RIVERS OF NIHIL – RIVERS OF NIHIL

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 192025
 

(Andy Synn presents his thoughts on Rivers of Nihil‘s upcoming self-titled album, out 30 May.)

With Rivers of Nihil stating that their upcoming fifth album – which we’ll get to shortly – would involve a synthesis of ideas and elements from all four of their previous records (plus some new ones born from some significant line-up changes) I felt it might make sense to start this review off with a quick round-up of where I stand in relation to their discography so far.

Their underrated debut album, The Conscious Seed of Light, still holds a special place in my heart for the way it introduced me to the band and their nascent blend of rigid, biomechanical riffage and fluid, melodic embellishments, while the heavier, hookier, and more tightly-structured Monarchy remains, in my opinion at least, the most focussed and consistent release of their career (so far, anyway).

And while I understand the love a lot of people have for Where Owls Know My Name – which, with its proggier and more accessible vibes, was where a lot of fans fell in love with the band – to me it remains something of a mixed bag (half “killer”, half “filler”) with the more ambitious and even more progressive (not to mention divisive) approach of The Work representing a much bolder and more successful creative step in my opinion (even if a couple of tracks still didn’t quite… ahem… work).

So, with that in mind, here’s what I think of their eponymous fifth album, which comes out next week.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: WAIDELOTTE, HÆRESIS, HELL, CAVE, FUNERAL BAPTISM, TEARDRINKER

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 182025
 

(written by Islander)

For reasons explained yesterday I’ve had less than the usual amount of time this week to explore new music from the blacker realms of extreme music. I’ll fall behind again next week due to MDFing and will likely leave a void in this column’s place next Sunday.

Bereft of the time needed to make a more complete survey this week, I randomly threw a couple handfuls of mental darts at all the tabs I’d opened for new songs and albums. There were misses, but enough solid hits to furnish the following collection, which I hope will both darken and immolate your day. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: NOISE TRAIL IMMERSION, CRUST, DOMKRAFT, ANGEROT, MORDBEAR, BEAR MACE, OSI AND THE JUPITER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 172025
 

(written by Islander)

The last two weeks have been out of the ordinary here, and the next 10 days will be too. In the weeks now past I and a few of my NCS comrades joined forces with a lot of other terrific volunteers to help put on the 3-day Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. (See above, just after we finished last Saturday night.) The fest was fantastic, but it didn’t leave me enough clear-headed time to do the usual weekend posts for NCS.

During the past week I had some good post-fest outings in the Seattle area with DGR and Andy Synn. That put a crimp in my usual new-music listening. And now, beginning on Wednesday of this coming week, we’re all going to venture to Baltimore with other friends to take in Maryland Deathfest. That makes it highly unlikely I will be doing the usual NCS posts next weekend either.

The wall of possibilities for this roundup and the blacker one tomorrow is enormous. I scraped against it, sort of like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption digging through the wall of his cell with a tiny rock hammer, except I don’t have 19 years to get the job done. Here’s what I chipped away for today. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GROG — “VEGETATIVE TECHUMAN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
May 162025
 

(written by Islander)

The battle-hardened Portuguese metal veterans in Grog have been plying their deadly craft since 1991, remarkably holding together the same lineup for the past 20 years despite the usual upheavals in personal life and the world at large, not to mention the constant upheavals in the realms of heavy music.

Grog aren’t trend-chasers, but they’ve not stood still like statues either. All those years of experience have fed into a notable precision of execution by these sonic executioners, and a twisted refinement of their songwriting — but without abandoning the mauling and bone-smashing brutality of their core death-grinding assaults.

Where all those years have led them is now captured in Sphere of Atrocities, Grog‘s fifth album and their first full-length in 8 years. It’s set for co-release on June 13th by Helldprod Records and Murder Records, and what we have for you today is a lyric video for the second song disclosed from the album so far — a weapon of extreme sonic destruction named “Vegetative Techuman“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HSPDN — “HEYDAY’S RUIN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 162025
 

(written by Islander)

In this feature we are taking a few large steps off the various beaten, broken, and thorn-shrouded paths we usually follow in our musical meanderings around here. The connections to those paths, such as they are, derive in part from the person who made the music you’re about to hear.

That person goes by the name “twi” in this new project, but we can disclose that the person is the Slovakian musician and vocalist also known as Twisted in the experimental industrial doom/death metal band 0n0, whose music we’ve written about repeatedly over the last nine years (here’s the proof of that).

The name of the new project is hspdn. hspdn‘s first release is Heyday’s Ruin, a four-song, 18-minute work set for release open May 23rd and self-described as “an EP about climate and personal crises”. What we have for you today is the premiere of its title song. Continue reading »

AEONIAN SORROW: “FROM THE SHADOWS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 162025
 

(Sacramento-based DGR has at last caught up with the latest release by the pan-national doom band Aeonian Sorrow and shares his thoughts about it below.)

We’ll pry the mask off of our anonymity somewhat here but a few releases have hit this year that I’m genuinely surprised have flown under the NCS radar. Perhaps it’s just due to the weird flood/non-flood of pacing that releases have seen so far, but some that’ve floated past us feel like releases that have had neon signs hovering over them and calling out to us.

Maybe it’s just due to the fact that release season has been weird. I’m obsessed with finding a groove in things and that includes the flow of the year. Generally speaking, January has been my fall back for checking out Doom releases. It is about as cold as the home town will get (a frigid 29 fahrenheit at worst guys, make sure to hunker down) and also allows for a meditative slowing down of things.

Not this year though, as a certain moron decided to get high on his own supply and proceeded to add an addendum to the year’s most infectious list which took a surprising amount out of them. On top of that, Doom didn’t really hit in the massive wave that it usually does in January. Finland as a whole did, dominating the early part of the year somewhat, but the Doom releases were a little more scattered.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I am legit surprised we missed Aeonian Sorrow‘s new EP From The Shadows when it saw release in late March. We’ve had a pretty good track record of keeping up with the Finnish/Greek superhero team-up, but for some reason From The Shadows flew right past our dazed skulls. Well not anymore, let’s rectify that now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVEBORN — “TEMPORAL SANDS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Four years ago we had the extreme pleasure of premiering the title track from Transmigrator, the then-forthcoming fourth album from the Boston-based death metal band Graveborn. That album was a significant step in the band’s ongoing evolution in their musical approach, a steadily progressing shift away from their deathcore roots and into a more stylistically multi-faceted and even more thrilling (but still brutalizing) experience.

Four years later, it’s clear that Graveborn haven’t stopped moving. Where their increasingly inventive momentum has led them is reflected in a new single we’re premiering today, presented through a fascinating animated video. Named “Temporal Sands,” this new song is a head-spinner of a high order — and a brutal bone-smasher too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMPEIRIA — “IV”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 152025
 

(written by Islander)

The black metal band Empeiria (a word intended to mean “the un-tangible, the negation of limit”) arrive like some flaming meteor suddenly surging through a night sky.

A mysterious German duo who go by the names π and η, their first recording is a debut album that caught the attention of Vendetta Records, which will release it on June 6th. The album’s name is The Ascent: Szenen der Katharsis, and we have this description of its narrative progression:

The Ascent: Szenen der Katharsis is a tripartite concept album tracing the journey of the lyrical protagonist through three emotional stages: tormenting doubts and guilt (I–III), growing confidence (IV–VI), and existential realization (VII). The atmosphere and compositional approach of the seven tracks reflect these evolving themes.

What we have for you today is a premiere stream of the album’s fourth track. And we have this introduction of that specific song to share with you as well: Continue reading »

How the fuck is it already mid-2025 when 2020 was just a few months ago? Yeah I slept on some shit last year, I was going through some stuff, what`s your fucking excuse for listening to the same 5 albums over and over again? YES, it`s all the title including this sentence. Haven`t you picked up on my way naming these articles yet?

 Album Reviews, LISTMANIA 2024  No Responses »
May 152025
 

(“Eclectic.” There’s that word again, the one we almost always use in sharing year-end lists from Tumbleweed Dealer‘s Seb Painchaud. We already did present Seb’s 2024 YE list during our LISTMANIA series for last year, but it turns out he overlooked a few — 16 of them, to be precise.)

How the fuck is it already mid-2025 when 2020 was just a few months ago? Yeah I slept on some shit last year, I was going through some stuff, what`s your fucking excuse for listening to the same 5 albums over and over again? YES, it’s all the title including this sentence. Haven’t you picked up on my way naming these articles yet?

So, are we really doing this again? I swore I was done with these lists as no one seems to read ‘em but god damn it, I kept discovering amazing 2024 albums I wish I had included and I made a playlist of ‘em on spotify and it’s just there, mocking me with its smugness, shoving my face into the failure that is not reporting these albums to you, the people not reading these lists.

On we go… Continue reading »

GENUNE – INFINITE PRESENCE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 152025
 

(Andy Synn returns to the site with praise for the new album from Romania’s Genune)

As you may be aware (or maybe not, it depends on how much attention you’ve been paying to the site recently) I’m currently over in the USA enjoying the post-festival relaxation period after this year’s edition of Northwest Terror Fest before then heading over to Baltimore to attend Maryland Deathfest.

As a result I haven’t been doing much in the way of writing/reviewing… heck, I haven’t been online all that much at all… and have just been focussing on hanging out with some friends and listening to music purely for the enjoyment of doing so.

That being said, I do have a few things in mind for the next couple of weeks (including one highly-anticipated new release that’s guaranteed to be one of the best albums of the year), with the following review for the upcoming third album from Genune (out this Friday on Consouling Sounds) marking the end to my short (but necessary) hiatus.

Continue reading »

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