NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: GEXEROTT — “INSEMINATED”

Apr 012021

Before hearing a single note I was magnetized by the brilliant title of Gexerott’s new album, Hallucinetic Violet Ignition, and the equally attention-seizing and entirely complementary cover art. Together they kindle intrigue while simultaneously creating an otherworldly chill, the first hints of danger swathed in violet allure. It turns out that the danger blooms in the music, in blood-freezing and mind-altering ways.

This new album is Gexerott’s third, and in it they continue to follow an occult spiritual path, translating ceremonies and epiphanies with roots in chaos-gnosis. The music is fundamentally black metal, but takes a visionary form that is genuinely unearthly, and deeply sinister in ways that may leave you feeling shaken, and maybe even poisoned. That is certainly true of the song we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s April 18 co-release by Satanath Records and Exhumed Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNIVERSALLY ESTRANGED — “DESPOILING SOULS OF FLESH ACROSS THE GALAXY”

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Apr 012021

Blood Harvest Records has unearthed a real gem. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the label has caught a comet that came unexpectedly rocketing into the atmosphere from some distant constellation. Universally Estranged seems to have no prior releases, instead immediately blazing across the sky with a full-length that truly is eye-opening in both its extravagant adventurousness and its technical acumen, presenting a vision of sci-fi-inspired death metal that is (in the vivid words of the label’s publicist) “both cosmically levitational and grossly subterranean”.

Replete with bizarre but somehow fitting song titles, and wild cover art that’s also entirely suitable, Reared Up in Spectral Predation delivers one mind-boggling, bone-breaking escapade after another, collectively creating a pan-dimensional thrill-ride that’s likely to stand out from the pack this year even though it’s “just” a debut effort from what seems to be a solo creator (who also seems to prefer anonymity).

As an electrifying sign of what the album holds in store, today we allow you to witness the band “Despoiling Souls of Flesh Across the Galaxy“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DORDEDUH, JUODVARNIS, ANTRISCH, ACAUSAL INTRUSION, RALE, SLITHERING DECAY, PAN KUBUŚ

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Apr 012021

This round-up includes seven bands, which is a lot. But except for two, there’s just a single track per band (in the remaining cases there are EPs). I included a curveball at the end.

DORDEDUH (Romania)

Two days ago Dordeduh premiered a beautiful English-subtitled lyric video for “Descânt” (“Disenchantment”), the second single from their new second album Har, which will be released by Prophecy Productions on May 14th. The previously released single is “Desferecat“, which translates to “unchained”. It was accompanied by a fascinating music video of its own. Both songs have a visceral “physicality” but also quicken the imagination as you listen. Here’s what former NCS contributor KevinP wrote me about them: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PLAGUEWIELDER — “COVENANT DEATH”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Mar 312021

We’ve been following the progress of Ohio’s Plaguewielder since discovering their 2017 single “Writhing in Mental Torment” almost exactly four years ago — a single that was the first release after their 2015 debut album Succumb to the Ash. The name of that single captured a through-line that continued emerging in the band’s music in the following years, feelings of hopelessness, frustration, and fury that always seemed to be fighting to get out into the songs — music as catharsis.

But the music itself has changed over the years, as Plaguewielder has found increasingly multi-faceted and expansive means of expression. In its creative evolution Plaguewielder has reached an apotheosis in Covenant Death, the album that we’re proud to premiere in full today. Undeniably the band’s best work yet, it’s also one of the most striking and memorable works yet to emerge in this still young and still wretched second year of the plague. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 132): WOWOD

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Mar 312021

(For the March 2021 edition of THE SYNN REPORT Andy Synn discusses the discography of Russia’s Wowod, whose most recent album came out back in January.)

Recommended for fans of: Rorcal, Isis, Downfall of Gaia

For this month’s edition of The Synn Report (I know, how has another month gone by so fast) we’re heading to Russia… St. Petersburg, to be exact… to touch base with a band I only recently discovered but whom I’ve been dying to write about ever since.

Over the course of three albums (the most recent of which was released back in January) Wowod have developed an impressively visceral and exceptionally weighty sound which could best be described as a simultaneously abrasive yet atmospheric amalgam of Post-Metal, Post-Black Metal, and Crust, built around a core of humongous, heaving riffs, harsh, howling vocals, and dark, desperate melodies and accented with erratic eruptions of seething tremolo, scathing blastbeats, and the occasional diversion into ominous, brooding ambience.

It’s a sound that’s capable of both brutal intensity and intense beauty, as heavy as it is hypnotic, by turns stunningly dense and surprisingly delicate, and one I’m sure a lot of our readers are going to love.

AN NCS PREMIERE: FUNEBRIA — “DAWN OF BLACK INERICON”

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Mar 312021

The last time we wrote about Funebria was almost six years ago, in connection with their second album, Dekatherion: Ten Years of Hate and Pride. We wondered if we had missed something in the many years since then, but no, there has been nothing new from this Venezuelan horde (now based in Colombia) — until now. And now they are looking ahead to April 17, when their third album, Death Of The Last Sun, will be released by Satanath Records in collaboration with Dark Terror Temple.

Based on what has been released from the album so far — including the track we’re premiering today — the music of Funebria is still a furious (and blasphemous) union of black and death metal, but even more dynamic, multi-faceted, and technically impressive than before. Today’s song premiere, “Dawn of Black Inericon“, is great proof of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NEKKROFUKK — “MYSTERIOUS RITUALS IN THE ABYSS OF SABBATH & ETERNAL CELEBRATION OF THE BLAKK GOAT”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Mar 302021

Let’s cut to the chase: We’re premiering a full stream of the new album by Poland’s Nekkrofukk on the day of its release by Putrid Cult. Like the last album two years ago, the title of this one is packed with evocative words: Mysterious Rituals in the Abyss of Sabbath & Eternal Celebration of the Blakk Goat. In its music, it’s primitive, crushing, pestilential, and foul, a blending of doom and black metal that seems to have bubbled up like poisonous ichor from a by-gone age.

Rarely do the songs accelerate beyond an earthquaking, mid-paced stomp, or provide reprieve from their moods of cruelty, oppression, and plague. Never do the vocals reveal any sense of humanity, so steeped as they are in bestial expulsions of disgust and damnation. When other melodic accents come in, they create an atmosphere of supernatural horror, rather than casting the listener a life-raft. Heads will move when listeners hear the music’s enormous carnal rhythms, and as ugly as the experience is, you may nevertheless find yourself falling into a narcotic trance as the album unfolds — albeit one that’s infiltrated by terrors. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SCORDATURA — “NOTHING BUT DUST”

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Mar 302021

In our man Andy Synn‘s review of the latest full-length discharge by Scotland’s Scordatura, he referred to them as “one of the heaviest, nastiest, bands currently operating out of the UK”. And he summed up that album (Mass Failure, released last September through Gore House Productions) as “a neck-wrecking, gut-churning, bowel-loosening bombardment of jagged riffs, technical twists, and gruesome, glass-gargling gutturals that floats like an atom bomb and stings like a beast.”

If by chance you missed that album, it’s definitely not too late to be consumed by it. And as a further inducement we’re now presenting an official video for “Nothing But Dust“, an album track from Mass Failure that (as Andy wrote) “could give early Cryptopsy a serious run for its money”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CARCOLH

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Mar 302021

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks spoke with Quentin Aberne, guitarist of the French doom band Carcolh, whose second album The Life and Works of Death was released last month by Sleeping Church Records.)

There are few bands with whom we have had close relationships through years despite their status and activity. It’s kind of an exception to the rule indeed. It was 2013 when we did an interview with the Bordeaux-based traditional doom band Marble Chariot for Doom Metal Front magazine, and we’ve kept in touch ’til now even though the band was reincarnated by most of its lineup as Carcolh.

Named after a grotesque mythical mix of tentacled dragon and snail, Carcolh provides pure old and good traditional doom. And as their debut album Rising Sons Of Saturn (2018) tended to be a promising start, the new full-length work The Life And Works Of Death is a full-scale doom invasion, a balm for the mortal wounds of replete doom-eaters.

We had a nice talk with Carcolh’s guitarist Quentin Aberne, and I invite you now to learn more of Carcolh and their ways.

A DIRTY HALF DOZEN – AVERSED / CREEPING FEAR / DANTALIAN / KANONENFIEBER / PUTRESCINE / WODE

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Mar 292021

(Our man Andy Synn has been busy recently, but not too busy to help catch us up with a bevy of new (or new-ish) albums from the first quarter of 2021)

We’re now at the end of March and I can officially say that the stream of new releases, re-releases, and surprise releases, has finally gotten the better of me and I have fallen well behind on my “to review” list.

Sacrifices will, inevitably, have to be made, and some things I intended to write about will either have to wait until an opening appears in my schedule somewhere down the line or, in the worst case scenario, have to be content with appearing in one of my year-end round-ups.

But I’m not going to give in to the inevitable without a fight, which is why, in a desperate effort to provide some interesting coverage, commentary, and – in some cases – criticism about a bunch of records (some dating back to January, some only just about to hit the streets) I’ve decided to pen a few thoughts about six different albums – three Death Metal, three Black Metal – which I’ve been meaning to write about for quite some time.

So, without further ado…

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