NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: HANNES GROSSMANN — “HAIL SATAN”

Jul 272016

Approximately one month ago my comrade DGR spilled a lot of words at our site about a very exciting piece of news — the rising presence on the horizon of a new solo album by the phenomenal Hannes Grossmann, and the release of the first advance track from the album. Today we’re delighted to bring you the premiere of a second song with an accompanying lyric video — “Hail Satan” (that’s the name of the song, as well as our reaction to it) — and a reminder about the crowdfunding campaign that’s necessary to put the entire album in our grasping hands.

For those who may only now be discovering Hannes Grossmann, he is a Nuremberg-based writer and producer who is probably best known as a drummer for such bands as Necrophagist, Obscura, Blotted Science, Alkaloid, and Hate Eternal. In addition to being an amazing musician, he was a principal songwriter for Obscura as well as a creative force in the remarkable Alkaloid, whose debut album The Malkuth Grimoire was one of 2015’s best.

Two years ago, he released his first solo album The Radial Covenant, which was also financed through a crowdfunding campaign, and this new one is named The Crypts of Sleep.
Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: 40 WATT SUN, DYSRYTHMIA, ALCEST, INQUISITION, ASPHYX

Jul 262016

Yesterday I loaded up a Seen and Heard round-up with music from 9 bands I had discovered in a single morning, most of them of the more obscure variety. Today I’ve again decided to focus exclusively on things I discovered through a whirlwind tour of our in-box and Facebook this morning, but this time the bands have a higher profile than yesterday’s group. Of course, these things are relative; the odds are that none of the people you encounter today who aren’t already your friends will have heard of any of these bands. And of course that is their loss.

40 WATT SUN

This first item him me like a bolt from the blue. Although I haven’t been regularly searching for news about 40 Watt Sun, I think in the recesses of my mind I just assumed we would never have another album by this particular project of Patrick Walker (ex-Warning) — but indeed we will, in less than three months’ time. Continue reading »

OBED MARSH: “INNSMOUTH”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Jul 262016

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the debut album by Obed Marsh from Perth, Western Australia.)

Let’s face it, the relationship between Lovecraft and Metal is pretty well established by this point, with numerous acts from across the length and breadth (and other, more esoteric, dimensions) of the metallic spectrum all turning to the twisted dreams of the Providence-born prophet for their inspiration.

Joining their deformed and deviant ranks we now have Obed Marsh, a doom-laden duo named for Captain Obed Marsh, accursed founder of The Esoteric Order of Dagon, whose pact with the blasphemous Deep Ones was, in turn, the source of both Innsmouth’s prosperity, and its ultimate damnation.

Over the course of six weighty, oppressive songs – bookended, in true concept-album style, by the atmospheric “Prologue” and “Epilogue” — these down-under denizens conjure up a series of truly harrowing musical visions whose filthy tendrils seek to infiltrate and permeate every fibre of your being.

So come with me now, into the murky depths. But don’t expect to return unchanged by the experience… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: USELESS — “THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE”

Premieres No Responses »

Jul 252016

Perhaps more so than in other musical genres, nightmares have a strong association with extreme metal, as sources of inspiration and as experiences that artists have tried to represent or foment in their music. The song you’re about to hear, “The Ultimate Nightmare“, would leave little doubt about the wellspring of its own inspiration, even if it had a different title.

The song was created by a mysterious black metal trio who call themselves Useless, and it appears on their debut album Absence of Grace, which will be released by Third Eye Temple on September 2. The band’s members identify themselves only by initials, and I’m not even sure of the country in which they live (though if forced to guess, I would say Poland, which is Third Eye Temple’s home). But they do have a talent for pulling a listener’s mind out of its mundane surroundings and sending it off to a very dark and inhospitable place. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AEPHANEMER, CRUCIFIED MORTALS, LUNATIC AFFLICTION, NABAATH, NAG, PIT OF CARNAGE, RUSSIAN CIRCLES, ZQKMGDZ , AUBE GRISE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Jul 252016

I had a few ideas for a Monday round-up that percolated over the weekend. And then this morning, when I crawled through what had arrived in the NCS in-box since I went to sleep last night, all those ideas were shoved aside and put on the shelf for later retrieval. I do have poor impulse control, and therefore decided I would devote this post to nothing but what I discovered this morning.

Mind you, not everything I found in our in-box was worth spreading around (e.g., news about a new device for preventing snoring), but an unusually high percentage was. And what I especially liked about what I found was the serendipitous fact that the songs were quite varied in their styles of heaviness.

Now there’s quite a lot of music here, and so I’m going to do my best to keep my verbiage to a minimum. I’ve arranged the tracks in alphabetical order by band name, except for the last one… because I think it’s best experienced as a conclusion to this playlist.

AEPHANEMER

Until seeing the wonderful cover art that I put at the top of this post I had forgotten that Dark Tranquillity’s Niklas Sundin was a visual artist as well as a musical one. This creation adorns a new album named Memento Mori by the band Aephanemer from Toulouse, France. It will be released on September 16, but the band have already made one song from the album available for streaming and free download at Bandcamp. Its name is “Unstoppable”. Continue reading »

TOURISM: GORGUTS TO PLAY AUSTIN, AZ (AND OTHER NORTH AMERICAN CITIES) WITH INTRONAUT AND BRAIN TENTACLES

Metal News 4 Responses »

Jul 252016

Creeping through the NCS e-mail in-box this morning while trying to wake up I spied an item that achieved that objective better than coffee: an announcement by Season of Mist that the phenomenal Gorguts will be mounting a North American tour this fall, with support from Intronaut and Brain Tentacles. Called The Pleiades Dust Tour, it begins on October 3 in Brighton, MA, and travels through assorted other U.S. and Canadian locations for the rest of the month, ending in New York City on the 30th.

As usual in perusing such announcements, I had eyes for only one thing: Would there be a stop in Seattle? Having found that, yes, there will be, I ignored all other info in the flyer — until a Texas-based friend expressed sadness that the tour would be stopping in Austin, Arizona, rather than Austin, Texas. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: WINDFAERER, MAR MORTUUM, HIDING, ANTHRO HALAUST, AEGRUS, MISANTHROPIC RAGE

Album Reviews, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 10 Responses »

Jul 242016

Greetings from Seattle and welcome to another edition of Shades of Black. I wasn’t able to prepare one of these installments last Sunday due to fucking off, so I’ve accumulated an especially large list of recent discoveries that I would like to write about. From that list I’ve selected blackened music from six bands to recommend.

WINDFAERER

The name Windfaerer will likely be a familiar one to our readers. Last year we premiered two songs from the band’s marvelous second album Tenebrosum and named one of those to our list of 2015’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. What a nice surprise it was to discover that two days ago Windfaerer released more new music.

These new songs (three of them) appear on a three-way split by Windfaerer and two other Northeast bands, WolfCloak, and Dumal. The name of the split is Coniuratio Nigrum Atlantika. So far I’ve only listened to Windfaerer’s tracks, but they are predictably excellent. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (CIRCLE OF DEAD CHILDREN)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 5 Responses »

Jul 242016

(DGR steps in to write this Sunday’s edition of The Rearview Mirror, in which we revisit releases from metal’s past.)

Sometimes I find myself shooting awake with ideas for Rearviewmirrors, lots of which remain half-written. I love this column because it allows me to basically post what I wake up thinking, which is usually along the lines of ‘Holy shit, remember _______?!’ I did that recently with Circle Of Dead Children, a band whose music was not only an ugly reflection of the time in which it was written, but also years later is still able to turn a mirror and announce with utter disdain that absolutely fucking nothing changes.

Of all the bands that would eventually find their way into my early-going CD collection, Pennsylvania’s Circle Of Dead Children were always one of the most extreme ones. I came around to the group late-ish in their career, a few years after Zero Comfort Margin — the group’s 2005 EP that is today’s subject — was released. I actually discovered this EP in early 2008, after reading the lyrics to one of their songs, “Android (120 Ampere Opiate)”, and it closed with the line “Your sound bite slogans can burn with your flags”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WORMROT, AETHERIAN, VIRVUM, MORDOR, PANTHEIST

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jul 232016

Getting a very slow start on this Saturday. Went to sleep very late last night without having begun writing the post you are now reading, and then slept for 9 hours — and still didn’t want to get out of bed. I can’t remember the last time I slept for 9 hours, or anything close to that. I felt groggy as shit for a couple of hours after waking up. Pretty sure that was sleep grogginess rather than the after-effects of all the wine I consumed last night with my spouse and some friends. Pretty sure.

Either way, I now feel more alert and invigorated, having listened to the music collected in this post. This collection doesn’t really make much of a dent in the long list of new tracks and videos I came across since the last round-up I assembled. As usual, there’s not much rhyme or reason to why I picked these selections rather than others. Austin Weber also contributed one of these items, as you’ll see below.

WORMROT

On July 20, Singapore’s Wormrot announced that they will be releasing a new album named Voices on October 14, and they revealed the great cover art you see above by Zahir Sanosi (aka Kilas). Voices comes five long years since their last album, Dirge. Wormrot made a video to announce the new album, and it includes a new song from the album called “Fallen Into Disuse”. Continue reading »

TOURISM: DUST OF THE EARTH (WITH AMIENSUS AND PANGAEA)

Metal News No Responses »

Jul 222016

It’s not a well-kept secret that we here at NCS are ardent fans of Minnesota’s Amiensus. We’ve been closely following all of their releases ever since Andy Synn reviewed their debut album Restoration for us back in January 2013. Their latest album, Ascension, appeared last year (and we reviewed it here), and we premiered a new track named “Reflections” last April.

Since then, Amiensus have signed on with Apathia Records for the release of a new EP in the spring of 2017 and have laid the groundwork for the Dust of the Earth tour with Wisconsin’s Pangaea during September — which we’re now helping to announce. For details about that, plus music from both bands, plus more news updates about both Amiensus and Pangaea, please continue reading…. Continue reading »

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