AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CEREMONY OF SILENCE — “OÚTIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Mar 292019
 

 

Oútis, the debut album by the Slovakian duo Ceremony of Silence, is one of the most mind-bending albums of the year so far, a display of such astonishing (and mentally destabilizing) brilliance that it is likely to leave a shivering gleam in the eyes of astute listeners even as they make their lists at the end of this year.

The album will be released by Willowtip Records on April 5th. We have already published an enthusiastic review by our contributor Vonlughlio, who called it “spectacular from start to finish”, “complex and extravagantly inventive at many times, straightforward and simple (and oppressive) at others”, but since we have the privilege of premiering a full stream of Oútis today, I can’t resist adding my own equally exuberant comments by way of introduction. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MOONSHADE — “SUN DETHRONED”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 292019
 

 

In October of last year Art Gates Records released the debut album Sun Dethroned by the melodic death metal band Moonshade from northern Portugal. As explained by the band, the album is “a conceptual work that deals with a two-sided personification of the human condition, in the form of two romantically involved main characters that symbolize the abstract concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’: Lenore and God of Nothingness, the latter represented in the album cover”. As Moonshade further explain:

“Throughout this piece a story is told of which the most important events are the death of Lenore (“good”), that leads God of Nothingness (“evil”) towards a spiraling descent into wrath and madness, eventually consuming all reality, including himself, finally abandoning his pitiful existence in a sea of regrets where, in essence, he mourns his lost love and mourns the innocence of his madness. In short, Sun Dethroned functions as a parabola that highlights the need for balance while firmly stating the cost of its absence.”

Today we present the premiere of a music video made by the talented Portuguese filmmaker Guilherme Enriques for the title track to Sun Dethroned. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EYE OF THE DESTROYER — “FACE DOWN”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 282019
 

 

Judging by the song we’re about to premiere from the new album Baptized In Pain by New Jersey’s Eye of the Destroyer, the band picked an accurate name for the record. Listening to “Face Down” feels like being beaten with crowbars.

In addition to being a cold-eyed, heavyweight bruiser, this hybrid of death metal and hardcore is a humongous headbanger. That effect kicks in pretty quickly, but not before the band opens the heavens with a thunderstorm of pummeling drums, rumbling bass, and dismal, ringing chords. Then comes the gargantuan, mercilessly hammering, teeth-loosening riff that will get your head going (and your skull cracking), at the same time as Joe Randazza‘s raw, scalding howls do their damnedest to burn the flesh off your face. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABDUCTION — “ALL PAIN AS PENANCE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 282019
 

 

Abduction is a one-man UK black metal band whose ravaging debut album To Further Dreams of Failure we reviewed (in part) in March 2017. The band also released an album last year, A Crown of Curses, and now this UK ravager already has a third one geared up for release tomorrow — March 29th — via Inferna Profundus Records. All Pain As Penance is the name of the new one, and we have a full stream of it for you today.

“Infinite Ancient Hexes” was the first track made available for streaming a few weeks ago. It seized attention immediately. On that track, as on all the others, A|V handles everything except drums, which were performed by session member EG. His drumming on that first song to be revealed from the album is powerful, driving the pace in a plundering fury while delivering neck-cracking fills along the way. Meanwhile, the riffing creates a dismal and poisonous atmosphere, a thick, desolating miasma of sound, parsed by chiming chords that are still moody but also hypnotic, and by an incendiary solo.

It made for an absolutely explosive, irresistibly head-moving herald for this album, notwithstanding the music’s aura of pestilence and wretchedness. It rocks as well as ravages, and it’s easy to get addicted to it very quickly. But there is so much more to come from this album following that opener. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AMBER TEARS — “WHEN NO TRAILS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 282019
 

 

It was only yesterday that I wrote about a song from the new album by the Russian pagan doom band Amber Tears [Янтарные Слезы]. I knew then that we would be premiering the entire album today, and I had planned to recommend the track much earlier than I did, but I couldn’t resist. “Sing the Wind, Sing the Raven” [Спой Ветер, Спой Воронis] such a powerfully captivating song, its mood so wintry and haunting, so steeped in sorrow down to the marrow, so deeply moving, yet so glorious.

What I knew then, and can prove to you now, is that the entire album is just as captivating as that opening track. Entitled When No Trails [Когда Нет Троп], it will be released by BadMood Man Records on March 29th — tomorrow! Continue reading »

ACCURSED SPAWN: “THE VIRULENT HOST”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 272019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Accursed Spawn from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, which was released by PRC Music on March 23rd.)

For whatever reason we here at NCS seem to have developed a bit of a reputation, in certain quarters, as a site that solely covers Black Metal.

Of course, you and I know that’s not true (even if my next edition of The Synn Report is most definitely going to be blacker than the blackest black… times infinity), but I’m willing to accept that perhaps it sometimes looks like we feature our blackened brethren more frequently than any other members of our disparate metallic menagerie.

Still, you know we love our Death Metal too, in all its myriad forms, and to prove it I’d like to introduce you all to Canada’s latest extreme export… Accursed Spawn. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FALAISE — “A PLACE I DON’T BELONG TO”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 272019
 

 

A Place I Don’t Belong To is the third album by the Italian duo Falaise. It will be released on March 29th through A Sad Sadness Song, but we have a full stream of the album for you today.

The band’s first two albums, As Time Goes By (2015) and My Endless Immensity (2017), have charted an evolutionary course as Falaise has moved in a direction that may now cause many listeners to put them in the company of such bands as Alcest and Lantlôs, as they have fashioned an amalgam of sound that now includes depressive black metal, post-rock, and shoegaze. They are creating music of changing shades but persistent, unabashedly heart-felt, emotional intensity, and the new album finds them at the peak of their powers so far, delivering elaborately-textured and dramatically contrasting music that’s completely captivating. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEVOID OF THOUGHT, SLAVES BC, EXCRUCIATION, AMBER TEARS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 272019
 

 

I wasn’t sure I would have a time for a round-up this week, given the continuing press of my day job, but I did manage to pull this one together based on some late-night listening over the last couple of evenings. If I stay up late enough and wake up early enough, I find that I’m still able to squeeze in something like this, despite having a lot fewer daylight hours to call my own. Here we go:

DEVOID OF THOUGHT

In October 2017 we premiered a demo named Astral Necrosis by the Italian band Devoid of Thought, whose name I thought would also describe the mental state of listeners exposed to the demo’s three tracks. The music was a whipsawing amalgam of death metal and thrash, with the kind of fireball instrumental performances and brain-spinning intricacy that might lead one to slap a “progressive” label on the ingredients as well — except the music seemed too maniacal and vicious for that word. It was insanely good, and also just insane. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TROLL — “LEGEND MASTER, BOOK 2: THREE EVIL WORDS”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  8 Responses »
Mar 262019
 

 

This is another day when newcomers to our site will become confused, or will complain about “bait and switch” tactics. For those folks, let’s be clear up-front that we do make exceptions to that rule brandished in our site’s name. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does it’s well-earned, as it is in the case of the song by Portland’s Troll that we’re premiering in this post.

The band’s frontman, Rainbo, really does have a remarkable voice — clear, strong, and capable of channeling varieties of emotional intensity with gripping force. In this new song, as in others from Troll’s new album, Legend Master, he pairs parts of his range to create harmonies of haunting power. His voice is a dominant presence in the music, but it’s far from the only appealing ingredient in the music, as you’re about to discover. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: JOHN, THE VOID — “CURSED”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 262019
 

 

In their first two releases, a self-titled EP in 2014 and an album entitled II in 2016, the Italian band John, the Void explored conceptual themes rooted in science-fiction and visionary experiences. Their new album, III Adversa, follows a different path. As they have described, each track represents a different feeling, “based on a more-concrete sense of despair, where the human kind must face the irreparable sense of helplessness against the fate, the pain, the loss, the guilt, and the exhausting war to conquer a moment of peace”.

In manifesting such struggles through sound, the band have drawn upon ingredients from catastrophic sludge, post-black metal, and doom, with careful use of electronic accents. It’s not “easy listening”. Like the ever-present and immutable experiences of human existence that inspired these songs, they are instead intense, often harrowing sensations — but they’re emotionally gripping, like strong hands that have seized the back of your neck, forcing you to look at things you might rather not see but won’t be able to ignore for very long. Continue reading »

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