AN NCS INTERVIEW: MOTHER OF GRAVES

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Oct 102022
 

(Indianapolis-based Mother of Graves are fast approaching the release date set by Wise Blood Records for their powerful debut album Where the Shadows Adorn, and thus the time was right for Comrade Aleks to interview members of the band, resulting in the discussion we present here.)

There aren’t many melodic death-doom bands who have gained real recognition. Swallow the Sun from Finland, Daylight Dies from the States, and October Tide from Sweden are the bigger and most influential bands in this list, though it’s easy to find many more names in different countries. Maybe it’s the “doom” tag which scares potential listeners, even though the genre is quite friendly, even for newcomers: The songs’ tempos usually vary from mid to high, soaring melodies ignite your melancholy, and expressive raging vocals are harsh usually and yet appealing in some way.

However it’s always cool to learn about new bands who are able to strike you down with their very first album. Mother of Graves from Indianapolis does it without visible strenuous effort as their forthcoming debut album Where the Shadows Adorn combines the spirit of old school melodic death-doom  and epic modern production. This release is scheduled for the 14th of October, so there’s time to prepare yourself for it while reading the interview with Chris Morrison (guitars),  Brandon Howe (vocals), and Corey Clark (bass). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SKAPHOS, AKRAIA, SACRILEGION, AARA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 082022
 

Last weekend I was able to compile and write about a typhoon of new songs and videos, but this weekend will be different. The Seattle Mariners baseball club made the major league playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and won the first game of their first playoff series yesterday in Toronto. The second game is this afternoon, and I’ll be glued to the TV watching that with friends.

Afterward will be a dinner party in Seattle that will likely go late, and that won’t bode well for Sunday morning work on Shades of Black whenever I get back to my island home. Also ominous is the fact that I’ve got to do shit for my fucking day job tomorrow, which makes tomorrow’s usual column even more unlikely. So don’t be surprised if I have to skip it this week.

I’ve got to make my way to Seattle pretty soon for that ballgame, so I’ll have to make the following collection short, but hopefully sweet. I wish I could have done more, and really wish I could have done it yesterday when there was an extra incentive for fans to spend money on Bandcamp, but my job hammered me then too. So it goes. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE HOWLING VOID — “DEEPER, DARKER WATERS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 072022
 

The last time we wrote about The Howling Void, three and a half years ago, this one-man project was on the verge of releasing its seventh album, Bleak and Everlasting. We’d been following the project for a long time even then, and remarked that it wasn’t like following someone on a sidewalk, striding along a straight line, but more like being in a dense forest and thinking, “Where the hell did he go?!? He was right in front of me a second ago!”

That was an effort to explain that the muse followed by the band’s Texas-based alter ego Ryan Wilson has periodically tended to lead him off in different directions as one album has followed another, even though the branching paths still weave through the massive forests and looming monoliths of funeral doom.

We’re revisiting The Howling Void now because an album named Into Darkness Ever More Profound will finally follow Bleak and Everlasting, and it might be the first one with a release date in 2023 that we’ve covered here so far. As you can see, we have a song premiere today to help spread the word, and it comes timed to coincide with another Bandcamp Friday, where more of your money will go to the artists and labels, thanks to Bandcamp surrendering its usual share. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INVICTUS — “BLEED ME OUT”

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Oct 072022
 

To say that Maurizio Iacono has nothing left to prove is to state the obvious. After 14 studio albums from Kataklysm (and a host of other releases), four more full-lengths from Ex Deo, numerous global tours and festival performances, and many other endeavors in prominent aspects of the music business, he’s already secured a rare level of success in the world of heavy metal and a secure position in its history.

Having nothing left to prove, however, doesn’t mean having nothing left to say. How else does one explain his decision to create a new band at this very mature stage of his career? That is in fact what Maurizio has done with the formation of Invictus, a group that makes its recording debut with an album named Unstoppable on October 21st via the MNRK Heavy label. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UPON YOUR GRAVE — “GOLD & DECAY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 062022
 

The image of a golden heart amidst black roses which welcomes listeners to the new EP by the Quebec-based death metal band Upon Your Grave isn’t just appropriate for the EP’s title — Gold & Decay — it also meshes with some of the music’s manifold ingredients. There’s head-spinning brilliance in these five songs, but also a surrounding yet alluring darkness in some of the melodies.

But the cover doesn’t clue you in to all of the ingredients, most prominently the fact that in this EP Upon Your Grave routinely inflict the kind of brutally obliterating beatings and unchained demolition work that spawns images of shattered bones and buildings reduced to rubble. And while there are moments that are mesmerizing, the main probable effect of the EP will be to leave people hyperventilated and gasping. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: VOIDOATH

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Oct 062022
 

(Costa Rica’s VoidOath have recently released an album inspired by John Carpenter‘s “The Thing“, and the music is a match for its terrifying concept — deeply unsettling, but so well-made that it’s relentlessly immersive. And today Comrade Aleks has brought us an interview with the band that reveals further insights into their history, their conception of the music, and what may come next.)

Did you see the artwork of VoidOath’s album Ascension Beyond Kokytus? Something familiar, isn’t it? John Carpenter’s The Thing is a cult movie, there’s no doubt, but I don’t remember a band who would build an entire album around this story. Now we have VoidOath and this world seems to be a little bit better place.

VoidOath was founded in San José, Costa Rica four years ago by Allan Salas (bass), Gabriel Ortiz (drums), Jose Rodríguez (guitars), and Christopher G. De Haan (guitars, vocals). Three of them played in different local bands, so VoidOath’s first EP Illumination Through Necromancy was recorded pretty fast, and they had 32 minutes of sludge doom madness ready in 2020.

I don’t know if this release helped the band to spread the word effectively, but the Irish label Cursed Monk Records noticed them and Ascension Beyond Kokytus was released on the 28th of September, preceded by the album premiere and review here at NCS. I think it was Jose with whom we spoke about The Thing, metal, and the underground of Costa Rica.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLACK ROYAL — “GHOSTS OF THE DEAD”

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Oct 052022
 

 

The heart is a pump. It drives the pulse. It sets the beat. Whether it slowly thumps or hammers in your throat, it’s the body’s rhythm section. When music makes us move, isn’t it because it connects to those primal grooves that keep us alive? (Anthropologists and other scientists have probably proven this, but at the moment we can’t be bothered to hunt for the proof.)

But the fact that the reaction is reflexive means that it’s easy for even mediocre musicians to lay down songs that make listeners move. Even extreme heavy metal bands do that all the time, easily triggering the headbang reflex, even though other groups obviously believe that putting too much groove in their music cheapens their “artistry” or clashes with their “ethos”. And indeed, taking the easy way out is rarely the basis for respect.

Which brings us to Black Royal, and what has made — and still makes — their deathly sludge ‘n’ roll so special. It’s undeniable (or at least your reptile brain won’t deny it) that in both their music and their vocal phrasings these Finns know how to lock in with the beat of your heart, and make it both slowly pump and hammer like a well-fueled piston.

But their expertise in doing that isn’t the sole basis for the allure of their music, and in the case of their new album Earthbound, which will be released on October 21st by M-Theory Audio, a strong case can be made that it’s the artistry and ethos of everything else they do which makes the album stand out. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MASTIC SCUM — “ICON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 052022
 

(On October 7th MDD Records will release a new album by the Austrian band Mastic Scum, and it’s our honor to premiere a full stream of it today, preceded by an extensive review prepared by NCS writer DGR.)

It is wild to think that were it not for 2017’s Defy EP almost nine years would have passed between releases for Austria’s Mastic Scum. As it stands. almost nine years between full-lengths is getting up there in time, and five years between an EP and a full-length is pretty lengthy as well. Usually when you get gaps like that it is because the band have gone through massive lineup changes or things behind the scenes, usually resulting in some sort of change in sound. Long-lost groups will return and it will play out like a relaunch of the band in those ways, the prior history something for the books and the current format the defining sounding.

It’s hard to even fathom the amount of shit the world has gone through in the span of time between the December 2013 release of Mastic Scum‘s album CTRL and the impending release of their new album Icon. You’d think that with everything we’ve all been through it would be reflected in the Mastic Scum sound, but Icon is kind of incredible because it’s like the band looked at the ever-shifting sands of heavy metal and the constantly changing scenes in death metal, glanced at their own brand of industrial-strength Terminator-murdering death metal, and just said, “Haha, nope”, things are going to stay exactly the same.

Because Icon picks up right where CTRL left off… like almost from the exact moment, down to the four-letter album title that has been every Mastic Scum full-length. The biggest difference here is that Icon is the first Mastic Scum album since 2005’s Mind not to feature a skull up front and center on the album art in some form. Icon is  Mastic Scum once again pummeling the planet for ten songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THUNDERING HOOVES — “RADIANCE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 052022
 

(Andy Synn presents his first impressions of the fantastic new album from Thundering Hooves, which is set for release on October 7th by Mercenary Press)

Well, here we are… finally.

I say “finally” because, originally, this premiere/review was meant to go live yesterday, but due to a major behind-the-scenes mix-up (which involved me working with the wrong promo materials entirely… long story) we had to bump it back a day.

But, while this obviously means I haven’t been able to give it the usual in-depth investigation, perhaps we should treat this as something of an opportunity… after all, dear reader, how often is it that you and I get to experience an album for the first time together?

So let’s see what Radiance has to offer, shall we, and compare our notes at the end? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MORBID STENCH — “MACABRE INTROSPECTION”

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Oct 042022
 

The process of rot after death may seem like a slow and stultifying process, but in fact there is a feverish busyness beneath the surface. Decomposition begins immediately, as a multitude of a body’s organisms join forces to create putrefaction, releasing compounds such as cadaverine and putrescine, which produce the unmistakably putrid odor of decay. Where possible, they are aided by worms and other external creatures satiating their own hunger from the stinking flesh.

No, this isn’t a science class today, but merely some morbid meditations spawned by the Central American necrotic doom-death band Morbid Stench and their new album The Rotting Ways of Doom. And it’s not just the name of the band and the title of their new album that prompt such thoughts, but also the music itself — and we have a prime example of that in our premiere of a track off the new album named “Macabre Introspection“. Continue reading »

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