AN NCS PREMIERE: UNVIÂR — “DISGLAÇ”

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Nov 132025
 

(written by Islander)

The maestro Paolo Girardi painted the stunning cover art for Unviâr’s forthcoming debut album Disglaç. As you can see, it’s out of the ordinary in Girardi’s vast catalogue of works — no monsters, no demons, no writhing horrors or glaring eyeballs, no visions of the world ending. Instead, it’s naturalistic and beautiful, though also ominous and haunting, rather than paranormal and nightmarish.

The artwork may raise a question in the minds of listeners about whether the music of this Italian black metal band, as reflected on Disglaç, is in line with the visuals. We have an early answer today, through our premiere of the album’s title song in advance of the record’s November 28 release by ATMF. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40 FOR 2025

 LISTMANIA 2025  5 Responses »
Nov 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Well, holy shit, is it already time here on only the 13th day of November to begin our site’s annual LISTMANIA orgy? Lo and behold, it is.

It has become an annual (and reflexive) tradition at our putrid site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list, because they always seem to burst from the starting gate sooner than anyone else — and they’ve done it again this year, even earlier (by one day) than they did in 2024.

I need to repeat, of course, that the reason we also use their list as the launching point for all of our own forthcoming YE features is because, in my humble opinion, DECIBEL is still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal. Their list also always generates healthy discussions (and sometimes unhealthy ones), so it’s still a fitting way to launch the latest LISTMANIA season apart from the list’s early-bird status.

The DECIBEL 2025 list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2026 edition (which can be ordered here and includes a cover story about GWAR’s 40th anniversary, a Hall of Fame on Pallbearer’s debut, an exclusive new Morbikon flexi disc, and writers’ commentary about the Top 40 list), but DECIBEL again decided (for the 11th year in a row) 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. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MNAJDRA AND SAĦĦAR — “MDLXV – FIDI, VENDETTA”

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Nov 122025
 

(written by Islander)

Two days from now Snow Wolf Records and Fiadh Productions will co-release a special collaborative split album of black metal inspired by Maltese lore, focusing on the renowned Great Siege of Malta. One of the bands, Mnajdra, is a U.S. band but with a long-standing interest in the history and culture of the island of Malta (indeed, the band is named for a megalithic temple complex found on Malta). The other, Saħħar, is a Maltese band with an extensive discography dating back to its 2007 full-length debut.

In their musical re-telling of the Great Siege, Mnajdra represents the Turkish invaders and Saħħar represents the Knights of Malta. The tracks of the two bands alternate across the course of the album, but the record also includes one song in which the two bands collaborate.

To help spread the word, we’re sharing a full stream of the album today, along with some thoughts about the music, but before we get to that we ought to provide a brief sketch of the Great Siege of Malta for people who aren’t as steeped in that history as Mnajdra and Saħħar. Continue reading »

CKRAFT: “UNCOMMON GROUNDS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 122025
 

(Settle in, make some time, prepare for detours into a labyrinth of rabbit holes, and eventually reach a wildly inventive discussion of wildly inventive music. In other words, we have another remarkable review by Vizzah Harri, this time focusing on a remarkable album by the French band CKRAFT that was released way back in January of this waning year.)

One type of madness is to take pattern-seeking to the level where one actively looks for connections. It’s been pretty stormy in my neck of the woods this year. Not being able to account for how others experienced a year filled with despair for many, no-one can claim to be able to right or mend all wrongs on our earth in the current zeitgeist. There is however a criminally underplayed and underrated album that demands attention. It will be revealed after a bit of a detour. People that groan about nothing good coming out anymore are living under a rock and probably still send each other this meme for kicks.

Every now and then you hear a melody that reminds you of something else. Only recently becoming acquainted with Emerson, Lake & Palmer led me to listen to their Tarkus album and when Stones of years came around I was pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I heard that vocal melody before. I was like, this is Hail Spirit Noir, but it very obviously was not. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DIVINE HATRED / VANDAMPIRE / WAR CLUB

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Nov 122025
 

(Andy Synn has three more bands from the UK underground for you to check out today)

There’s a passage in One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (which I’m currently re-reading) where he talks about his experiences as a young journalist and his desire to tell “stories of consequence… stories that, had you not read about them in my articles, you wouldn’t have read at all.”

And while the whole book is an excellent piece of work – engaging, insightful, and unapologetically devastating in the way it dissects and analyses why the world is the way it is, right here and right now, and what that really means when you strip away all the constant obfuscation and abnegation of responsibility by those who bear the lion’s share of the blame – this particular passage stood out to me a little more this time around.

Because, really, that’s something we try to do here at NCS – albeit, obviously, on a much smaller scale – when we focus on covering bands who we believe haven’t received the attention or acclaim they deserve (which, in some cases, means any at all).

Sure, we’re not afraid of writing about bigger bands who already have a decent level of exposure – they help bring eyes to the site after all, which in turn benefits their lesser-known cousins – but the ethos here has always been to try to use our platform as a place for articles and opinions you might not get elsewhere.

So, with this in mind, today I’ve chosen three debut albums by a trio of bands who don’t necessarily have the biggest profile outside the UK – even Divine Hatred, who have crossed the channel a couple of times already (and if they want to share some info about that with us, that’d be appreciated), don’t appear to have received much coverage for their new record – but who could (and should) all benefit from this article.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AMIENSUS — “THE LODGE”

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Nov 112025
 

(written by Islander)

One of our site’s favorite bands, Minnesota-based Amiensus, have busied themselves this year by releasing singles — “Fields of Emerald Fire” (reviewed here), “We Still Bloom” (reviewed here), and “The Peak of Denali” (reviewed here). They have also been teasing a fourth single to emerge before year-end, and today we’re very happy to bring it your way.

This one is a cover song, and you might guess whose music Amiensus is covering based solely on the cover art. But in case you’re still scratching your head, it’s Agalloch, and the song is “The Lodge” from the band’s beloved 2002 album The Mantle. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE OMEN MACHINE — “DELAY, DENY, DEFEND”

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Nov 112025
 

(written by Islander)

“If you dislike the American healthcare system, have had issues with doctors, or have ever had problems with health insurance, boy do I have a song for you….”

That’s how Colin Busse from Rochester, NY begins to introduce the latest song from his collaborative metal project The Omen Machine. The name of this new one, which we’re premiering today with a video in advance of its November 14 release, is “Delay, Deny, Defend,” a title derived from a book of the same name by Jay Feinman, which excoriates the self-serving, profit-directed behavior of U.S. insurance companies.

Deplorable recent events here in the U.S. have put the affordability of healthcare on the front burner of lots of people’s minds, and so the timing of The Omen Machine’s new single could hardly be more on-point. Continue reading »

NOVEMBRE: “WORDS OF INDIGO”

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Nov 112025
 

(Last week Peaceville released the ninth studio album by the revamped Italian band Novembre, and as our DGR is a long-term follower of the band’s music, there’s no one here better suited to review it — which he does below.)

It could never be perfect, one guesses, that the timelines of releases would line up perfectly so that the opening ‘fun with statistics’ paragraph could already be pre-written for us. Alas though, we do find ourselves cycling back around anyway with Italy’s Novembre, who’ve returned to us after another near ten-year period of inactivity as a renewed creature and full band.

It has been close to nine and a half years since the group’s previous album Ursa was let loose upon the world, to unleash its melancholy and general sadness upon unsuspecting citizens who might’ve thought they would be enjoying a beautiful spring and bright summer back in April of 2016. We’ll just gloss over the fact that yours truly actually scribbled something up about the album at that time as well, itself a victim of a long retreat from the public eye on the band’s part.

Yet even as a new creature, Novembre find themselves existing in cycles, and their newest album Words Of Indigo springs to life just as we enter the cold peace of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere yet somehow still finds itself conjuring up the spirits of blue-hued cover arts and siblings of old, as if it were the unintentional completion of a trilogy begun all the way back in 2002 with Dreams D’Azur, revitalized in 2007’s The Blue, and now 18 years later summoned once again for the aforementioned Words Of Indigo. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BURNING DEATH — “DEATH IS SALVATION”

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Nov 102025
 

(written by Islander)

You’re about to imagine what it would be like to catch fire and cavort with devils, to throw caution to the winds and spin like a tornado of flame while bouncing off demon bodies in Hell’s own mosh pit.

That’s one way of trying to capture the experience of “Death In Salvation,” an absolutely electrifying and evil-minded song off the self-titled debut album of Burning Death, an infernal thrash outfit from Nashville, Tennessee, which is now set for release on December 5th by Caligari Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HAGETISSE — “TO WITHER BENEATH THY RADIANCE”

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Nov 102025
 

(written by Islander)

For approximately 35 years the Dutch artist Maurice de Jong (aka Mories) has been churning out music as if his life depended on it (and we can infer that it probably does). This morning a count of his endeavors at Metal-Archives shows 45 current or past bands through which he has released music over that span of years.

The ones best known from that list are probably Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak of Altering, and De Magia Veterum, but we should not lose sight of Hagetisse, one of the arguably more “traditional” of his musical vehicles, the tradition being strains of black metal rooted in the ’90s — witness the fact that Void Wanderer Productions recommends the newest Hagetisse album for fans of Ulver, Emperor, and Obtained Enslavement.

That new album, an 8-song affair, is titled To Wither Beneath Thy Radiance, and to help spread the word about it we’re premiering its title song today. Continue reading »

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