AN NCS PREMIERE: UNIVERSALLY ESTRANGED — “DEVOURED FROM ANOTHER TIME”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 282022
 

Last year we had the chance to premiere a song from a debut album that seemed to come out of nowhere and landed on the Blood Harvest Records label. At that time we wrote this:

“Blood Harvest Records has unearthed a real gem. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the label has caught a comet that came unexpectedly rocketing into the atmosphere from some distant constellation. Universally Estranged seems to have no prior releases, instead immediately blazing across the sky with a full-length that truly is eye-opening in both its extravagant adventurousness and its technical acumen, presenting a vision of sci-fi-inspired death metal that is (in the vivid words of the label’s publicist) ‘both cosmically levitational and grossly subterranean'”.

That album, Reared Up in Spectral Predation, delivered one mind-boggling, bone-breaking escapade after another, collectively creating a pan-dimensional thrill-ride that we forecasted was likely to stand out from the pack in 2021, even though it was “just” a debut effort from what seemed to be an anonymous solo creator.

Letting no solar flares or satellite traffic deter it, Universally Estranged is swooping into our atmosphere again with a follow-up album named Dimension of Deviant Clusters, and we again have a chance to present another song premiere (in the midst of another torrent of words). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROMUTILATOR — “CREMATION SORCERY”

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Sep 282022
 

“Ripping riffs, bursting artillery, blood-spilling bass pulsation, and vomit from the infernal pit for eight hymns of black death and damnation, all forged in Satanic power and hammering darkness throughout endless morbidity.”

That’s how Osmose Productions has vividly announced Oath of Abhorrence, the forthcoming third album by the Italian decimators in Necromutilator. And if that message isn’t clear enough, we have these words from the band themselves: “Your god is still dead and we, servants of the Adversary, are still vomiting blood and pissing acid on his corpse and soul”.

No finesse or nuance there, and certainly no mercy. But words are one thing, and the sound is another, and the former must be tested against the latter. We give you the test today through our premiere of a track off the new album named “Cremation Sorcery“. Continue reading »

ACID WITCH: “ROT AMONG US”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 282022
 

(Detroit’s Acid Witch have a new album headed our way (of course the release day is on Halloween), and in the following review Wil Cifer shares his thoughts about it.)

This morning, I took a break from checking out the updates as to when Hurricane Ian will be coming to rock my neighborhood like the Scorpions, and found the new Acid Witch in my in-box. The anxiety left me when I pressed play. While Ian might rain on my Halloween parade going into the first weekend in October, these guys kept my spirits up.

The bar is set high since these guys are one of my favorite bands. Dressing death metal up like a Spirit Halloween Store on LSD is a beautiful thing that speaks to my soul on every level. The first track is spooky intro with just enough metal to foreshadow what is to come. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FALL OF SERAPHS — “PSYCHOTIC TROUBLED SENSES”

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Sep 272022
 

As you can see, Mark Erskine of Erskine Designs has created cover art for the debut album by Fall of Seraphs that’s guaranteed to seize attention with its colorful rendering of supernatural monstrosity and fiery, storm-tossed chaos. It really is the kind of eye-catcher that’s likely to pull listeners into the record, even those who know nothing about the music. But more than that, it also provides a great match for the kind of death metal this French band have created on this debut album, which is both dazzling and monstrously malignant.

The album’s name is From Dust to Creation, and like the title it flips lots of things on their heads. The music is brutish in its skull-busting thuggery and as hostile as rabid wolves, but incorporates the kind of guitar work that spins heads and sends them shooting off into the stratosphere, and the band blend it all together with a vivid sense of dynamism and infectiousness in the songwriting.

You’ll learn that for yourselves through today’s premiere of the album’s fifth track, “Psychotic Troubled Senses“. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DE PROFUNDIS / GODEATER / LIVE BURIAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 272022
 

(Andy Synn delivers a Death Metal-centric edition of The Best of British)

The UK Death Metal scene is a fertile place, no doubt about it.

Of course, such a bountiful harvest does sometimes make it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff (here’s a little bit of advice – stringing together a few generic grooves and mediocre, mid-paced blastbeats does not make you “the next Bolt Thrower”) but that’s just the price you pay for living in such interesting times.

One thing that separates these bands from the rest of the pack – in my opinion – is that they don’t play it safe. Sure, they’re standing on the shoulders of giants (aren’t we all?) but they’re taking risks – some big, some small – and pushing themselves in an attempt to climb even higher, demonstrating a level of ambition that, honestly, I wish more bands had instead of just settling for being just another fish in an increasingly over-crowded pond.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABYSSIC — “MIRROR OF SORROW”

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Sep 272022
 

 

Abyssic‘s last album High the Memory, which we reviewed and premiered here, prompted us to wax poetic

“In these complex and richly textured compositions, which draw upon ingredients of funeral death/doom, black metal, and prog, augmented by classical orchestration (and the use of Mellotron, Minimoog, and upright bass), Abyssic create combinations of crushing power and mystical evanescence, of oppressive gloom and fragile, gleaming beauty. Dread and devastation stalk this vast musical landscape, furrowing the earth with great troughs of misery and despair, while brilliant stars wink overhead, blazing comets streak the night sky, and the borealis shimmers in unearthly brilliance. The effect of these juxtapositions is harrowing and hypnotic, magisterial and monstrous.”

Well, “poetic” is of course a relative term here at our putrid enclave, but you get the idea: This Norwegian band’s music has a way of firing the imagination, and trying to describe it in more conventional terms falls flat by comparison. Now we find ourselves in a similar place, because Abyssic have a new album on the way, and we’re again hosting a premiere to help advance the cause. Continue reading »

OMOPHAGIA: “REBIRTH IN BLACK”

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Sep 272022
 

(On September 16th Unique Leader Records released a new album by the Swiss death metal band Omophagia, and DGR takes a deep dive into it in the following review.)

The day that Omophagia put out an album where the first song isn’t called “Intro” is going to feel like a period of mourning isn’t it? Other than a clockwork two-to-three-year release schedule, there are fewer long-standing patterns out there that one can rely on quite like a band being four albums in and the first song still being called “Intro”. One more album and Omophagia will be able to release an “Intro” song EP.

It is good to see this crew still going though, as the Switzerland-based bruisers are one of the more severely underrated tech-death bands out there. Perhaps due to the unassuming nature of the band or just a general sense of how consistently ‘good’ they have remained throughout their three releases up to their latest one, Rebirth In Black, it seems like Omophagia constantly get the undersell.

What you can say about Omophagia is that despite the appearance of five dudes just making complicated death metal imagery, every one of their releases has sounded different from the one before it. You’ll note the natural evolution in song-writing and just how much Omophagia like a good jackhammer-groove, but that also comes not so much with a move forward but a complete leap somewhere else on the musical explosion map, just to keep things different on the fringes. Rebirth In Black continues that trend. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VOIDOATH — “ASCENSION BEYOND KOKYTUS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 262022
 

Some fans of extreme music are also fans of interesting album concepts and well-written lyrics, perhaps because such things are so few and far between in the great and continuing flood of new releases, like finding a scattering of diamonds in your sock drawer. Other fans could really care less about that, focusing instead on the music and the vocals (where the words are rarely decipherable anyway). But today we’re going to begin with concept and words, and perhaps you’ll soon understand why.

The inspiration for Ascension Beyond Kokytus, the debut album by the Costa Rican band VoidOath, was deeply rooted in the lore created by John W. Campbell Jr. through his 1938 science fiction novella Who goes there? and the novel-length version of that story, Frozen Hell, which was discovered and published after Campbell‘s death, as well as the 1982 film The Thing, John Carpenter’s classic adaptation/remake of the Campbell story. Continue reading »

MÆNTRA: “KUNDALINI RISING”

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Sep 262022
 

(As you’ll see in DGR‘s review below, Mæntra‘s debut album has been perched on his shoulders for a long time, and while it might be easier at this point just to dispense with a write-up, the album wouldn’t allow that.)

I feel that every year I must commend my fellow writers around the hovel that is the NCS office space for having a sense of when to just cut things off and accept that you won’t be able to get around to it in time. It takes a strength of character that, frankly, I just don’t have.

Every year there will be two or three albums that I feel like I have to write about, even as the review backlog grows larger and larger with new discoveries and bigger releases. These releases rest on my shoulders for what seems like forever until I either find the time or finally, shoulders slumped in defeat, admit that yes, I too will not get around to something and the time to shit or get off the pot has long since passed.

Hell, I still occasionally toy with the idea of reviewing a release that came out in January of last year now that I’ve found an easy-to-listen-to copy of it. On the opposite end though, goddamn does it feel good to finally free yourself of the need to speak of a release, when you can find that gap to do so and let the world be damned if they have anything to say about it. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NORILSK

 Interviews  No Responses »
Sep 262022
 


photo by Nick Richer

(Here we have Comrade Aleks‘ new interview of Nicolas Miquelon from the Québec band Norilsk, who released a new EP this past spring to tide us over ’til the next album.)

NCS’ constant followers should remember Norilsk. It’s a Canadian death-doom band who integrated elements of post metal into their music, and we interviewed Nicolas Miquelon (all instruments, vocals) a few years ago. But in case you forgot that, let me remind you of some facts about Norilsk.

The band is named after the world’s northernmost city and the second-largest city (after Murmansk) inside the Arctic Circle. Norilsk and Yakutsk are also the only large cities in the continuous permafrost zone. So you see the reason why Nicolas and his band-mate Nick Richer (drums) entitled their first album The Idea of North (2015). Then Hypnotic Dirge Records released the albums Le passage des glaciers (2017) and Weepers of the Land (2018). And then… then there was silence.

The Beyond the Mountains EP is the first band’s recording in four years, and that’s quite a long break for such an active act. These two tracks bring the hope that Norilsk are going to get rid of their relatively new passion toward post-metal, as here we have good old death-doom as it was in ’90s. What else could we expect if one of the songs is an Officium Triste cover? So just one really new song after four years? Well, not. This interview was intended for Dark City magazine, but here it is. A chance to dig deeper into the idea of North again. Continue reading »

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