AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “IN THE MOUTHS OF GIANTS”

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Oct 082021
 

 

Last summer we had the pleasure of premiering the title track from No Center, the latest album by Graveslave from the Minnesota Twin Cities, which was subsequently released on July 30th by TRVASFUK Music, adorned by the terrific cover art of Adam Burke. In an effort to sum up the music, we called it “a rich and relentlessly dynamic mix of sounds and sensations, which underscores the progressive elements of Graveslave‘s brand of death metal… intense in different ways and highly memorable”.

If you overlooked the album, today we have a reminder of just how good it is. What we’ve got today is a new music video for the album’s epic and unnerving closing track, “In the Mouths of Giants“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SVPREMACIST — “DRUG OF CHOICE”

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Oct 082021
 

 

We’ve been covering the fiery ascent of the Israeli black metal band Svpremacist since their debut release in 2018 — Black Fuck You Metal. They released a second demo that same year (Book Burner) and a single for a compilation (“No Life Matters“) the following year. And now a debut album is at hand. Entitled Meaningless Death, it’s set for a November 5 release by the UK label Repose Records.

Our previous writings about Svpremacist‘s feral brand of take-no-prisoners black thrash have included such phrases as “raw and ripping”, “electrifying and infectious”, “diabolically unhinged and unpredictable”, “imperious and volcanic”, “delirious and explosive” — but we’ve also praised the well-structured nature of the songs and the band’s incorporation of other heavy metal ingredients to make the music even more attention-grabbing and contagious.

And so it’s a real pleasure to continue yelling about the band today, the occasion being our premiere of a track named “Drug of Choice” off the debut album. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BLACKDEATH

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 082021
 

 

(Comrade Aleks continues his streak of fascinating interviews with this very extensive one with Para Bellum of the long-running Russian black metal band Blackdeath, whose latest work Also sprach das Chaos is officially being released today.)

Saturn Sector, Fucking Fullmoon Foundation, Satan Macht Frei, and more… Blackdeath have recorded nine full-length albums since the late ’90s and a bunch of smaller releases, and they have done much more for the underground black metal scene besides recording and performing their blasphemous incantations.

Blackdeath’s line-up had just a few minor changes for years and its core since the first day, built by brothers Colonel Para Bellum (aka Dmitry, bass, vocals, lyrics) and Abysslooker (aka Denis, guitars, songwriting), has been accompanied by Polar Maya (drums) since 2007, and it seems like this line-up works in the most productive way one could expect. Being founded in 1995 under the name Draugwath, this band remain one of the most stable and creative black metal acts in Mother Russia’s territory and they prove their status once more with a new tenth album, Also Sprach das Chaos, coming out on the 8th of October via End All Life Productions.

We made this interview with Colonel some time ago but the decision was made to wait for the new album’s official release, and so the day has come. If the words “True Black Metal” mean something for you still, here we go. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET (SHADES OF BLACK EDITION): SØRGELIG, IKU-TURSO, MISANTHROPÆ

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Oct 072021
 

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Time is always fleeting, but I kidnapped enough of it to write some brief reviews and heart-felt recommendations for three very recent short releases that have captivated me (maybe especially because more often than not I’m angry and depressed these days). The SHADES OF BLACK reference in the post title is intended to provide the clue that this is all black metal, but no two of these releases sound alike.

SØRGELIG (Greece)

One of the commenters on the Bandcamp page for Sørgelig‘s new EP Slaves of Tomorrow did a very nice job in capturing part of what makes the band, and this EP, so special:

“I love Sorgelig’s utterly ruthless and nihilistic, yet also surprisingly humane and hopeful, take on primal black metal. Yes, we all live ‘in the prison of dead dreams,’ but we *can* dream, we can rage, we can spit in the eyes of our masters and call *them* the slaves. We can burn this blighted hell of a failing so-called civilization to the ground and build something better”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ILLYRIAN — “AGE OF CHAOS”

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Oct 072021
 

 

Take some big gulps of air and make sure your head is screwed on tight, because the fireball of a song we’re premiering today through a lyric video will suck the wind from your lungs and threaten to send your head spinning off into the clouds.

The track is “Age of Chaos“, and it’s off a forthcoming concept EP (Aegis) by Illyrian from Calgary, Canada, which presents an electrifying combination of thrash-fueled death metal with impressive technicality and an ear for evocative melody. The EP will also appeal to gamers, because it draws inspiration from the gaming world, and specifically Dark Souls. The song we present today is a prime example of these inspirations. The band explain:

“‘Age of Chaos’ is a song about a king’s hubris, a witch’s creation, and the downfall of a kingdom they built together. The Dark Souls fans in the room will recognize this story, along with those told on rest of the EP, but if you’re not familiar – it’s a whole lot of demons, dragons, and death (metal).” Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 072021
 

(Andy Synn encourages you to check out four albums from last month which you might have missed)

Well then… how exactly do you try and address a month like September, which was, arguably, the biggest and busiest month of the year for new releases yet?

Hell, my initial shortlist (sorry, “short” list) for this column was a good eight or nine albums long, an even though I successfully spun one of them off as part of last month’s edition of The Synn Report, that still left me with more options than I could possibly fit into one article.

So what I ended up doing, to be frank, was just picking not-entirely-at-random and going with my gut for this latest edition of “Things You May Have Missed”, which ultimately ended up covering an intriguing array of artists/albums from across the (Extreme) Metal spectrum.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BURIAL –“INNER GATEWAYS TO THE SLUMBERING EQUILIBIRUM AT THE CENTER OF THE COSMOS”

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Oct 072021
 

 

Today we present our second track premiere from the debut album by the Italian death metal band Burial in advance of its October 29 release by Everlasting Spew Records. When presenting the first premiere, a track named “Halls of the Formless Unraveler“, we summed up the music as “both hideous and haunting, assaulting and anguished, unearthly and oppressive,” with “the capacity to hypnotize, and to create harrowing emotional disturbances”.

What we have for you today is the album’s title track, “Inner Gateways To The Slumbering Equilibrium At The Center Of Cosmos“. It’s a mammoth song, both in its length and in the stunning impact of the nightmarish musical sensations it presents. It sounds like a monstrous intrusion from some horrifying realm beyond our own plane of existence. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): GENOCIDE PACT, IN MOURNING, NECRONEMESIS, ROPE SECT, SOLAR CROSS, THULCANDRA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 062021
 

Picking up here with the second Part of the big alphabetized roundup of new songs and videos I assembled for this hump-day…. If you haven’t yet checked out what was in Part 1, I hope you’ll do that when time allows, because there’s great stuff there too. You’ll find it through THIS LINK.

GENOCIDE PACT (U.S.)

Even though Genocide Pact‘s new album is their third one, they’ve self-titled it anyway. Unless I overlooked something, the first song I’ve chosen to lead off Part 2 of this round-up is the first one to be revealed from the album. Its name is “Perverse Dominion”, and we get to see the band performing it in a video. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE DESIGN ABSTRACT — “DECRYPTOR”

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Oct 062021
 

 

Today marks the first appearance at our site of The Design Abstract from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, and it’s an enormously eye-opening advent. Though only a trio, their brand of sci-fi-inspired melodic death metal sounds like a cast of thousands, bringing into play orchestral and other electronic/industrial synth elements that magnify the scale, the sweep, and the mind-bending extravagance of the music in ways that vividly suit their futuristic narratives.

The band’s new concept album, Metemtechnosis, is their fifth record overall and it’s set for release on October 29th by Abstrakted Records. Through music that should appeal to fans of Scar Symmetry, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Soilwork, it tells the story of humanity being reborn as a creation of hyper-intelligent technology. The song we’re premiering today is “Decryptor“, and the band describe it’s place in their larger narrative with these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BELL — “COLD WALL RADIO”

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Oct 062021
 

 

Cyclopean Eye is a small label in India that releases black, death, and doom metal but has also been releasing power electronics/noise/ambient music from artists mostly based in the South Asian continent. Some of the more notable artists on the roster are Genocide Shrines, Serpents Athirst, Konflict, Reek of the Unzen Gas Fumes, Jyotisavedanga, and Sathara Ashtika, among others.

What we have for you today, however, is a track from the forthcoming second release by an mysterious American power-electronics/ambient artist named Bell. Entitled Enigma Calling, it’s an EP set for release by Cyclopean Eye on October 10th, and follows Bell‘s 2017 debut album Secrets from a Distant Star. Continue reading »

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