Sep 292021
 

 

Imagine yourself as a character in a waking dream, finding yourself transported centuries into the past and venturing into a French cabaret populated by aristocratic Satanists and those practicing medieval witchcraft, with vampires roaming in their midst, draining blood from crystal goblets instead of wine. Imagining such a scene, an unreal dreamscape of ancient elegance and palpable danger, is one way of preparing yourself for the music to be found on the new second album by the Brazilian “supergroup” Le Chant Noir.

That album, La Société Satanique Des Poètes Morts, is set for release by Personal Records on October 22nd. As the press materials faithfully describe it, the songs “thread together the darkest fibers of archaic black metal, doom metal, and even dark metal, arriving at a sort of avant-garde symphonic black metal that’s simultaneously an authentic throwback and refreshingly modern”.

The album is indeed an out-of-the-ordinary experience, a kind of macabre musical theater that proves to be genuinely transportive. Even the one song we’re premiering today has that effect. Its name is “Les Métamorphoses Du Vampire“. Continue reading »

Sep 282021
 

 

This is one of those times when we feel compelled to offer some words of warning. Before you listen to the song we’re about to premiere, you’d be best advised to lash yourself to something solid, don a crash helmet, and have some supplemental oxygen handy. The name of the song is “The World Eater“, and it does indeed sound like it’s doing its best to devour the world.

The band responsible for this breathtaking musical mayhem is Versus, a part-Swiss, part-French group formed in 2013 around Geneva. They introduce themselves this way: Continue reading »

Sep 282021
 

 

After a trio of short releases, the ravishing French death metal band Venefixion have at last prepared a debut full-length that’s set for an imminent October 1 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Curiously entitled A Sigh From Below, the only sighs it’s likely to produce are breaths of wonder at how explosive and exhilarating the music is.

With the exception of an ominous and eerie intro track in which distorted voices roar and howl through an increasingly cacophonous maelstrom, and an otherworldly, chiming and swirling instrumental interlude (“Subterranean Deathspell”) that creates an atmosphere of gloomy gothic horror, what stands out first and foremost about the album is the feeling of brazen and blazing haughtiness that the music generates — as well as the band’s formidable talent for melding sensations of grim defiance, violent ecstasy, and sinister supernatural downfall. Continue reading »

Sep 282021
 

 

(Comrade Aleks continues an ongoing series of interviews of black metal bands in this discussion with guitarist Azrael of the English black metal band Heathen Deity.)

In order to support the underground Black Metal scene as well as the war against Christianity (if you don’t mind) we offer you this in-depth interview with Heathen Deity, whose long-awaited debut album True English Black Metal was finally out in June 2021. Heathen Deity was active for six years from 1998 to 2004 and then after a ten-year-long break its members re-united in order to deal with deeds started long ago. Thus, after the live album Nottingham Infernal (2019) and The Damnation Tapes compilation (2020) they finally have reached the point when the work was right and all material properly recorded.

Here’s the detailed story of True English Black Metal with an in-depth look at Deity’s cult daily life. The band’s original guitarist Azrael channels Deity’s will patiently and consistently. Continue reading »

Sep 272021
 

 

The magnificent cover art for Skverna Liniya‘s debut album В венке из воска (In A Garland Of Wax) portrays a scene that’s both classically elegant and desolate. It reveals grand architectural achievements that have become relics, looming beneath daunting grey skies, surrounding a cobble-stoned plaza virtually empty of life and a mysterious garland resting in a liquid pool. It’s a haunting vision, and an intriguing one. And it turns out to beautifully suit the music on the album.

This Russian band’s full-length advent (which will be co-released by Casus Belli Musica and Beverina Productions) summons adjectives like “atmospheric” and “progressive”, because it’s so powerful in creating moods and so fascinating in its dazzling instrumental and stylistic diversity (which include ingredients of doom and post-metal). As a preview of how the music will affect listeners, we share the conceptions that inspired it, as disclosed in the press materials: Continue reading »

Sep 272021
 

(Andy Synn takes some time out of his busy schedule to celebrate some short but sweet releases by a variety of big names and new faces)

One unfortunate result of the endless scramble to stay on top of the relentless torrent of new album releases is that the humble EP often gets a little overlooked.

Which, obviously, is a real shame, because a good EP can often be just as fulfilling as an album in its own way, especially when a band uses it as an opportunity to explore a different side of themselves or to create something that works within the constraints of the format to tell a complete and fully realised story.

So while I’m working on a number of different full-length reviews (as well as the next edition of The Synn Report) I thought I might as well take a few moments to jot down a few quick reviews for some of the EPs I’ve enjoyed the most over the course of the year so far.

Continue reading »

Sep 272021
 

 

The German band Fiat Nox have already established a prominent place for themselves in the fire-and-ice realms of black metal through the strength of a debut demo (2016’s Light the Torches), and a debut album (The Archive of Nightmares, released in June of this year). Wasting no time, Fiat Nox have now readied a new EP for release by Personal Records on October 1st, and it further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies.

We’ve previously lavished praise upon the EP, and now have the opportunity to present a stream of it in its entirety. Its entirely fitting title is In Contemptuous Defiance. Continue reading »

Sep 252021
 

 

To avoid boring you and offending vegetarians and vegans out there, I’ll spare you the details, but I have to pick up an animal carcass and then burn wood in a pit for about 6 hours today before burying it. There’s a lot to be said about staring at fire for 6 hours, but I’m going to drink anyway.

And anyway, because this all has to get started soon and because I slept in, I’m unable to write this morning. Even in the “Overflowing Streams” format I usually manage to write a couple sentences about the new music and videos I’ve chosen and then leave pre-order and Facebook links. I don’t even have time to do that today. In the 11+ years of NCS I can’t remember another time when all I’ve done is installed the music streams and videos. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

To salve my wounded conscience I did decide to (mostly) limit this collection to what I consider well-known bands because you’ll probably have a good idea about what’s coming without me providing any guidance. But there may still be a few surprises.

P.S. There’s no new music from Lock Up in this collection. I just like Khaos Diktator‘s cover art for the band’s new album. The first single, “Dark Force Of Conviction”, will be coming on September 30th with a video. Continue reading »

Sep 242021
 

 

Man, my head is spinning once again over how many new songs and videos I want to recommend from the week that’s now ending. There are only six of them in this roundup, and there’s not much rhyme nor reason about why I picked these — other than the fact that I like ’em — because they provide a pretty wild series of musical twists and turns rather than some kind of cohesive flow from one to the next. But I am smiling at the whiplash it’s going to give you. I guess I should add that in different ways they’re all pretty fuckin’ intense.

I’ve got a very busy weekend ahead, but I hope to collect a few more new things from the past week’s deluge in posts on both Saturday and Sunday.

1914 (Ukraine)

I’m beginning with a couple of very dark and (as promised) very intense songs, the first of which is 1914‘s “Pillars of Fire (The Battle of Messines)“. If you’re not already familiar with the horrific World War I event that’s the subject of the song, you’ll learn about it in the prelude to the animated video. Continue reading »

Sep 242021
 

 

Odds are, when you see references to black thrash it’s likely to be written “ripping black thrash”. But that’s the point, isn’t it? To get your heart pumping and your head moving, and to do it in a way that feels dangerously untamed, vicious, and yes, eviscerating. The music of Destructo is definitely all that, and it’s intoxicating too, the kind of experience that makes you go wild in your head.

The band’s name itself is reflective of their musical attitude. Further clues can be found in the inspirations of these Dutch deviants: Destructo was formed in 2018 as a side-project between erstwhile Dödsrit and Nuclear Devastation bandmates Soulcrusher and Motörphallus (and later joined by drummer Necrohammer) as a tribute to bands like Sarcofago, Syphilitic Vaginas, and Japan’s Sabbat, and in their forthcoming debut album they’ve also brought forward forward influences from Bathory, Hellhammer, and especially G.I.S.M., thus creating a bastard child of first-wave black metal and ’80s speed metal and thrash.

The album, fittingly entitled Demonic Possession, is indeed one very wild and blasphemous ride, a ten-track, 40-minute experience guaranteed to juice your adrenaline into overdrive. It’s coming out on November 19th via Dying Victims Productions, and we’re as happy as fiends to premiere a song from it that exalts the “Black Mark“. Continue reading »