SEEN AND HEARD ON A TUESDAY: KUNTARI, MOUTH OF MADNESS, VERMINGOD, PLUTONIAN SHORE, SETH, HYENISM

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 152025
 


Kuntari

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere responsibility today and nothing else in the queue from our other writers, I had just enough time to compile a rare weekday roundup of new songs and videos. I think many of the songs that follow include aspects of the exotic, or at least that’s the best word I can come up with. The collection is book-ended by a couple of things I found thanks to someone else’s recent collection.

KUNTARI (Indonesia)

Last October I came across the Indonesian musical project Kuntari (the duo of Tesla Manaf and Rio Abror) based on a fascinating collaboration Kuntari did with an Indonesian “Post-Black Metal/Crust/Shoegaze” band named Avhath. I included a bit of background info about Kuntari and a lot of enthusiastic words about just one head-spinning song from the collaboration here. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HARVESTED — “SYNAPTIC CONFUSION”

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Jul 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Your muscles are about to reflexively twitch, your head is about to hammer, your pulse is about to accelerate. Audio worms will slither into your ear canals and take up residence there. Some of your cranial neurons may start spinning, creating visions of fast devils and hulking monsters.

Those are our predictions of what will happen when you see and hear the playthrough video we’re premiering for the song “Synaptic Confusion” by the Ottawa-based death metal band Harvested. It’s an excellent way to rev up your own motor as Harvested rev up theirs. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TSARETVORETZ

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 152025
 

(In this new interview our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks talks with one of the members of the Russian black metal band Tsaretvoretz (Царетворец), whose second album was released in May by Svanrenne Music.)

The official press-release of this melancholic black metal from Russia states: “Tsars are created with blood, committing palace coups. Or with impulses of the soul, perversely evolving into the creation of idols for themselves. But after the fire, only ashes remain. Tsaretvoretz is a straightforward black metal with fiery melodies and atmospheric melancholic passages of post-black, absorbing all the best from Russian and Scandinavian examples of the coal genre. For connoisseurs of Morokh, Second to Sun, Downfall of Gaia”.

Laconic yet informative – as well as this interview with one of Tsaretvoretz’ founders we did due to the release of their second album Kostmi Usypana Zemlya / The Ground Is Strewn with Bones.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STOMACH — “LOW DEMON”

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Jul 142025
 

(written by Islander)

Miserable and merciless, doomed and depraved, an exorcism of inner demons. Those are among the descriptions you may have seen if you’ve come across the news about a new album from Chicago-based Stomach. You may have also seen the album’s name: Low Demon. And man, is it ever that.

The album will be released this coming Friday by Hibernation Release. It will likely turn the end of the week into a smoking crater, from which horrid smoking things will crawl. But hell, why wait to see what happens? Let’s see what happens today. There’s no good reason to let this week pretend to have a positive start (we know better than to be fooled that way), and so we’ll drop Low Demon on your heads right now. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XVIII: THE HALFWAY POINT

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Jul 142025
 

(Below you will find Daniel Barkasi’s monthly collection of NCS album reviews, this time recommending six records released in June 2025.)

It’s the middle of the year, and boy are my… everything tired. Time always seems to move fast, because it does. We don’t need reminders of the all too limited amount of it, but sadly they happen regularly. Since our last installment, a major news story that affected me as a Liverpool FC supporter – but more so as a human – was the death of brothers Diogo Jota and André Silva in a driving accident, traveling from Porto to Liverpool for the start of training for Diogo.

The most heartbreaking part, other than him only being 28, was that he had gotten married a week prior, with three very young children. Furthermore, he came across as a lovely fellow that didn’t fall into the egotism that many professional athletes fall into. A humble guy who loved his life, and showed it all the time. LFC classily will pay out the remainder of his contract to his now widow, and will fully fund his children’s education. They also retired his #20 kit number – all-around class from a classy club. RIP Diogo and André – YNWA. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LUCTUS, NATÜRGEIST, MANIA, ARKHAAIK, TRYPANON, DOWNWARD

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Although this Sunday’s collection includes varying shades and phases of black metal I would say they have unsettling sensations of madness and murder in common, and most of them feature a muscular heart-hammering punch as well as abundant doses of crazed ferocity and mind-bending psychosis.

In many instances you’ll also encounter some of the most unhinged vocals you’re likely to find outside the hideous real-world history of self-immolation.

Only in extreme metal could an introduction like that qualify as “enticing,” but I know our audience well enough that I’m sure it will be. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PARADISE LOST, AMORPHIS, CAR BOMB, NOVEMBRE, HIGH PARASITE, TIGGUO COBAUC, CIRCLING OVER, OROMET, CORRIDORÉ

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 122025
 


Paradise Lost

(written by Islander)

When I finished yesterday’s head start on today’s column I thought I’d focus today on lesser-known bands. As you can see, I didn’t completely follow through on that notion. What grabbed me as I listened turned out to be a mix of names everyone knows and names more likely to be new discoveries.

I’ve led with the luminaries. Maybe they will function like old friends greeting you at the door to their home and pulling you inside, where a group of strangers are waiting to do unexpected things to you, some of which, as it turns out, are going to hurt. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VISITANT — “STARLESS”

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Jul 112025
 

(written by Islander)

Visitant is an excellent name. Unlike the more mundane “visitor”, it suggests the appearance of something uncommon, something supernatural and possibly dangerous, like an apparitional visitation from the spirit world. That idea is reinforced by the striking red-hued cover image on this U.S. band’s debut album Rubidium.

True to the name they chose, Visitant‘s music turns out to be uncommon as well, a changing braid of varying genre ingredients that creates altered and interwoven sensations — sensations haunting and harrowing, disconsolate and vengeful, diaphanous and pulverizing, and altogether head-spinning.

You’ll get an idea of just how variable those ingredients are when you see the “for fans of” references provided by Visitant‘s label Exitus Stratagem Records: Gojira, Opeth, Naglfar, Between the Buried And Me, Enslaved, Dimmu Borgir, Mgła, Leaves Eyes, and Chelsea Wolfe.

Of course, not all those allusions become relevant within each song on Rubidium. The weave tends to change from song to song. The one from the album we’re focused on today is “Starless“, presented through a gripping lyric video made by Motus Insaniam. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A FRIDAY: HIDEOUS DIVINITY, CRYPTOPSY, GREEN CARNATION, DESASTER, BRÉVINE, THEURGION

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 112025
 

(written by Islander)

Consider this a head-start on the roundup I usually put together on Saturday. A hell of a lot of new songs and videos popped up this week, and even with this head-start I still won’t be able to make more than a dent in that big moving wall, but at least it will be a bigger dent this week.

I decided to focus today’s collection on the bigger names scrawled on that wall, but before finishing we’ll still turn our gaze to a few names not yet written in such large letters. I haven’t figured out what tomorrow’s column will include, but my aim will be to dig even deeper into obscurities (at least relatively speaking). Continue reading »

EMBERTHRONE: “CURSIVE”

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Jul 112025
 

(Sacramento-based DGR reviews a very recently released EP by Sacramento-based Emberthrone, and comes away happy.)

Sacramento’s Emberthrone are one we’ve kept a curious eye on for a little bit now. Part of a small-town-sized wave of deathcore-leaning projects that sprang up in the lockdown years wherein a lot of people suddenly had a bunch of free time out of nowhere for some reason, Emberthrone seemed like a solid union with a lot of potential just based off of its lineup alone at the time. Uniting some of the scene’s workhorses for vocals and drums in the form of Monte Bernard and Gabe Seeber, the group’s complete portrait included bassist Quentin Garcia and guitarist Martin Bianchini.

Their group’s four-song debut Godless Wonder found them a home on Seek & Strike, a label that has slowly developed an arc for being the home of boutique ass-kickers in prefix-core heavy form. Godless Wonder was a reliably solid brick of music that fell perfectly in line with a lot of the bruisers that’ve emerged from California’s filing cabinet over the years. In the three years hence, though, the lineup for Emberthrone has remained fairly solid save for what seems to be a new face behind the kit, translating into an interesting round two for the band.

Now more matured and gelled together as a band, Emberthrone returned in early-July with a second EP bearing the name Cursive that seems to be forged by experience and a stronger vision of what sort of project they want to be, while also much more determined to throw its heft around than they did before. Continue reading »

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