ULCERATE: “STARE INTO DEATH AND BE STILL”

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Apr 152020
 

 

(In this review Andy Synn lavishes great (and well-deserved) praise on the new album by New Zealand’s Ulcerate, which will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on April 24th.)

Let me ask you a question… what does it take to earn a place in the Death Metal hall of fame?

Obviously seminal acts like Death, Dismember, Morbid Angel and their ilk (to name but a few) all belong there, as without them we wouldn’t even have a Death Metal genre… at least, not in the same way we know it now.

But as things have evolved, as new styles have come into being and splintered off to form their own distinct sub-species, it’s become harder and harder to form a consensus about what bands are big enough, bold enough, bombastic and badass enough, to be considered true hall-of-famers.

But if there was ever any doubt about Ulcerate’s worthiness, the release of Stare Into Death and Be Still should finally, and firmly, put that to rest. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BURDEN LIMBS — “HYPOCHONDRIAC”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 152020
 

 

We’ve all now seen examples of songs that were written and recorded long before the pandemic reared its ugly head and took our throats in its teeth, but which now seem as if they had been written yesterday. “Hypochondriac” by the British band Burden Limbs is one of those songs. Now must be a particularly miserable time to be a hypochondriac, but the music also captures the tension, the terror, and the sense of unreality that now pervades everyone’s existence, while the words convey meaning that goes beyond the afflictions of mere hypochondria.

What we’re presenting today is a disorienting and disturbing lyric video for this song, one that is well-suited to the disorienting and disturbing sensations in the music. The band’s vocalist Chad Murray explained it to us this way: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SARPA — “ANGUISHING REVERIES”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 152020
 

 

“Anguishing Reveries“, the song you’re about to hear, is an eye-popping, jaw-dropping surprise — in part because the title may lead you to expect one thing and the music will deliver something astonishingly different. The music is astonishing for other reasons besides the possible mis-direction of the title, but we’ll come to that explanation in a minute.

For now, let’s tell you that the song is the creation of Texas vocalist and multi-instrumentalist David Baxter (drummer of Plutonian Shore, ex-Skrew, ex-Škan) operating under the name Sarpa, a project that he formed in 2018. And the track appears on Sarpa’s debut album Solivagus, which will be released on June 5th of this year. Musically (to borrow from the advance press material), the album is “primarily embedded in the essence of black metal, but Sarpa throws other ingredients such as progressive rock, acoustics, old school death/thrash, and some Afro/Latin rhythms into the pot”.

And now let’s get back to the song you’re about to hear…. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: OIL SPILL, PROTOSEQUENCE, CENTINEX, DEVANGELIC, SMOKE & MIRRORS, VARAHA, HORN, CAULDRON BLACK RAM, LORD MANTIS, THE LIFTED VEIL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 152020
 

 

For today’s mega round-up of new songs and videos I decided not to alphabetize everything as I’ve been doing. Instead, I’ve created five pairs of songs. By sheer good fortune, as I continued to hack my way through an ever-burgeoning listening list, I not only discovered these 10 things but found that they could be organized in this way. The songs in each pair aren’t completely similar to each other by any means, but they do share certain qualities that made them fit together nicely (at least to my addled mind).

OIL SPILL (U.S.)

Felicitously, I discovered quotations from others about this new EP by the Texas band Oil Spill that seemed quite fitting, and they had the side benefit of saving me a bit of work in coming up with my own verbiage. These two are from commenters on the EP’s Bandcamp page: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OMNIARCH — “PATHFINDER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 142020
 

 

Omniarch come our way from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and they don’t come timidly. Their formulation of technical and progressive death metal absolutely blazes with exuberant spirit, technical virtuosity, and turbocharged energy, while incorporating memorable melodic and atmospheric accents. It’s the kind of music that will likely find welcome among fans of such bands as Revocation, Inferi, and The Black Dahlia Murder.

Omniarch’s self-titled debut album will be released on May 8th, and today we’re giving you a glimpse of all the qualities mentioned above as we premiere the song “Pathfinder” (and in case you missed it, we’re again presenting the album’s first single, “Ohm Cairn“). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PHOBOS MONOLITH — “OKTOBER (LUNAR ECLIPSE)”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 142020
 

 

“When the Light Will Fade“, the title track and first single released from the debut EP of Phobos Monolith, quickly demonstrated the band’s precocious mastery of ingredients that are vital to the appeal of doom-influenced melodic death metal: craggy low-end weight, jolting rhythms, a vocalist who possesses a deep and ravaging growl that’s spine-tingling to hear, and most importantly a talent for crafting forlorn melodic hooks that make an immediate and lasting impression. In addition, consistent with the band’s thematic interests in the mysteries of space-time and the multiverse, they created a sound that hinted at the vastness of the cosmos, accented by ringing keyboards that sparkled like starshine.

That song made a very positive first impression, and now we’re able to bring you a lyric video for a second single, entitled “Oktober (Lunar Ellipse)“, in the lead-up to the June 29 release of When the Light Will Fade by Pest Records. Continue reading »

ABYSMAL DAWN: “PHYLOGENESIS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 142020
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of the new album by California’s Abysmal Dawn, a long-time favorite of our site, set for release on April 17th by Season of Mist.)

Upon the release of the first single from Abysmal Dawn‘s latest album Phylogenesis, there was a moment of surprised realization amongst the goofballs who comprise the NCS staff: “Has it really been five and a half years since their previous release Obsolescence?” And yet, with a late October 2014 release date for that album and a late April 2020 date for the group’s latest, that much time has indeed passed.

You wouldn’t know it though. For a few of those aforementioned goofballs Obsolescence was kind of lightning-in-a-bottle for the Abysmal Dawn crew. The disc quickly became something of a default resort — it was a constant go-to, so that the album seemed like it had always been there, and the passage of time quickly became irrelevant. If you were out of ideas of things to listen to, Abysmal Dawn had found a way with that album to land on a median among the varying degrees of modern death metal, kicking out a solid near-fifty-minute slab of solid groove and relentless blast.

The question with Phylogenesis then becomes, did the band seek to do that again? What odd twists and turns might they have taken? Hell, what sort of effect did the lineup-shifting that happened in between these two discs produce? Continue reading »

BLACK CURSE: “ENDLESS WOUND”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 142020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the debut album by Colorado’s Black Curse, which was recently released by Sepulchral Voice.)

To paraphrase a very tall, very shiny, Russian man:

“…four or five moments… that’s all it takes to be a hero make a good album…”

And, you know what? He’s right. If your album has four or five moments, four or five songs, which truly stand out, and stand the test of time, then you’re probably good.

The thing is, really great albums, albums like Endless Wound, don’t just settle for four or five moments per record, they offer up four or five of these moments in practically every song! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TITAAN — “ITIMA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 132020
 

 

In the broadest and most simplistic terms, the monumental new album by Titaan is a sequence of startling juxtapositions of sound and atmosphere. A single track of more than 46 minutes in length, Itima operates like a musical flux capacitor, capable of sending listeners through time into an ancient age as well as far into the future. And the music is itself constantly in flux, flexing between states of overpowering, densely layered chaos and mystical yet morphing ambient drift into wondrous and blood-freezing realms.

As in the case of Titaan’s debut album Kadingir, the project’s alter ego Lalartu (whose identity and location remain a mystery) has worked alone, which makes the extravagant achievements of Itima all the more jaw-dropping. It is evident that this massive composition required meticulous planning and is the result of extensive attention to detail, everything well-calculated to pitch the listener into a gigantic and perilous labyrinth of sounds and sensations that seem completely divorced from mundane earth-bound existence.

To be sure, the full experience requires patience, but on the other hand it doesn’t take long to become transfixed by what’s happening, and to lose track of time as the music’s rituals hurl you without warning across millennia and into mystifying dimensions both nightmarish and celestial. Today we’re providing the chance to lose yourself in the labyrinth of Itima through a fukll stream of the album in advance of its April 16 release by ATMF. Continue reading »

OLD MAN GLOOM: “SEMINAR IX: DARKNESS OF BEING”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 132020
 

 

(Seattle-based writer Gonzo returns to NCS with this review of a new album by the star-studded Old Man Gloom, whose release day was accelerated by the band and Profound Lore Records and is out now.)

Never the types to be conventional, post-hardcore/sludge superheroes Old Man Gloom have again released not one, but two, new albums: Seminar VIII: The Lightness of Meaning, and Seminar IX: The Darkness of Being. Originally not scheduled to be released until May 22, the band decided to stagger the double effort with a surprise release of Seminar IX back in late March. Seminar VIII will keep its original release date of May 22.

To limit any head-spinning confusion, this review covers Seminar IX.

Confused yet? Good, me too. Continue reading »

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