shrapnel… both impressively tight, yet as raw and fractious as the wildest of riots, every track… detonated like a pipe-bomb flung into the audience….”

“Geist unleash some of the angriest, most vitriolic Metallic Hardcore I’ve heard in a very long time, pulling a total of zero punches and taking no prisoners in the process.”

“Through a feral mix of dark hardcore, crust, and metal, they channel emotionally raw and devastating sensations (and bone-busting force) through their debut album Swarming Season.”

There’s a lot more where all that came from, but you probably get the point. We’re very high on Geist‘s music, and thankfully they show no signs of slowing down, because they’re now preparing to release their second album Blueprints To Moderate Sedation in September of this year through Cursed Monk, Black Omega, and Trepanation Recordings. And as you can tell, today we’re premiering an explosive song and video for the new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORPHALIS — “STARING INTO RUIN”

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Aug 092023
 

Today we are most happy to revisit the music of the German band Orphalis after spending a lot of time with them around the release of their second album The Birth of Infinity back in 2016. Shame on us for not paying nearly as much attention to their third album, 2019’s The Approaching Darkness — definitely a case of oversight rather than dissatisfaction.

What brings us back to them again today is the rapidly approaching advent of the band’s fourth album, As the Ashes Settle, which is set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on August 25th, and more specifically our premiere of an extravagant new song from the album named “Staring Into Ruin“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KRIEG, SULPHUR AEON, TORPOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 082023
 

The time I have available for NCS activity today is rapidly slipping away, so this roundup will be relatively short — just three new songs — but I wanted to jump on these while they’re still “hot off the presses”.

KRIEG (U.S.)

Krieg haven’t been moribund since the release of their last album of new songs, 2014’s Transient. They’ve filled the intervening years with splits, compilations, and shorter releases, and we got the “Bone Whip” flexi-disc single just last month. But at last there’s a new Krieg album on the October horizon, and yesterday brought the first streaming single, “Solitarily, A Future Renounced”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXCARNATED ENTITY — “CORRIDOR OF FLAME”

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Aug 082023
 

A band whose members hail from such groups as Anhedonist, Triumvir Foul, Ash Borer, and Dagger Lust? Say no more, we’re drawn to what they’re doing like iron filings compelled by a big magnet.

Those are indeed some of the many band names on the resumes of the now-Portland-based quartet who call themselves Excarnated Entity. They’ve devoted their talents to the creation of doomed death metal, as revealed in desolate and devastating fashion on their forthcoming debut album Mass Grave Horizon — a title that’s entirely fitting as a preview of the music within.

The album is now set for release on September 8th by Nuclear Winter Records. One single has already emerged, and today we present a second one, a song of hideous majesty, pulverizing power, and otherworldly misery that goes by the name “Corridor of Flame“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CURSED TO OCCULT — “CULTLEADER”

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Aug 082023
 

Cursed To Occult is a German one-man band, the solo recording work of one Micha Eibisch, though it expands to a full band for live performances. Because it is a one-man project, the music is very much a reflection of its creator’s personal experiences, and those experiences are distressing — as you might guess from both the name of Cursed To Occult‘s debut album Mind Wreck, and the title of its forthcoming second album, Diary Of A Broken Man.

What we have for you today is the unnerving and exhilarating first video and single from that new album, in advance of its release by the Crawling Chaos label on September 1st. Entitled “Cultleader“, it’s a viscerally compelling amalgam of crust punk, black metal, sludge, and hardcore, all roped together to lash and pummel the senses with shattering intensity.

But before we get to that song and video, it’s worth sharing what Micha Eibisc has stated about where the music on the new album comes from: Continue reading »

TIDELESS: “EYE OF WATER”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 082023
 

(On September 15th Chaos Records will release the second album by the California band Tideless, and today we’ve got Wil Cifer‘s impressions of the music to share with you.)

2023 has so far become an impressive year for death metal .Many bands continue to sharpen the blade forged in Tampa, others make conscious attempts to wander their own path. California band Tideless set themselves further apart from the status quo with their sophomore release Eye of Water.

The aggression is dialed back as they lean in a post-rock direction with a cinematic sonic scope. At just under seven minutes the opening track is the shortest song on this album, as the songs seem to require extended track lengths to lay the groundwork for the breadth of the dynamics they are building toward. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVERIPPER — “RESIST AGAINST THE LIGHT”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 072023
 

At the end of every year for the last 13 years our site has rolled out a list of each year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“. Barring some unforeseen calamity we will do it again at the end of 2023. We don’t start seriously thinking about which songs should make the list until the waning days of each year, but sometimes some of the choices become immediately obvious, and this is one of those times. There absolutely WILL be a song from GraveRipper on the 2023 edition of the list. The only thing up in the air is, which song?

The choice won’t be easy, because GraveRipper‘s forthcoming debut album Seasons Dreaming Death (set for release later this month by Wise Blood Records) is packed to the brim with highly infectious black-thrashing romps, the kind of exultant escapades that are loaded with hooks, bury them deep in a listener’s brain, and get hearts pounding and heads banging.

No, it won’t be an easy choice, but the song from the album we’re premiering today — “Resist Against the Light” — will certainly be a leading contender. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLGATA — “UR ELD OCH ASKA”

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Aug 072023
 

In mid-June of last year we had the opportunity to premiere a video for a song from Ur eld och aska (“out of fire and ashes”), the then-forthcoming third album by the Swedish melodic black metal band Golgata, which was subsequently co-released by Satanath Records and Ketzer Records.

As we wrote then, the album (as suggested by its title) “is a journey through fire and ash but it’s also a journey through time, inspired by the history and natural surroundings of the dark, forested region that gave birth to this duo. It has the capacity to scathe the senses in raw and unbridled fashion, but it’s equally powerful in its capacity to mesmerize and to transport listeners away from modernity and into a much older age, creating grim and haunting visions of yearning and sorrow.”

We now have an opportunity to revisit the album, and to introduce it to people who might have overlooked it, through our premiere of a lyric video for its title track. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 072023
 

(Andy Synn catches you up with a bunch of releases from last month you may have overlooked)

Since it’s likely I won’t have chance to write much else this week – we’re filming a new music video, for one thing, and prepping for that is taking up more time than I expected – I’d better make today’s “Things You May Have Missed” column count, hadn’t I?

I don’t think you’ll be disappointed though, not least since this bumper edition contains six, rather than the usual four, albums – several of which I have no doubt will end up making numerous appearances on lots of “Best Of…” lists come the end of the year.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BLACK BIRCH, BLOOD ABSCISSION

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 062023
 

I don’t feel great, thanks for asking. Within an hour after finishing yesterday’s roundup it became evident that I was coming down with a cold. (My spouse brought it home with her last week, so I don’t blame yesterday’s bands.) By dinnertime last night I felt like fresh shit, and didn’t sleep worth a shit either. I don’t think it’s much worse this morning but it’s not any better either. One of the few things that makes me look backward with fondness on covid is that I went two years without a cold. Staying away from human germ-carriers was a big silver lining.

I was tempted to just blow off this usual Sunday column and instead wallow in misery. Didn’t seem quite fair to share my thoroughly clogged and befogged headspace with innocent bands, or to interrupt their performances with ugly hacking and explosive blasts of sneezing, even though I was able to re-listen to the parts that were interrupted with rail-gun blasts of snot.

Well, but the world is not a fair place. It brings colds and music writers who don’t know when to shut up, and I thought forging ahead with this column might temporarily take my mind off my miseries. So it did.

BLACK BIRCH (Sweden)

Black Birch describe themselves as an “Atmospheric Black Metal duo from Southern Sweden” (the two of them are Gina Wiklund and Ulf Blomberg), with an ethos that is “Antifascist & vegan”. I see on their Bandcamp page that they’ve been releasing a sequence of seven singles since January of this year, and on September 1st they’re going to release a self-titled EP on vinyl and digital formats that includes two of those previous singles and two new songs. Continue reading »

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