AN NCS INTERVIEW: TEMPLE OF DREAD

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Jul 182023
 

(Temple of Dread‘s new album Beyond Acheron, which features artwork by Paolo Girardi, is set for release in August by Testimony Records. Over time we’ve appreciatively written about their music on several occasions, and even premiered their last album, and today Comrade Aleks joins in, with an engaging interview of guitarist/bassist Markus Bünnemeyer.)

German death metal band Temple of Dread is another unit well-known to NCS’ readers. The trio of Markus Bünnemeyer (guitars, bass), Jörg Uken (drums) and Jens Finger (vocals) shoot out albums one after another regularly, so if you skipped their first release Blood Craving Mantras (2019) then you probably heard World Sacrifice (2020) or Hades Unleashed (2021). As good as these albums were, the new one Beyond Acheron is stronger, darker, and sometimes even more epic.

Temple of Dread’s fourth album will be officially released on August 11th by Testimony Records, but we used our chance to get in touch with the band right now.

(Thanks to Jan, SureShotWorx PR, for organizing the interview.) Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: IMPERCEPTUM, PLEŃ

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jul 172023
 

Yesterday I had ambitions to make the Shades of Black column a two-parter, but in a rare display of wisdom I didn’t call it that, because I wasn’t sure I would have time to finish the second part. But I did, even though I didn’t finish Part 2 in time to post it Sunday. Here it is now.

Yesterday’s first installment was devoted mainly to advance tracks from forthcoming records. Today’s just focuses on two recent albums.

IMPERCEPTUM (Germany)

Imperceptum is one of those bands I’ve been eagerly following and writing about for a long time, beginning with this Bremen-based project’s debut album Collapse of Existence, released in early 2016. Two EPs and four more albums have come out since then, the latest of which (until now) was 2020’s Entity of Undead Stars (reviewed here). Eight days ago we got another full-length, and you’ll find the stream below. I found it extraordinary. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEPTORY — “SWAMP”

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Jul 172023
 

The Russian death metal band Septory came together in Saint Petersburg in 2005. They released albums in 2008 and 2011, plus a split with Finland’s Sadistik Forest in 2013, and then a long silence descended. But now, a decade later, Septory is releasing a compilation that spans the long bridge between their first recordings and new works in 2023.

Entitled Rotting Humanity, it’s set for co-release on August 17th by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Heretic Rex (Russia). A six-track collection, it consists of the previously unreleased 2006 EP Rotting Humanity (which includes the title track and a cover of Deicide‘s “Sacrificial Suicide”); a demo from 2007 (“Madness“); a completely re-recorded song from the 2008 album World War Chaos (“Swamp”); a new recording of a cover of Benediction‘s “The Grotesque”; and a new intro track named “Dies Irae”.

For the new recordings, Deiron (guitars, bass, vocals) was joined by guest musicians Dym Nox (Pyre, Blazing Rust, Drama) on drums, and Devourer (Warder, Sudden Rage, Rotten Coffin, Apostate) on vocals, and the compilation is adorned by the cover art of Rotten Phantom.

What we have for you today is the premiere of that re-recorded song “Swamp” from Septory‘s World War Chaos album. Continue reading »

AGRICULTURE – AGRICULTURE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 172023
 

(Andy Synn digs deep into Agriculture‘s highly-anticipated debut album, out this Friday)

The Circle Chant, the debut EP from self-described “ecstatic Black Metal” band Agriculture, received a lot of hype – in certain circles, at least – when it was released last year.

And while I, perhaps unsurprisingly, felt that some of these reactions were a little overblown – two really good tracks and two bits of filler content does not make for a great release overall, in my book – the best moments of the EP (most specifically the opening title-track, which is basically five minutes of raw emotional energy in musical form) convinced me to keep an eye and an ear open for whatever the band did next.

Which is where their self-titled album comes in.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CENOBITE

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Jul 172023
 

(Today we have a discussion among two Russians, our interviewer Comrade Aleks and the frontman of the death metal torturers Cenobite, whose newest album was unshackled in late May.)

I interviewed Kostek Dolganov, who performs bass and vocals in the Russian old-school death metal band Cenobite, just two years ago. Despite all odds the band and their label Svanrenne Music prepared a new full-length album which naturally surpassed the debut Dark Dimension we discussed the last time.

Fans of savage and violent death metal rooted in the legacy of Obituary, Entombed, Autopsy and Asphyx will like their stuff, so let’s take a look at what the label tells about the album:

“Torment Your Flesh and Explore the Limits of Experience is the wheel of suffering, tightly fitted with chains to a bent figure, creates the impression of inevitability, fate, overcoming. The band continues the tradition of the debut album, composing the worst anthems of old school death metal, sustained in the mystical atmosphere of a frightening empty basement of cold torture. Where chains ring, bones rattle, drafts blow, and martyrs are awaiting their fate in mud and blood… in anticipation of the torment of the flesh and exploration of the limits of terrible experience”.

It sounds a bit blurred, so let’s investigate a bit more about Torment Your Flesh and Explore the Limits of Experience with Cenobite’s chief. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DANTALION, SATÓN, ANTI-GOD HAND, MAZE OF TERROR, EMINENTIA TENEBRIS, STANGARIGEL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jul 162023
 

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 100 times (probably closer to 200): I have another job whose demands are very unpredictable. It interfered with my ability to prepare a roundup yesterday, unexpectedly so for me — because I just fucking forgot about a big online meeting that had been scheduled for months (rude surprises have many causes). It started early and went on for 2 1/2 hours (come on, it takes time to coordinate production of pocket-sized fusion reactors!).

I thought about just pretending that today was Saturday and proceeding with a cross-genre roundup, but then thought again, and decided to stick with the usual plan and focus on the blacker arts today. Still, your creaky wagon won’t get stuck in any ruts – these selections will cause it to careen all over the en-thorned dirt road (or so I hope).

DANTALION (Spain)

I decided to start with a quintet of songs from forthcoming releases and then turn to just one recent EP. The first of the advance tracks comes from the ninth album by the long-running Spanish band Dantalion (which my addled brain always tries to read as “dandelion”, though there’s nothing about their music that connects with such an image, unless the flower is dead). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOE, 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 142023
 

Here we are at another Friday, with yet another big pile of new metal staring us in the face and not nearly enough time to make much of a start in selecting recommendations before the sun gets high in the sky (or is replaced by the moon where you might live).

I’m reminded of the statement attributed to Laozi about how the journey of a thousand miles begins, a proverb that usually doesn’t motivate me at times like this, when a thousand-yard stare is all I can usually muster. But today I tried harder to take the proverb to heart, and actually made two steps. Unless like puts a bog in my path, more steps will follow tomorrow and Sunday.

WOE (U.S.)

My first selection is a new song from Legacies of Frailty, a new album by Woe and the first one since 2017’s Hope Attrition. Since then, it’s hard to deny that the human world around us has slid backward, more rapidly and in more disgusting ways than even the pessimists among us had contemplated, and the natural world has suffered for it as well.

These developments certainly weighed on the mind of Chris Grigg, who for the first time since 2007 made this Woe album by himself (albeit with additional drumming on three tracks by Lev Weinstein). The result is a concept album, described by Grigg in these words: Continue reading »

DEADSPACE: NEWS AND NEW MUSIC

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 142023
 


Deadspace

Those of you who have been following us a long time know that for a long time we have been following the band Deadspace (as the many reviews collected here will demonstrate), as well as the Exitium Sui solo project of Deadspace front-person Chris Gebauer (those reviews collected here). There was a time when we thought Deadspace had been interred forever when Chris moved to Europe, but thankfully the reports of their demise proved to be premature:

In 2021 Deadspace released the single “Moksha“, and about one month ago Immortal Frost Productions announced that on September 22nd it will release the band’s seventh album, Unveiling the Palest Truth. But even before then Deadspace will release another record, and it’s our pleasure to announce that today, as well as to provide a reminder about the first single that surfaced from the new album about a week ago and to spread the word about a couple of upcoming live shows. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEAD FIELDS OF WOOLWICH — “I’VE MADE IT TO HELL”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 132023
 

We’re told that Dead Fields Of Woolwich had its beginnings in the Autumn of 2020 in North Bay, Ontario when multi-instrumentalist Kye Bell (Within Nostalgia) created a project inspired by a love of bands like Type O Negative, Paradise Lost, and Wood Of Ypres. The band’s name was inspired by the place where he grew up in southern Ontario, a place that left memories of “of old fields, scarecrows, and dense woods of twisted trees”.

Although still considered a solo project at heart, the band’s forthcoming self-titled album includes the performances of session vocalist Alyssa Broere (Within Nostalgia, ex-Astral Witch), and you’ll see from our video premiere today that Alyssa plays a vital role in the album’s captivating rendering of gothic melodic doom. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COUNTESS ERZSEBET — “IN THE BLOOD OF VIRGINS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 132023
 

In this feature today we’re sort of premiering a video for a song from the forthcoming self-titled mini-album by the artist Countess Erzsebet. “Sort of” because the video is age-restricted, and therefore we’re only able to give you a link to YouTube where you can verify that you are a mature adult, or at least an adult.

The name of the song is “In the Blood of Virgins“, and it’s age-restricted because (as the Countess explains) it includes “abstract erotic horror elements”, though the scenes of her bathing in blood obviously weren’t abstract enough to satisfy YouTube and its algorithms.

Before we get to some further details about the video, and most especially about the music you’ll hear, we might need to introduce some of you to Countess Erzsebet (previously known as Erzsebet when she released the nearly-album-length Black Spell in 2017). She is also known as Rachel Bloodspell Moongoddess, who has previously played bass for a number of bands but more recently Xasthur, where she did three tours playing acoustic bass and was on the Aestas Pretium MMXVIII EP.

But her background also includes other interesting details. Continue reading »

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