NCS STAY THE FUCK INSIDE LIST II (BY NEILL JAMESON)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 032020
 

 

(Two weeks ago (here) Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) shared with us and you a list of musical suggestions to help us get through the current “end of the world” times, and today he follows that with another selection.)

So not a hell of a lot has changed since the last time I sat down to do one of these. Seems that a lot of you are still stuck at home, bitching and moaning that you’re bored while another batch of you (myself included) is considered “essential” and stuck being out with the public every day, most of whom have no real reason to be out of their house except “boredom”. These are the same assholes who’re going to be shocked they’re waiting for a ventilator in a few weeks while the poor sap who never finished college who’s behind whatever counter (me again) still has to go to work without extra pay, wishing they/we/I could be at home or at the very least stop being told by our jobs to be grateful we still have them while the “Today Show” has some montage about how essential employees are “heroes”, a sentiment not reflected in the majority of their paychecks.

That shit-show aside, I’ve compiled a few bands and labels that, since you have the time, are worth your consideration. Hopefully you find something interesting you haven’t heard before or you think my taste is pure horseshit and are moved to compile your own lists.  Either way it gives you something to emotionally invest in for a few minutes while you try to figure out what household item you can use to wipe your ass with. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORDER OF ORIAS — “RAGING IDOLS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 032020
 

 

The vision of the cover art for the long-awaited new album by Australia’s Order of Orias would have demanded our attention, wholly apart from the lasting memories of their tremendous contribution to a split with Aosoth in 2015 and their 2011 debut album Inverse. It would have fit well in our long-defunct series “Eye-Catchers”, in which visual art alone was the basis for investigating new music.

In this instance, however, it was the opportunity to premiere a song from Ablaze in advance of its April 30 release by W.T.C. Productions that provided the occasion for investigation, and that song alone proves that the five-year wait for new music from this talented black metal duo has been richly rewarded. Continue reading »

ALTERNATIVE RELEASE DAY ROUND-UP: CATALEPSIA / ENDLESS FORMS MOST GRUESOME / HADOPELAGIAL / RELIC POINT / RITUAL CONTRITION / SKYEATER

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 032020
 

 

(Andy Synn has again assembled reviews and streams of new albums for this release-day Friday that might not be getting the attention they deserve elsewhere.)

People seemed to enjoy this the last time I did it, so I thought to myself… why not keep the streak alive?

So here we go, trying to go two for two, with another quick round-up of releases which you may otherwise have missed! Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): ALKYMIST, APOSENTO, ASHTAR, BEYOND CREATION, BLAZE OF SORROW, CALLIGRAM, CATTLE DECAPITATION, COSMIC BURIAL, DEFACING GOD, DYING FETUS, EXOCRINE, FORGOTTEN TOMB

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 032020
 

 

We begin another mega-roundup today to assist you in enduring your shut-in time, with a second installment planned for Saturday. Long on music and short on words, it’s arranged alphabetically by band name. We have A-F today, and F through W tomorrow, unless an X, Y, or Z band surfaces between now and then.

Lots of old friends in this Part I, and some new names, a scattering of both big names and obscure ones, as well as a mix of genres. Almost everything here surfaced in the last few days. This time I added some artwork thumbnails, but don’t get used to that. It takes time I usually don’t have when I compile these monster collections.

ALKYMIST (Denmark)

Ugly, sludgy riffing that moans and groans… methodical drum pounding… grotesque, gritty growls and terrifying howls… a meaty bass line combined with eerie ringing notes… flares of evil braying chords rising up like a death anthem and descending like a plague gouging its way into the body… and then the guitar begins to pulse and the drums begin to hammer and rock… and things get fairly demented and frightening near the end before a final bout of gouging, groaning, and pounding. Really, the whole song is evil…. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HENRY KANE — “MY SWEET ESCAPE”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Apr 022020
 

 

Given the usual volume of verbiage we unload in introducing premieres, there’s a better-than-even chance it would take you longer to read what we have to say than to listen to this new Henry Kane song. So, let’s speed things up:

Absolutemayhemnotimetobreathefullborepercussiveblastingandbatteringadensemassof
writhingmutilatingriffagehurtlingbassnotesunhingedhowlingvocalferocity!

Got that?

Okay, here’s “My Sweet Escape“: Continue reading »

BENIGHTED: “OBSCENE REPRESSED”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 022020
 

 

(We present DGR’s typically detailed review of Obscene Repressed, the new album by the French maulers in Benighted, which will be released by Season of Mist on April 10th.)

It probably doesn’t need to be stated that we’re fans of the French death metal crew Benighted and their brand of frantic mania, especially given that we’ve kept a pretty constant eye on the crew from release to release. Thus, we’ve been patiently waiting for the group’s newest album Obscene Repressed, a thematically twisted concept album that reads part horror story, part Pornhub top video statistics by State chart, and part gleeful exploration of insanity with the music stylings to back it up. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE AND REVIEW: DEATH WHORE’S SELF-TITLED EP

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 022020
 

 

“Imagine a cross between the brutalizing grooves of Y2K-era Metal Hardcore greats like Terror, Xibalba, Nails or Rotten Sound, and old school Swedish Death Metal breakneck riffing”. That’s part of the introduction that Death Whore gave us to their self-titled EP, along with references to Harm’s Way and Entombed. That description of the band’s amalgam of punishing hardcore and bone-mangling, neck-wrecking Swedish death metal punched all sorts of pleasure-center buttons in our brains, and then it turned out that the music fully lived up to the descriptions. And thus we were eager to help spread the word by premiering a full stream of the EP today, in advance of its April 10 release on CD and digital.

Death Whore rampage through seven tracks in 20 minutes, and every one of those compact brawlers is explosively destructive and propelled by the kind of feral and filthy savagery that will light a fire under your pulse rate. Continue reading »

DARK FORTRESS: “SPECTRES FROM THE OLD WORLD”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 022020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Germany’s Dark Fortress, which was released by Century Media on February 28th.)

This COVID-19 situation has really fucked with all of us in big and small ways.  That should go without saying, but it’s also my excuse for being so behind on NCS shit.  Quarantine prep, a tornado hitting close to home and putting me out of power for a bit, and other setbacks have kept me distracted from my NCS duties and it’s sucked. But now I’m back to full operational no-life quarantine activity and I can finally get to this.

I’m glad in the end that I’ve been held up, because it’s given me an absurd amount of time to spend with Dark Fortress in the interim.  They are definitely one of my personal favorite black metal bands, Old Mans Child and Keep Of Kalessin joining them in my top three.  Their dedication to doing a form of black metal that’s sort of amorphous while being incredibly disciplined, precise, and unafraid to consistently dive into other sub-genres of extreme metal is the kind of thing I love, just in principle.

Spectres From The Old World is a record in particular that I find fascinating, because if anything, it points to a band who are moving away from black metal as the foundation of their sound and want to re-purpose it as a flourish. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SALTAS

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 022020
 

 

(In this new interview for our site Comrade Aleks spoke with both members of the Swedish death/doom band Saltas about their new album, which was released two weeks ago, as well as the status of the members’ other projects.)

Despite this crazy situation all over the world the metal industry still works, and this month, due to the efforts of Nuclear War Now! Productions, the two-man project Saltas of Gothenburg, Sweden has just released their debut full-length Mors Salis: Opus I. This macabre death doom metal straight from the underground catacombs was created by C.J. (vocals, drums) and N.R. (vocals, guitars).

C.J. succeeds in keeping his personality a bit anonymous though N.R. is Leif Nicklas Rudolfsson himself, founder of the Swedish grim bastion of the extreme doom front Runemagick and half a dozen other bands and projects like Domedag, Necrocurse, and The Funeral Orchestra, just to name few. I bet you have a clue what you may expect from Saltas, we’ve talked with both of the band’s’ members. Here you see result of this conversation: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ZAN — “HOUSE OF SPLENDOR”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 012020
 

 

Man, this video makes me so fucking nostalgic, amped-up by the memory of being in the midst of a packed crowd and in the presence of a band on stage kicking our adrenaline into collective overdrive, and longing for the day when that can happen again.

But beyond the intense nostalgia for happier times that this new video provokes, it’s also a tonic for all the other mental and emotional ailments many of us are experiencing these days, because both this new song by Zan and the way they kick it out in the film of this live performance is exhilarating on a bunch of different levels. That song, “House of Splendor“, is the kind of thing that does indeed transform a shoulder-to-shoulder venue into a house of raucous splendor. It comes from Zan’s new album Behold the Key, which was just released last Friday by Blackhouse Records. Continue reading »

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