FORTRESS FESTIVAL 2025 — MAY 31-JUNE 1, SCARBOROUGH, NORTH YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND: DAY 1

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 242025
 

(We proudly present the first part of Daniel Barkasi’s extensive two-part report on the latest edition of Fortress Festival in the UK, lavishly accompanied by his own many photos. We plan to post his report on the second day of the event tomorrow.)

When deciding to travel to a foreign land, many preparations need to occur. Especially when it’s a country that you’ve never been to before. It’s true that these ears have traveled much distance for live music – we’ve been to Germany many times for Wacken (x3), Summer Breeze (x2), Party.San and Trveheim, for example – but somehow in all our travels, the UK had never been one of them.

From afar, I’ve admired several UK based metal festivals that have been boasting insane lineups that would simply never occur in North America. Cosmic Void, Damnation Festival, ArcTanGent, Incineration Festival are all ones on the list to hit up – but the mighty Fortress Festival was the one that screamed the loudest. Partially due to the mind-boggling lineup, but also the unique location, a seaside resort town known for its beach, views, history, and massive fortress (hence the name of the fest).

What better locale for two days of furious black metal, sans an old stave church in Norway? Continue reading »

HOLLOW LEG: “DUST AND ECHOES”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 242025
 

(Wil Cifer reviews Florida-based Hollow Leg‘s new compilation album Dust and Echoes (combining two 2024 EPs), which was released on June 13th by Third House Communications.)

The fact that guitarist Brent Lynch is the only member of Hollow Leg who was not from Bloodlet might lead you to think, this band is a continuation of the forerunners of dark hardcore’s legacy. That is not the case.

It’s respectable for the band to mark this as a new chapter rather than use the name of their previous project for the sake of recognition. This is truth in advertising as this band is much more metal, and in my best guesstimation, and the fact they are fellow Floridians, I can assume things changed as they started smoking a ton of weed which caused the shift in musical direction. The biggest change is that Scott’s vocals are still gruff, but come closer to a scowl-tinted croon than the hardcore roar that marked what he did in the late ’90s. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INDESIDERIUM — “APOCALYPTIC FUNERAL MARCH”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 232025
 

(written by Islander)

Indesiderium is a Los Angeles based black metal duo founded by vocalist, guitarist, and bassist Atrum Lorde and now accompanied by drummer Warhead. Indesiderium has released two albums so far, Wanderer of the Abyssal Plains (2015) and Of Twilight and Evenfall​.​.​. (2018), and now a third one, The Nocturnal Seance Of Lucifer, is set for co-release later this week by Satanath Records (Georgia) and WP And RO Productions (Netherlands).

From the beginning, the band’s mission has been to channel in uncompromising terms the bleakness, the cold majesty, and the evil of second-wave black metal in its golden age, paying homage to the influence of such bands as Dawn, Dark Funeral, Dissection, Immortal, and Emperor. As a sign of where the band now stand in that mission, we’re premiering today a song from their new album named “Apocalyptic Funeral March“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISEMBODIMENT — “INFECTED TO ROT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 232025
 

(written by Islander)

About five weeks ago we premiered a song from Spiral Crypts, the forthcoming debut album of Disembodiment from Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. We preceded it with a warning:

You are about to be stomped and gouged, bounced off the walls and lacerated, dragged into foul and choking cesspools and made witness to violent charnel-house abominations. Your pulse will pound, your head will move, your guts will churn. And you will smile broadly at every abuse to which you will be subjected!

Five weeks might have been long enough for physical and mental therapy to have had some beneficial recuperative effect on listeners who heard that song, “Stygian Overture“. It’s possible listeners have stopped smiling now too (smiling takes extra effort when your jaw’s wired shut). And so the time is right to bring you another helping of death metal trauma straight from the Spiral Crypts, through a song whose title describes some of its own consequences: “Infected To Rot“. Continue reading »

HEAVEN SHALL BURN – HEIMAT

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 232025
 

(Andy Synn has a lot of history with Heaven Shall Burn, which now includes their new album, Heimat, which is set for release this coming Friday on Century Media Records)

Way back in the year 2002 a young man who would one day come to be known (in certain dark corners of the internet, at least) as Andy Synn fell in love with an album by the name of Whatever It May Take by German Metalcore icon(oclast)s Heaven Shall Burn, who would go on to have a major influence on his music tastes for the foreseeable future.

That same year he also encountered an outstanding (some might even say seminal) piece of cinema named 28 Days Later, from director Danny Boyle, which would also have a huge impact on the media he would choose to consume going forwards and set the standard for what home-grown Horror could be.

And now, here we are in 2025 with new releases from both band and director demanding our attention once more… but while one of those has proven to be a crushing disappointment, let’s hope that the other one lives up to its legacy, shall we?

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AKVAN, ESKAPISM, PIT OF DESPAIR, IDOLOS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jun 222025
 

(written by Islander)

I got a call last night from an anxiety-prone Millennial family member asking whether I thought World War III had just begun. He said he couldn’t bear to read very much about what had just happened but knew that I would have done so quickly.

I did my best to calm him down, tried to explain why I thought this won’t turn into WWIII and to assure him we’re all safe in Seattle (I didn’t mention the funding cuts to programs that combat domestic terrorism or the 22-year-old intern who was put in charge of the main DHS hub for that).

But yes, I’ve been reading a lot. I can’t help it, even though I know it’s pointless, even though no one really knows where this is headed but every pundit has an opinion (the smart ones tick off discouraging possibilities but then acknowledge that no one knows). It seems like an odd time to be thinking about music, but as usual on days like this the music becomes something of a refuge (NCS as a sanctuary city!). And so, on we go… but where to begin? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MALTHUSIAN, UPON STONE, BEFORE THE DAWN, CASTRATOR, ENTRAILS, A CAT IN THE BRAIN, LOMMI, BOMBUS, GLUED MOUTH

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 212025
 

(written by Islander)

This Saturday selection of new songs and videos provides a lot to take in, and lots of twists and turns in the musical path as you move from one to the next (which is what I hope you’ll do).

Fair warning: I’ve included a pair of songs that feature entirely clean singing, and another where singing trades off with harsher expressions. Today’s collection is also a mix of well-known bands (at least well-known to yours truly) and others that have scoured my ears for the first time this week. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MROME — “BONEYARD TWIST”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 202025
 

(written by Islander)

The Polish band MROME have been making music since the mid-’90s, first under the name Kingdom and then as MROME. Under the latter name they’ve released four albums so far, most of which we’ve paid attention to (as you can see here), and on June 23rd they’ll release a fifth one.

Entitled Boneyard Twist, the new one includes 9 tracks recorded live in the studio, and the band have described it to us as “a kind of return to our dark roots from the early ’90s, inspired deeply by the first wave black metal.” Lyrically, they tell us, the songs deal “with grave residents, disabilities of body and mind, necromancy and… monks exploding!”

What we have for you today is a full stream of the new record, preceded (of course) by some thoughts about it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DÉCRYPTAL — “HORDE D’INVERTÉBRÉS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 202025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to present a song that should make even the most hardened and hard-to-please death metal fans sit up and pay close attention. It’s a track called “Horde d’invertébrés” off the debut album Simulacre from Quebec’s Décryptal, which will be co-released on July 11th by Me Saco Un Ojo and Rotted Life.

In the space of just this one song Décryptal lead listeners through a musical house of horrors, pulling us forward from one ghastly room to the next, with enough return trips among them to embed their hideous visions in a listener’s head (and providing a time to bang our heads as well). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OSKOREIEN — “PRISMATIC REASON”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 192025
 

(written by Islander)

Oskoreien is back!

For people with discerning musical tastes and long memories, that will be a very happy piece of news. For people who may be encountering the Oskoreien name for the first time, it’s a project formed in Los Angeles in 2003 by multi-instrumentalist Jay Valena. As his solo endeavor, Oskoreien released a pair of demos and then a self-titled debut album in 2011, followed by a split with Botanist five years later and then a second album, All Too Human, in 2016 — but nothing since then.

If you haven’t explored those previous releases, they are well worth your time, especially if you’re a fan of multi-faceted melodic black metal (and you can learn more about some of them, and about Jay Valena‘s very interesting inspirations, through the reviews and an interview we published in those earlier years). Oskoreien‘s forthcoming third album, Hollow Fangs, will also be well worth your time. It’s set for release on July 18th, and today we’re premiering its opening track “Prismatic Reason“. Continue reading »

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