AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HOLOCAUSTO EM CHAMAS — “לָשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 032018
 

 

Last year the Portuguese raw black metal band Holocausto Em Chamas  made a strong recording debut, first with the Sermões da montanha demo and then participating in a split with the Icelandic band Óreiða, both of them released by Harvest of Death. Now, the same label is poised to release the band’s debut album — לָשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ — on October 5th. Today we present the first public stream of the entire album.

It would be difficult to overstate the intensity of the terrors transmuted into sound through these 11 songs. Almost every song presents alternating sequences, interweaving different infernal ideas and arcane energies — from wretched, malignant doom to virulent black metal malignance (with tonalities of gothic horror rearing their head as well) — and all of them stinking of sulphur. The movements are narcotic and necrotic, murderously delirious and morbidly oppressive, and most definitely not for frail ears or fragile minds. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NEGATIVA — “XXI”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Oct 032018
 

 

The Spanish depressive black metal band Negativa seems completely committed to their philosophy, a dogma in which an inner turmoil of “dismal negativity, dread, and insurmountable misery” is channeled through the catharsis of nightmarishly wretched sound. They don’t reach out to make human connections, to offer empathy or invite sympathy. They don’t disclose their identities or their lyrics (nor name their releases or compositions), and their music — as you will discover — seems unreservedly nihilistic, and often quite unnerving.

Despite the dehumanizing and debilitating aspects of the band’s outward manifestations, the sensations revealed through the music do have the capacity to make intense connections with the listener, as if casting a black spell that makes Negativa’s nightmares your own, or perhaps reacquainting you with personal torments you thought you could lock away in a dark corner of your mind.

03 is Negativa‘s second album. It will be jointly released by Sentient Ruin and Nebular Carcoma Records on October 19th. What we bring you today is a track identified as “XXI“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ICHOR — “GOD OF THUNDER GOD OF WAR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Oct 022018
 

 

There is no escaping the long shadow of the Australian black metal band Nazxul in introducing Ichor and their debut album, God of Thunder God of War, which will be released by Seance Records on October 5th. The two members of Ichor — Wraith and Diablore — actually started the band in 1993, but put Ichor aside, after recording a demo, in order to focus on Nazxul, in which Wraith has been involved continuously since the beginning and in which Diablore (under the name Dalibor) was also an original member. In 2017 they decided to revive Ichor, and the results of their collaboration are what you’re about to hear.

We’re told that tehse two chose the name Ichor, the ancient Greek word for the fluid that runs in the gods’ veins, to express the concept that the only difference between humanity and the gods is a physical substance or principal, signifying that humanity can rise to the ranks of gods. But while the ancient Greeks may have furnished the name, this first album thematically focuses on Slavic paganism. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ARES KINGDOM, LIMOS, WOUNDVAC, VEIN COLLECTOR

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 022018
 

 

“Short But Sweet” is the tag we usually apply to reviews and streams of EPs and other releases that are less than album-length; we would apply the tag consistently except sometimes I forget to add it. Today I’m adding it when in one instance I probably shouldn’t, since one of the following releases is classified as an album — though it’s only about six minutes longer than one of the following EPs. But I’m late getting to it and wanted to say something about it without further delay.

This post is “Short But Sweet” for another reason: Pressed for time, I’m not able to write respectable reviews, just brief words of praise about each of these four items. I’ll add that each of these occupies a different genre space from the others, so you should check out all of them even if some don’t hit your own sweet spot.

ARES KINGDOM

My interest in this Kansas City death-thrashing band, whose recording roots go back into the mid-’90s, extends to the very early days of this site — the first review I wrote about their music was in May 2010, about six months after I launched NCS. I’ve written more things about them since then, not only because their music is so damned good but also because I also got interested in their personal stories. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTIVERSE — “BLACK WAVES OF SORCERY”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 012018
 

 

WARNING: Excessive metaphors ahead! I’ve tried to bottle them up, but this blood-boilng, nerve-firing new Antiverse song has forced them from my head like a tsunami. And the song strikes like a tsunami, too. (You, see, the flood has already begun.)

“Black Waves of Sorcery” is a full-on blast furnace of mad-thrashing intensity and explosive instrumental and vocal exuberance. As speedy and as thrilling as a rocket-powered roller-coaster, as vicious as a pack of racing wolves, and as imperious as trumpet fanfares and whipping banners soaring above a galloping war charge, the song could bring the dead to life, cackling with glee. But there’s a hidden, darker dimension to the track, as well as to the album that includes it (Under the Regolith, which is set for release on October 19th by Seeing Red Records). Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 101): VALDUR

 THE SYNN REPORT  5 Responses »
Oct 012018
 

(In this edition of THE SYNN REPORT for September 2018, Andy Synn reviews all the albums released so far by the Californian black/death band Valdur, as well as their new full-length scheduled for detonation on October 19th.)

Recommended for fans of: Teitanblood, Tchornobog, Incantation

By sheer coincidence the last several editions of The Synn Report have covered bands who tend towards the more melodic, the more ambient, or the more accessible end of the metallic spectrum.

Which makes it high time we delved into something a little harder, and a lot nastier, doesn’t it?

Hailing (aptly enough) from Mammoth Lakes in California, Valdur’s fluctuating line-up has often been veiled in a shroud of obfuscation, with several of the band’s members operating either unacknowledged, unnamed, or under a carefully crafted pseudonym, over the years.

But while the group’s roster may have changed, their core-line-up, and their commitment to their uncompromising and unrelenting brand of grim and gritty Black/Death Metal, has remained remarkably – even rabidly – consistent, over the course of five (soon to be six) savagely Satanic, ravenously riff-heavy, albums.

And with their newest release, Goat of Iniquity, set for release on the 19th of October, now seemed like the perfect time to go for a deep dive into the filth and fury of the band’s back-catalogue. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DUNGEÖNHAMMER — “SWORN IN BLOOD”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 012018
 

 

To begin, a confession: When we premiere individual songs from forthcoming albums or EPs, we usually haven’t yet listened to the entire record — not from lack of desire, but due to lack of time. In the case of today’s premiere I made a partial exception. This new DungeönHammer song turned out to be a short one, but so damned good that I felt a strong urge to find out what else they were capable of. And so I listened to the three other tracks from their debut album that had surfaced before the one we’re bringing you today, and came away even more impressed (and also surprised). I’ll get to those, but first, let’s talk about “Sworn In Blood“.

This newest track is one of eight on DungeönHammer’s full-length debut, Infernal Moon. True to the press descriptions, it hearkens back to an earlier age, a kind of proto-black-thrash, but more rocking than thrashing, and evil as hell. It’s not really speed metal mayhem, but more the kind of primal filthiness that your head and neck will respond to, from beginning to its too-soon end. Continue reading »

AUTHOR & PUNISHER: “BEASTLAND”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 012018
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer’s review of the new sixth album by Author & Punisher, which will be released by Relapse Records on October 5th.)

Not being satisfied with heavy as merely blazing fast double-bass with even faster guitar solos, I require something out of left field with a great deal of sonic intensity. Author & Punisher’s brand of sludged-out industrial fits the bill.

At first listen, what Tristan Shone does might seem like a novel concept…”Oh yeah, he’s the dude that plays with machines”. Six albums in, that novelty has to be taken out of the equation to leave the focus on the songs. He delivers in this regard, while working against the abrasive drone that tends to dominate his sound. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KOSTAS PANAGIOTOU (PANTHEIST, TOWARDS ATLANTIS LIGHTS)

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 012018
 

 

(Comrade Aleks brings us this interview of Kostas Panagiotou of Pantheist, whose latest album was released on September 14th by Melancholic Realm Productions, and Towards Atlantis Lights, whose first album was released earlier this year by Transcending Obscurity.)

I bet every doom metal fan knows Pantheist. Started as funeral doom studio project in 2000 by Kostas Panagiotou, it has grown to the size of a full band and went through a series of stylistically metamorphoses. After seven years of secret workings since their last album, Pantheist have returned with an updated lineup and a new full-length album, Seeking Infinity. Besides that, Kostas managed to take part in the international doom project Towards Atlantis Lights, whose first album Dust Of Aeons saw the light of day in March 2018 through Transcending Obscurity Records.

In light of these events, it seemed there were several questions that we should ask Kostas, and so we did. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GROZA, DRATNA, A FLOCK NAMED MURDER, SLEGEST, HISSING, SOLAR TEMPLE, FLUISTERAARS, TURIA

 SHADES OF BLACK  12 Responses »
Sep 302018
 

 

I struggle with these picks every week, and resolve the struggle in different ways. Sometimes, when I’ve got the time, I double-up the column so I don’t have to leave out quite as many possibilities. I don’t have that kind of time today. And to make the task harder, a lot of the music I wanted to talk about today turns out to be extra time-consuming — full releases, really long songs, many minutes that don’t lend themselves to pithy introductions.

Days like this I’m reminded that the main value of what we do here is “curation” (to use a pretentious term), i.e., the sifting and sorting of music and the selection of what we find appealing and think might be worth the time of people like you. If the writing itself proves to be entertaining, that’s a bonus. Mainly, we just do that to entertain ourselves. Hopefully, the curation alone will carry the day today — my own words are limited to begin with and kind of tail off into tiny dribbles the further you get into this.

GROZA

My friend eiterorm found Groza’s new album on Friday, said it was obviously inspired by Mgła, and expressed completely certainty that I would like it, judging from our common tastes in metal. “So make sure this one gets top priority. ;-]”, he wrote. So I did, and my friend was right — this is really good. Continue reading »

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