AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THORN — “DROWNED SERPENTS”

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May 072021
 

 

Phoenix-based Thorn (the solo project of Brennen Westermeyer) made its advent last year with an EP entitled The Encompassing Nothing, revealing itself as a musical monstrosity dedicated to the creation of cavernous, ominous, and dreadful death metal. Thorn followed that auspicious debut by joining forces with Toronto’s Fumes for a fearsome split release in January of this year. We hosted the premiere of songs from that split, summing up Thorn’s contributions as “an amalgam of crushing brutality, freakish mayhem, and eerie supernatural frightfulness”.

Now we’re helping spread the word that Thorn has completed work on a debut album. Entitled Crawling Worship, it’s set for release in multiple formats on June 18th by Gurgling Gore and Life After Death Records, and once again we have the ghoulish pleasure of premiering a new Thorn song — “Drowned Serpents” — which is presented through a lyric video. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRIMSON DIMENSION — “AGE OF AWAKENING”

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May 072021
 

 

The self-titled debut album of Finland’s Crimson Dimension consists of four tracks, but it’s more than an hour long, with each of those songs ranging in length from 12 minutes to more than 18. Two of those epic-length excursions have already been revealed (the first one as far back as 2017), and today we present a third one — the longest and perhaps most astounding of them all — “Age of Awakening“.

The length of these songs should not be a deterrent, because notwithstanding their duration they are all tremendously captivating. They represent a union of wildly adventurous song-writing ideas and jaw-dropping instrumental skill, and trust us when we say that it’s very easy to lose track of time as you get caught up in them.

If there is a genre label to be applied to music of such high-flying and wide-ranging ambition, “blackened progressive metal” seems to be the one preferred by the band. And that makes some sense, because although the music does incorporate sinister and ravaging elements of black metal, it is absolutely the kind of record that should prove powerfully appealing to ardent devotees of progressive metal. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AMENRA, ANCIENT WISDOM, COFFIN LURKER, DEFLESHED, ENSLAVED, HANGING GARDEN, HELL STRIKE, IDOLOS, KILLING ADDICTION, KORGONTHURUS, OPHIDIAN I, PERILAXE OCCLUSION, SVARTA SANNINGAR

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 072021
 

 

The usual insanity of our in-box reached a fever pitch overnight, because it’s another Bandcamp Friday. That fever has been building all week in anticipation of the day, with the typical flood of new music reaching typhoon proportions. I’ve diverted some of that flood into this collection, a baker’s dozen of new songs and videos that range from the dreamy to the decimating, and includes both the re-surfacing of old gods and the emergence of promising new names – but without the usual artwork or my usual wordy reflections. Not everything is available on Bandcamp, but where it is available there, I’ve included links.

Mother’s Day is also on Sunday, but thankfully that doesn’t seem to have added to the torrent of releases. In catch-up mode, I’ll continue recommending more new music that day and on Saturday (if you don’t keep swimming, you drown). By the way, for those of you who don’t live in the U.S., “Mother’s Day” does not stand for Motherfucker’s Day, so most of you won’t have any reason to celebrate.

Continue reading »

AN NCS EP ROUND-UP: EREB ALTOR, PHLEBOTOMIZED, DISEMBODIMENT, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
May 062021
 


Ereb Altor

 

(Nathan Ferreira wrote the following reviews of four new EPs that are all well worth your time.)

In these pandemic-ridden times, I’ve had online discussions with internet cretins about how EP releases may be a more viable format for artists, especially those that rely on touring as an income source. There’s less time and expense required to record, produce, and promote them, and it allows the artists in question to focus more on moving other projects forward – in theory, anyways.

Plus, how often do you actually make it through all those hour-long albums you own front to back in one sitting? Is there really that much of a difference between 25- and 40-minute runtimes in terms of how complete an album feels? If the music is good enough, probably not.

For the reasons above, and because I’ve been seeing an unusual number of artists both bigger and smaller embrace the EP format recently (a sign of the times, perhaps), I thought it was appropriate to give some attention to some of the more bite-sized musical snacks that have caught my ear in the past couple of months. Mini-albums need love too, you know. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: T.O.M.E. — “II”

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May 062021
 

 

We’ve been given hints that the members of T.O.M.E. are veterans of the Finnish metal underground, but apart from the drummer (whose identity can be discovered through Metal-Archives), they’ve hidden their names and pedigrees, preferring to let their music represent itself. And what it represents, through their debut album I-III, is a strange and formidably frightening experience, a form of black metal that reveals the members as sonic alchemists, capable of creating creepy spells that take us into some “otherworld” far away from the one we live in, while simultaneously seducing a listener’s reptile brain — the part that makes us move without thinking.

The album will be released by Spread Evil on June 4th, and what we have for you today is the second of its three long tracks, which are denominated only by Roman numerals. But we encourage you to set aside the 14 minutes required to listen to the previously released track “I” first, before moving into the second track that we’re premiering today, which will take 11 more minutes of your time. Trust us, it will all be time well-spent. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOSUDAR — “INSURRECTION OF NEPHILIM”

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May 062021
 

 

When I saw the description of Gosudar’s debut album provided by Rotted Life, the Maryland-based label that will release it on May 28th, I figuratively smacked my lips in anticipation:

“With gut-churning vocals and seasick serpentine riffage, Gosudar wind their way through twisted, psychotic arrangements, while never sacrificing their oppressive heaviness for technicality, nor disregarding the sheer power of a razor-sharp hook. It’s a cyclonic style of death metal chaos crucial for fans of Dead Congegration, Mortiferum, and Incantation“.

But of course one can never know how well such enticing previews will match up with the actual sounds until diving into the music itself. Fortunately, in the case of Gosudar’s Morbid Despotic Ritual, they turn out to ring true. This Moscow-based trio have created something special that really will appeal to fans of the afore-mentioned groups, and the song we’re presenting today, “Insurrection of Nephilim“, is powerful evidence of that. Continue reading »

OBSOLETE: “ANIMATE // ISOLATE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 062021
 

 

(Todd Manning rejoins us with the following review of the debut album by Obsolete, which was released not long ago through Unspeakable Axe Records.)

I don’t know about anyone else, but as time goes on, I find myself more obsessed with groups such as Watchtower, Atheist and Sadus. And now it’s time to add a new name to the list. Riding a fine line between Tech-Thrash and early Death Metal, Animate//Isolate is the stunning debut full-length from Minneapolis-based band Obsolete.

While some bands from the Tech-Thrash movement could create a pretty obscure sound (see Watchtower or Sieges Even’s Steps),  Obsolete never sacrifice immediacy in their quest for mind-bending technicality. The riffs stampede relentlessly, and the harsh vocals are firmly rooted in Death Metal. And while most the beats deconstruct and reassemble classic Thrash workouts, they find opportunities to squeeze in blast beats as well as softer moments. Continue reading »

HADIT – WITH JOY AND ARDOUR THROUGH THE INCOMMENSURABLE PATH

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May 052021
 

(The long-awaited debut album from Italian Black/Death duo Hadit is set for release this Friday via Sentient Ruin/Caligari Records, and Andy Synn has volunteered to act as Virgil on this journey into the inferno)

After my shameless flirtation with – dare I say it – the “mainstream” (ok, not really, but you know what I mean) earlier this week, it’s high time I got back to the underground, the underdogs, and the underappreciated.

And what better way to do so than with a quick look at the long-awaited, soon-to-be-released, debut album from Italian Death-duo Hadit, whose elaborately titled new album conjures up a sound that is distinctly more occult and “old school” in demeanour and delivery than that of the band’s more popular and blast-happy contemporaries/countrymen?

Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EMPTY THRONE — “GLOSSOLALIA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 052021
 

 

Those of us who toil at this site draw pleasure from what we do in many ways, but perhaps the most fun comes from presenting explosive surprises — helping to spread the word about new, unheralded bands whose appearance turns out to be something like a big meteor blazing through a night sky. And that’s exactly what we have for you today, in our premiere of the debut EP of the multi-state U.S. band Empty Throne in advance of its release this coming Friday by Wise Blood Records.

This EP, Glossolalia, really is a spectacular experience, one that’s perhaps best enjoyed after hyperventilating, because you may need the extra oxygen. In a nutshell (to borrow the label’s words), “this is hellish and ornate blackened death metal with thrashing rhythms and an epic scope”. It draws upon “the violent propulsion of ‘80s thrash, the agile savagery of death metal circa 1994, with Gothenburg adornments and rabid vocals”, blended with an ambitious scope and the dark atmospherics of late-stage black metal.

And it must also be said that the high-speed instrumental pyrotechnics are likely to find fans among devotees of technical death metal too. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEPHREN-KA — “L’ABOMINATION”

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May 052021
 

 

It would seem like a paradox to most people (though not to many of the fiends who visit our site) that music which violently and ruthlessly assaults the senses can fuel a feeling of outlandish fun (as well as triggering a big discharge of adrenaline).

When riotous, high-speed brutalization is inflicted with no care for restraint or mercy, it can become terrifically exhilarating rather than repellant — at least when the experience is created by technically skilled executioners and diabolical songwriters. Even better when it becomes apparent that subtle structures and seductive accents exist within the explosive chaos, so that you feel the compulsion to have the experience again and again — and find even more to like about it with each renewal.

All of that is true in the case of “L’Abomination“, the song we’re premiering today from the forthcoming third album by Nephren-Ka, From Agony To Transcendence, which will be released by Dolorem Records on June 25th. Continue reading »

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