PEDOPHILE PRIESTS: “CANCER”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 142019
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli wrote the following review of the new album by the Polish band Pedophile Priests, which was released on November 8th by Metal Scrap Records.)

I reviewed Anti-Catholic avant-garde/progressive death metal band Pedophile Priest’s excellent debut Dark Transgression Of The Soul back in 2016 and have been kind of in love with them ever since.  I feel like back then my review didn’t do this band proper justice.  I wholeheartedly believe Pedophile Priests are one of the best, most important bands in the modern death metal landscape.  Their combination of every style of death metal mixed with black metal mixed with a unique vocal style and the particular things they do with their genre bents results in a band I can 100% safely say NOBODY sounds like.  Nobody else even comes close as far as I’m aware (and I listen to a lot of fucking music). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TRAJETO DE CABRA — “SCYTHE OF PESTILENCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 132019
 

 

Just when I think, after many years of listening to mind-mauling assaults of war metal, that I’ve become inured to the violence, I come across something like the debut album of Trajeto de Cabra from British Columbia which causes my mouth to slowly drop open in astonishment and my eyes to glaze over in a thousand-yard stare. There might have been a bit of drool in evidence as well.

That album, aptly named Supreme Command of Satanic Will, will be released by Iron Bonehead Productions on December 13th (yes, it’s a Friday the Thirteenth), and today we’ve got the premiere stream of a track called “Scythe of Pestilence“, which is a prime example the album’s stupefying impact. Continue reading »

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE: KATHAROS XIII / MYRIAD DRONE / ROSK

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Nov 132019
 


Katharos XIII

 

(In this article Andy Synn combines enthusiastic reviews of three 2019 albums that are departures from our normal musical fare.)

One of the oddest things I’ve observed recently is a surprising number of people bemoaning the fact that “underground sites/magazines don’t cover enough mainstream bands”.

This seems like an odd complaint to make. Not only do mainstream/popular bands already get more than enough attention/coverage, but choosing to read a site/zine which specialises in a certain area, only to then moan about that speciality, feels like an exercise in futility.

Thankfully this doesn’t really affect us here at NCS all that much, as while we do prefer to cover artists and albums that don’t necessarily get a lot of exposure elsewhere, we’re also not afraid to write about more mainstream or popular bands when we feel the occasion calls for it.

This also extends to writing about artists/albums whose work is an “exception to the rule” when it comes to our “no clean singing” policy (although, let’s be honest, that was always more of an in-joke than an actual edict), as while the three bands featured here today are far from “mainstream” they’re still all far more melodic, far more listenable, and far more laid-back than the majority of what we usually cover. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEXEKRATION RITES — “ASCENSION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 132019
 

 

In September of last year Atavism Records released the debut demo of Hexekration Rites, and we premiered one of the two tracks, a song that brought forth feelings of lust (rather than love) in my heart (loins?) because, as I wrote then, “the appeal of the music is definitely more carnal than romantic, more rooted in atavistic impulses and more likely to trigger primal reflexes — and as the song’s name suggests, ‘Chaos Absolution’ is wild, channeling a feeling of frenzied liberation and savage ecstasy”.

I concluded that premiere by disclosing that this formidable French black/death duo didn’t intend to stop, and that more Hexekration Rites creations would be forthcoming. And now another one looms on the near horizon.

On November 22nd the same Atavism Records will release the first EP of Hexekration Rites. Fittingly named Desekration Manifesto, it includes five transfixing assaults on the senses, and once again we have the twisted pleasure of presenting one of them, a track called “Ascension“. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40 FOR 2019

 LISTMANIA 2019  27 Responses »
Nov 132019
 

 

Wow, it’s already that time of year again. It has become an annual tradition at our putrid site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list. It has become a tradition in part because, in my humble opinion, it’s still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal, and also because they always manage to jump out of the starting blocks first in the race for publishing YE “best of” lists – and they’ve done it again this year, though this year it took me by surprise. I think I’m still stuck in October. Anyway, here we go again!

The DECIBEL list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2020 edition, which hasn’t yet hit my own mailbox, but DECIBEL again decided (for the fourth year in a row, or maybe the fifth) to scoop their own list rather than letting leeches like me leak it. They published the list on-line yesterday, and so I can now again re-publish their list without too much guilt, beyond the sheepishness that comes from being one of the factors that forced them to start outing themselves in the first place.

Of course, there will be a lot more content in the January issue (which has Blood Incantation on the cover), including commentary about each of these 40 albums and why they were selected, as well as dozens of contributor-conceived year-end Top 5 lists, a Hall of Fame feature on Madball’s Set It Off, and a brand new Carcass picture flexi disc containing the band’s first new song in six years,. You can order a copy of that HERE. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (EXCERPTS): HELL’S CORONATION, DIMHOLT, BOREAL HYMN, SOVEREIGN, MINENWERFER, CAÏNA, NEBULA ORIONIS

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
Nov 122019
 

 

Some of you might remember that in the regular Sunday edition of this feature two days ago I mentioned that I had an idea for quickly highlighting a bunch of new albums that I didn’t want to neglect. I referred to it then as a collection of “teasers”. What I meant by that, as you’re about to see for yourselves, is a strategy that’s less satisfying than writing everything I’d like to say about these albums, but better than by-passing them altogether. What I’ve done is to pick just one song from each release as a jumping-off point, in the hope that you’ll go ahead and jump all the way in without further persuasion.

HELL’S CORONATION

The first album I’d like to highlight is Ritual Chalice of Hateful Blood, the debut full-length by Hell’s Coronation, which was released on October 31st by Godz Ov War Productions. The song I’ve picked as a teaser for the album is “Fullmoon Is the Sinister Light of Providence“, which also happens to be the song that’s set up to stream first at the album’s Bandcamp page, although it comes fourth in the running order. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INFIDEL REICH — “REICHENSTEIN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 122019
 

 

Ex-Asphyx drummer Bob Bagchus and Acheron frontman Vincent Crowley, who’ve been friends since 1991, finally got fed up with what they perceived as an overdose of political correctness in the metal scene, and decided to do something about it. Determined to express their disgust with a culture in which “everything is offensive and so-called victims are a plenty” (as Crowley put it in an interview), they collaborated to create Infidel Reich, a head-moving riff machine that now includes early Asphyx guitarist Tony Brookhuis and a bassist named McNasty.

The band’s name is itself intentionally provocative, though not intended to convey any political, religious, or racist dogmas. The “Reich” refers to the band’s own self-contained “empire”, while the name of their debut album, Reichenstein, is a play on Mary Shelley‘s classic novel, and (like the cover art by Triple Seis Design) was conceived as a way of capturing the monstrosity of the musical beast created by this band of metal mad scientists.

Musical inspirations of course come from a myriad of experiences and convictions, and no doubt those which animated Infidel Reich will succeed in pissing off some segment of the listening public before they hear a single note of Reichenstein. It’s hard to shed any tears over that, because that’s exactly what Infidel Reich anticipated. On the other hand, those who reject the particular kind of disgust and rage that drives this album will miss out on a remarkably well-crafted and relentlessly addictive collection of songs which successfully integrate a wide array of old-school heavy metal traditions. Continue reading »

LORD MANTIS: “UNIVERSAL DEATH CHURCH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 122019
 

 

(On November 22nd Profound Lore will release a new album by Lord Mantis, and today we share with you Todd Manning‘s review.)

It’s the return of the filth, courtesy of Lord Mantis. These people have been absent for five long years, but they are ready to reopen festering wounds with their new full-length, Universal Death Church, out November 22nd on Profound Lore Records.

At one point this entity appeared to be dead, but the group decided to rebuild burnt bridges in order to honor the memory of drummer and founding member Bill Bumgardner. Universal Death Church is an immense statement by the reformed line-up, a sprawling testament to chaos and sadism, done as only Lord Mantis knows how to do. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OAK — “MIRROR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 112019
 

 

The pleasure of watching talented musicians take their first steps in a new venture, and then grow and evolve, and soon have their works exposed to a wide audience, is one of the more satisfying rewards of participating in a site like ours, particularly when we’ve done our own (very small) part to help them along the way.

In the case of the Portuguese band Oak, we were first drawn to their activities under that name because both members were also part of the terrific black metal band Gaerea — although the music they’ve created in Oak (a blend of mystical funeral doom and death metal) is very different. In the spring of 2018 we premiered a live recording (captured on video) for a spellbinding single called “Sculptures“, which in final form appears on their debut album, Lone. A bit later in the year we also premiered a video of the band’s live set in a chapel within the old Portuguese fortress known as Castelo de Santiago da Barra (and if you haven’t seen that video, you really must!).

And then in January of this year we devoted space to a discussion of an Oak song called “Abomination“, which was released in connection with the announcement that Transcending Obscurity Records would be releasing Lone, and that the Italian maestro Paolo Girardi had painted a fitting piece of cover art for the record. Now it’s our pleasure to premiere another of the four tracks on Lone. This one comes second in the running order (just after “Sculptures“) and its name is “Mirror“. Continue reading »

BLOOD INCANTATION: “HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 112019
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Colorado-based Blood Incantation, which will be released on November 22nd by Dark Descent Records (NorthAm) and Century Media (Europe), and features artwork by Bruce Pennington.)

The rapid rise of Blood Incantation can, when all is said and done, be attributed to a combination of a few different factors.

First and foremost, of course, is that fact that the Colorado quartet are just a fantastic Death Metal band. No caveats, no equivocations.

They’ve got the technical talents, they’ve got the songwriting skills, and, perhaps more importantly, they’ve got just the right blend of sounds – proggy enough to keep themselves from being boxed in with the rest of the “old school” revivalists, but “classic” enough to appeal to the nostalgia-hounds – to reach a surprisingly wide audience, both young and old.

Then there’s the group’s blissfully baked, “I’m not saying it was aliens…”, aesthetic which, when combined with their impressive songcraft and easy meme-ability (the scraggly logo, the hesher-friendly merch designs, the far-out ’70s sci-fi artwork) has given rise to a near-perfect storm of viral fame and critical acclaim that’s seen the band go from “relative unknown” to “next big thing” in just a few short years.

And while there’s definitely a little bit of home-grown hero-worship going on with some of their more rabid (typically American) fans, the truth is that the band’s highly-anticipated second album makes a strong case for why you need to start believing the hype.

Well, most of it anyway… Continue reading »

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