Mar 102025
 

(This is DGR‘s review of the debut album by the German band Synaptic, which was released in January by Lifeless Chasm Records.)

Dwelling in the earlier part of the year has so far presented a handful of pleasant surprises but none came out of left field quite like the first full-length from Germany’s Synaptic, a tech-death, thrash, and melodeath hybrid that has resulted in a sub-thirty-five minute blistering whirlwind of an album known as Enter The Void.

Synaptic have existed in one embryonic form or another for over twenty-plus years of on-and-off activity but up to this point have only had one release to their name, a twenty-seven minute EP dating back to 2008 entitled Distortion Of Senses. Since then, the whole lineup has changed save for one main project-driver, and it seems as if the entire sound of the group has shifted from those days. It means that in a lot of ways Enter The Void is a full relaunch of Synaptic – now a three piece – and is the sort of release that makes it seem as if the seventeen years between releases were put to good use.

Even though there’s only an eight-minute difference between Synaptic‘s full-length and the aforementioned EP, there is a lot more packed within those thirty some-odd minutes than you might expect. Continue reading »

Mar 092025
 

I got a really good head-start on this column yesterday, so good that I thought I’d be able to post it much earlier today than usual. But of course the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.

This mouse forgot that Daylight Savings Time would go into effect overnight, springing the clock forward. And then this mouse slept for 9 1/2 hours. Put those two together, and the morning was well underway by the time I turned to finishing this. Oh well.

What you’ll find below is an alternating sequence of songs from forthcoming records and complete releases, most of them head-spinning in different ways, but with a more meditative and deeply haunting experience at the end. Continue reading »

Mar 082025
 

(written by Islander)

I can’t think of any reason to criticize Bandcamp for renewing their Bandcamp Fridays in 2025. Unless I’m missing something, it’s good for bands and labels that use the platform, not only because it lets them keep more of their sales revenue but also because it incentivizes fans to spend.

But it does make my life harder, because in weeks ending with one of those days the volume of new music swells significantly. Even in more normal weeks I can’t listen to everything I’m interested in. That’s an even greater impossibility in weeks like this past one.

But of course I did make some picks. Three of the picks are live videos that I’ve included at the end without much commentary, but the bands’ names ought to be inducement enough. Continue reading »

Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Only five days ago Bandcamp announced that it would continue Bandcamp Fridays in 2025, with the first one happening today. Before that, it wasn’t clear that they would continue, so it caught most of us by surprise. But word obviously spread very fast. What was already unfolding as a packed week for new music became a typhoon over the last few days. I was already agonizing about what the hell to do for tomorrow’s usual SEEN AND HEARD roundup, but now I feel like someone caught on the beach as a towering tidal wave rushes ashore.

Bandcamp Fridays are always an ideal time to spread the word about new music, but because of other duties around here I rarely have enough time to pull something together until the day after. I really don’t have much time for it today either, but felt like I needed to do something to make tomorrow’s task even a bit less overwhelming.

What I decided to do is a bit out of character for myself and the site as a whole: focusing exclusively on some of the bigger names in metal (or in one case, metal-adjacent). We don’t ignore the big names around here, as long as what they’re doing is good, but we often use them as a way of luring people into music from bands whose names are much more obscure. If I’d had more time, that’s what I would have done with this small roundup. It was just easier and faster to stick with these four.

But of course, none of these four new songs and videos would be here if I didn’t think they were worth recommending. Continue reading »

Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Few long-gone bands from the underground still have as passionately devoted a following as the Swedish group Lifelover. Two of that band’s surviving members have worked together under the name Ritualmord to create a debut album that will be released tomorrow by Unjoy – Art & Ritualia. That pedigree alone would attract Lifelover fans to the album like iron filings to a magnet, but almost like a rebuff of an old lover, Ritualmord named their album This Is Not Lifelover.

And the album’s name is mostly true, but not entirely true. It isn’t Lifelover, but to use a cliché, there are some Lifelover nucleotides in Ritualmord‘s DNA — though indeed it’s true that the other ingredients of their musical polymer are quite different from what a Lifelover fan would expect and possibly hope for — though it may reflect where Lifelover would have gone (to more vast and mind-bending places), had it lived.

In lieu of typical PR promotional texts, the two people behind the album, ( ) (Kim Carlsson) and 1853 (Johan Gabrielson) have crafted a different kind of introduction, and we ought to begin there in presenting today’s album premiere: Continue reading »

Mar 072025
 

(At the end of February Downfall Records released the debut album from a group of U.S. metal veterans who’ve taken the name Empty Throne, and today we have DGR‘s extensive and enthusiastic review of what they’ve accomplished on this first full-length.)

One of the most appreciable things about Empty Throne and their new album Unholy is that within the first minute of the opening song “Abbey Of Thelema”, you have a pretty good idea of exactly how this album is going to go and what the band sound like. It has been some time since we’ve had a release that has so clearly laid its cards on the table with an opening furnace blast of music quite like Empty Throne do up until the quiet guitar break in that opening song.

You’ll have a sense of just how much of the group’s death metal with a hint of melodicism, blackened thrash, and gnarly razor-sharp guitars you’ll want from the band right about that point. That’s not to say that Empty Throne aren’t happy to provide other things, but that opening minute lays out the core of a very ambitious band who across six songs and forty minutes have a lot to say — and as it turns out, at a very fast and teeth-shattering tempo as well. Continue reading »

Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Listless is a new depressive black metal project born from the mind of Aidan Crossley, the guitarist and vocalist of the atmospheric black metal band Liminal Shroud from Victoria, BC in the Canadian West.

Those familiar with Liminal Shroud will detect some kinship in the music of that band and Listless, but in the case of this new project, Aidan has drawn inspiration from the likes of Austere, Woods of Desolation, Coldworld, None, and Gris, as well as depressive rock elements from bands like Lifelover and Psychonaut 4.

On April 25th, Hypnotic Dirge Records will release the self-titled debut album of Listless, and what we have for you today is a video for the first haunting and harrowing song revealed from the album. Its name is “Devoid“. Continue reading »

Mar 062025
 

(Andy Synn does his best to let the light in… let’s see what it reveals, shall we?)

I think it was pretty much the day I started writing here that I began chipping away at the whole “no clean singing” thing here at NCS.

Granted, it was always more of a tongue-in-cheek statement, rather than a strict edict, as the site had been featuring bands with various forms of clean singing, off and on, well before I got here.

But I’ve definitely been responsible for bringing a fair number of bands – bands with nary a hint of harsh vocals in their sound – to the site that probably wouldn’t have been covered here otherwise.

And since I was the one to first bring Doom-Pop/Dream-Gaze quartet SOM to the site’s attention – first with my review of their debut album, The Fall, followed by my write-up of their stunning second album, The Shape of Everything (which also made it into my Critical Top Ten of 2022) – it only seems fitting that I continue to make a mockery of everything we stand for by sharing my thoughts on their upcoming third album, Let The Light In (out next week on Pelagic Records).

Continue reading »

Mar 062025
 

(written by Islander)

The Arizona band Necrambulant have a new album coming out tomorrow on Gore House Productions. Ever-interested in improving my vocabulary, I tried to look up the meaning of “necrambulant”, especially because a variant of the word also appears in the album title: Upheaval of Malignant Necrambulance.

Turns out it’s not in any dictionary (not yet). According to an 11-year-old interview of Necrambulant guitarist Ron Clark at Teeth of the Divine, it’s a word the band made up by combining the prefix “Necro” with “Ambulant” — “just a fancy way to say ‘Zombie.'”

At the time of that interview Necrambulant were about 9 months beyond the release of their debut album Infernal Infectious Necro-Ambulatory Pandemic. It might be time for another interview to figure out why it took the band so long to release more music, with 9 years passing by until their 2022 EP A Feast of Festering Flesh, and then 3 more years until this new second full-length, coming out a chunky dozen years after the first one. (I did find a quartet of more recent interviews, but they were all just the kind of stock questions that could be doled out to any band, and none of them delved into that question.)

But really, the answer is just a matter of bystander curiosity. It’s irrelevant to whether anyone should be paying attention to the band’s new album. Whether attention should be paid, of course, is a function of the music and the tastes of the listener. You’ll get to taste the whole thing — and it will get to taste you raw, without benefit of cooking or seasoning — because we’re providing a full stream today. Continue reading »

Mar 062025
 

(The Polish titans Decapitated recently finished their Nihility Across North America Tour, with support from Incantation, Darkest Hour, and Exmortus. Our friend Ben Manzella caught their February 27 show at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge and provided us with the following report and his photos of the performances.)

It is hard for me to believe that it was nineteen years ago that I started to desire to be at a concert almost any night that it was possible. For obvious reasons, this has hardly been possible but I couldn’t help but be reflective as I walked into the DNA Lounge for the Nihility Across North America tour. As I think I mentioned in my review of Decapitated’s show last year, Vogg was the first person to allow me the time to interview them in person. We haven’t been able to talk again in person since that night, but it still means a lot to me. It was great to be able to see this tour celebrating a pinnacle moment in the career of Decapitated. Continue reading »