NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARKONA — “ZIEMIA”

Oct 132016

We have three months left in 2016, and there are still can’t-miss releases on the horizon before we reach New Year’s Day. Judging by the stunning new song you’re about to hear, we’re compelled to say that the new album Lunaris by the long-running Polish band Arkona will be one of these. The album is set for release on November 4 by Debemur Morti Productions, and the name of the song is “Ziemia“.

Arkona must be considered among the pioneers of Polish black metal, with demos that date back to 1994 and a debut album (Imperium) released in 1996. Lunaris is the band’s sixth album in that long career, and the second following a span between 2003 and 2014 when the band only participated in a few splits. This is their first album on the Debemur Morti label. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HOUR OF PENANCE, DEVOURING STAR, HENRY KANE, CVINGER, HANGING GARDEN, DISILLUSION, MYLINGAR, EMPTINESS

Oct 122016

Yes, there are quite a lot of names in the headline of this post, but what follows isn’t quite as daunting as you might think. The first two items consist of news and art for forthcoming releases, but no music yet, and the last two items are just brief teasers of new music. In between I’ve sandwiched four full songs and videos, and I’m quite happy with what I’ve chosen, not only because the music is very good considered in isolation but also because collectively they make for a nice, varied playlist (and the two videos and album covers are quite eye-catching, too). At least it should be nice for people who have eclectic tastes. Here we go….

HOUR OF PENANCE

That’s a hell of a metal album cover up there, isn’t it? It was disclosed yesterday by Italy’s Hour of Penance and Prosthetic Records, who will release the band’s new album Cast the First Stone on January 27, 2017. The cover was created by Gyula Havancsak, whose work we’ve praised before in these pages.

The announcement was accompanied not only by a quote from our site (yay!) but also by the following statement from the band’s vocalist Paolo Pieri concerning the concept of the album, which revolves around the idea that “the injustices suffered during the Crusades and Colonialism do not justify the chain of hate that propagandizes the destruction of the West”: Continue reading »

UNDERDOGS IN THE UNDERGROUND: RETURN TO THE TALENTED DEPTHS OV OBSCURE MADNESS (PART 1)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Oct 122016

(Austin Weber prepared this multi-part unearthing of new music, and today he focused on releases from three bands — Buckshot Facelift, Omnea, and The Conjuration — while also urging you to go spend your time at another site!)

While I’m not quite egotistical enough to think anyone who reads this site has missed my multi-part underground music articles, I can at least speak for myself and say that I’ve missed doing them! With that in mind, there will be at least three or four more editions of this article to come. So prepare thyself for both weirdness and madness, because a heaping shitload of both will be covered by the time this article wraps up.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to refrain from covering any obscure stuff I’ve covered or helped stream early through my other gig at Metal-Injection. But in spite of that, I urge you to peruse what I’ve covered there in 2016 so far through the following link here. You might be surprised at the stuff you uncover that hasn’t been covered here at NCS to date! Now onto the first installment of some new gems you absolutely must give a listen to. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SLEGEST — “WOLF”

Premieres No Responses »

Oct 122016

In December of every year our putrid site rolls out a list of the year’s “most infectious” extreme metal songs, as chosen through our own infallible judgment. This song we’re about to bring you by the Norwegian band Slegest has vaulted onto the list like Superman leaping a tall building in a single bound.

The name of the song is “Wolf” and it appears on Slegest’s second album Vidsyn, which is being released by Dark Essence Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: QUEEN ELEPHANTINE — “ONYX”

Premieres No Responses »

Oct 122016

With the song you’re about to hear, we’re taking a few steps off our more usual beaten paths. The song doesn’t fracture skulls or lacerate flesh, but it definitely has an irresistible effect on the body and the mind — and one that grows ever stronger as it unfolds. The name of the song is “Onyx” and it appears on Kala, which is the fifth album by Queen Elephantine, due for release on October 21 in a variety of formats by a consortium of different labels.

To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the band before delving into this album, but you can now count me among those intrigued and fascinated by the music. For others who may also be discovering Queen Elephantine for the first time, the group was originally formed in Hong Kong in 2006, moved to New York the next year, and are now based in Providence, Rhode Island. The line-up hasn’t remained fixed over time — and no fewer than 10 people are credited with contributions to the music on Kala. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEMON EYE (ERIK SUGG)

Interviews 1 Response »

Oct 122016

(Comrade Aleks is back with an interview of Erik Sugg, vocalist/guitarist of North Carolina’s Demon Eye, who brings us lots of news about the band’s next album)

It started when Erik Sugg (guitars, vocals) and Larry Burilson (guitars) played in a band named Corvette Summer which covered ‘70s rock bands (Budgie, UFO, Humble Pie, and others), and that’s how they met Bill Eagen (drums, vocals) and Paul Walz (bass). Once after a weekend on a wooded mountainside Eric returned enlightened and asked if the guys could support the riffs he wrote there alone on an acoustic guitar… Just like that story with Moses – you know… The real commotion started.

So since 2012 Demon Eye have recorded two stunning, successful albums performed in the way of heavy doom metal charged with demonic energy! The debut full-length Leave the Light was full of sheer killer-songs, and the sophomore work Tempora Infernalia developed its ideas further. Just one year has passed since the Tempora Infernalia release, but I’m already anxious as the news has spread that Demon Eye are in the studio again. Are they conjuring a new ominous grand work? Erik Sugg will answer this and few other questions in the interview below. Continue reading »

HAAR AND UR DRAUGR: A SPLIT

Reviews 3 Responses »

Oct 112016

Sometimes the best split releases are those that juxtapose differing musical styles of the participating bands while finding common ground between them in sometimes unexpected ways — and the new split by Scotland’s Haar and Australia’s Ur Draugr is one of those. It was released on October 7 by ATMF and it includes three songs by Haar and a single 20-minute monolith by Ur Draugr. I’ll share some thoughts about each side separately, along with a conclusion about the powerful combined effect of the split’s complete experience, and a stream of all the music.

HAAR

Following the appearance of two well-received EPs in 2010 and 2012, Haar released their hour-long debut album (also through ATMF), The Wayward Ceremony, in 2015. We premiered a full stream of the album in May of that year, along with a review in which I wrote:

“If you had to force the album into a genre category, I suppose black metal would be the name of the game, but the album resists simple classification. Atmospherically, it is unquestionably dark and threatening, casting an aura of horrors hidden in the shadows and the relentless approach of an all-consuming hunger. And there are bursts of ravaging black metal aggression, complete with blasting drums and raking/jabbing riffs…. Continue reading »

TARNKAPPE: “WINTERWAKER”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Oct 112016

Black metal has morphed into many different shapes since the term was first coined on the cover of Venom’s second album. Even the now-classic albums released by Norwegian bands in the early ’90s are referred to as the “second wave” because the changes had already begun, though those albums could justifiably be considered the ones that created the genre as most people now know it, far more than the prototypes of the ’80s. Of course, the morphing has continued with increasing speed from then straight up to through present.

The Dutch band Tarnkappe have little apparent interest in all the spinoffs and mutations that have transformed “black metal” into a genre term of such breadth that it no longer provides much specific guidance about the sound of bands who use it. Their new album Winterwaker (“Guardian of Winter” in English) is firmly rooted in the early ’90s — and it thrives in that cold black soil. Yet Winterwaker still has its own vivid and dynamic personality. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRÉATURES — “À L’ORÉE DU MAL, LE PACTE”

Premieres 1 Response »

Oct 112016

Le Noir Village by the French project Créatures is an unusual and ambitious album in numerous ways. Créatures is the solo project of a man who uses the name Sparda. The album (which is Créatures’ first full-length) tells the story of a twelfth-century countryside village that is attacked by terrifying monsters. As in an opera, all the characters in the story are enacted by different vocalists who act as first-person narrators to help tell the tale. The digipack version of the album will be accompanied by a 16-page booklet that includes, in addition to the cover painting by Simon Hervé, a different drawing in a medieval style for each of the album’s six songs along with the texts of this musical horror play.

But the album’s ambitions go further still. Sparda, who composed the music and also plays one of the vocal roles, performs not only guitars and bass but also piano, organ, ocarina, dung chen, singing bowls, gong, and the sounds of singing choirs. And he was aided in the production of the album not only by the 9 other vocal artists but also by other musicians (including drummer Ehrryk) who perform a further array of instruments that includes cello, violin, trumpet, darbuka, and more.

And if you’re not interested in hearing the music by now, that would be surprising. But what you hear may be even more surprising. We have the premiere of a shortened version of the album’s fourth track, “À l’orée du Mal, le Pacte“. Continue reading »

MORPHEUS TALES: “SECULAR NOIR”

Reviews 1 Response »

Oct 112016

(In this post we bring you two songs from the forthcoming reissue of the debut album by the unusual Greek band Morpheus Tales, along with the following review by Greek guest writer Chrysostomos Tsaprailis.)

Black metal and space have been closely intimated throughout the genre’s history. Not so much as the last frontier for humanity, but rather as an approximation of the Unknown, space exhibits close ties with the genre’s uncanny essence. The noir art genre on the other hand, though somewhat close aesthetically to black metal, has never been much associated with it, mainly due to the former’s emphasis on human emotions and relations, something undoubtedly contrary to the black metal thought-form. Still, the Greek experimental black metal band Morpheus Tales assume the difficult task of presenting a cosmic noir tale in their aptly named debut Secular Noir.

The album was first released independently on digital format in 2014, and two years after, it will finally see a physical release via the new Greek Arcane Angels label, firstly on tape as a taste of what’s to come, and then on both vinyl and CD editions. All physical releases will sport new cover art and band logo, created by Arcane Accidents, a sub-division of Arcane Angels, which will be responsible for the artwork of several other releases of the label as well. Continue reading »

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