AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LUX NIGRUM — “ADAMAS VOLUNTATEM”

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Feb 202023
 

Lux Nigrum‘s 2019 debut EP Burning the Eternal Return (which we reviewed and premiered here) made a striking impression. The music channeled chaos, but not in the sense of some flailing, disorganized cacophony. There was a palpable sense of fierce wildness and burning devotion in the music, but an equal devotion to the crafting of excellent riffs, which had both emotional power and magnetic musical appeal.

And so it was very welcome news to learn that this Chilean band would be returning in 2023 with a debut album named Omnia Ab Uno, Omnia Ad Unum, to be released by Australis Records on April 28th. It is described as “a conceptual album based on the Acausal Spirituality and the mysterious duality of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death, dealing with the unification of everything as One, and it’s own dissolution towards Ain.”

Once again we’re honored to host a premiere, and this time it’s a lyric video for the new album’s concluding song “Adamas Voluntatem“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TOMBSTONE — “GUARDIANS OF LAND AND SEA”

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Feb 202023
 

“Seven songs of scathing black metal mysticism from one of Indonesia’s most enigmatic bands”. That’s the concise introduction to Tombstone‘s new album To the Existence of Light proffered by Gutter Prince Cabal, the label that will release the record on March 1st of this year.

It turns out to be an accurate evocation of this Jakarta duo’s music in the follow-up to their 2020 debut full-length The Awakening of Darkness, as you shall learn for yourselves through our premiere of the song “Guardians of Land and Sea“. Continue reading »

BRÆ: “AV VÅLNADER BORTOM ALLT”

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Feb 202023
 

 

(On February 22nd Amor Fati Productions will release the second album by the multinational duo Bræ, and today we present the following review by Hope Gould.)

It would be easy to open and close this review with just naming the two prolific minds behind Bræ. For devotees to the obsidian underground, just the idea of Sweden’s one-man black metal factory Swartadauþuz, and Belgian ambient master Déhà, collaborating on a project is thrilling. And for those not yet acquainted, we could talk at length about their individual contributions and send you down a rabbit hole you won’t surface from for months. You should definitely still do that, but you should also know that Bræ’s new album stands on its own without the name-dropping. So, for now, let’s focus on what matters most – the music.

2021’s A Thousand Ways to End It All and the forthcoming Av Vålnader Bortom Allt follow the same formula: two tracks that each clock in around twenty epic minutes. Raw black metal is deconstructed into dark psychoactive ambience only Déhà could craft. Both releases are graced with spellbinding dungeon synth dripping in signature Swartadauþuz mysticism, which felt to me like the strongest parts of A Thousand Ways to End It All. The duo still brandishes an improvisational quality that won’t appeal to everyone, but they have a clearer grasp on direction in Av Vålnader Bortom Allt that keeps the soundscapes more immersive than the debut. There are also not one, not two, but eight very satisfying OUGH’s and if that doesn’t grab you, I’m afraid nothing will. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MYLINGEN, PALACE OF WORMS, MORK, STRJA, ETHIR ANDUIN, TIDELESS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 192023
 

I didn’t oversleep today, so there’s a lot here. And I don’t just mean the volume of music, but the stylistic range of it too. Black metal has become a vast canvass, but I’ve often gone off the edge of the canvass too. And I’ll add that there are more variants of doom in this mix than usual.

MYLINGEN (Sweden)

To begin today, I’ve chosen At Night I See Demons, the head-spinning debut EP released last month by the Swedish black metal band Mylingen, a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist V.J. (from Apathy Noir) and vocalist G.C. According to Metal Archives, their name is based on the word “myling“, which in Scandinavian folklore was “the phantasmal incarnations of the souls of unwanted children killed by their mothers and forced to roam the Earth until they could persuade someone to bury them properly.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SWAMP LANTERN, USNEA, BLACKBRAID, ERNTE, UPCDOWNC

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 182023
 

Today I woke up late and moved lazily. For most of my life, and probably yours, that’s the way Saturday mornings always were. Except in my case I had the lunatic idea when I started this blog in the fall of 2009 that I’d post something about music I liked even on Saturday and Sunday, and every holiday.

I thought of that as a way of underscoring that NCS would never be a business, and would consider none of us here as “workers”, because people working “jobs” almost always get weekends off. I think I also believed we might get more visitors due to the lack of competition on the weekends from the somewhat more-established metal sites that were beginning to dot the internet landscape.

And I probably thought the lifespan of NCS would be about a year, so how tough would it be to listen and write on the weekends for a year? Who knew it would go on like it has? I sure as shit didn’t.

In the last 13+ years I’ve failed to make some weekend posts, after a long stretch of never failing, though the number of failure days is still small. So now when I wake up late and move lazily it doesn’t take long before I start to feel like I’d better get my shit in gear, even if the lateness of the morning hour means I’m not able to make the Saturday roundup as extensive as I’d like (which is true today). But… no failure today at least…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CATTLE DECAPITATION, THEOPHONOS, THE OCEAN

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 172023
 

Yet another big week for new metal. I have many things I want to recommend, but not enough time today to throw them all your way. So I’ll make a start now, with a sandwich made of some big names at top and bottom and stunning Theophonos in the middle, and continue on Saturday.

CATTLE DECAPITATION (U.S.)

It’s kind of amazing that Cattle Decap have now been around long enough to release a tenth studio album, which is what will happen on May 12th when Metal Blade ushers Terrasite into a waiting world.

We have a linguistic preview of what’s coming, thanks to this statement by guitarist Josh Elmore: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERMINOUS SERPENT — “SERAPHIM FALLS”

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Feb 172023
 

Many of us, when reading about Verminous Serpent‘s lineup, didn’t need to know anything more in order to be drawn to the music, like iron filings to a big magnet. Knowing only that the band includes Slidhr‘s Joseph Deegan on guitar, Malthusian‘s Matt Bree on drums, and Primordial‘s A.A. Nemtheanga on vocals and bass, was more than enough to ignite interest and intrigue.

What their collaboration has spawned is a 41-minute album named The Malign Covenant, a title that proves to be entirely fitting for this trio’s own collaborative covenant. Not for naught does the advance publicity from Amor Fati Productions (who will release the album on March 17th) describe the music as “a rippling soundworld of lurking dread and sulfurous tension, where intensity is measured not by speed or density but by the hideous sensations that shapeshift within the listener’s subconscious”.

The music proves to be an alchemical cauldron of black metal that’s in some measure primitive and preternatural, muscle-moving and spine-tingling, but also well-calculated to create horrifying visions of mesmeric power, capable of both ascending into vistas of world-threatening calamity and descending into lightless pits of misery and death unending. No pun intended, it makes reflexive and riveting connections to dark, primordial energies that still lurk within us.

As a vivid example of what we’re trying to describe, today we present the album’s second advance track, “Seraphim Falls“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARV — “FURY”

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Feb 172023
 

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was “heavy metal”. Then thrash, doom, death metal, black metal, and all the ways in which hardcore began to hybridize with metal. Over time, the genres continued to divide, subdivide, intertwine, and absorb DNA from a universe of non-metal music. Metal has been segmented and categorized with a multitude of ever-expanding genre- and sub-genre labels, so many that we may soon deplete the storehouse of hyphens and slashes. But hey, there’s always room for one more, isn’t there?

How about “WAKE THE FUCK UP!” metal? You probably get the idea. Not so much a stylistic descriptor as a description of impact — the kind of explosive, blood-rushing musical cyclone that will kick your adrenaline into overdrive even when you think your brain couldn’t be more foggy or your ass dragging any more miserably.

What’s making us think about this is the electrifying video we’re now presenting for a heart-pounding song by the Oslo-based band ARV. Its name is “Fury“, and that is absolutely truth in advertising. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASTRIFEROUS — “OMINOUS AND MALEVOLENT”

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Feb 162023
 

It is a regrettable but inarguable fact that metal bands in many countries outside the commercial behemoths of North America and Western Europe face serious challenges in reaching waiting ears, notwithstanding the explosive spread of streaming services and other digital platforms. If anything, the ease with which underground bands and labels can digitally launch music has just made it harder for truly talented bands to get noticed, like nuggets of gold in a flooding river.

Which brings us to the Costa Rican death metal band Astriferous. It would go too far to say that they are unknown, because their pair of demos in 2019 and 2020, their 2020 EP The Lower Levels of Sentience, and their 2021 split with countrymen Bloodsoaked Necrovoid did earn them devoted fans well beyond their home shores. Yet it’s fair to say that they are still further below the radar than their music deserves.

Hopefully that is all about to change, thanks to a stunningly impressive debut album named Pulsations from the Black Orb that’s now set for international co-release in March by the well-known labels Me Saco Un Ojo and Pulverised Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE GRAFHOND — “GEFLUISTER”

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Feb 162023
 

We could have a long (and probably inconclusive) conversation about why so much of second-wave black metal spawned descriptions that characterized the music as “cold” or “icy”, and why those descriptions persisted into the present day as thousands of bands carried the traditions forward.

The answer doesn’t seem obvious. A lot of the music might strike first-time observers as fiery and frenzied, more violently confrontational, savage, and nihilistic than the stuff of freezing moons. Riotous blast-beats, boiling tremolo riffs, and scalding screams don’t seem calculated to lower the temperature.

One explanation might lie in the grim and grievous emotions sometimes channeled by such sonic onslaughts. Where those sounds create moods of unyielding cruelty, despair, and the surrender of all hope, or the merciless presence of inevitable death, then it becomes more evident why people feel no warmth despite the super-heated deliveries.

Such thoughts have come to mind in listening to the music of the Dutch band Grafhond, a duo consisting of Graaf Graf and Nachtvorst who first began their Grafhond collaboration in 2017, resolved to seek a deeper and darker emotional connection in their black metal than some of the more formulaic, antiseptic, or sunlit styles that have branched away in the modern age. Continue reading »

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