AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALASTOR — “BLACK MAGIC”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 172017
 

 

It’s time once again for us to confuse the hell out of people who are visiting our site for the first time. And apart from the fun of sowing confusion and discord through defiance of our site’s title, we are finding our fun today in Black Magic, the new album by the Swedish doom band Alastor.

But it is a peculiar kind of fun, because the music itself is like a near-apocalyptic hallucination, a mesmerizing one that will stay in your head for a long time after taking the trip — and the trip is yours for the taking, because below you will find a full stream of the EP in advance of its March 18th release by Twin Earth Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ROGGA JOHANSSON — “AT MOUNTAIN GARPE”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Mar 172017
 

 

As always, no one will stop you if you decide to scroll down to the bottom of this page immediately and start playing the song by Rogga Johansson that we’re premiering, but if you do that I hope you’ll still come back up here to the top and continue reading. If you don’t, you’ll miss an interesting story, and as a further inducement, I’ll tease you with the name Demiurg.

That band was an honest-to-god death metal super-group (and by using the past tense I don’t mean to suggest they are defunct, because that would be unduly pessimistic). The line-up included Rogga Johansson as guitarist and vocalist, Dan Swanö as lead guitarist and keyboardist, Ed Warby on drums and vocals, Johan Berglund on bass, and vocalist Marjan Welman from the Dutch goth metal band Autumn.

They released three conceptually related albums beginning with 2007’s Breath of the Demiurg. The last one was 2010’s Slakthus Gamleby. As I learned when I devoted one of our Rearview Mirror posts to a stupendous song from that album earlier this year, Gamleby is the second largest locality situated in Västervik Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden, and is Rogga Johansson’s home, and “Slakthus” is Swedish for “slaughterhouse”. Continue reading »

WARBRINGER: “WOE TO THE VANQUISHED”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 162017
 

 

(The MadIsraeli reviews the new album by Warbringer, which will be released on March 31 by Napalm Records.)

Warbringer are a band who up to now never quite hooked me. They’re no doubt talented, and they are definitely in the upper echelon of the old school thrash revival. I should’ve liked these guys more. They were essentially more aggressive Twisted Into Form Forbidden, but I always felt they played it too safe, enough so that it kept me from being enthralled by their music. Having said that, I’ve always been willing to give the newest Warbringer album a listen when one comes out, because I WANT to like these guys more than I have.

The main thing that really makes these re-thrash bands any good is when they know how to blend the old school with modernity, and in the past Warbringer were too busy living in the past and imitating it rather than emboldening it with a new-school spirit. That is, until Woe To The Vanquished. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AMIENSUS — “GEHENNA”

 Premieres  9 Responses »
Mar 162017
 

 

We have been closely following the musical progress of Minnesota’s Amiensus, essentially step by step, since we discovered and then praised their wonderful debut album Restoration back in the early days of 2013. Since then, they have released (and we have reviewed) a split with Oak Pantheon, a single named “Wolfhead’s Tree“, their 2015 album Ascension, and another single named “Reflections“.

As we happily reported last fall, Amiensus have signed with Apathia Records for the release of a new EP this spring, and now we have further details about it as well as the premiere of a track from the EP named “Gehenna“. Continue reading »

WELCOME TO LOVECRAFT COUNTRY…

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 162017
 


“Cthulhu” by François Baranger

 

(To commemorate the anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s death, Andy Synn has assembled a playlist of great tracks inspired by the great man.)

 

The influence that the work of H. P. Lovecraft has had upon the Metal scene can’t be understated, with everyone from Metallica to Morbid Angel taking lyrical (and musical) inspiration from his work.

Now yesterday just so happened to be the eightieth anniversary of Lovecraft’s death and, in true NCS fashion… we completely failed to acknowledge it.

However, it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon, and what is dead can never truly die, so here are a bunch of songs/albums which pay tribute to the author’s lasting legacy of eldritch, inhuman horror. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW AND A VIDEO PREMIERE: CURSUS (“HER WINGS COVER THE SKIES”)

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 162017
 

 

(NCS contributor Comrade Aleks brings us both an interview with one of the two members of Texas-based Cursus and the premiere of an official video for a song from their forthcoming debut album.)

Texan sludgy and psychedelic doom-duo Cursus arrive with their massive self-titled full-length debut. The album will be released on vinyl on the 28th of April, 2017, via Artificial Head, but here — right alongside the interview that the band’s guitarist and vocalist CJ Salem provided to NCS, we have a premiere of the official Cursus video for their new song “Her Wings Cover the Skies”.

Deep, heavy, low-tuned, and ominous, Cursus remind us of different aspects of bands like Neurosis, Ufomammut, and YOB, but the duo of CJ Salem and Sarah Ann Roork worked out their own charismatic sound. These crushing and mesmerizing riffs are worthy of your attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BALFOR — “DAWN OF SAVAGE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 162017
 

 

In mid-January of this year we had the pleasure of premiering a stream of Black Serpent Rising, the new third album by Ukrainian black/death metal band Balfor, in advance of its January 15 release by the French label Drakkar Productions, and now we have for you a new video of the band performing the song “Dawn of Savage“, filmed at their album release show in Kyiv.

For those of you who may still be new to Balfor, the line-up includes current and former members of such notable groups as Khors, Raventale, and Hate Forest. Black Serpent Rising follows the band’s last album, Barbaric Blood, by six years, with the 2013 EP Heralds of the Fall dividing the wait and with significant line-up changes occurring over that interval as well. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: BLASPHEMER (UK)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Mar 152017
 

 

(KevinP brings us another episode in his series of brief interviews, and this time he quizzes guitarist/vocalist Arno Cagna and drummer Dan Mullins of the UK’s Blasphemer, whose self-titled debut album was released in January of this year.)

 

So you’ve been around 25 years (since 1992) and you just finally got around to releasing your debut album.  Amuse us with the explanation why it took that long?

Arno:  The band actually formed in 1990.  Our first demo was released at the end of 1992.  From 1992 to 1995 we released several demos and received positive press in the fanzines of the day.  That led on to us receiving 5/5 demo reviews in Terrorizer magazine in the UK in 1994 and then being voted best unsigned band by their readers. So you would have thought our first album would have been released in the 1990s. It wasn’t to be though, as around 1995 the project as Blasphemer was put hold. This was due to an unreleased demo that fell into the hands of a record label. Continue reading »

LOCK UP: “DEMONIZATION”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 152017
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the new album by the death-grind super-group Lock Up, which was released on March 10th by Listenable Records.)

It is rare that I find myself admiring a musician for the amount of fun he seems to be having on a disc; but I sincerely hope that one day I have half as much fun as Nick Barker seems to be having with the toms on his kit on Lock Up’s new disc Demonization.

We open with musing on that fact because if there is one dominant thing you won’t help but notice over and over during the vicious barrage of auditory violence that Lock Up wield against their listeners during Demonization, it is the constant drum fills that feature the upper part of the man’s drum kit as he just flies through the whole thing. Someone pulled him aside and told him ‘go fast’, and that is what he did for most of the album, save for three songs where the group actually slow down slightly, and he unleashes some ultra-tight blasts and rolls constantly, making sure every drum and cymbal available to him gets the everliving shit beat out of it.

But of course, that’s much like the entire listening experience; it is why we come to grind-stalwarts Lock Up in the first place, right? Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: SCÁTH NA DÉITH, MUKA, AUTHOR & PUNISHER, ISOLERT

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Mar 152017
 

 

I have some friends on this site (and I’m thinking mainly of Andy, Austin, and Gorger) who have a talent for compiling collections of brief reviews that get their points across concisely and then let the music carry the baton across the finish line. I’m going to try that here myself, because I’ve sadly admitted to myself that I’ll never get around to writing proper reviews of these releases. These aren’t even improper reviews, just impressionistic streams of consciousness.

Three of the following releases are albums I hinted on Sunday would be covered in an extension of my SHADES OF BLACK series. The fourth one is an EP that popped up unexpectedly. I’m hoping to compile another collection like this one for later in the week.

SCÁTH NA DÉITH

I was very impressed by this Irish band’s 2015 EP, The Horrors of Old (reviewed here) and I’ve been meaning to write about this album for a long time, ever since it came out in mid-January. I kept delaying until I could find the time to write something long, detailed, and adequately reflective of the enthusiasm I have for it. And then I realized that day may never come. Turning even one new person onto the album would be worth something as meager as this little “review” — better this than further procrastination.

Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries