NO CLEAN SINGING

ALTARAGE – COGWHEEL

Jul 272026

(Andy Synn returns to the darkness with a revitalised Altarage and their new album, out Friday)

There’s an excellent question that Sir Michael Caine once asked, and answered… “why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

And, make no mistake about it, there’s certainly a pretty decent (and vocal) number of Altarage fans who will be happy – well, not exactly happy – to tell you all about how much the band fell off after their opening salvo of three killer albums (Nihl, Endinghent, and The Approaching Roar) in a row.

Don’t get me wrong, I have some sympathy with this view – as much as I loved the band’s initial trilogy of terror, I was willing to go on record with how disappointed (and disjointed) I felt 2021’s Succumb to be (a position I still stand by), and while I appreciated 2022’s Sol Corrupto a little more than most it definitely still fell short of the band’s usual high standards – but I’m also the sort of person who believes that it’s important for bands to take chances, and that a few experimental misses can sometimes lead to even bigger hits down the line.

Which may well be what we have here, as while 2023’s Worst Case Scenario was clearly informed by the lessons learned from the Succumb/Sol Corrupto sessions, it’s only with the upcoming release of Cogwheel that Altarage seem to have really managed to pick themselves back up again and become the same terrifying force they used to be.

Batman begin.

SHADES OF BLACK: NECROLIGION, MOORAH, SÁRR, NAMU, DUSKSEEKER, AKVAN

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

Jul 262026

(written by Islander)

I had enough time between yesterday and this morning to make this week’s SHADES OF BLACK collection a large one. It includes a trio of EPs, a pair of singles, and one full-length album, all of which got their claws on me in very different ways.

I suppose I could have sub-titled this collection “Best of British”, because three of the bands are from that green and pleasant land (that place of clouded hills and Satanic mills, to complete Blake’s famous references). However, my friend Andy claimed that phrase for his own reviews long ago, and anyway the following collection also includes bands from Czechia, Texas, and Iran. Hope you enjoy everything here. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FILTHY ILK, SIDEREAN, WEALTHY WOMEN, THE HU

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Jul 252026

(written by Islander)

As you know if you’ve stopped by here in previous Saturdays, I sometimes start with a shiny lure, a new song or video from a well-known band, and then drag people down into much deeper waters, kind of the reverse of conventional fishing (fishing from below).

Today I do have a shiny lure, but decided to put it at the end for reasons I’ll eventually explain. Before then I’ve bounced around among savage, strange, and scintillating creatures spotted in the lower depths. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MISERY INDEX, FEARTILIZER 1492, VENOMOUS ECHOES, THE ABSOLUTION SEQUENCE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jul 242026

(written by Islander)

I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning. I wake up early every morning, mainly because of this blog, but not that early. No idea why I opened my eyes then but I couldn’t go back to sleep.

The only silver lining to that unfortunate cloud is that after putting the finishing touches on that Agonanist song premiere I posted earlier today, which I hope you’ve explored, I had time on my hands. And so I decided to get a head-start on the usual Saturday roundup of new songs and videos, time enough to focus on four new things from the usual giant list of possibilities. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AGONANIST — “THE GATEWAY”

Premieres No Responses »

Jul 242026

(written by Islander)

In late August Transylvanian Recordings will release a second album by Agonanist, which is the experimental music project of multidisciplinary artist Tyler Henthorn, who is based in San Francisco. The album’s title is The Spirit of Gravity, and the label describes its contents as: “Dark, Hypnotic, Dissonant & Mystical Black Metal. Somewhere between a fever dream and a claustrophobic nightmare. Sonically unruly, jarring, & entrancing.”

The album has many unusual aspects, which we explored with Tyler in an interview you’ll find near the end of this article. It was produced in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where Tyler lived for many years. Further, in creating the music he used microtonal instruments, experimenting with EDO (Equal Divisions of the Octave), cutting the octave into numerous steps, with side A of the album described as “a mix of 17ET and 12ET, and side B of 22ET” (with ET standing for “Equal Temperament”).

Moreover, Agonanist enlisted the participation of some notable guests. He sent demos of the songs to Andrew Lee (Ripped to Shreds), Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts, Behold the Arctopus), and Kevin Paradis (Benighted, Svart Crown), and gave them the freedom to put themselves into his compositions.

The results are indeed sonically unruly, jarring, and entrancing. Tyler explains: “The Spirit of Gravity represents inevitability, our experience of time being an illusion, causality being a continuous web that spans the entire universe where everything exists at once in a splatter of liquid.”

In reading those words, and in listening to the album, it’s not surprising to learn that Tyler is a fan of the great Polish science fiction author Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) and that the name Agonanist is derived from an episode in one of Lem’s stories. But more about that later (much later). For now we should turn to some of the music on The Spirit of Gravity, including a song named “The Gateway” that we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PSICORRAGIA

Interviews No Responses »

Jul 242026

(In June of this year the Peruvian band Psicorragia released their third album. We had the pleasure of premiering a video for one of its great songs, and today we take pleasure in presenting Comrade Aleks’ excellent discussion with Psicorragia’s Mario Romanet.)

Peruvian death-doom band Psicorragia, led by bassist and vocalist Mario Romanet, has been together since 1994. Their first full-length album, La pasion de lo mortal, was released in 2001, and this year saw the release of their third major effort, Nekromanthra. Although nine years ago, the band had eight tracks in the works for their third full-length, the final release included only six songs, totaling 45 minutes. Yet there’s no need to worry; it’s absolutely a full-length recording and Psicorragia delivered professional and powerful material, effectively serving as the best work of their career.

The very first track, “Y sus plagas invocaron,” showcases their wide range of influences, from death metal to eldritch death-doom. The composition repeatedly shifts its mood from hostilely aggressive to detached melancholy and back again, the ascetic guitar sound offset by keyboard arrangements that take on the form of sublime orchestrations and mournful violin dirges.

Psicorragia tend to blend these two styles and, relying on their instincts, combine both approaches, but, for example, “Lo inexorable” embodies that very classic “death-doom with violin” from the ’90s that has become a brand in itself. The final track, “Nekromanthra,” concludes the album with grueling, drawn-out funereal doom, presented in an ominous, tormented, and almost ceremonial manner.

Mario Romanet answered a few questions recently, so I invite you to read this interview and join the macabre world of Psicorragia. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SHABTI — “SOJOURNER”

Premieres 1 Response »

Jul 232026

(written by Islander)

Those of us here like to think we’re good at getting in on the ground floor with promising new bands and then attentively following their progress forward. But we also readily admit when we’re very late in discovering impressive talents, and we are definitely very late in discovering the wiles of Shabti from Portland, Maine.

The lateness is even more inexcusable given the notable nature of Shabti’s lineup, which consists of drummer Ray Capizzo (Falls Of Rauros, Obsidian Tongue, Panopticon-live), vocalist/guitarist Rob Cook (Worm Altar), and bassist Brendan Hayter (Obsidian Tongue, Fires In The Distance). When a band features talents such as those, you’d think smart people would have explored what they’ve been doing long before now. But alas, we didn’t — until now.

Shabti now have their third album, Haze, Cacophony, And White Light, set for release on August 21st by the Contemn Light label. The album’s first single grabbed our attention like a big hand on the back of the neck, and we then grabbed back, seizing the opportunity to premiere a second single today. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ENDSPACE — “FIRST TRANSMISSION”

Premieres 1 Response »

Jul 232026

(written by Islander)

The copy/paste keyboard function is vital to preserving the sanity of people who write about metal in its global settings. Sometimes that’s because band names, album titles, or song names are in a language different from that of the writer. Sometimes it’s because metal bands have a tendency to just make up words for such things, and the words can be unpronounceable due to confounding juxtapositiions of consonants and vowels. And sometimes, but much more rarely, something significant is expressed in long strings of numbers.

Which brings us to the Canadian band Endspace. The name Endspace can be typed without difficulty, but copy/pasting is necessary for the identification of its two members. They are: 040118180514 and 102119200914. Equally strange, this isn’t the first time those two members have identified themselves numerically, even though Endspace is a new band — because they are also members of Fractal Generator, in which they are known by the same collections of digits.

This might lead you to assume there are similarities between what Endspace is doing and what Fractal Generator have done. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but you wouldn’t be entirely right either. At a high level Fractal Generator lean into death metal, whereas Endspace lean into black metal. And yet they are only just leaning, because both bands put lots of often head-scrambling twists, turns, and layers into their musical (and lyrical) concoctions.

In the case of Endspace, their first concoctions are encompassed by a debut album named First Contact that will be released on October 2nd by Transcending Obscurity Records. As the label says, it is “sci-fi themed black metal”, and it’s “light years ahead of what we’re accustomed to hearing”. Continue reading »

THE OLDEST HOUSE – THE ART OF ABYSSWALKING

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Jul 232026

(Andy Synn would like to invite you all to enter The Oldest House)

There’s another common phrase – and, boy, do I seem to be using a lot of them recently, don’t I? – that goes something like “better late than never”.

Which might as well be our motto here at NCS sometimes, because if we like something we’ll always try our best to write about it, even if that write-up ends up being a little late.

And, let me tell you, I really like The Art of Abysswalking.

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHTRIGË — “WOUNDS OF ETERNAL HUNGER”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Jul 222026

(written by Islander)

Shtrigë is a collaboration between two experienced practitioners of the black (metal) arts — Swiss musician Solaris Lupus (the sole mind behind Aspaarn and vocalist of Lord Valtgryftåke) and the Italian musician Sanguis Antiquus (based in Finland), whose many other bands include Clactonian and Thecodontion. In their Shtrigë endeavor the former performs all the instruments and the latter is responsible for vocals, lyrics, and songwriting.

As they have explained, this project “takes its name from the Shtrigë, a vampiric witch of Albanian mythology said to suck the blood of infants during the night and to transform themselves into a flying insect (traditionally a moth, fly, or bee).” In line with that choice, Shtrigë draws inspiration “from the dark legends and folkloric traditions of the Western Balkans”.

The duo released their debut demo Of Blood and Night in February of this year, and on July 24th Prehistoric Sounds will release their second one, Wounds of Eternal Hunger, and we’re premiering it today. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries