SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: UFOMAMMUT, GALVANIST, MÅNEGARM, KATHAROS XIII, BOG BODY, SIGN OF EVIL, WOLFANGER & WOLFHEART, VREID, WORMROT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 192022
 


Ufomammut – photo by Francesca De Franceschi Manzoni

I hope your weekend is going well. Mine got off to a very good start this morning as I made my way through songs and videos that surfaced over the past week or so. By sheer good fortune, almost everything I listened to struck a chord, and the ones that rang loudest made its way into this big round-up.

I organized the selections in a way that made sense to me, capped by a shot of pure adrenaline. I’ll briefly tell you what to prepare for.

UFOMAMMUT (Italy)

Prepare for: a slow burn, a dreamy but sinew-triggering trip reminiscent of an old Pink Floyd space odyssey, with an increasingly fiery slug-fest as its destination. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAEDEOUS — “OBSCURUS PERPETUO” (AND A VIDEO PREMIERE TOO!)

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 182022
 

On March 22nd the Portuguese symphonic black metal metal band Caedeous will release their third album, Obscurus Perpetua, and today we present not only the premiere of the album as a whole but also an official video for the song “Magisteri Peccatorum“.

If we were trained medical professionals we’d advise you to take your seats and get a firm grip on something solid before embarking on this journey, because Obscurus Perpetua is a dazzling, diabolical, and disorienting trip through the imperiums of Hell. The music is elaborate and unpredictable, theatrical and bombastic, sometimes breathtaking in its splendor but always as scary as your worst nightmares. Fascinating music, to be sure, but also demented and intensely unnerving. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RISE TO THE SKY — “EVERY DAY, A FUNERAL”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 182022
 

Rise to the Sky is the vehicle for the music of its sole creator, Chilean multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Sergio González Catalán. Though the project’s earliest releases emerged only in 2019, it has already assembled an extensive discography devoted primarily to atmospheric death/doom metal.

2021 saw the release of not one but two albums, the second of which (Per Aspera Ad Astra) was the source of a song (“End My Night“) that we premiered and then later named as one of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Sergio‘s creative fires haven’t been quenched despite the production of two full-lengths last year. He has already completed another album, this one entitled Every Day, A Funeral. It’s now set for release on May 6th via Meuse Music Records, and once again we have the pleasure of premiering a song. Presented through a lyric video, it’s the first single from this new work, and fittingly it’s the title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PLANEPACKED — “THE DEMON CORE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 172022
 

On April 8th the Massachusetts-based “metaltronica” project Planepacked will release a multi-faceted new album named Transactinides. A head-spinning trip of changing moods and soundscapes, the music includes ingredients that should appeal to fans of extreme metal, but adventurously mixes those with both boisterous and mesmerizing electronica and dramatically varying vocal styles.

Not for naught does the press material explain that on this new record Planepacked draws influence from the likes of Autechre, Igorrr, Devin Townsend, and Susumu Hirasawa (among others), as well as the urban fantasy fiction series Endian Project created by the woman behind Planepacked, Jessica Kagan.

What we bring you today is the premiere of the second single from the new album, a pulse-pounding spectacle named “The Demon Core“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GLOSON — “THE RIFT”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 172022
 

 

All of the old-timers here at NCS have their own musical tastes, which are probably best portrayed as a Venn diagram in which there are areas of intersection but also swaths of area that largely stand apart from each other. But the Swedish band Gloson are one of those bands in which we all overlap in our enthusiasm for the music. And thus it’s a genuine thrill for us now to present a full stream of their new album, The Rift, which is set for release this coming Friday by Indie Recordings.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, our own Andy Synn presented a review of the album just yesterday. He called it “by some margin the best Post-/Sludge Metal album I’ve heard so far this year — surpassing even Cult of Luna‘s fantastic new record”, an album that “has most certainly re-set the bar for 2022, and only time will tell if anything else can match it”.

He then proceeded to explain why, should you need any further persuasion to dive into the full stream today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CULT BURIAL — “DISORDER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 172022
 

It’s fair to say that we here at NCS have been following the UK band Cult Burial very closely. We’ve reviewed and recommended every one of their releases so far — their debut EP Sorrow in 2020, their self-titled debut album that same year, and their second EP Oblivion in 2021. It thus took no second thoughts nor any pause for us to leap at the chance to hear the band’s new single, “Disorder“, and we leaped equally fast at the chance to premiere it (as soon as we re-assembled our spine and picked our teeth up from the floor).

In a broad way, Cult Burial‘s music can be described as a changing amalgam of Black, Death, and Doom Metal, but while the band are capable of creating dark, dense, and oppressive soundscapes, this new song is a high-speed hurricane of obliteration. As the band have explained to us, “The aim was to create a nasty, aggressive, energetic piece of music that would leave the listener suffering under the weight of the song.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MRTVI — “LAKE OF MEMORIES”

 Interviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 172022
 

Music videos can be entertaining to watch when they are well-made, even when they don’t have any deep connection (or sometimes any connection at all) to the music they accompany. But in those rare instances when they do connect, each aspect of the art can enhance the other, the sights and sounds intertwining to create a more powerful and emotionally involving experience than if each were experienced separately. We have one of those rarities to share with you today.

The song is “Lake of Memories“, and it brings the listener to the culmination of a story that unfolds across the fifth concept album created by the Serbian experimental black metal project MRTVI (that genre description isn’t really adequate, but it would be equally inadequate to concoct some other short-hand descriptor). Entitled The ExiZentialist, the album is now set for release on June 14th by Life Is A Dream Records.

All of MRTVI‘s albums have been rooted in the experiences and thinking of their solo creator, Damjan Stefanović, but this new one is even more autobiographical, inspired by his own experience of being uprooted long ago from his homeland, transported for many years to another country (the UK, where he began MRTVI), and much more recently returning to the country of his birth. Continue reading »

GLOSON – THE RIFT

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 162022
 

(Andy Synn descends into The Rift, the astonishing new album from Sweden’s Gloson)

Let me ask you something… what is it that makes one album, or one artist, better than another?

It’s not a question with an easy or simple answer, I know.

There are some people, for example, who seem to believe that being more accessible – more listenable, more likable, more relatable – is something that inherently makes an artist/album better, as their music is now capable of appealing to a wider audience.

On the flip-side of this, though, there are also those who affirm that becoming more challenging, more difficult, more complex – in any of a variety of different ways – is the only true way to keep getting better as a band.

Ultimately, of course, it’s all somewhat subjective, and each of us will have a slightly different set of criteria, a different suite of sensibilities which need to be satisfied (or not), in order to make that judgement for ourselves.

So when I tell you that The Rift, the second album from Swedish quartet Gloson is by some margin the best Post-/Sludge Metal album I’ve heard so far this year – surpassing even Cult of Luna‘s fantastic new record (a statement which I’m sure will inspire much shock and consternation amongst many of our readers) – chances are that some of you will believe me, and some of you won’t.

But that’s fine. Because it’s still true either way.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FLUMMOX — “FLUMMOXING ACT I: GARBANZO’S LEAP”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 162022
 

 

We have two premieres at our site today. The first of them was a new song by the legendary Wisconsin death metal band Viogression. The contrast between that one and the one we’re presenting now could hardly be more stark. I suspect that will be pleasing to the band who’s the focus of this premiere, because their mission is… to flummox… to flummox conventions and expectations.

It’s been a while since we checked in with this Nashville band, and so it may be worth repeating something I wrote long ago:

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us that no one is completely sure where the word flummox comes from, though its first known use was in Charles Dickens’ debut novel, The Pickwick Papers, published in 1837. It means “to confuse”, and among its synonyms are “baffle”, “perplex”, “bewilder”, “bemuse”, and “mystify”. And when you understand all that, it’s not confusing at all why this band chose Flummox as their name — because (as forecast above) flummoxing listeners seems to be their primary mission. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VIOGRESSION — “CIPHER”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Mar 162022
 

 

Until recently I had never heard Viogression‘s 1991 debut album Expound and Exhort, which led to this Wisconsin band mounting a world tour with Death and Pestilence. Even today that album has a cult following who recognize it as a criminally underrated gem of the early death metal scene, one that draws comparisons to the likes of Death and Obituary, to Morbid Angel and Morbid Saint. And I’ll say now, based on personal experience, that it holds up very well 30 years later.

From all accounts, even that first album didn’t get the attention it deserved when it came out, largely due to negligent label backing. But what happened afterward was like a second hammer blow to the band’s legacy — including the premature release of an unfinished second album (Passage) the year after Expound and Exhort, and then a 9-year hiatus, finally broken by a 2014 EP.

The band continued to perform live, but only now, 30 years after their debut full-length, are Viogression releasing a third album. Its name is 3rd Stage Of Decay. Continue reading »

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