NO CLEAN SINGING

ASCENSION FESTIVAL MMXIX: AN INTERVIEW OF STEPHEN LOCKHART

Mar 212019

Ascension MMXIX will take place on June 13 – 15, 2019, in Mosfellbær, Iceland, about a 20-minute drive or half-hour bus ride from the city center in Reykjavik. Over those three days 30 bands from a dozen countries will perform at the Hlégarður venue. The impressive line-up includes not only Sólstafir and the best-known names from the vanguard of red-hot Icelandic black metal but also such U.S. bands as Akhlys, Drab Majesty, and King Dude; Antaeus and The Order of Apollyon from France; Auroch and Mitocondrion from Canada; Mgła from Poland; Sweden’s Tribulation; Akrotheism from Greece; Jupiterian from Brazil; and the Belgian band Wolvennest.

Ascension is the spiritual successor to the widely acclaimed Oration Festival, which ran for three years (from 2016 through 2018) in Reykjavik. Like Oration, Ascension is the brainchild of Stephen Lockhart, who is the owner/operator of both the Icelandic record label Oration and of Studio Emissary, where Lockhart has been responsible for recording, mixing, and mastering an extensive list of great metal releases since the studio’s founding in 2010. The bands with whom Lockhart has worked through the studio have formed the nucleus of both Oration and now Ascension, but the appeal of the festivals to performing bands obviously extends much further. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHWOMB — “MOLOCH’S DOMAIN”

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Mar 202019

April 19th is the date set by Iron Bonehead Productions for release of the debut album by the Spanish black metal band Deathwomb, Its title, Moonless Night Sacraments, conveys the band’s devotion to resurrecting a certain primitive and primeval form of ’90s black metal that combines a cold, wraithlike mysticism with brutish depravity. These wolves hunt their prey in the pitch-black, and the light that gleams from their eyes comes from another world.

These references still don’t fully exhaust what Deathwomb have accomplished in their music. As revealed by the song we’re about to premiere, “Moloch’s Domain“, their musical toxins syphon from the brutishness of death metal and the dismal ghastliness of occult doom to create an experience that’s blood-freezing as well as heart-pumping. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOCTURNAL HOLLOW — “TRAPPED IN A COFFIN”

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Mar 202019

Prepare to feel the fear of being nailed into a coffin and the adrenaline rush of trying to claw your way out before your pumping lungs exhaust all the oxygen.

“Trapped In A Coffin” is the name of the song we’re about to present, and as the name suggests, it summons those desperate sensations — through music that rampages and romps in a vicious, head-hammering fury. It comes from A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul, the new fifth album by the Venezuelan death metal band Nocturnal Hollow, which will be released on March 29th by Redefining Darkness Records in the U.S. and by Raw Skull Recordz in Europe. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LAETITIA IN HOLOCAUST — “FAUCI TRA FAUCI”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Mar 202019

Who doesn’t enjoy an enormous surprise? I don’t mean the surprise of being T-boned at an intersection by a speeding semi-truck, but something like the surprise of stepping through your door and finding that a wild-dreamlike dimension has replaced the mundane comforts of home, with sights and sounds that are thrilling but also dangerous to body and mind. Fauci Tra Fauci, the new album by Laetitia In Holocaust (which will be released by Third I Rex on March 31st), is that kind of surprise.

I literally had no idea what to expect when I began listening to this album, having not heard this Italian black metal band’s preceding two full-lengths or even the single from this new one that premiered at Toilet Ov Hell. For all I know, Fauci Tra Fauci might prove to be a surprise even if I’d been familiar with the band’s preceding works (and for obvious reasons I can’t compare this one to the others). But I’m glad I didn’t know what was coming, because it made this journey of unexpected discovery all the more exciting. Continue reading »

CONTINUUM: “DESIGNED OBSOLESCENCE”

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Mar 202019

(DGR reviews the new album by California-based Continuum, which was released in February by Unique Leader Records.)

I’ve often mused that if I were to pick a handful of bands who represent the Unique Leader label, as a sort of throughline of all the sounds that they currently have signed to their roster, Arkaik would be one. Their combination of tech-death, core, and straightforward death metal does a pretty good job representing a whole lot of what the roster sounds like.

To continue with that thought exercise, Continuum would likely be one of the others. The line-up alone includes resumes of time spent in about a third of the groups on the Unique Leader roster. Guitarists Chase Fraser and Ivan Mungia add Decrepit Birth, Deeds Of Flesh, and Arkaik to that list just between the two of them, not to discount Chase’s work with Conflux either. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WARFORGED — “VOICE”

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Mar 192019

Something unsettling is happening in this video, but it’s not clear what. Something mysterious and perhaps unnatural, off in the dense woods across the expanse of a long gray lake. People seem to be watching this on a screen, made frantic by what they see, or what they think they see. Maybe something else is looking back at them.

Meanwhile, as we’re drawn into these perplexities on our own screens, the band Warforged, blinking in and out of view like fireflies at midnight, throw themselves into a song called “Voice“, which is even more mystifying and destabilizing than whatever is going on in the woods. There is no way to predict what happens in the music, or the shocking and sometimes violent ways in which the music changes. Paradoxically, it becomes absolutely transfixing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ROTTING GRAVE — “ROTTING GRAVE”

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Mar 192019

In the month of June, 2018, Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, gave birth to a monster. Inspired by the horrific atmosphere and cadaverous sound of especially gruesome strains of death metal from the ’90s, guitarist Roberto Trejo, guitarist/vocalist Pablo Aceves, bassist Néstor Márquez, and drummer Saúl Anzaldo joined forces to spawn this ghastly entity known as Rotting Grave.

Rotting Grave wasn’t the first fruits of their labors within the fetid spawning grounds of extreme metal. Those four had sharpened their skills in such other bands as Morbid Messiah, Ictiosis, Worthless, Condemnation, Portrait of Ruin, and Human Trash. But with Rotting Grave they’ve clearly created something that puts their talents to very good use — as you’re about to discover.

Rotting Grave’s first EP, Horrid Pestilence of Death, will be released on April 29th in a CD edition by Death In Pieces Records, and what we have for you today is one of its six tracks, one that shares the band’s name, one that’s hideous and thrilling, repellent and addictive. Continue reading »

TRIBE OF PAZUZU: “HERETICAL UPRISING”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Mar 192019

(DGR catches up to the debut EP by Tribe of Pazuzu, which was released in February this year.)

It’s not hard to imagine why the announcement of Tribe Of Pazuzu and their debut EP release Heretical Uprising turned some heads on first notice: It’s not often you get a group that unites musicians with credits to their name like Cryptopsy, Incantation, Soulstorm, and Pestilence. Yet that’s what this hybrid Canadian/American death metal band does, combining the forces of bassist/vocalist Nick Sagias, guitarists Randy Harris and John McEntee, and drummer Flo Mounier. Together they’ve recorded five songs and just over fourteen minutes of high speed death metal that is surprisingly straightforward, bludgeoning, and clear-sounding from a collective of musicians whose previous groups have alternated between sounding like cavernous whirlwind maws of death metal and sheer technical chaos.

Tribe Of Pazuzu‘s somewhat thrashier offering moves quickly, with a take-no-prisoners approach, and is so surgical about it that after its fourteen minutes wrap up, you’ll likely be a couple of spins into Heretical Uprising before you can even sort your thoughts from the first run-through. Continue reading »

BODY VOID: “YOU WILL KNOW THE FEAR YOU FORCED UPON US”

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Mar 182019

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the horrifying new EP by San Francisco’s Body Void, which was released on March 15th by Seeing Red Records, Dry Cough Records, and Crown and Throne Ltd.)

I’m not sure if any of you have noticed, or if it’s bothered you at all, but the majority of my writing over the last several weeks has focussed on covering a variety of big names, famous faces, and iconoclastic figures… plus the occasional up-and-coming contender… which has left surprisingly little space for the more underground or esoteric bands which NCS has generally been more famous for covering.

Does this mean I’m… whisper it… on the verge of selling out?

Hell no. It just means that I happened to have listened to a fair few artists/albums who (deservedly) have also been receiving a lot of coverage elsewhere recently, and that I felt like writing about them.

But for those of you who might have been a little concerned, fear not, as it looks like this week is going to be all about the underappreciated and the underground, kicking off with this quick smash ‘n’ grab review of the new EP from Body Void. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ARCHAIC DECAPITATOR — “CRUELTY OF THE HOST STAR”

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Mar 182019

On Friday, April 19th, the Connecticut-based melodic death metal band Archaic Decapitator will release a new five-song EP entitled The Apothecary. It follows their well-received 2016 EP, Light of a Different Sun, which featured performances by session drummer extraordinaire Kevin Talley. But while Kevin Talley isn’t featured on this new EP, Archaic Decapitator have enlisted another tremendously talented skins-man in Gary Marotta from Xenosis, and new rhythm guitarist Chris Ridley has also joined the band as a permanent member.

Those two round out a group that also includes vocalist Kyle Quintin (Fires in the Distance, ex-Formless), lead guitarist Yegor Savonin (Fires in the Distance), and bassist/backing-vocalist Craig Breitsprecher (Fires in the Distance, ex-Formless).

Today, through a lyric video, we present a second single from the EP, “Cruelty of the Host Star“, a song that vividly reveals the dynamism of The Apothecary as the band accent their bracing rush of melodic death metal with progressive flourishes, elements of black metal and thrash, and even a few symphonic touches. Continue reading »

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