NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: RIPPING REMAINS, DYING REMAINS, FERAL STATE, SUNKEN, TANVALD, CRATOPHANE

Sep 062025

(written by Islander)

Long story short, I overslept. I mean, I way overslept, and in a few hours from now, as I start to pull this roundup together, I’ve got to do something else that isn’t blogging. So I will have to truncate today’s collection.

P.S. Truncate descends from the Latin verb truncare, meaning “to shorten,” which in turn can be traced back to the Latin word for the trunk of a tree, which is truncus. Incidentally, if you’ve guessed that truncus is also the ancestor of the English word trunk, you are correct. Truncus also gave us truncheon, which is the name for a police officer’s billy club, and the obscure word obtruncate, meaning “to cut the head or top from.” (lifted from this place) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY: BLUT AUS NORD, PRIMITIVE MAN, SMOHALLA, MILIM KASHOT VOL. 6

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Sep 052025

(written by Islander)

Today is another Bandcamp Friday. If you’ve forgotten the fine print, this means that from midnight last night to midnight tonight (PST) Bandcamp will waive its usual revenue share (10% for physical items and 15% for digital items) for sales through the platform.

Sadly, there’s other fine print you can find here about the impact of the Trump administration’s elimination of the de minimus exemption from tariffs. There is apparently an exception for “informational media” entering the US, which includes vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, books, sheet music, and other items, but don’t forget the decision of many European postal services to suspend shipments to the U.S. following the elimination of the de minimus exemption. Of course, this tariff-related shitstorm will not affect purchases of digital music.

Speaking of storms, our in-box blew up over the last 24-48 hours with messages from bands and labels seeking to take advantage of this Bandcamp Friday, which always happens every time one of these Friday’s rolls around. I managed to keep my nose above water and picked a few recommendations for you — on top of the great volume of other recommendations we’ve made since the last Bandcamp Friday. I wish I could make this a bigger roundup of recommendations, but life has gotten in the way. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEFACEMENT

Interviews No Responses »

Sep 052025

(One year after their acclaimed Duality album, last month the international quartet Defacement released their fourth studio record, Doomed, through the Unorthodox Emanations division of Avantgarde Music. What we have for you today is Zoltar‘s interview of Defacement protagonist Khalil Azagoth.)

The jury may still be out on if they truly belong to the post-black metal genre or not (read Andy Synn‘s extended review to find out – or not) but the international act that is Defacement aren’t your so-called ‘typical’ dissonant death metal band, whatever this elusive tag may refer to.

Yet as undecipherable as they may come across at first, despite their overall concision, each of their four so far released albums, including Doomed unleashed by Avantgarde Music last month, has this rare ability to suck the listeners into the vacuum where one can experience subsequently dizziness, fear, and inner peace, sometimes simultaneously.

Mainman and guitarist Khalil Azagoth agreed to give us some keys to their abstruse but fascinating inner world. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WILD BEYOND — “SLAUGHTERING THE LION”

Premieres No Responses »

Sep 042025

(written by Islander)

What goes around comes around, and sometimes when fortune smiles the circle shines — though in the case of Wild Beyond‘s music, “shines” isn’t quite the right word. We’ll find some more accurate ones in a minute or two.

What went around the first time was this Philadelphia band’s self-titled debut album in 2023. Gravitating to it thanks to Adam Burke‘s spectacular cover art, we found rumbling and ravaging blackened thrash, but much more intricate and unpredictable in its maneuvers than much of what rips and races along under that genre banner. The music was often vicious and ugly but with a plethora of moving parts that were fascinating to follow. At times it produced hallucinatory effects; at others it became gloriously exhilarating.

And what’s coming back around now is a new Wild Beyond EP ominously named Black Sites In Lower Chambers, which will be released on October 17th in cooperation with Fiadh Productions. For reasons you will soon discover we are very happy to help spread the word through our premiere of a diabolical song off the EP that’s titled “Slaughtering the Lion“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PROFESSOR EMERITUS

Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews 1 Response »

Sep 042025

photo by Liz Gollner

(In June of this year Chicago-based Professor Emeritus released a long-awaited second album, and our Comrade Aleks was so taken with its melding of epic doom metal and traditional heavy metal that he reached out to the band’s founder, guitarist, and keyboardist Lee Smith for an interview that we now present below. As you might have already guessed, the music is an earned exception to the “rule” in our site’s title.)

Born in Chicago, 2010, Professor Emeritus didn’t hurry: their debut album Take Me to the Gallows (2017) gave the world a formula for not the newest, but a refractory alloy of epic doom metal and traditional heavy metal. The resulting blend was further alloyed with a fantasy concept, and in the end this material, enlivened by a passionate presentation, was good despite all the rough edges.

It took eight more years to make the second album, and the reason is simple: only guitarist Lee Smith remained from the first lineup. I don’t know what happened there, but the former bassist and the vocalist of Professor Emeritus started their own doom band, Fer de Lance, so in the end everyone wins, yet it obviously took time to find replacements.

Having retained a significant influence of Candlemass in their doom, Professor Emeritus strikes with the power of bands like Argus and Memento Mori, and even the rudeness of archaic Manowar. The mood of the new vocalist Esteban Julian Peña’s lines in A Land Long Gone changes from ominous battle cries to melancholic philosophizing. Esteban became a real find for Lee, and I suppose here he has more opportunity to open up than in his original band Acerus. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews No Responses »

Sep 042025

(Andy Synn has four suggestions, taken from a long list, of stuff to check out from August)

August was a busy month for me, for a lot of different reasons, which is why it feels like I missed out on covering a lot of artists/albums I normally would have made/found more time for.

Those artists include – but are not limited to – Arrows (though at least Islander was able to give that a bit of a write-up), Innumerable Forms (hopefully someone will get to that?), Lowheaven (which I wish I had more space for… but Slow Crush took their slot in the end), Pilgrimage, Ethereal Wound (which I’m more and more gutted not to be including), Spire of Lazarus, Hexrot, and Porenut (whose new album I still might review, possibly next week) amongst many, many more, so I encourage you all to go check them out if/when you have time after reading this article.

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNSOULING — “YOUR MOMENTARY PASSING”

Premieres No Responses »

Sep 032025

(written by Islander)

Even after the enthusiasm that greeted I, Voidhanger Records‘ release of Unsouling‘s 2024 debut album Vampiric Spiritual Drain, it’s likely that the band’s Minneapolis-based creator Andy Schoengrund still remained best-known for his work in Feral Light. That’s likely to change after the release of Unsouling‘s forthcoming second album, Outward Streams Of Devotional Woe, and not simply because Feral Light has split up. As Andy has shared with us:

“Outward Streams Of Devotional Woe differs from its predecessor in that the meandering exploration of the first album has been replaced with a more sure-footed and focused journey. The anchor of black metal with the bleed into gothic, dark wave, and death metal influences is still very much present, but it is more reigned in and pointed.”

The new album will be co-released by I, Voidhanger Records, Canti Erectici, and Unsouling, and to help pave the road toward its October 3 release we’re now premiering the album’s first single, “Your Momentary Passing“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KOSTNATĚNÍ — “SAMOTÁŘ (LONER)”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Sep 032025

(written by Islander)

At the end of this week, the Bandcamp Friday for September, Willowtip Records will launch pre-orders for a new album from Minneapolis-based Kostnatění. Titled Přílišnost (Excess), it’s this constantly surprising project’s third full-length overall, and follows the blend of technical black metal and Middle Eastern folk revealed in 2023’s Úpal (“Heatstroke”) — an album we described as “extravagantly head-spinning – dizzying, dazzling, and disorienting.”

Willowtip states that on the new album Kostnatění “has packed into this bizarre base an even stranger array of influences that must be heard to be believed,” resulting in “the band’s heaviest, most compact and violent songs to date.”

You will be able to test these claims today as we premiere the first advance track from the album, a song named “Samotář (Loner)“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A TUESDAY: EXITIUM SUI, STARER, OLD YEAR

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Sep 022025

(written by Islander)

I only had one premiere to write up for today and only one other post on the calendar (an interview you can find here), so I felt a compulsion to add something more, hence this brief roundup of new songs.

The first two picks were pretty obvious to me, coming from bands we’ve been following at NCS for a good long while. The third one was from a project I knew nothing about before this morning, but after hearing it I felt like a cut of meat that had been “tenderized” until paper thin, and I thought you might like to feel that way too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HORROR WITHIN — “TEARS OF ANGELS”

Premieres No Responses »

Sep 022025

(written by Islander)

On October 3rd Dolorem Records will release Soul Awakening, the debut album of the French death metal band Horror Within. After listening to the song from the album we’re about to present, it would be a good guess as to why they named it “Tears of Angels” — because they apparently want to make the heavens cry and plead for mercy.

The music, which draws influence from the likes of Entombed and Dismember, is mercilessly mauling, brutally bone-smashing, reflexively head-moving, and as chilling as it is electrifying — and that’s true of the album as a whole. While noting that the band draw on “the roots of Swedeath — that saturated sound typical of the HM-2 pedal”, Dolorem makes another accurate observation about the album:

Horror Within isn’t just organized chaos: it’s a constant search for balance between old-school savagery and a modern aesthetic. Syncopated rhythms, dissonant textures, unexpected breaks, oppressive atmospheres — the band injects contemporary tension into their music, without ever sacrificing coherence or impact.

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