AN NCS PREMIERE: FROM THE VASTLAND — “THE CROWNED OF OSHIDARN”

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Sep 232022
 

From the Vastland‘s steady rise to prominence in the global realms of black metal began in the spring of 2013 when its then sole creator Sina journeyed from his homeland in Iran to perform at Oslo’s Inferno Festival, backed by a group of black metal luminaries from Norway. It happened to be a performance that our own Andy Synn witnessed and memorialized here. From then, and following Sina‘s immigration to Norway, From the Vastland has put out one impressive album after another, and we’ve continued following the band’s progress all along.

From the Vastland‘s most recent album was 2020’s The Haft Khan, a work that the same Mr. Synn lauded here as “pleasingly raw, yet mercilessly melodic”, delivering “great riffs”. “hideously infectious grooves”, “bold, bombastic hooks which, nevertheless, absolutely bristle with blackened menace”, and an obvious passion for a hallmark style of Norwegian black metal developed in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Throughout From the Vastland‘s rise, Sina has drawn thematic inspiration from wellsprings of Persian history and mythology, and he continues doing so on a new album (the band’s seventh) named Taurvi, which will be released on October 7th by the band’s new label, The Crawling Chaos Records. Continue reading »

MOTHER OF GRAVES: “WHERE THE SHADOWS ADORN”

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Sep 232022
 

(On October 14th Wise Blood Records will release the debut album of Indianapolis-based Mother of Graves, an album mastered by Dan Swanö and with cover art by Paolo Girardi, and below you’ll find Todd Manning‘s review of this new opus.)

Mother of Graves has picked the perfect time to drop their debut full-length, Where the Shadows Adorn. First of all, anyone who heard their excellent EP, In Somber Dreams, has been dying to get their hands on more material from this great band. In addition, there is something about this particular brand of death/doom that just seems to herald the changing of the seasons. The music feels autumnal, or even winter-ish. Like black metal, this type of forlorn music feels connected to the seasons. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOAK — “FÜR JEDE WUNDE EIN PFEIL”

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Sep 222022
 

For the second day in a row (and there will be a third tomorrow) it’s our pleasure to premiere a song from a forthcoming album on one of our favorite labels, the always distinctive I, Voidhanger Records. Yesterday it was Acausal Intrusion, and today the focus is the Greek black metal band Voak and their debut album Verdrängung.

The musical drive of Voak is fueled (as the label explains) by their concerns over “societies shaken by racial tensions, sexual discriminations and extremisms of all kinds”. They chose for the title of their album a German word that refers to the suppression of inner feelings and conflicts, which can lead to inaction in the face of wrongs. They write:

“The presence of our inner conflict shall trumpet over the mesmerizing melody of our comfort and fear of quarrel. To identify ‘Verdrängung’ as such, is a step to be taken in order to be able to fight among others, after fighting against the causes of our own inertia…. The oppressed and the ones struggling against the ‘Verdrängung’ may live in different prisons, but they are the majority… And in unity there is hope.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SFEERVERZIEKER — “MASTERS OF INSANITY”

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Sep 222022
 

In its debut album Death is the Desired Ending, the Dutch solo project Sfeerverzieker invites you to “Embrace depravity, Embrace brutality”. Consistent with that invitation, the songs’ lyrical themes are themselves centered on “brutality, misery, negativity, and the destruction mankind brings to this world”.

But as is sometimes true of metal spawned by such negative and nihilistic thoughts, the music of Sfeerverzieker, which broadly could be summed up as an atmospheric amalgam of sludge, doom, and post-metal, expresses them in ways that are often brimming with vitality and stunning in the scale of their power. Wide-ranging in their variations, the songs are often unmistakably disturbing and devastating in both their sonic force and their emotional impact, but also relentlessly captivating.

We have two striking examples of these accomplishments today, one of them a song that has already debuted but which you might have missed, and the other a track we’re presenting for its first public airing. Continue reading »

CONCERT REVIEW: HEILUNG LIVE IN SEATTLE, SEPT. 20, 2022

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Sep 222022
 

 

(Our editor Islander [that would be me] wrote the following concert review and took all the photos that accompany it.)

The literature of anthropological evolution (in which I’m a dabbler rather than an expert) makes a convincing case that much of our behavior is rooted in instincts that evolved over a vast span of time, instincts geared toward the survival of the species. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty clear that in the “modern age” those instincts no longer function very well as instruments of preservation and advancement. Instead, they lead to behavior that’s just plain dumb, or worse yet self-destructive, or still worse yet, dangerous to the survival of the species as a whole.

Unlike almost all other creatures on the planet, our big sophisticated brains give us the ability to override instinct for the better. Sometimes we actually behave in genuinely altruistic ways. Sometimes we’re able to extricate ourselves from dangerous predicaments through the exercise of reason when instinct alone would fail. We just don’t do any of that as often as we should, and there’s a case to be made that time is running out.

These thoughts bubbled to the surface as I reflected on the performance of Heilung I was lucky enough to witness in Seattle on the night of September 20th. On the one hand, the intense primal attraction of the show was a vivid reminder that “primitive man” still dwells within us. On the other hand, it was a testament to the willed creativity of which we’re capable, and the capacity to create beauty and magic. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ACAUSAL INTRUSION — “TRANSFORMATIONAL DEATH PHENOMENON”

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Sep 212022
 

For reasons that our man Andy Synn incisively explained in his review last year, Acausal Intrusion‘s debut album Nulitas was a rare piece of work. My favorite fragment from the review was this one: “[T]his is one record that actively feels like it’s evolving and mutating as you’re listening to it, which is no mean feat”.

It wasn’t just that Nulitas morphed from song to song, it was that the individual songs themselves seemed to change when listening to them a second and third time, which was a strange experience. But as Andy also noted, it was only after repeat listens that the album began to make sense — albeit a weird and warped kind of sense.

Now this dizzying and devastating duo are fast returning with a new album, this one named Seeping Evocation. Not surprisingly, it’s a challenging listen, and a frequently disturbing one. As the band’s label I, Voidhanger Records, expresses it:

“Once again the watchwords are chaos and transformation…. Seeping Evocation is like a living organism from another dimension, a giant black hole that pulsates and breathes, the eye of a forgotten Lovecraftian god open to our reality, ready to burn and destroy everything.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MAJESTIC MASS — “APOSTLES OF THE BLACK DAWN”

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Sep 212022
 

The last time I wrote at NCS about a song by Majestic Mass, back in 2018, I tried to explain my enthusiasm by spewing out a string of addled words that didn’t come close to a complete sentence, and ended by referring to the track as “a song with sensations of lewdness and lust, fire and triumph….”

Majestic Mass now have another album on the way, following up on that 2018 debut full-length Savage Empire of Death (and a 2019 EP named Onwards). And look at the epigram featured in the PR materials for the new record.

Feel no fear nor woe
Embrace the final blow
See the crimson glow
Let lust and fire grow… Continue reading »

GAEREA – MIRAGE

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Sep 212022
 

(Andy Synn takes a look behind the mask with Gaerea‘s new album, Mirage, out on Friday)

What’s in a name, anyway?

Well, according to some people… not a lot. And according to others… a great deal. Especially when it comes to genres.

Case in point, there are some people – by no means a majority, I should point out right away, though often the loudest and/or most obnoxious – who would balk at the very suggestion that Gaerea are a “true” (or “trve”) Black Metal band due to the fact that their sound is too “polished”, their visual aesthetic too “clean”, and so on.

And yet, for every one of them (I think of them as the Black Metal equivalent of the Amish – zealously convinced that a certain time period was the only “righteous” one, and that any progress beyond that should be shunned) there’s at least a dozen more for whom the very idea of questioning the band’s right to “belong” to the genre (of which they are so clearly and obviously a part) is patently ridiculous.

But the thing is… while much digital ink (and the occasional bit of non-digital blood) has been spilled over this argument, and many like it over the years… it’s obvious that Gaerea themselves don’t really care what you call them. They know who they are. And it’s the music, and not the labels which others put on it, which defines them.

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KUOLEMANLAAKSO

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Sep 202022
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Markus Laakso from the Finnish band Kuolemanlaakso (among other endeavors he’s involved in, which are also discussed below). The band’s newest album Kuusumu was released this past spring by Svart Records.)

Kuolemanlaakso (“death valley” in Finnish) once was known as the “death-doom band with Swallow the Sun’s vocalist”. It was started in 2010 and the band’s line-up didn’t change since then: Mikko Johannes Kotamäki (vocals), Markus Laakso (guitars, keyboards, vocals), Toni Ronkainen (drums), Tuomo Räisänen (bass), and Petteri Ruotsalainen (guitars).

Their first album Uljas uusi maailma (2012) was already too progressive and melodic for any rigid “death-doom” tag. The EP Musta aurinko nousee (2013) and the LP Tulijoutsen (2014) developed Kuolemanlaakso’s eclectic style only further until Markus recorded M. Laakso – Vol. 1: The Gothic Tapes (2016), something like his own gothic Kuolemanlaakso-based spin-off…

Besides that, Markus Laasko is the author of two metal books which we need to mention in this interview, which is focused on the band’s fourth album Kuusumu. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE LOOM OF TIME — “GRAND FALSE KARASS”

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Sep 202022
 

Many much-beloved metal albums, both very old and much newer, follow a straight and narrow path, charting a consistent stylistic course and staying in the lane, without much interest shown in the openings that lead off elsewhere into the thorny brambles and dark woods on either side. They work because the bands are so good at what they chose to do, and make their trails wander just enough to keep the eyes and ears of listeners alert.

On the other hand, some bands only seem to have eyes for the paths that twist and turn, the more tangled and unpredictable the better, and they relish the chance to dart off into side-openings whenever the opportunity presents itself. Some of those bands get lost, and lose listeners along the way, but others succeed in making their less-traveled paths more exciting than the straight and narrow.

The Loom of Time‘s new album Grand False Karass is certainly a vivid example of the latter, and an even more surprising one in light of the bamboozling (and dangerous) new adventures it offers by comparison to the band’s debut. Continue reading »

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