SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ESOCTRILIHUM, KAMRA, HUYA GENUS, YOTUMA, VICTIM OF FIRE, ESSES

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 262025
 

(written by Islander)

I got a late start on this Saturday’s roundup of recommended new music, and I feel the need to rush in order to keep it from appearing too late in the day. So my review-ish commentary will be somewhat briefer than usual (please hold your applause) and I’ll cut the rest of the introduction to just this:

I would suggest that this collection is a mix of brain-scramblers, bone-smashing punishers, muscle-twitching groovers, headlong racers, and seductive clean-sung sorcery, more or less in that order. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A FRIDAY: TOMBS, HORNWOOD FELL, ACEPHALIC VOID, DEF/LIGHT

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 252025
 

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere to handle today and nothing else waiting in the queue for our site, I had a combination of opportunity and need, anxiety about us not posting the usual amount of stuff in recent days and the time (barely enough time) to do something about it. So, as a head-start on Saturday’s roundup, I got this four-band collection done, focusing on two old favorites and two brand new discoveries. The cover art for all four was part of the initial attraction.

TOMBS (U.S.)

The first of the old favorites is Tombs. Earlier this week we got the news that they have a new album named Feral Darkness now set for release on October 17th by their new label Redefining Darkness Records. The “FFO” references for Tombs have changed over time. As a clue about this new full-length, which follows 2020’s Under Sullen Skies, it includes Fields of the Nephilim, Samhain, Mayhem, and Goatwhore. The lineup also includes new guitarist Dan Higgins. Sera Timms also provides guest vocals on one song.

And then there’s this from the press release: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VELZEVUL — “ABIGOR”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 252025
 

(written by Islander)

Elegantly garbed and golden-masked, the symphonic black metal band Velzevul has emerged from the far east of Russia with their debut album Pandemonium set for release in September by Satanath Records and More Hate Productions.

Their album imagines the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, a nuclear wasteland on the shores of the Sea of Japan — that almost wholly enclosed body of water bordered by the Japanese archipelago, the Korean peninsula, and mainland Russia. Its concept is described in these words on behalf of the band and the labels (as translated from the Russian text): Continue reading »

A NCS INTERVIEW : DISEMBODIMENT

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jul 252025
 

(Everlasting Spew Records released the gut-churning, pulse-pounding, head-moving debut album of Disembodiment on July 11th, and now we present Zoltar‘s interview of Disembodiment guitarist Chris Lacroix.)

Disembodiment are a death metal band from Canada. Now hold your horses right away, especially those immediately expecting some kind of shred-fest or deathcore march. This four-piece out of Sherbrooke, Québec may be downtuned and all about decay and slimy things but their music nevertheless remains deeply rooted in the early ’90s, back when the genre wasn’t all about speed and/or technical wankery but stomping grooves, grueling slow parts, and being metal-as-fuck.

If their demo-turned-into-an-EP Mutated Chaos in 2021 was a warning shot, their long-awaited full-length Spiral Crypts – with a couple of songs premiered on this very site a few weeks back – will truly take you to a even more gruesome place “where cadavers pile to rest” as they say themselves on the opening track, “Stygian Overture”.

Although not the most talkative person on the planet, guitar player Chris Lacroix spills some of the beans for us… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IMPERIALIST — “BENEATH THE SANDS OF TITAN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 242025
 

(written by Islander)

The California-based black metal band Imperialist have released two albums so far (Cipher and Zenith), and their third one — Prime — is now set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on September 5th. We’ve been fortunate to host premieres of music from those first two albums, and are fortunate again to premiere a song from the third one today.

Speaking of good fortune, all three of Imperialist‘s albums have featured tremendous cover paintings that connect with the band’s science-fiction themes, Adam Burke having created the first two and Eliran Kantor devoting his tremendous talents to the new one. Kantor‘s two-panel piece reveals a panorama of intricate detail. Its entire expanse creates a daunting alien vision, but it draws the eye in.

Something similar stands out about Imperialist‘s new music: Their songs are crafted with great attention to detail and executed with eye-popping skill, and they also draw the listener in (often from the very first seconds) and then wholly consume attention with their musical visions while creating a viscerally physical response at the same time.

The song we’re premiering today, “Beneath the Sands of Titan“, is an excellent example of these achievements, and it also seems to connect with the album’s cover art because what Eliran Kantor rendered might indeed be a vision of Saturn’s greatest moon — undergoing a catastrophic event. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KVSKET — “ALL THIS TALKING”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 232025
 

(written by Islander)

The Minnesota band kvsket (pronounced “casket”) describe themselves as “Minneapolis Goth Rock”. That’s the definition of a short-hand description. The “for fans of” references to Deftones, Gojira, My Chemical Romance, Turnstile, and The Cure is more descriptively complete but still doesn’t complete cover the waterfront of kvsket‘s head-spinning music on their album Patiently Awaiting Your Arrival, which was released last February. We tried to unpack it in May when we premiered a video for one of the album tracks (“Hot Grip”):

The 11 mostly short songs on Patiently Awaiting Your Arrival encompass a lot of musical variety…. You’ll find big burly bounding grooves, guitars that abrade like a belt-sander and glitter like needles or quiver like warped sirens, high-flying singing with a raw edge, dark gothic crooning, furious wailing yells, and nasty snarls. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ABSOLUTISM / CAR BOMB / NEFAS

 SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 232025
 

(Andy Synn presents three mind-warping metallic morsels to bruise and bludgeon your brains)

Some of you may have noticed (or maybe you didn’t?) that I didn’t post anything here last week, mostly because I was snowed under with work/life/band stuff and just couldn’t find the time (or the mental energy) to put my thoughts (as scrambled as they were) down in any coherent order.

To rectify that, however, I spent some time over the weekend putting together a bunch of reviews… although, wouldn’t you know it, pretty much all the bands I’ve ended up writing about have been so dizzyingly, discombobulatingly technical and intense that they’ve ended up scrambling my brain all over again.

So if you enjoyed Monday’s dissection of the upcoming new album from Sallow Moth and are looking for a few more meaty morsels to satisfy your cravings for chaotic complexity, then you’ll want to give all three of these EPs a listen too.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CULT BURIAL — “BESEECH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 232025
 

(written by Islander)

We ran out of fingers. It took all 10 of them and one toe to count the number of articles we’ve published here about the London band Cult Burial, all of them in just the last five years. The attention began with the release of their 2020 debut EP Sorrow and has continued through their release of numerous singles, another EP, and two albums. Now this duo of Simon Langford and César Moreira will release a third album in September named Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust.

The new album is described in these haunting and harrowing words:

Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust is a record about erosion — of structures, of certainty, of meaning. Across eight tracks, Cult Burial tears through the frameworks we cling to, carving out something that sits between aggression and despair, weight and absence. The music is dense and layered, yet unafraid of space; at times claustrophobic, at others stripped to bare wire and exposed edge.

Each song peels back the layers between memory and oblivion, order and chaos. Built on jagged riffs and drenched in haunting textures, this album traces the gradual decay of mind, identity, and ritual. From the first shudder of collapse to that final, ash-choked breath, it offers no solace. Continue reading »

COFFIN FEEDER: “BIG TROUBLE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 232025
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the debut album from the Belgian death-dealers Coffin Feeder.)

We’ve joked about it over the years but there does exist something in the vocalist world that we’ve referred to as the “Sven effect”, wherein any band that has a feature from vocalist Sven de Caluwé is going to inevitably sound like one of his projects. Him being one of the more consistent and prolific guest vocalists out there certainly doesn’t help matters either; the guy is just so recognizable that he could almost never commit a crime because someone would be able to pick him out of a lineup while in another country.

The recipe is simple too: if you take Sven and put him over some sort of grinding death metal or deathcore riff, inevitably it is going to sound like it has emerged from his wide-reaching works within the infrastructure of his biggest project, Aborted.

You have to work very, very hard in order to avoid this, though a handful of bands have managed to do so over the years. Most recently and impressively, the progressive death metal group Eternal Storm featured him on their song “A Dim Illusion” and it actually played out more like the band bent him to their will rather than the other way around.

But does this same effect exist when it comes to Sven‘s own projects and the works he has brought into his orbit over the years? Is one person’s taste for rapid-fire blast and grinding guitar enough that all of them become one amorphous mass or is there enough on offer that part of the interest will come from hearing how a particular sculpture might’ve been crafted in spite of one guy’s spotlight being so suffocatingly bright that even when it’s not his choice, any similarities to his career are going to fall into his lap?

It has to be vexing at times, but by that same token perhaps it is worth it to just throw caution to the wind. Continue reading »

R.I.P. OZZY

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Jul 222025
 


photo by Ross Halfin

(written by Islander)

This isn’t an entertainment news site, unless the news concerns the release of a record whose music we’re writing about. But the death of Ozzy Osbourne is an event we can’t overlook.

Many of us grew up listening to Black Sabbath and/or Ozzy‘s solo records. That music became part of the language of our minds, not just what we heard and felt but how we reacted to the world around us, as much a part of our internal “culture” as an external part.

And then, add to that the tens of thousands of other bands whose music Ozzy and his bandmates influenced down to this very day, musicians who took those influences, either directly or indirectly from other bands who had already built upon them, and spun out music into hundreds of new directions they might not have found if Ozzy hadn’t been born. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries