BRIEF REVIEWS: THUNDERWAR AND VOID EATER

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Apr 142018
 

 

Andy Synn’s creation of the Waxing Lyrical series as a regular Saturday post has freed me from the compulsion to cook up NCS posts for these days, which I think was part of the reason why Andy proposed to make the series a Saturday fixture (there is indeed a soft heart that beats beneath that rough exterior). The problem is that my compulsion continues to gnaw at my brain even under the easiest of circumstances. And so here I am, posting something of my own on Saturday again.

I suppose the only compromise I’ve made with myself in this instance is to somewhat truncate my usual verbosity. My main aim here is to recommend that you to listen to these two releases, which you can easily do in the case of one, and which you’ll be able to do fairly soon in the case of the other. (There was going to be a third EP in this collection, but at the last minute a guest writer volunteered to do the review, and so that one should be coming early next week, and should be interesting to read.)

THUNDERWAR

We were highly appreciative of this Polish band’s 2016 debut album, Black Storm. My colleague TheMadIsraeli described the music in these words: “Of course, coming from Poland, Thunderwar know how to write pretty fucking pristine death metal. They take that trademark imperial might for which the scene has always been known and mix it with the frigid, brittle melodic tendencies of Dissection and the power groove of Kataklysm. The result is a sound that’s difficult to say no to, both in its heft and in its emotive power.” And I had a few things to say about it, too.

The new Thunderwar release, following up on that impressive debut, is an EP named Wolfpack that’s also hugely impressive. It consists of five original tracks and a cover of Darkthrone’s “The Winds They Called the Dungeon Shaker”. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: EMPLOYED TO SERVE

 Interviews, WAXING LYRICAL  No Responses »
Apr 142018
 

 

(Andy Synn returns with another installment in his Saturday series about lyrics in metal, and today brings us insights from Sammy Urwin of the UK band Employed To Serve.)

 

So last week’s edition of Waxing Lyrical featured an artist who I declared to have produced one of the best albums of 2017, and so I thought… why not carry on in that vein?

So here’s your chance to learn more about Employed to Serve, whose most recent album, The Warmth of a Dying Sun, was an absolute masterstroke of metallic catharsis and furious energy, courtesy of the band’s guitarist/main song-writer Sammy Urwin. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOMITILE — “LABELED DEAD”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 132018
 

 

Vomitile hail from the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, which they’ve turned into ground zero for their own detonations of hard-charging, war-like death metal since 2007. Over the last decade they’ve released an EP and two full-lengths and performed live with such blood-thirsty luminaries as Sodom, Kreator, Obituary, and Vader, and toured with the likes of Master and Onslaught. Now they’ve got a third album — Pure Eternal Hate — ready for imminent discharge via Satanath Records and the Spanish label Hecatombe Records. It will be upon us on April 18th, but today we’ve got a sample of the punishment it will deliver through our premiere of a lyric video for one of the new songs.

Vomitile have a taste for thrash as well as eviscerating death metal, and so this new song, “Labeled Dead” is a high-octane ripper that gets the blood pumping and the body moving. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LIE IN RUINS — “DEMISE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 132018
 

 

When I learned that Dark Descent Records would be releasing a new EP by the Finnish death metal band Lie In Ruins, I had one of those wide-eyed, take-a-big-gulp moments you get when the unexpected hits you like a piece of lumber on the back of the neck. In other words, it was a big surprise — but in this case a very welcome one. And then the waiting began, to find out exactly what these men had done with their time away from the studios.

Four years have elapsed since this band’s last album, Towards Divine Death, which was very good (and if you haven’t heard that album, quit screwing around and get your butt over here sometime soon). This new EP, Demise, is also the band’s eighth release overall in a career that began in roughly 1993 under the name Dissected, halted for many years after a few rehearsal tapes were recorded, and then resumed for real in about 2002.

What we have for you today is a full stream of Demise a couple of weeks before the official release date. Rather than a collection of clearly segmented songs, it is instead presented as a single track nearly 29 minutes in length. And I do believe it’s the best thing this band have ever done. Continue reading »

OUR PLACE OF WORSHIP IS SILENCE: “WITH INEXORABLE SUFFERING”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 132018
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by California-based Our Place of Worship Is Silence, which is being released today by Translation Loss Records., and features striking cover art by Wrest of Leviathan.)

 

When you get right down to the beating, bleeding heart of things, a band is really just an organic machine, a biological mechanism of meat and metal, driven by electrical impulses and instinctual imperatives to procreate and disseminate its memetic ideas as far and as wide as possible.

This is something that Our Place of Worship is Silence seem to have grasped on an innate level with their vicious and hate-fuelled second album, With Inexorable Suffering, which finds the deadly duo simultaneously fleshing out their gruesome sound whilst also stripping it back to its most lethally efficient form. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WILD HUNT — “PALINGENESIA”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 122018
 

 

We’re taught by daily disappointments and betrayals, by recurring defeats and the loss of people we hold dear, to see the world through jaundiced eyes. Life rides us with a heavy whip-hand, and hard lessons can lead to hardened hearts. When you listen to the music of Wild Hunt, it’s evident that they’re no strangers to the stings of life’s chaotic lashings. And so perhaps it’s all the more remarkable that their music also powerfully up-ends our defeatist worldview by injecting a sense of wonder and a feeling of irrepressible resilience.

Just about every writer at this site, at one time or another, has found reason to praise what this Bay Area band have accomplished, even if we (and others) can’t completely agree on what kind of genre labels to slap on the sounds. The word “progressive” always (understandably) seems to find a way into the stitched-together, multi-hyphenated descriptors, with black metal, doom, or post-metal sometimes in the jumble as well. But whatever Frankenstein-ian label might be most accurate, it’s probably best to just skip past that puzzle and allow the music to have its way with you.

Wild Hunt’s latest work is an album named Afterdream Of The Reveller. It will be released on April 20 by Vendetta Records. And what we have for you today is the album’s truly wondrous closing track, “Palingenesia“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISPLAY OF DECAY — “UNABLE TO IDENTIFY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 122018
 

 

If you imagine Display of Decay as a big rocketing road machine with a roaring jet engine in place of the usual pumping cylinders (and that’s not hard to imagine at all), the brakes obviously failed a few hundred miles ago, to the vicious glee of the blood-lusting demons at the controls. When you listen to their new album, Art In Mutilation, it’s patently obvious that they’re having a howling good time, and their full-throttle, take-no-prisoners enthusiasm is highly contagious.

This is the fifth studio release by these Edmonton-based barbarians in a career that now spans ten years. It will be released by Gore House Productions on May 18th. One single from the album (“Forced Frontal Lobotomy”) debuted a few weeks ago at Metal Injection, and now we’ve got another one for you. Buckle up and take some deep breaths in preparation for “Unable To Identify“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEMONIC OBEDIENCE — “AWAKENING”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 122018
 

 

Roughly two years ago we had the pleasure of premiering a track from the second album by Demonic Obedience, Nocturnal Hymns To the Fallen. That was our own introduction to the band’s music, and it was a hell of a savage greeting. Now, Demonic Obedience are returning with a new album, and we again find ourselves in the fortunate position of delivering another premiere. The name of the new album is Fatalistic Uprisal Of Abhorrent Creation, and the track we have for you in advance of its April 17 release by Satanath Records and Sevared Records is “Awakening“.

Demonic Obedience has led something of a nomadic existence. Originally spawned in Greece by George Ntavelas and George Seremetis in early 2013 under the name of The Deepest, it then continued as the solo project of George Ntavelas after his move to Edinburgh, Scotland. On this new album, Ntavelas is the guitarist, but he was also joined in the recording by two new members of the band, Kruxator (vocals) and Mark Stormwhipper (bass). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VOIDTHRONE — “KUR”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 112018
 

 

“By the end of Kur,” Voidthrone explain, “it is our intent to leave both listener and performer drained. Within this receptive exhaustion, we leave a spark — a seed of discontent that rejects normality. A hunger engendered for the other side of the veil. Beyond which — an absolute darkness, filled with Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh my!”

The close of that last sentence may be the only time you smile at the experience of Kur, their new EP. Oh, maybe a somewhat crazed smile of appreciation for what this Seattle band have accomplished, but the music itself (which combines elements of black and death metal) is a disorienting, disturbing, and even terrifying experience, combining head-spinning intricacy, unsettling dissonance, and raw emotional intensity.

As for the band’s objective, it may not take a complete trip through all four songs to leave you feeling drained. The title track of the EP that we’re premiering today in advance of its May 4 release, especially when experienced along with the freakish music video that accompanies it, will probably take care of that all by itself. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CRAFT, OVATE, NICK VASALLO, JØTNARR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 112018
 

 

I’ve been away from home since last Friday morning, mainly working on the things I do when I’m not throwing music at your heads at NCS, but having some fun here and there. I shudder to think what havoc the loris horde have wrecked at the NCS compound while I’ve been gone. I’ll find out tonight; I’ll be leaving for the Philadelphia airport, bound for Seattle, as soon as I post this hurried collection.

The huge list of new songs I had created before leaving Seattle torments me; I’ve grown more tormented looking at what popped up in my e-mail and web-surfing last night and this morning. Just too damned much intriguing metal being vomited forth every day. This is a tiny fraction of what I found most recently.

CRAFT

White Noise and Black Metal is the name of the new album by the long-running Swedish black metal cult Craft, their first one in seven years. The release date, through Season of Mist, is June 22nd. Continue reading »

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