AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IRON ALTAR — “MORTALITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 012023
 

In their new song “Mortality” the Scottish band Iron Altar musically harness their own four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although one might imagine the ravages of the biblical foursome of Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, the song spawns powerful visions of Rage, Madness, Desolation, and Despair, inflicted not by some world-ending divinity but by a deeply flawed humanity.

As you will soon discover for yourselves through our premiere of a video for the song, Iron Altar create such harrowing impressions through a relentlessly dynamic and multi-faceted piece of heavy-grooved deathly sludge that hits very hard on multiple levels. And it’s no outlier, because the band’s new album Promethean (their second full-length) is a powerhouse experience all the way through. It’s set for release on September 29th by Trepanation Recordings. Continue reading »

THE ZENITH PASSAGE: “DATALYSIUM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 012023
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new second album by L.A.-based The Zenith Passage, recently released by Metal Blade Records.)

A few specters are hovering around tech-death group The Zenith Passage and their newest release Datalysium. One of them is the surprising amount of time that it took for The Zenith Passage to reach their sophomore full-length release. In what seems to be a recurring theme with 2023, a large block of time has passed between releases here; the group’s prior album Solipsist arrived in 2016 and it is only now at a little over seven years later that the band are on their second album.

The second specter is something that everyone is going to bring up at one point or another when discussing them. Given the group’s pedigree, it is hard not to imagine this playing out as one of the background narratives surrounding the record: When three of the four musicians involved in a new release were at one point or another involved in the revolving door of The Faceless over the years, it’s difficult to avoid drawing comparisons. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CAVEMAN CULT, CULT BURIAL, MAIRU

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 312023
 

On Saturday morning I mentioned that I would be involved in an Event that I expected would consume the weekend, and so it did. I didn’t fall into any fires, which is a minor miracle given the volume of intoxicants I consumed, but I didn’t have time for NCS after that brief Saturday morning roundup.

In a rare display of wisdom, I didn’t agree to do any song premieres today, anticipating that I would still be trying to recover from a weekend of debauchery. But of course I did feel the old obsession today – how could I let a day go by without recommending something musical at the site, even though we did share Andy‘s latest Synn Report and a good interview by Aleksey? Well, as you can see, I couldn’t.

CAVEMAN CULT (U.S.)

Eventually, my eyes were able to focus this morning, so I decided to take a quick look at what landed in the NCS in-box since Saturday morning. There I found a notice of a new post at the starkweather SubStack. I slowly read through it and bookmarked some music I hadn’t been aware of, to explore when my brain was less fogged in. Then it dawned on me that something I discovered there would probably blow the fog away like a hurricane, along with my brain itself. A rough cure, to be sure. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MISTY GREY

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 312023
 

(Everyone knows that Doom Metal is Comrade Aleks‘ main love, and although his interviews have branched out into other dark genres, today he returns to the old flame with a very interesting discussion with members of the Spanish band Misty Grey, whose newest album was released in June of this year.)

Misty Grey first met in Madrid in 2011. This is one of the very few Spanish doom metal bands, and doom-heads know Misty Grey due to their honesty, passion, and good taste.

Another thing is that the backbone of the group in the vertebrae of Juan (guitar), Robin (bass) and Javier (drums) seems to have fallen victim to the gypsy curse or something like that: They were not lucky with either of the ladies who recorded vocals for the first and the sophomore albums, and the necessity to find a new singer was a scourge for the band.

Their new album Visions After Void was recorded with the new front-man Angel Flores, who sang for almost a decade in a local Viking folk band. And you know what? Angel is incredibly good in doom metal too. His range is much wider than that of the former vocalists, and he easily copes with both hard rock and epic parts previously uncharacteristic of Misty Grey.

These seven tracks recreate the recognizable atmosphere of traditional doom, they reflect the composer’s talent and passion, and this material has a sense of belonging to the modern doom scene too. Although what kind of modernity is something special, as the album is dedicated to the work of the German film director Fritz Lang, who authored the large-scale expressionist dystopia Metropolis (1927) and one of the first “noir” detectives M (1931).

To be honest, I can name a couple more doom albums that are entirely dedicated to dark cinematography masterpieces, so it’s not entirely true to praise Misty Grey for originality, but you know… They are original in their own way, and Visions After Void surpasses many of the modern doom albums. Juan (guitars). Javi (drums) and Angel (vocals) introduce the band to NCS’ readers in this in-depth interview. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 161): SOMNURI

 THE SYNN REPORT  1 Response »
Jul 312023
 

Recommended for fans of: Mastodon, Baroness, Byzantine

As I’ve mentioned several times already,2023 has been a pretty Prog-friendly year so far, with lots – if not most – of the year’s best bands and albums showing off their proggier proclivities over the last seven months.

Case in point, the new album from New York sludge-slingers Somnuri found the band really pushing the boat out and digging their proverbial oar into even proggier waters, and has been receiving widespread applause and acclaim from pretty much everyone who’s heard it as a result.

But to really understand and appreciate their newest album we need to go back to their first record, because it’s only by going back to look at where they came from that we can properly appreciate just how much progress they’ve made over the years.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WAYFARER, ASHTAR, HOUSE OF FLOWERS

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jul 292023
 

Dear friends and complete strangers, greetings to you on another diēs Sāturnī. I must be brief today because of an Event I must attend, which begins soon and will extend until the stars come out, when the congregants will have to see each other by firelight.

That Event continues tomorrow, beginning early on dies Solis and again proceeding past nightfall, and so don’t be surprised if my next usual round-up of new music, the blacker one, is also brief or goes missing altogether, even if I don’t fall into the fire.

WAYFARER (U.S.)

Denver-based Wayfarer‘s next album, American Gothic, is said to serve as “a funeral for the American dream”. “Caked in dust, and buried deep in blood and gunpowder, it paints a brutal and beautiful portrait” — so says Profound Lore, which will release the album on October 27th. “What we have now is a world full of oil drillers, and railroad barons. Cattle thieves and company men. This is the new American Gothic”. So says the band.

Along with these announcements came a video for a new album track named “False Constellation“. Continue reading »

DEADSPACE: “WITHIN HAUNTED CHAMBERS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 282023
 

Those of you who have been routinely stopping by our site over the last few weeks know that we’ve been enthusiastically welcoming the return of the Australian black metal band Deadspace, not only trying to help spread the word about their forthcoming seventh album Unveiling the Palest Truth on the Immortal Frost label, but also announcing and premiering a song from their new EP Within Haunted Chambers — and today that EP has been released.

As we’ve previously reported, the EP functions as something of a harrowing glide path to the takeoff of the new album. It includes three tracks from two Deadspace albums, The Promise of Oblivion (independently released in 2015) and Dirge (released through Talheim Records in 2019), but Deadspace have re-recorded the songs to showcase their evolution over the years in the live and studio arenas and to bring them more in line with what we’ll hear on the new full-length. As they explained to us:

This is part of us re-establishing ourselves and a much harsher and heavier entity, leaving behind the DSBM moniker. These tracks are how these songs are played live now in 2023 and are designed to sit well amongst our newer material that will be out in September.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REVERENCE TO PAROXYSM — “PORTALS TO DARK MISERY”

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Jul 282023
 

When I first encountered the debut song of Mexico City’s Reverence to Paroxysm, a long track called “Congruence of the Profound Forlorn” on their 2020 split with Spain’s Pestilength, I struggled to find words capable of expressing how horrifying the experience was. I’m not sure I succeeded, even in referencing “hallucinatory sensations of dread, degradation, and disease” and the reign of “unreasoning madness and fatal sickness”, or resorting to such phrases as “demented and doomed” and “mauling and mangling”.

More horrors were revealed when the band released a live album named Cadaveric Continuity of Unreal Perspectives last fall, providing a steep descent into a foul death metal netherworld where primal fears thrive and defenseless victims are bludgeoned, poisoned, and sliced with corroded blades into strips of bleeding meat by monstrosities of preternatural origin.

Well, you see, I’m still trying to find the right words, and the task becomes even more daunting because the band have built on what they’ve already accomplished (frightening as that prospect may be) by completing a debut studio album named Lux Morte. As a sign of how wickedly effective it is, the album has been picked up for release on August 31st by none other than Me Saco Un Ojo Records and Dark Descent Records.

As an even more viscerally effective sign, we’re premiering a song today named “Portals To Dark Misery“. More struggles with words to come…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WALDGEFLÜSTER, SECRET POISON, PHANTOM WINTER, SECRELICT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 272023
 

Busy week, busy day, on the home front here, but just enough spare time to take a very quick spin through some bookmarked new music. Not entirely random choices, since I focused on two bands I already know I like and followed the recommendation of a trusted source in another instance, but also made one startling new discovery.

WALDGEFLÜSTER (Germany)

I have yet to be disappointed by the music of Winterherz (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a festival many years ago, introduced by Austin Lunn), and based on the first song from the new Waldgeflüster mini-album, he and his friends still aren’t about to let me down.

The brightness of the strummed chords and the liveliness of the tumbling drums at the outset of the song provide a welcome measure of beauty and hope, and the peals of hopefulness continue, even after the roiling riffage and wrenching screams and yells begin to blaze and the drums launch their barrage. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PANZERCHRIST — “LAST OF A KIND”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 272023
 

Some of you reading this already know the 30-year history of the Danish band Panzerchrist without being told, because you lived through it. Others may have heard the name but were still children when the band released their last album, 7th Offensive, a decade ago — and yes, a decade of silence has passed since their last release.

The full history is an extensive one, not merely because the band’s origins go back to 1993 and included seven albums before the silence fell, but also because the band’s members have changed significantly over that 30-year life, and the full list of participants is both very long and also star-studded.

It’s tempting to delve deeper into that history to set the stage for the evidence of the band’s resurrection — a new album named Last Of A Kind that will be released tomorrow by Emanzipation Productions — but despite the ground-breaking nature of the band’s earliest albums, most hardcore metalheads know that an enthusiastic reception for a new record must be earned, even by bands who have already made their place in the history books.

So, in the case of Last Of A Kind, have Panzerchrist earned it? Continue reading »

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