AN NCS PREMIERE: WORWS — “STANDING IN PLACE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 072017
 

 

WORWS come our way from Portland, Oregon, just down the interstate from our own HQ. Their second album Truth To Power is due for arrival on September 22nd. Based on its sound, that will be sort of like the projected date for a hurricane making landfall, though without producing the human misery of the real ones that now seem to be weekly fodder for our news feeds.

There is tangible fury and elemental power in this band’s brand of hardcore, fueled by anger at the toxic stew of injustice and ignorance that permeates our social fabric. “Standing In Place” is an example of how they channel that rage into a bruising sonic experience. We have the premiere of that track below. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GUTSLIT — “NECKTIE PARTY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 072017
 

 

I’ve written before, and I don’t think many people would argue the point, that many excellent metal bands located outside North America and Western Europe would probably be household names (at least within the filthy households of metal) if they lived in the West. It’s not so much a matter of regional prejudice (though undoubtedly there’s some of that at work) as it is a challenge to gaining exposure. You can add India’s Gutslit to that list of deserving but under-appreciated bands. Though their success in arranging two European tours (with a third one in progress now) has undoubtedly helped their cause, I suspect their new album Amputheatre is going to elevate their profile significantly, notwithstanding the challenges posed by being located outside the West.

Amputheatre is the band’s second album, which follows their debut full-length Skewered In the Sewer by four years. It’s scheduled for release on October 15 by Transcending Obscurity India, and it’s going to catch a lot of eyes based on the cover art alone, which was painted by the phenomenal Berlin artist Eliran Kantor, who has a long list of credits on his resume, including album art for the likes of Incantation, Hate Eternal, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Testament, and Archspire. And the music’s going to catch a lot of ears, too. It certainly caught ours — and then proceeded to wreck them. We’re very happy to host a premiere of a song from the new album called “Necktie Party“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: COMMUNIC, EXHUMED, THE KENNEDY VEIL, ORIGIN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 072017
 

 

This will be a very busy day at our site. We’ve posted one review already, we have another one coming, and we have four (!) very good premieres lined up. But thanks to DGR, we also have a brief round-up of new songs and videos that have recently appeared elsewhere — to which I’ve added one news item at the front end, one wisely suggested by my comrade Mr. Synn. So, you’ll have to tolerate a bit of my verbiage for the first item, and then I’ll turn you over to the words and selections of DGR.

COMMUNIC

This has been a banner year for metal album covers, and Berlin-based Eliran Kantor has been responsible for many of the best ones, including the one above, which accompanies a new album by the Norwegian progressive metal band Communic. And the fact that we will have a new Communic album this year is itself very welcome news.

The name of the album is Where Echoes Gather, and it will be released on October 27 by the band’s new label, AFM Records, following four previous albums released by Nuclear Blast. Continue reading »

RASTER DENSITY: “MOTHER OV MANKIND”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 072017
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by the Finnish band Raster Density, which was released in May of this year.)

It’s been something of a banner year for the Technical side of the Death Metal spectrum so far, with new releases from both established luminaries (Decrepit Birth, Origin, Inanimate Existence) and up-and-coming acts (Replacire, Enfold Darkness) grabbing hype and headlines for their furious fretsmanship and shameless dedication to crushing complexity.

And while this torrent of technical tumult doesn’t show any signs of abating any time soon – with new albums from Archspire (which I should be reviewing next week), Fleshkiller (aka Extol 2.0), and The Faceless (which, yes, I have heard) all on the horizon – the sheer array of impressively OTT offerings clamouring for our attention means it’s inevitable that some bands will slip through the cracks.

Which, until now at least, had very much been the case with Finland’s Raster Density. Continue reading »

LOUISVILLE DEATHFEST: A PREVIEW

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

(Austin Weber prepared this post highlighting the upcoming 2017 edition of Louisville Deathfest, which boasts an especially killer line-up this year.)

Here in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky we have a yearly metal fest event called Louisville Deathfest. The event serves to highlight a mix of local acts and acclaimed national groups many of us know and love. I’m writing a short post about it here because this year’s line up is fucking ridiculous and it only seemed right to try to shine a spotlight on it for anyone who may not have heard about it but might be intrigued enough to make the trek for it.

A two-day pass for the event is currently a mere $30, with single one-day passes just $20, though I would assume day-of-show prices might be higher as is normal.

Without further adieu, here is the incredible line-up I was speaking of, and I’ll have some short observations to make after listing them. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HORRIFIED — “THE PERCEIVER”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

I think I need to repeat something I wrote when I first came across the title track to the new full-length by Horrified: “If Adam Burke’s artwork for the new album by the UK’s Horrified doesn’t compel you to listen to the music, there may be no hope for you (or perhaps you just need to visit your optometrist for a prescription update)”. That remains just as true today. But there is now abundant evidence besides the artwork that this album is something very special.

Entitled Allure of the Fallen, it’s set for release on September 29th via Shadow Kingdom Records, and now we have one more song to present as proof of the album’s power, in addition to streams of two others that have previously premiered. The new song is named “The Perceiver“.

For those new to Horrified, this is their third album, following Of Despair last year and 2014’s Descent Into Putridity, and the strength of the band’s continued musical evolution and their increased sophistication, self-asssurance, and distinctiveness of vision is fully revealed in this new one. In the simplest of genre terms, you could call Horrified a melodic death metal band, but their new music is far from simple. “The Perceiver“, for example, is impressively multi-faceted, rhythmically dynamic, intricately plotted, and emotionally evocative. It vividly summons sensations of torment, terror, and paralyzing grief. Continue reading »

COMA CLUSTER VOID RETURNS TO SHARE “THOUGHTS FROM A STONE”

 Metal News  No Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

(Austin Weber prepared this post about news of a new release by a favorite band — the multinational combine known as Coma Cluster Void.)

Just one year after their amazing 2016 debut, Mind Cemeteries, made a massive and terrifying impression on the death metal world, the international dissonant death metal/math metal collective that is Coma Cluster Void are back at it again.

Yesterday, the band unveiled the artwork and teaser video for their upcoming EP entitled Thoughts From A Stone. Which is a single-song composition clocking in at over 21 minutes. The EP is set for release on Friday, October 13th, through Translation Loss Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEVIL’S EMISSARY — “DEMIURGE ASCETICISM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

Offered in praise of the Harvester of Worlds, the great Swallower of Suns, the new EP by the Polish band Devil’s Emissary is a stunning amalgam of black and death metal that shocks and seduces in equal measures. It’s due for release on September 9 by Third Eye Temple, but we present a full stream of the EP today. Its name is Demiurge Asceticism.

This new three-song work follows the groups’s second album by two years, and reflects an evolution in sound, one in which staggering doses of heaviness have been blended with spine-shivering eruptions of black fury. The result is a changing pageant of armageddon-like chaos, pestilential doom, and blood-freezing grandeur, a tale of destruction and resurgence. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET — UNBEHELD — “DUST”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

(DGR reviews the new EP by Unbeheld from British Columbia, which was released near the end of July.)

Something happened in the three years since their self-titled EP in 2014 that caused Canadian death metal band Unbeheld to develop a nihilistic streak that has spilled over into their music. The group’s latest EP, Dust, features seven songs and not a friendly thought amongst them. The band themselves even explain this upfront on the Bandcamp page for Dust, stating:

Dust is lyrically based on thoughts rooted in depression and anxiety. The sort of feelings that one dealing with such mental conditions goes through on a daily basis. The sense that nothing ever quite feels “right”. The fact that that exists in itself is an absurd phenomena. It also deals with the usual death metal themes of death and violence; but instead of being about the process of these things, it more so deals with the thoughts that go through ones mind during death and or while performing acts of violence as well as a general fear of fading away into nothingness. That is to say that after we die; nothing we did really mattered.

I’m not a gambling man but I’d guess that “friendly” and “approachable” will likely not be the words attached to Unbeheld’s music, and to be fair, the artwork for Dust matches the music within — intense and violent. Continue reading »

HELLRAISERS: MIDNIGHT, ANIMA DAMNATA, SOL DE SANGRE, ANTICHRIST HOOLIGANS, OXYGEN DESTROYER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 062017
 

 

From day to day, we have very few plans here at the NCS HQ, or at least very few that I know of. As the editor I rely mainly on my reflexes, which are like coils of rusted springs, ready to creak into action on a moment’s notice. Our other writers may have plans, but I usually learn of them only when our intrepid pigeon aeronauts arrive with stained scrolls of text wrapped around their legs. I do my creaky best to get their writings ready to go by the next day… or the same day… and quite often those surprises unexpectedly fill up our site with content when only the day before I might have wondered what the hell I would have for you beyond my own frenzied scribbling. Beyond that, the rest of my life occasionally intrudes with other reflex tests.

And so it was that I promised Part 2 of my latest SHADES OF BLACK column would be posted on Monday, and then got surprised… and then was surprised again on Monday… and today will also be full of surprises (at last count, we’ll have six posts today). Anyway, no SHADES OF BLACK today either, but I am going with this selection of new music from five bands, most of which I originally intended to include in that missing Part 2 and a couple that I came across since starting on it. I’m calling this “Hellraisers” because… well… you’ll find out why soon enough.

MIDNIGHT

This is one of the items I discovered most recently — last night, in fact. It’s a new release by Ohio’s Midnight, a cover of “I Don’t Need Society” by D.R.I. It’s a Bandcamp, download-only release, and all profits will be donated to the Red Cross in their efforts to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey. Various other Midnight CDs, LPs, tapes, patches, and t-shirts are available in bundles along with the new download, and profits from those sales will also be donated to the Red Cross. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries