AN NCS PREMIERE: DRAGHKAR — “AT THE CROSSROADS OF INFINITY”

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Jul 092020
 

 

At the Crossroads of Infinity is a lofty title for what turns out to be an ambitious album, a multi-faceted work of savagery and wonder, of awe-inspiring spectacle and wide-ranging emotion that sinks deep into bitter soil as well as extending its grasp out into the mysteries of the cosmos. That album is the debut full-length of the death metal band Draghkar, which will be released on July 27th by Unspeakable Axe Records, and today it’s our privilege to present an exclusive stream of the title track.

We also had the pleasure of premiering the band’s last outing, an eye-opening 2018 EP named The Endless Howling Abyss. Since then the band’s founder, southern California guitarist Brandon Corsair, has assembled a new line-up around him, which features a lot of well-known names in the metal underground, including vocalist Dan Butler (Vastum), guitarist K.S. Kuciemba (Drawn and Quartered), drummer Phil Segitho (Ecferus), and bassist Cameron Fisher. Together, they provide a powerful complement to Brandon‘s guitar performances and songwriting. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: A PAIR OF TRACKS FROM XYTHLIA’S “IMMORTALITY THROUGH QUANTUM SUICIDE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 092020
 

 

We almost never cut-and-paste from PR material for music we choose to feature here. That’s a sign of laziness, and it by-passes the fun (and the challenge) of trying to come up with our own descriptive formulations. But here I can’t resist sharing some of the words that accompany I, Voidhanger Records‘ promo for Xythlia‘s debut album, Immortality Through Quantum Suicide, because they’re so spot-on:

“The solo project of US multi-instrumentalist/singer Nick Stanger (also active in the ranks of black metallers ASHBRINGER), XYTHLIA brilliantly blend the most extreme tech death/grind metal with VOIVOD‘s progressive/experimental approach and the mind-shattering guitar acrobatics of KRALLICE and OCRILIM. Immortality Through Quantum Suicide, the band’s first album is as creepy and weirdly fascinating as Carlos Agraz‘s stunning cover painting, where an alien creature performs a suicide ritual through the space/time continuum, furiously stabbing itself to death. It’s a cosmic self-murder, an outer-dimensional bloodbath, each blood drop a seed destined to spawn new and abhorrent life forms.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALEYNMORD, SVALBARD, EXITIUM SUI, STONEBIRDS, CARNATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 092020
 

 

Despite my new-found strategy of limiting the volume of these round-ups in order to do more of them each week, I found enough time to include new music from five bands in this one. The new stuff I picked for today’s collection based on an early-morning listening session begins with two excellent Jakub Moth videos for a couple of dramatically impassioned songs, and the mood stays serious and intense for the two tracks after that. And then I decided to wrap things up with some good old death metal via Antwerp that’s just plain evil fun.

ALEYNMORD

The first song I picked is a track off the debut album of the wilderness-worshiping Oregonian duo Aleynmord. The album’s name is The Blinding Light, and it’s packaged with cover art by Jef Whitehead. As noted above, Chariot of the Black Moth created the beautifully haunting video for the track. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WINTER NIGHTS — “UNMARKED GRAVE”

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Jul 082020
 

 

From the introductory Scott Joplin excerpt to the suggestion that you take a shot, and the command to mosh, the lyric video we’re presenting today may give you some quick grins, but the only smiles you might get from the music will be evil ones — because while the the music is thrilling, it’s also dark and disturbing.

The song in question is “Unmarked Grave“, which is where the song’s protagonist asks to be buried. That song comes from the second full-length by the Brooklyn-based, guitar-driven melodic death metal band Winter Nights. Self-titled, the album is set for release on July 31st. Continue reading »

SATURNO: “MENHIR”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jul 082020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album, released on May 30, by the Chilean band Saturno.)

One thing that I love about Metal (one of the many things I love about Metal) is how much of a global phenomenon it’s become.

And while the majority of coverage still focuses on bands from Western Europe and North America, we’re seeing more and more music from Africa, Asia, and Central/Southern America breaking through every year, reinforcing the fact that the love of the riff transcends all national boundaries.

With that in mind, today’s trip takes us to the West coast of South America to dance around the fire with Chilean Death/Doom quintet Saturno. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DAWN OF A DARK AGE — “LA TAVOLA OSCA”

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Jul 082020
 

 

Over time every music fan, including those of us who nourish our needs with extreme metal, discover our strongest preferences. We find what’s most appealing and we tend to stay with it, and we learn what sounds sour to our own ears and avoid it. Each of us also has different degrees of tolerance for musical adventurousness. It might be true that in the genres we love best that tolerance is more limited than in other genres where we usually have only a modest interest, if any at all.

Yet except for the most hidebound listeners, the prospect of discovering music that’s exploratory, that goes off the well-trod paths and introduces us to new terrains, is at least intriguing. And when the adventure succeeds, the discovery can become an even greater thrill than listening to music that satisfies our pre-existing and well-defined individual tastes.

That is precisely what happened to this listener while participating in the adventure of La Tavola Osca, the latest album by the Italian band Dawn Of A Dark Age. It proved to be a thrilling discovery for me, and thus the opportunity to share it with you today is also exciting. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CHAOS MOTION — “PERTURBATION OF A SPIN”

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Jul 072020
 

 

Chaos Motion drew an extravagant amount of attention to themselves last fall when they released their debut album Psychological Spasms Cacophony through Transcending Obscurity Records. Listening to the music was something akin to hearing a flock of starlings suddenly begin speaking in human languages, or witnessing a pack of wolves break out into improvisational dance, or perhaps seeing a falling star detour into tracing hieroglyphic letters across a night sky during its blazing descent through the atmosphere. A weird and wondrous experience it was — the words “mind fuck!” readily come to mind.

But despite all the attention, perhaps you missed the album? Well, that’s one reason bands create music videos months after a record’s release, to vacuum up a few more music fans who might not have been sucked into the music during the weeks surrounding its release or at year-end-list time. And a Chaos Motion music video is exactly what we have for you today — a video that’s especially riveting because it allows us to see with our own how the band’s two guitarists make such a cornucopia of bewildering yet strangely enthralling sounds. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WORSEN — “OPEN GRAVE”

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Jul 072020
 

 

The North Carolina black metal band Worsen began as the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Rick Contes. After a debut EP in 2014 named Blood, five years passed before the release of Worsen‘s debut album Cursed To Witness Life last year. Contes again wrote the music and recorded all instruments and vocals. He has explained the events that led to the album, and the time it took to write it:

“This was a very personal and cathartic record for me that is lyrically focused on the death of my brother as well as dramatic conclusions to hollow friendships and the removal of toxic people and things from my life. It’s something I started alone that I needed to finish alone.”

Although the album was his own personal work, Worsen has now become a full band, with a line-up that has performed live and that is now preparing material for Worsen‘s next release. That full line-up is featured in the video we’re presenting today for “Open Grave“, an especially intense and emotionally wrenching track off of Cursed To Witness Life  — and it follows the band’s announcement that the album will now be released on vinyl by The Hell Command (USA) and Wolves Of Hades (Europe). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HAVUKRUUNU, SILVER KNIFE, HINAYANA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jul 072020
 

 

Those of us who form the core staff at NCS have recently been reconsidering lots of the things we do here and how we do them. To be more precise, much of the discussion has involved what I do here and how I do them. A lot of the discussion boils down to being more selective in what we publish, and more willing to publish fewer posts every day if that’s necessary to make greater scrutiny possible.

One likely outcome of those discussions is that I will accept fewer premieres. For a while now I’ve been writing two or more premieres every day. I only agree to premiere music that I like and that I think fits the musical focus of the site, but that still leads to lots of premieres. I admit that I have a hard time saying no. One consequence of so many premieres is that I have much less time to write about music that I find on my own, including round-ups of new music and stand-alone reviews of records that we’re not premiering.

Because I’ve put myself in the position of not being able to write round-ups as often as I’d like, the backlogs grow to gargantuan proportions. I resort to gigantic Overflowing Streams collections in an effort to work through the backlogs, but even that format (in which I cut back on my own verbiage) takes time to put together, and so I wind up not even publishing those kinds of collections more than once a week (if I can even manage that).

This process of discussion and self-reflection has led me to realize another problem I’ve created for myself. Continue reading »

TRIAL: “1”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 062020
 

 

(This is Todd Manning‘s review of the debut EP by the UK band Trial, which is set for release on July 10th.)

We might associate the Eighties with some sort of neon-nightmare Glam Metal and New Wave bastardized Pop Music, but there was definitely a strain of post-collapse apocalypticism running through the underground of Metal, Punk and Industrial at the time that seems to capture the dystopian/collapse feeling better than just about anyone, including those of us who now seem to be living out that particular dream. Trial might be of today, but they tap that Eighties eschatological strain as well as anyone.

This music sounds like it was composed in a plastic coffin, one of many strewn across the nuclear wasteland. The guitar summons the feel of primitive Thrash, simple riffs played in a minimalist fashion, almost sounding as if they’ve been ripped from some long-lost cassette demo. These are then juxtaposed against a cold and punishing drum machine and an equally disaffected vocal style that seems smuggled in from a Post-Punk record. The result is both captivating and punishing, often walking a fine-line near the fist-pumping goodness that recalls the Heavy Metal of an earlier time, yet with a layer of noise and abstraction poured over the mix that keeps this from being just a nostalgia trip. Continue reading »

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