AN NCS PREMIERE: DEPRAVITY — “AWFUL MANGULATION”

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Oct 302025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s always a pleasure to adorn our page with a painting by Paolo Girardi, especially when it’s as monstrously grotesque as the one that leaps off the cover of Depravity’s new album, Bestial Possession.

It’s also always a pleasure to re-connect with the music of this Australian death metal band, which we’ve been covering in our articles beginning in 2011, and to host a premiere of their songs (today’s is our fourth Depravity premiere since 2016).

It’s been a bit of a wait since our last encounter with Depravity, due to the five-year gap between their last album (Grand Malevolence) and this new one. But in the case of Depravity, it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, assuming one is fond of getting musically mauled and mangled.

Speaking of which, the song from Bestial Possession that we’re premiering today is named “Awful Mangulation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GREEN CARNATION

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Oct 302025
 


Photos by Lars Gunnar Liestøl

(In September Season of Mist released a new album by the Norwegian progressive metal band Green Carnation, the first album in a three-album trilogy. Below you’ll find Comrade Aleks’ interview with the band’s vocalist Kjetil Nordhus, a discussion that delves into both the new album and the status of the ones to come.)

Initially, the name of the Norwegian band Green Carnation was firmly associated with its founder, Terje Vik Skye, better known as Tchort. He already had a reputation for his work with Emperor, and his new project, at the intersection of doom metal and prog rock, broke the mold. A series of successful albums in the 2000s earned Green Carnation a reputation as an artistic, emotional band with a keen eye for good melodies and well-developed ideas, so their departure from the scene in 2007 was not taken lightly.

However, Green Carnation returned ten years ago, and after a long hiatus, they released not just a new album, but the first part of a trilogy—the progressive and melancholic A Dark Poem Part I: The Shores of Melancholia. The band’s vocalist, Kjetil Nordhus, agreed to shed light on some details of this release, and the opportunity was unmissable. However, not everything is ideal in this world, and the interview could have appeared a few weeks earlier, but the situation was out of my hand. So here we go. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOX NOSTRA — “VITA DANTIS”

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Oct 292025
 

(written by Islander)

Vox Nostra (Latin for “Our Voice”) is a Texas band that began to take shape in 2022, founded by vocalist Nathan Buckhoff and former bassist Jay, and then fleshed out with drummer Steven Pedini, guitarist Juan Diaz, and later guitarist Andrew Dahdouh in 2024.

They released two singles in 2023 (“Façade” and “Synthetic Womb“), and today we’re premiering a lyric video created by Scott Rudd (SR Films) for a third one, “Vita Dantis“, which we predict will appeal strongly to fans of emotionally evocative technical death metal. The band have given us this description of the song’s subject matter:

“Vita Dantis, in Latin ‘The Life of the Giver’, reflects a world where the working class is subjugated to weaponized AI by the ruling class. It’s the moment right before awareness turns into unrest.” Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DE PROFUNDIS / PLAGUE PIT / SOULFRACTURE

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Oct 292025
 

(Andy Synn recommends three short-but-sweet releases from the UK Metal underground)

Let me start off today with a little announcement of my own… sadly, for reasons beyond our control the third and final part of the Beyond Grace EP trilogy (which will also, Voltron-style, form our third album when all connected together) won’t be out this year.

I know, I know… I’m as disappointed as you are… but having lost most of September due to two different weddings (including my own) and their accompanying stag-dos/bachelor parties, and then struggling to book studio time for the drums, it really couldn’t be helped.

We’ll still be releasing another cover track, most likely at the start of January (and quite possibly as part of an awesome charity compilation), and then following that with another video prior to the EP/album release (where you’ll be able to get the digital version of the new EP and the collected CD/LP version, at the same time) but I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a little longer for your next fix.

But don’t worry, because today I’m bringing you three other short-form releases from three other killer British bands – including one we’ve toured with before, plus another that we’re hoping to tour with next year – that I’m hoping will help ease your obvious disappointment!

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ONYX RECORD PRESS

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Oct 292025
 

(We’re living in an era of resurgent demand for vinyl records, but one now marked by pressing-plant delays and challenging costs. Friend of the site Jon Rosenthal provides a vivid glimpse inside the business and technology of pressing vinyl through the following interview of two people involved in starting up and operating the LA-based vinyl plant ONYX.)

Opening a record pressing plant takes loads of effort. The record pressing process itself is an intense mix of humanpower, expertise, and correct, necessary machinery – now, make a facility dedicated to that craft, staff it, and get all that machinery. Losing your patience yet? Luckily, the newer LA-based pressing plant ONYX has taken on this process as part of an emerging wave of new US pressing plants. In a new interview, two of ONYX’s proprietors – musicians Moe Espinosa and Surachai – answer questions about the record pressing process, as well as what drove them to open a plant of their own. You can learn more about ONYX at their website. Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “DRACONIAN DARKNESS II”

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Oct 292025
 

(DGR continues his very long history of writing about the music of Finland’s Wolfheart at NCS with this review of their new EP Draconian Darkness II, out now via Reigning Phoenix Music.)

Wolfheart have developed many patterns for themselves over their career and we have dove headlong into them many a time with each successive album. One of the more common ones for the Wolfheart crew in recent years, since their Napalm Records and then current Reigning Phoenix signings, is to hammer together an EP or single in between albums and unleash it closer to the end of summer.

The name Wolfheart remains in constant discussion then, with releases like Skull Soldiers carving the path for the EP segment of the crowd and songs like “Iku-Turso” laying the groundwork for the occasional loose-laying single. It’s meant as a sort of comfort food for those of us who’ve taken to the band’s formulation of melodic death metal, forged in fire yet epic enough to soundtrack mountain climbing in a blizzard, something present that is consistent in quality with the album prior but still has a shiny newness to it to tide people over.

Wolfheart‘s latest gathering of material of this ilk arrived in late-September, entitled Draconian Darkness II, offering up a continuation of the group’s 2024 release Draconian Darkness and containing an oddball mixture of material to satiate the completionist in us all: Two new songs, one live track, an acoustic take on a Draconian Darkness song, and the orchestral segment of a different one of the same album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRYOXYD — “AMBIVALENT FEELINGS”

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Oct 282025
 

(written by Islander)

Imagery of sharp edges is a recurring feature in descriptions of the music and other aesthetics of the French death metal band CRYOXYD that have been circulated by Dolorem Records, which will release their debut album on December 12th.

The notes are described as “shards of bone” and the riffs as “blade-like”; their lyrics and visuals are described as “a shattered mirror held up to the abyss”; their stance is characterized as “neither provocative nor comforting, but surgical”; “Art as a Scalpel” sums it up.

The band’s intent is to create a conceptual artistic structure and identity devoted to the “autopsy of human collapse”, to confront “systemic dehumanization, collective madness, cognitive technodictatorship, and the moral failure of civilization” — “a sonic and visual manifesto against the illusion of progress, an X-ray of modern alienation’s mechanisms.”

How they seek to achieve these goals on their debut album This World We Live In… is through a formulation of music rooted in the technical death metal of the 1990s, drawing inspiration from the likes of Death (during the Human and Spiritual Healing eras), Pestilence, Brutality, and Morbid Angel, but as you’ll discover from the multi-dimensional album track we’re premiering today, they’ve put their own spin on those revered precedents. Continue reading »

AZELL – ASTRALIS

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Oct 282025
 

(Andy Synn has some very nice words to say about the second album from Kentucky’s Azell)

I do love a good concept album, don’t you?

A lot of that I attribute to my dad’s influence, as he was (and is) a big Prog fan, which meant I grew up being viariously exposed to the likes of The Wall, Tales from Topographic Oceans, and Quadrophenia.

And while some of my turn to Punk and Hardcore (and then Metal) in my teenage years may have been a form of rebellion against the outlandish excess and indulgent extravagance of these sorts of records, over time I’ve come to appreciate them as an art form more and more.

Note, however, that I explicitly said good concept albums, because there’s also been a lot of bad ones – from self-indulgent fantasy fan-fiction to shamelessly generic sci-fi schlock to badly-plotted (and barely coherent) political allegories, and everything in between – and it’s important to draw a distinction between the two.

Thankfully, however, the new album from sludge-slinging husband-and-wife duo Azell falls firmly on the former side of the divide.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD AND DRIPPING — “NEFARIOUSLY SCINTILLATING THROUGH VACANT GALACTIC RESERVOIRS”

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Oct 282025
 

(written by Islander)

New Jersey-based Dead and Dripping has created macabre musical intersections of sensations that are ghastly, putrid, bludgeoning, and malicious, but also machine-precise, head-spinning, and dazzling (in a very demented way).

Anyone who has dabbled in Dead and Dripping’s three previous albums already knows this, but you will know it in spades when you have the chance to hear the new one, or even just the songs from it that have been disgorged so far, or even just the one we’re premiering today.

But before we get to the music, we ought to remind folks about Dead and Dripping’s wordplay, as revealed in the band’s perpetually twisted and luxuriously multisyllabic song titles. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL DIATRIBE — “RAKTAKSHI SADHANA”

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Oct 272025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s easy to imagine that the Kolkata black metal band Infernal Diatribe subsist on a diet of rage and the tears of their enemies, washed down with the blood of a dissolving world. They manifest terrors and tribulations, infiltrated by tendrils of the exotic and overlaid by clouds of the occult.

Their forthcoming debut album, to be released by a trio of labels on November 29th, is inspired by and deeply rooted in an ancient Hindu concept known as Mahabhuta Pralaya (which is also the album’s name), a process of complete cosmic destruction that paves the way for a new cycle of creation and the rebirth of the universe. Their description of the concept is lengthy, but worth absorbing before listening to the music: Continue reading »

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