MEMORIAM: “RISE TO POWER”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 202023
 

(Here’s Todd Manning‘s review of the new album by the UK’s Memoriam, which is set for release by Reaper Entertainment on February 3rd and features stunning cover art by Dan Seagrave.)

Old School Death Metal is more vital than ever, with both old fans and new initiates alike being drawn into the crypts searching for their next fix. While many of the original bands continue to put out new records, other scene veterans form new groups in order to develop the genre’s sound even further.

Such is the case with the British act Memoriam. Formed by Karl Willetts, vocalist of Bolt Thrower, and bassist Frank Healy of Benediction, and joined by guitarist Scott Fairfax and drummer Spikey T. Smith, Memoriam draws on the blueprint of those seminal acts and adds a number of new elements to the sound. Their latest album, Rise to Power, forms the second section of a trilogy that began with 2021’s To the End. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: BLUE HOLOCAUST / MORGUE BREATH

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 192023
 

 

(Today we’re bringing you a whip-fast blast of grind released by a trio of labels, with an introduction written by Christopher Luedtke.)

Today we have a double threat of menacing grindcore. Blue Holocaust and Morgue Breath have teamed up to release After The Fall of Man / Hongo Atroz, both bands each knocking out five tracks of blasting fury.

First up is goregrinder Blue Holocaust. Hailing out of Albi, Occitanie in France, the one man band has been grinding since 2001, but has also released other projects such as Vomi Noir and Pulmonary Fibrosis. Blue Holocaust has also released three full-lengths, and a number of splits with bands such as Expurgo, Lysergic Rites of Sadopriest, Houkago Grind Time, and others.

The Blue Holocaust side is raw, punchy goregrind. It has the gurgle, raw goregrind sound but without the vocals sounding like they’re drowning in fluids. The songs also let in some death metal ala Mortician such as “Body-melting Thermomuclear Endgame” and “Wastelands of the Year Omega.” The solos are quick but wailing. And much in the spirit of grind/goregrind it’s over before you know it. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 14): KAMPFAR, STRIGOI, PREDATORY LIGHT

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  No Responses »
Jan 192023
 

We have made our way up to Part 14 of this year’s Most Infectious Song list, and for the second day in a row I don’t have a coherent organizing principle for why I put these three tracks together, other than the infectiousness of the choices.

I think I can accurately say that these songs are all infectious in the sense of being intensely memorable. They’re so dramatic and often daunting that calling them “catchy” doesn’t seem quite right. But are they the sorts of songs you’d gladly put on a playlist so you can listen to them over and over again as time passes? I think so!

KAMPFAR (Norway)

Some songs are so stunningly dramatic, so vast in their scale, so frightening in their intensity, that they send shivers down the spine no matter how many times you hear them. Kampfar‘s “Urkraft” is one of those songs. Even right after I heard it for the first time early last spring, I wrote: “I haven’t committed to memory all of Kampfar‘s tracks spread across an 8-album discography. I’ll just say that I can’t recall any song in their repertoire that stunned me on a first listen like ‘Urkraft‘ did. Listening to it this morning, I was stunned all over again.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SÍR – “MACHINE PLEASURE”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 192023
 

What we’re about to lead you into is a kind of music that’s somewhat rare for our site. It includes occasional elements of black metal, but is even more slanted toward doom and depressive rock. It includes gritty and high-flown singing as well as lycanthropic snarls. It rarely races and is often simple, but is also capable of becoming elaborate. It has the capacity to mesmerize in different and often unsettling ways, and joy and hope are dim at best and only fleeting.

The subject is Your Star Will Collapse, the debut album of a Hungarian solo project named Sír, which follows a first EP named Cosmic Grave released in 2020. We’re told this about the band’s name and conception: “Sír has equivocal meaning. The most obvious one is grave, but also means crying. Together they represent grief, loss of a loved one, it is a deep emotional state. It has nothing to do with the undead or other fantasy themes, it’s all about living people and their struggles.” Continue reading »

DEATH ENGINE – OCEAN

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 192023
 

(Andy Synn dives into the thrilling third album from France’s Death Engine)

Broadly speaking, there are two types of “Post-Metal” bands – there are the Post-Rock bands who discover the power of massive metallic distortion, and the Hardcore bands who discover that ambience and atmosphere can actually make you sound even heavier.

And, let me tell you, Death Engine are very much the latter sort of band.

Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 13): MACERATION, DECIPHER, GRAVEDANCER

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  No Responses »
Jan 182023
 

Like yesterday’s installment of this list, today’s lucky 13th grouping doesn’t have much rhyme or reason to it. I mean, all these songs are here because I found them all highly infectious and very good in different ways, but I sure won’t claim that they have many other connections.

Oh, I guess I should mention that all three happened to be either songs or videos we premiered at NCS, though that’s not the reason I picked them.

MACERATION (Denmark)

I feel honored every time someone asks us to host a music premiere, but I admit I was especially excited when we were asked to premiere the come-back album of this Danish death metal band last year. Not only did it represent the return of a group who made a heavy mark in the old annals of death metal with their 1992 debut A Serenade of Agony, it also featured Dan Swanö stepping in again to fill the session vocal role, as he did under the name Day Disyraa for that 1992 debut. And the new album also turned out to be really fucking good — an opinion I attempted to justify at great length in a review accompanying the premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD SOUL ALLIANCE — “NEW NORMAL NIHILIST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 182023
 

We’ve enjoyed watching the relentless forward progress of the Canadian death metal band Dead Soul Alliance, from the first self-titled demo in 2011 to the 2013 EP Proud To Die (reviewed here), the 2017 EP Slaves to the Apocalypse (reviewed here), and the band’s debut album, Behind the Scenes (for which we hosted a song premiere here). And now we have a new reason to howl the band’s praises because they’ve got a second album storming toward a February 17 release by the Cryptorium9 label.

Once again, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Wolven Deadsoul is in charge, again joined by drummer E.H., and together they’ve created a swift nine-song, 32-minute experience that bears a fitting name: Spiralling to Lunacy. How fitting is it? You’re about to find out, through our premiere of the album track “New Normal Nihilist“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEPULCRUM — “SCHIZOPHRENIC AMPUTATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 182023
 

The Chilean death metal band Sepulcrum (from Puerto Montt) made their public recording debut in 2020 with an explosive five-song EP named Corpse Dividing Holes, drawing influence from such classic ’90s death metal bands as Morbid Angel, Deicide, Mortem (Rus), Morta Skuld, Pestilence, and Death. They followed that up with numerous shows in the south of the country, and also turned their fiendish talents to the preparation of a full-length.

That album is now complete and bears the name Lamentation of Immolated Souls. Emblazoned with eye-catching cover art by Francisco Ramírez (Morkt Artist), it’s set for release on March 17th by the cult Mexican label Chaos Records on vinyl, CD, and cassette tape, joined in the release by the Chilean label Burning Coffin Records (CD and tape), licensed by Burning Coffin and Canometal Records.

To help spread the word, today we’re premiering a berserk bonfire of a song named “Schizophrenic Amputation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MARE INFINITUM

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 182023
 

(Here we have Comrade Aleks’ very engaging interview with Georgiy Bykov, a key musician with the Russian band Mare Infinitum, whose newest album was released near the end of last year by Solitude Productions.)

I didn’t expect any new releases from the Russian doom-focused label Solitude Productions during 2022, because the label was put on hold after infamous events which started in February 2022. But somehow they managed to release Cryosleep, the third album of the Moscow-based band Mare Infinitum.

The band was founded back in 2010, and its albums Sea of Infinity (2011) and Alien Monolith God (2015) received a warm welcome, so the band often played live, joining almost all the local doom festivals during the past decade. After a seven year long break and some line-up changes Mare Infinitum returns, and their new material differs significantly from the good old death-doom stuff we expected from them.

The band’s founder Georgy Bykov tells how they lived through these seven years and passed the genre’s borders. Continue reading »

KOLLAPS\E: “PHANTOM CENTRE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 172023
 

 

I almost never attempt to write album reviews except when we’re hosting full album premieres, and occasionally as part of the black metal column I put together on Sundays. It’s not for lack of desire, just a consequence of being squeezed for time after completing everything else I do around this joint. Doesn’t mean I don’t listen, just means I’m usually forced to keep my thoughts to myself.

And so what you’re about to read is a relative rarity for me, spawned not only by a belief that Phantom Centre, the new album by the Swedish post-metal/sludge band Kollaps\e, is deserving of whatever push I can give it, but also by an unexpected gift of free time. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries