AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MANOS SIX AND THE MUDDY DEVIL — “THE DEVIL WILL TAKE ME BY THE HAND”

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Jun 012022
 

 

As we all well know, the Devil is a central figure in the sprawling musical narratives of extreme metal, sometimes as a central figure and sometimes as the diabolical Muse who fuels the inspirations and philosophies of the artists. But of course the Devil is present across a wide span of other musical genres, from old-time gospel music to blues, country music, and much, much more. What Lucifer represents are ideas and feelings that know no bounds.

The Devil is certainly a powerful presence in the music of Manos Six and the Muddy Devil, and so even though that music is far, far beyond the soundscapes to which we usually devote our attention at this site, it is a kindred spirit to much of what occupies our attentions. The music is also captivating, which made it even easier for us to agree to the premiere we’re hosting right now. Continue reading »

HAUNTER: “DISCARNATE AILS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 012022
 

(We present Todd Manning‘s review of the new album by Haunter. It was released earlier this month by Profound Lore.)

Hailing from Austin Texas, the trio known as Haunter released Discarnate Ails via Profound Lore on May 6th. While only consisting of three songs, the album is nothing short of an epic journey through complex and progressive death metal.

The album opens with the ten-plus-minute song “Overgrown With the Moss”. The clean guitar that opens the track hints slightly at early Metallica at their most subdued, but this quickly gives way to a mammoth riff and powerful vocals. The feel is black metal in its scope but death metal in its density. A melodic guitar figure adds to the feeling of grandeur, yet things change again to a bit of Gorguts-inspired dissonance. More clean guitar work returns and things continue to shift and transform. And all this in the first half of the lengthy piece.

Obviously, Haunter are not lacking in ambition, and thankfully they’re able to execute all of this with great skill. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ATARAXY — “VISIONS OF ABSENCE”

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May 312022
 

The music of Ataraxy has become a confluence of heart-rending and hideous poetry, and violent, pulse-pounding turmoil. It brings together the soul-splintering downfalls of doom and the electrifying ravages of death metal, and shrouds those striking unions in an atmosphere that isn’t of this world, but seems instead to radiate from spectral realms that lie on the other side of death.

Even from their beginnings, Ataraxy have been very good, but the old cliche that “This is their best work yet!” is inarguably true in the case of this Spanish band’s newest album The Last Mirror, which will be co-released by Me Saco Un Ojo and Dark Descent Records. The songwriting here is both more refined and more unsettling — more elaborate, more prone to the creation of startling contrasts, and even more effective in drawing the listener down haunted and harrowing pathways of heartbreak, horror, and rampant savagery.

Everyone who has been paying attention already got a vivid sign of Ataraxy‘s multi-faceted achievements on this new album through the advent of its stunning first single, “Decline“, and today we bring you another sign via our premiere of “Visions of Absence“. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 146): ARTIFICIAL BRAIN

 THE SYNN REPORT  1 Response »
May 312022
 

Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Demilich, Wormed

So I’ve finally found a chance to break my streak of writing about Black Metal bands for The Synn Report, and what better way to do that than with the mind-melting Death Metal madness of Artifical Brain?

And what better time to do so than now, with the band’s self-titled third album (the culmination of their ongoing sci-fi trilogy which began with 2014’s Labyrinth Constellation) due for release at the end of this week?

Those of you already familiar with the group will obviously need no introduction to their sound, and are probably just here to glean a little bit of advanced insight into what their upcoming new album has in store.

But those who are a little more, shall we say, unprepared for the oncoming onslaught of extravagant technicality, extra-terrestrial vocalisations, and extinction-level heaviness, may find themselves a little overwhelmed by what will probably – at first listen – seem like the very epitome of “organised chaos”.

Thankfully, I can reassure you that there most certainly is a method to the band’s musical madness, it just takes a little while to fully acclimatise and tune into the right frequency in order to truly get what’s going on here.

But when you do… things will never be the same again.

Continue reading »

SEPTICFLESH: “MODERN PRIMITIVE”

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May 312022
 

 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by SepticFlesh, which was released by Nuclear Blast earlier this month.)

Modern Primitive, the eleventh release from Greek symphonic death metal group SepticFlesh, was quietly waiting to strike just out of our visual periphery. It’s a big, lumbering beast of an album that was patiently waiting for its moment of impact, and like many SepticFlesh releases there’s a lot to unpack here.

Now firmly ensconced in their specific style of symphonic death metal, SepticFlesh have become a band that moves in iterations. They have a solid and recognizable through-line in their music and one that has largely remained unchanged since the early-aughts – the general big, booming void of a SepticFlesh song is hard to mistake for anyone else.

What has become the story of each SepticFlesh album is just how far the band will drift from that line on each album, just how much they will go symphonic or just how death metal the band will be, with each release becoming a differing ratio of each. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERPENT ASCENDING — “HYPERBOREAN FOLKLORE”

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May 302022
 

Serpent Ascending‘s new album Hyperborean Folklore is one in which a questing wanderer may travel far in the company of an unusually gifted guide and find wonders galore, both on the surface of the path and far below it.

The music is the work of a sole adventurer, the Finnish musician and vocalist Jarno Nurmi, who was once a member of Slugathor, Nerlich, and Desecresy. Because it is a solo work, the inspirations, the words, and the music are all inter-connected in ways that are rare for a full band, and here they all come together in truly extravagant and fascinating ways. Continue reading »

DEMONICAL: “MASS DESTROYER”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 302022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by the Swedish death metal band Demonical, released earlier this month by Agonia Records.)

Demonical operate like clockwork. They’re one of the least presumptuous bands out there, playing a style of music that requires very little pretense to understand from the get-go. You know what you’re in for with a Demonical album by this point and they’ve stuck rigidly to that formula for some time.

They’ll have eight songs for you, weighing in at a little over half an hour, and the cover art will likely be of the same school of the last few releases from them. Mass Destroyer is the group’s second release with the current lineup; one that saw some minor shifting right around the time bassist Martin Schulman‘s other project Centinex went through lineup changes as well, but you’ll recognize Mass Destroyer as a Demonical release quickly. Continue reading »

GHOST OF MIRACH: “SOL REGEM”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 292022
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of the debut EP by the Dutch death metal band Ghost of Mirach, which was released in April 2022.)

Taken at face value Ghost Of Mirach‘s debut EP Sol Regem is a weird fucking entity. There is no groundwork laid and no explanation provided within the songs of what exactly is happening here. The group just launch you right into the deep end and from there you either pick up what’s happening or it whips right past you, given that Sol Regem is only twenty minutes long.

However, given this website’s tendencies to pull bands from nowhere and place them in front of you, at the very least we should explain what the hell the Ghost Of Mirach project is. Continue reading »

MDF BLOG ADJUSTMENT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
May 272022
 

You may have noticed that yesterday we didn’t make any new postings at NCS. It’s not that we didn’t have anything to post, it’s because our editor (that would be me) just blundered through a lost morning and basically forgot about everything other than attempting to gear up for the first day of Maryland Deathfest 2022.

In part I blame the fact that DGR and I and four other Seattle friends were on some flights from hell that didn’t make it to Baltimore until 1:15 a.m. yesterday. We managed to drag our asses from bed in time to rendezvous for lunch with Andy Synn (whose flight from the UK got in at a more reasonable hour) and a crew of other MDF stalwarts that we usually hang out with.

I guess we were at lunch together for about 2 1/2 hours, which is actually about par for the course when this crew gets together, and maybe more than par because we haven’t gotten to do this for three fucking years. And who knows if we’ll ever get to do it again? For MDF, the future is cloudy. Continue reading »

DEMIRICOUS: — “III: CHAOTIC LETHAL”

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May 272022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by the Indiana metal extremists Demiricous, which was released a couple weeks ago by Post. Recordings.)

What a wild world we live in when there’s a third Demiricous album out. The group were something of a fixture of the underground in the early-to-mid 2000s, with a combination of relentless touring and albums that skirted around on the death-thrash line/full-blown Slayer worship at a relentless pace.

The band put out two albums and then activity would become increasingly sporadic from about 2010 on. Outside of a demo release, Demiricous even went into full-hibernation mode for a while, which was a bummer for those who saw promise in both the Hellbound and Poverty releases.

However, once you’ve reached the ‘fifteen years between releases’ statistic, that is when you have people going ‘what a world we live in’, because it wasn’t that long ago that Demiricous released their third album Chaotic Lethal. Continue reading »

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