AN NCS PREMIERE: ANZV — “ISIMUD”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 012022
 

The Portuguese band ANZV is only a few years old, but harnesses the talents of experienced veterans. Through their forthcoming debut album Gallas, they explore an incredibly chilling conceptual vision. The description they give is worth reading in full, and we’ll get to that later in this feature, but for now let’s sum it up as a journey into an underworld of nihilism and despair, a free-fall into the surrender of will and self, becoming nothing at all.

In portraying such harrowing visions ANZV intertwine death metal and elements of classic and post-black metal, and they do so in tremendously powerful and gripping fashion. One song from the album (“Inane“) has already had a lyric video premiere, and today we bring you a second song — “Isimud” — which comes with its own cover art that you can see above. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MONDOCANE — “HAMMAREN OCH SKÄRAN”

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Sep 012022
 

Last May I took a blind chance on the music of Mondocane, diving into this Stockholm solo project’s second album Gloria without any previous exposure to Mondocone‘s creations. That turned out to be a winning gamble.

The songs on Gloria range widely in their sensations, and the familiar tropes of black metal play only one role in the musical amalgams. Depending on where you are in the track list (as I wrote then):

“The songs race and they stagger. They slash and they swirl. They brandish a feral, devilish swagger and they weave powerful dark spells. They’re menacing and dismal, cunning and cruel, and they elevate like witches around a bonfire. The riffing is captivating, and the keyboards and electronica are adroitly used. I’m not adept enough to know if the drumming is live or programmed, but their visceral punch, augmented by a heavyweight bass, is magnetic”.

Little wonder, then, that I got excited to discover that Mondocane would be releasing a new EP today. Entitled Enigmata | The Eminent, it includes three new songs (Enigmata), and as a bonus it also includes three songs (The Eminent) first released in 2000 by a band named Goatworship in which Mondocane‘s creator performed drums and keyboards (the band also included two members of Sarcasm). What we have for you today to help spread the word about this split release is the premiere of one of Mondocane‘s new songs, “Hammaren och skäran“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SVART VINTER — “MIST”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 312022
 

Forecasts of a temperature drop radiate from Svart Vinter‘s new album Mist, communicated not only by the band’s name and the record’s title but also from the gray fog blanketing black forests on the album’s cover. Most of the world may be baking in record heat waves right now, but winter is as much a state of mind as a season.

It is, in fact, many states of mind. The season brings gale-force turbulence as well as oppressive chills, death and decay as well as huddled loneliness, and the kindling of fires in an effort to keep the dark and the cold at bay. In some areas it’s also a time of beauty and wonder. In all these ways the season itself reflects and spawns a range of moods. After the roasting many of us are now enduring, it may be more welcome than in many past years at first, before dread and difficulties settle in during the long months until spring.

Mist manages to capture many of the sensations of the dark season, sketching portraits of what happens to the Earth as it turns away from the distant blazing orb, but even more so portraying the human emotions that find their simulacrum in the outer world. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 149): HEXIS

 THE SYNN REPORT  2 Responses »
Aug 312022
 

Recommended for fans of: Dragged Into Sunlight, Celeste, This Gift Is A Curse

Heed this warning: Danish dynamos Hexis are… not exactly easy listening, let’s just say that.

In fact, their abrasive amalgam of Black Metal and Hardcore – liberally dosed with enough sickeningly sludgy moments to ensure that the listener never becomes too comfortable or complacent – has, if anything, only gotten harsher, heavier, and just generally nastier, as the years have gone by… as you’re about to discover.

Continue reading »

ESCUELA GRIND: “MEMORY THEATER”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 312022
 

(Chris Luedtke is back at NCS with a review of the sophomore album by Mass.-based Escuela Grind, due for release on September 30 by MNRK Heavy.)

Escuela Grind are no stranger to the, well, grindcore genre. Though being a thoroughly grindcore-centric band, they exist in their own space that sounds like they are channeling Fuck The Facts but from peaks and valleys away. Maybe it is the way they carry their sound, maybe it is their aggressive touring style and their savvy ability to PR themselves. Likely, it is a combination of all (they have some killer merch).

Escuela Grind have been kicking up their discography, especially since the pandemic happened. During which Indoctrination dropped, as well as two EPs titled PPOOWWEERVVIIOOLLEENNCCE and GGRRIINNDCCOORREE. Now, the band’s sophomore LP Memory Theater is up to bat.

It is difficult to put into words when an album feels good but not great. Like a dull ache or even a soft blow. That’s how Indoctrination hit me. I queue it up on occasion and remember that it is a good slab of chaos but a return is not frequent. Maybe it needs to grow on me still. So the question becomes, can Memory Theater step up the game? The short answer is yes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GOATWHORE, EXHUMED, ATEIGGÄR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 302022
 


Goatwhore – Photo by Stephanie Cabral

 

This Tuesday roundup of new music will be shorter than usual, but hopefully you’ll still find it sweet. Without further ado…

GOATWHORE (U.S.)

Goatwhore have a well-deserved reputation for being one of the hardest-gigging bands around, and every one of the half-dozen times I’ve seen them they’ve played as if it would be their last show. You always get your money’s worth from these dudes when they hit a stage. But somehow they found time amidst all the touring — no doubt aided by the pandemic shutdown — to punch out a new album where, once again, angels will fear to tread. The title of this one is Angels Hung From The Arches Of Heaven.

It’s been a five-year wait since Vengeful Ascension, and Goatwhore have made up for that with 47 minutes of music. The album also includes the work of a new bass player (Robert “TA” Coleman) and it’s the band’s first production with Kurt Ballou who worked along with producer Jarrett Pritchard in his second effort with the band. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CATACOMBES — “LA BÊTE D’ACIER”

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Aug 302022
 

If you take a close look at the cover photograph for Catacombes’ new album Des Glaires et des Briques you’ll see that it depicts a wine bottle and a corkscrew resting on a rustic table. But you’ll also see that the wine-opener doubles as a knife, and shadows encroach along the borders. The title is rendered in an old gothic or medieval font and beneath it are words which Google Translate renders as follows: “Night falls and darkness seizes the dark alleys and busy onlookers…” Sun & Moon Records, the Transylvanian label releasing the album, invites us to “Pour a glass of wine and explore the genuine atmosphere of medieval obscurantism!”

What is one to make of all this visual and linguistic imagery? It’s suggestive of archaic themes and perhaps a degree of sophistication, but equally suggestive of nocturnal menace and maybe worse. Consider that the members of the band have chosen as their noms de guerre Le Démoniaque, La Damnée, and Le Vilain.

Well, we can’t help but engage in guessing games as a result of such intrigues, but it’s better to let the music speak for itself, and so let’s move directly into “La Bête d’Acier“, the song we’re premiering from the album today. Continue reading »

AETERNAM: “HEIR OF THE RISING SUN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 302022
 

(DGR wrote the following extensive review of a new album by Aeternam, which is coming out this Friday, September 2nd.)

The career path that Quebec’s Aeternam have taken in the lead-up to their latest album Heir Of The Rising Sun – their fifth overall –  has an interesting amount of twists and turns in it for a group whose genre descriptors boil down to a blackened death metal/folk metal hybrid. It’s the case with many other bands as well, but obviously those are dealing in differing shades, and in Aeternam‘s it feels more like a fight between two different styles, with each album a different snapshot at different points in that battle.

To say that the folk metal side has been winning out would be putting it politely of course, but that descriptor is inadequate here because “folk metal” often tends to conjure up imagery of a bunch of extra musicians with accordions, hurdy-gurdys, and flutes rather than a means of highlighting the music’s cultural aspects. Aeternam have often pulled from Middle Eastern history and mythology, and so too you often hear instrumentation from that region.

At first Aeternam used this effect in combination with a heavy Behemoth influence but over the years the band have lightened up – with perspective here, the band remain fairly heavy in comparison to a lot of other bands – and instead have become something more of a show, allowing themselves to stretch in a variety of different directions. In the case of Heir Of The Rising Sun, Aeternam have decided to make a thematic concept album focused on one period of time centered on the closing song ‘The Fall Of Constantinople’ – with all of the flavorings suggested therein. Continue reading »

CONAN: “EVIDENCE OF IMMORTALITY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 292022
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by Britain’s Conan, released earlier this month by Napalm Records.)

Conan the Barbarian from Cimmeria is one of my favorite fictional characters, so a band named after him did not sit well, nor would I want a band called Bruce Banner or Frankenstein’s Monster sitting in my iPod. This set my mind against this British band when I checked out their first album. It felt like burly but otherwise nondescript sludge that did not impress me. Now, four albums worth of time has passed and I have put that behind me and was ready to listen to their newest album objectively.

It carries a great deal of thundering thump that resonates with more sonic heaviness than their first album. The vocals are howled with more conviction. Often labelled as doom, rather than a depressed plod, they lunge into an aggressive tempo for “Levitation Hoax” , and have a rawer, more sludged-out apocalyptic darkness to their sound. They even delve into more traditional, almost modern metal, grooves on songs like “Ritual of Anonymity” to create a flowing pulse of menace. “Equilibrium of Mankind” has a heavier weight to its throb. The tempo is less aggressive than the previous song. Continue reading »

REVOCATION – NETHERHEAVEN

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 292022
 

(Andy Synn gets to grips with the new album from Revocation, due out 09 September on Metal Blade)

It’s always seemed odd to me that some people seem to equate “being a fan” of a band with “never, ever criticising or questioning what they do”.

Maybe it’s because they’ve invested so much of their identity into their fandom (which is never healthy), or maybe it’s because that’s just what they’ve been told by “the internet” and don’t want to rock the boat, but some folks act as though even entertaining the mildest of criticisms about a band is tantamount to a full-blown betrayal.

That’s obviously not the case, of course, and I’d argue that it’s not at all helpful for a band’s fans to just blindly praise them, since honest feedback from their audience potentially provides one of the best ways for an artist to learn and improve (but that’s an issue for a whole other article).

Case in point, while I think most would agree that Revocation have at least two top-tier classics under their belt(s) – namely 2011’s tech-tacular Chaos of Forms and 2014’s bombastically burly Deathless – it’s worth acknowledging that not every one of their seven (soon to be eight) albums hits quite the same heights (the self-titled in particular is a real clunker), and the band definitely aren’t perfect (nor do I think they’d claim to be).

But if all that has you worried about what I’m going to tell you about their newest album… don’t be, because this preamble has actually just been a clever bait-and-switch, since Netherheaven is easily on par with the band’s very best, and might even be the new standard by which all their work will be judged going forwards.

Continue reading »

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