AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZWARTE DOOD — “VAN KAÏN’S ZAAD”

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Aug 152018
 

 

It makes sense that the first demo of Zwarte Dood (Dutch for Black Death, though this project is Belgian) ends with a cover of a track by the infamous Ildjarn (a track I haven’t been able to find anywhere). Like much of Ildjarn’s music, Zwarte Dood‘s demo is an exercise in brutally distorted, minimalist, and palpably hostile black metal romping and rampaging. It’s crude and punishing, hateful and harsh — and in places, powerfully hook-heavy and head-moving.

The opener, “Aanvang“, lasts less than a minute, a stage-setter consisting or eerie swirling and shining ambient music, punctured by the slow strumming of reverberating strings, and elevated by something like the sounds of an angelic choir. After that, before you reach the Ildjarn cover at the end, there are two main songs with another kind of interlude in between them. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: REBEL WIZARD

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Aug 152018
 

 

This is an interview of NKSV, the Australian man behind both Nekrasov and Rebel Wizard, though the latter project was the focus of this discussion. The interview was conducted through a long chain of back-and-forth e-mails that lasted for several weeks, ending only yesterday when I forced myself to stop asking question because we’re only a couple days away from Prosthetic Records’ release of Rebel Wizard‘s new album, Voluptuous Worship of Rapture and Response.

I ought to explain that I swore off doing interviews more than a year ago after I finally accepted the reality that they consume time I don’t have, because I agonize too much in an effort to come up with non-standard questions that won’t bore the shit out of both myself and the person on the other end of the conversation. I made an exception here because, based on previous communications with NKSV, and because I’m such a big fan of Rebel Wizard, I thought it would be fun. And man, it really was.

This interview is also very long. VERY LONG. And sometimes it turned into a meeting of a mutual admiration society, which in retrospect might prove a bit embarrassing to both of us (though I don’t take back anything I said). If for those reasons, or others, you lose patience with this, I don’t need to tell you how to escape, though I do believe that this will prove interesting, insightful, thought-provoking (and fun) to a lot of readers despite its length — because, man, NKSV is an unorthodox wizard of a talker/writer, too. So maybe don’t pull the plug too soon?

One last word of advice before we begin: I think this conversation will make a lot more sense if you listen to Rebel Wizard’s first album (The Triumph of Gloom) and/or the new one (which premiered through a full stream at DECIBEL yesterday) before you begin reading, or while reading, or maybe even afterward. I’d encourage you to listen to those albums whether you read any further or not… and I’ll have some thoughts about the new one tomorrow in case we don’t completely exhaust your reading faculties today (you can get the new record here). Continue reading »

GOLDEN BATS: “RESIDUAL DREAD”

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Aug 152018
 

 

Residual Dread is a titanically heavy album, steeped in a kind of gothic gloom, and so haunting in its laments that it threatens to split the heart even as it’s splintering bone. With both a persistently brutal punch and an emotionally devastating conveyance of grief and pain, the music repeatedly hits home with staggering force on multiple levels — all the way up until the final 4 minutes and 40 seconds of the album, when something unexpected and perhaps even more astounding happens. But I’ll come back to that in due course.

The album is the latest one by Golden Bats, the solo project of Australian musician Geordie Stafford (from Brisbane). It’s being released today, both digitally and on vinyl, by a label called Domestic La La, which seems a whimsical name for a carrier of such desolating sounds. Continue reading »

ABHORRENT DEFORMITY: “SLAUGHTER MONOLITH”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 142018
 

 

(NCS contributor Vonlughlio penned this review of the new album by North Carolina’s Abhorrent Deformity, released on August 3rd by Comatose Music.)

This time around I have the opportunity to do a small write-up for the band Abhorrent Deformity’s sophomore effort Slaughter Monolith, released via Comatose Music. This project was formed back in 2013 and they are a local band (for me at least now) whom I discovered back when I lived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, after their first album Entity of Malevolence was released in 2015.

I have to say that although I heard a couple of songs from the first album and liked the music, I never  listened to the full album (due to shortness of time on my behalf). But I did eventually, once I moved to their home State in the  U.S., and I’m glad I gave it a listen since it showcased great musicianship and songwriting. Another aspect that caught my attention was how well they blended brutal death elements with progressive touches. Yes, dear reader, you read correctly. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AETHEREUS — “THAT WHICH IS LEFT BEHIND”

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Aug 142018
 

 

Back in mid-June we had the pleasure of premiering a lyric video for a song called “The Pale Beast” off the debut album by the Tacoma, Washington band Aethereus, whose progressive approach to death metal fluidly combines atmospheric, technical, and melodic aspects of the genre with compelling results. Back then, the release date for Absentia seemed a frustratingly long way off, but now it’s out, having hit the streets on August 10th via The Artisan Era. And to help spread the word, we’re again fortunate to bring you a video for another one of the album’s marvelous tracks, “That Which Is Left Behind“.

To put the song in context, “That Which Is Left Behind” appears sixth in a nine-track running order, within an album that (as the band explain) is “loosely structured around the Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance)”. Moved by the death of the band’s original bassist Shaun Hansen, the band chose to compose and arrange the album in a way that follows the stages of grief “and describes the experience of losing a loved one and the lasting impact that person’s absence has on an individual, a group, and life as a whole”. Continue reading »

MORS SUBITA: “INTO THE PITCH BLACK”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 142018
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Finland’s Mors Subita, which was released by Inverse Records on April 6th of this year.)

Mors Subita are a peculiar band to me, but one that scratch a lot of itches. While they’ve always embodied everything great about energetic, riff-driven European melodic death metal might, their embracing of the more metalcore elements of the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal bands like Chimaira, Lamb Of God, etc., has always caused them to stand apart from a lot of their current peers. These guys love the ’90s and early 2000s at their core, which resonates with me considering that a lot of my favorite metal in my formative listening years came from those eras.

The thing is, this Soilwork-meets-Chimaira-ism of Mors Subita produces some pretty compelling, consistently driving piston-pressure metal that includes the epic melodic scope and guitar work of melodic death metal as well as the beefy sense of groove and emotive sensibilities of their metalcore influences.  It’s junk food metal at its purest and finest, and I mean that as no insult whatsoever.  Into The Pitch Black is one of the year’s best records in my book, both addictive and engrossing. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLOODTRUTH — “THE LAST PROPHET”

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Aug 142018
 

 

As a general rule, generalizing is fraught with risk. For every sweeping statement, someone will come up with a hundred exceptions. Yet there’s more than a kernel of truth in the observation that Italian death metal tends to live in the fast lane. It often seems like the Autobahn of death metal, in which bands with adrenaline for blood race so fast and furiously that the wheels leave the ground, trailing flames. Bloodtruth is a prime example of this phenomenon — and the explosive extravagance of their highly accelerated attack is indeed phenomenal. Witness this new song we’re bringing you today through a lyric video.

“The Last Prophet” is one of ten absolutely ferocious tracks on Bloodtruth’s new album, Martyrium, which will be released by Unique Leader Records on September 28th. Consistent with the overarching thematic concept of the album, it’s a lyrical sledgehammer against the edifice of the Christian Church and the historical atrocities committed by the Church against people branded as “heretics”. Musically, it’s a spectacle of fast-twitch muscle fibers in action, everything geared toward heart-pumping savagery and maximum destructive impact. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABSOLVTION — “GALLOW’S DESTINY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 142018
 

 

The effect of listening to the new EP by the French black/death band Absolvtion is similar to what I imagine I’d feel if I turned a corner and found a cobra immediately at my feet, its head raised, its hood open wide, swaying, about to strike. I’d feel shock and fear mixed with repulsion, but I’d be transfixed, mesmerized by the terrible beauty of the thing, frozen in fascination.

Gallow’s Destiny exerts a similar mesmerizing attraction, a similar capacity to freeze you in your steps, and at the same time it’s unnerving and poisonous. It tends to blot out rational thought, paralyzing that part of your mind and then sinking its fangs deep. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REBEL SCUM — “GUZZOLINE”

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Aug 132018
 

 

When we first encountered music from the blood-pumping debut album of Buffalo’s Rebel Scum two years ago, we were moved to write: “Rebel Scum are churning out some devilish rock ‘n’ roll that will make you want to get loaded, jump on a big, smoking chopper, and eat up the highway, with Satan as your co-pilot.” With one more short leap of imagination, we might also have referred to a full-throttle chase across a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the kind of marauding rush so vividly captured in the Mad Max movies.

We’re fiendishly happy to report that Rebel Scum are returning, and this time they’ve made that leap of imagination for us. On September 3rd they’ll be releasing a new self-titled EP, and the first single we’re bringing you today has a title that evokes the Road Warrior — “Guzzoline“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFURIATE — “MORI TERRAE”

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Aug 132018
 

 

The debut album of the Texas death metal band Infuriate won’t be released by Everlasting Spew Records until the 31st of August, but we’ve already devoted quite a lot of attention to it, and are about to do so again. On July 2nd we premiered a track called “Juggernaut of Pestilence”; last week we published a guest review of the album in which our friend Vonlughlio proclaimed it his favorite debut album of all time (and yes, he keeps a list of such things). And today we have yet another premiere, one that showcases a merciless but enormously infectious track named “Mori Terrae“.

If you suspect that we’re just looking for fresh excuses to emblazon Jon Zig‘s remarkable cover art for the album at the top of our site, that would be a well-founded suspicion. But that’s not the only reason. The music is also just ridiculously good. Continue reading »

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