AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRAWLING CHAOS — “WYRD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 242025
 

(written by Islander)

Wyrd is the third album, by the Italian death metal band Crawling Chaos, and it’s set for imminent release by Time To Kill Records on March 28th. As the label explains, “It is an anthology inspired by the role of feminine figures in European mythology and their connection to the concepts of fate and free will.” Crawling Chaos elaborate further:

Wyrd is our third full-length assault and it is a twisted journey through fate, destiny, and everything that lies beyond free will. Inspired by the ancient Northern European concept of wyrd, this record dives headfirst into the dark side of what it means to become.

Each of the ten tracks is a chapter in a mythological fever dream. You’ll meet some of the most powerful, terrifying female figures from mythology, folklore, and history: the Norse Norns, Macbeth’s witches conjuring chaos for Hecate, the relentless Greco-Roman Furies, and those wicked Thessalian necromancers who bend the dead to their will. It’s a damn coven of destruction. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEATH WHORE — “INFERNAL TERROR MACHINE”

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Mar 242025
 

(written by Islander)

Death Whore‘s band name is a bit of a fist in the face for people who see it. Their music is a much bigger fist, uninterested in pulling its punches. You’ll get the idea again from the name of their forthcoming debut album, Blood Washes Everything Away, and from the name of the album track we’re premiering with a video today, “Infernal Terror Machine“.

Death Whore‘s earlier releases, their 2020 self-titled EP and the Total Teutonic Torso EP two years later, were mauling and murderous hybrids of death metal, hardcore, and crust punk. Wielding punishing percussive hammers prone to jackhammer grooves and stringed instruments tuned to mangling levels of abrasion, and fronted by scraped-raw and savagely rabid vocals and gang howls, they leaned into furious metallic hardcore beatdowns fueled by adrenaline and coated in grit and filth, leavened by monstrously brutalizing stomps as bleak as a sucking chest wound.

Those EPs are well worth catching up to even now, especially if you’re interested in getting big doses of raging and ruinous catharsis that are as viscerally compulsive as they are bone-smashing and corrosive. They build very high expectations for this debut album that we’re about to preview. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MO’YNOQ, PATHS TO DELIVERANCE, ANCESTOR OF KAOS, SUM LIGHTS (AND A LOT MORE)

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Mar 232025
 

(written by Islander)

I had grand plans for this column. I had a big pile of picks, enough to mega-size it, just needed to do the writing. And then I did what anyone with any sense does on a Sunday (but not me because sense is always in short supply) — I slept late. I would have slept later except one eye stickily opened and I saw the time on the bedside clock. Yikes!

So the grand plans have fallen apart. Many times in the past when I’ve been in this situation I’ve thought about just stitching together a bunch of song streams and videos without commentary, like some internet-enabled DJ or “influencer”. It would be easy to do that but I’ve always detested the thought. You may wonder why. Here’s the why: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AMENRA, NECHOCHWEN, BLOOD CHARIOT, STONE CROWN, BLOOD MONOLITH, THE GREAT SEA, WARFIELD, SLIDHR, JACK QUARTET

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 222025
 

(written by Islander)

As usual, I had an enormous number of things to choose from for today’s collection. As usual, I had no preconceived idea how to do it. I just put one foot in front of the other, stumbling along until I ran out of time.

As I sit here and look at what I chose, I see that I defaulted to some old favorites but also went with debuts from some bands I’d never heard of. (I also siphoned off a few that will make good shades for the usual blackening of the Sabbath tomorrow.) I also added a couple of live-performance videos at the end, one of which is a genuine brain-scrambler. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HOROH

 Interviews  No Responses »
Mar 212025
 

(In February the French death metal band Horoh released their second album on Crypt of Dr. Gore — reviewed here by our contributor Zoltar — and today we have Comrade Aleks‘ interview with this horror-loving band’s two veteran members.)

French death-metal duo Horoh consists of Sébastien (vocals) and J. (all instruments). Both men live in different parts of France, so I doubt that Horoh will outgrow its status of a studio project. And yet the fresh Horde of Horror is their new album released only two years after the debut Aberration. Crypt of Dr. Gore released this 39-minute-long knot of gore, death, and unspeakable horrors in a form of quite old fashioned death metal.

Sébastien and J. spent many years performing different kinds of metal, so… an old horse doesn’t spoil a furrow… or how do you pronounce that? However, here we have a quite lively and fun conversation with both men. Hi there! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAHVIRA — “I AM ARYAN”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Mar 212025
 

(written by Islander)

Let’s address the elephant in the room right quick: Rahvira are NOT a Nazi band, despite the conclusion you might leap to based upon the title of the song we’re premiering. The word aryan has a history and meaning far more ancient than the grotesque appropriation of it that the Nazis made.

The Holocaust was also not the first genocide of the 20th century. That horrid distinction goes to the Ottoman Empire’s near-complete liquidation of the Armenian people during World War I, an event that’s the subject of Rahvira‘s new album and that even the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. devotes attention to. Here is part of what you can find in that Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopedia:

Sometimes called the first genocide of the twentieth century, the Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation. Indeed, the origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in the mass murder of Armenians in 1915–16.

Additional horrific details are available in this article at Wikipedia. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: SWALLOW THE SUN, HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, GHOST BATH, SNAKES OF RUSSIA – FEB. 28, 2025, ORLANDO FL

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 212025
 

(Daniel Barkasi provided us the following wonderful report on the February 28 Orlando stop of Swallow the Sun‘s recently completed U.S. tour with Harakiri for the Sky, Ghost Bath, and Snakes of Russia, accompanied by the wonderful photos of Brittany Barkasi @Turn off the Thunder.)

Personally, Swallow the Sun is a band that has meant quite a bit over the years, both to myself and many friends – memories that will never fade. A good friend even made merch in the form of necklaces and keychains for this very tour, which are super high quality and wholly unique. For yours truly, ever since having my blackened heart soothed by The Morning Never Came in 2003, these Finns have been a constant in the listening rotation.

I first caught them live in September of 2007 (17-½ years ago – time is damn cruel) on what now has to be described as a dream tour, with Katatonia headlining, and Insomnium, Scar Symmetry, and Swallow the Sun supporting. Hard to imagine that tour was real, but for me and a bunch of others in the old Peabody’s (miss that place) in Cleveland, it was quite an affirming event. Since then, we’ve managed to see them a bunch of times, and when the opportunity arises, it’s one that we can’t turn down.

Adding to the allure of the melodic death/doom legends were Harakiri for the Sky, the post-black stalwarts who have eluded me for quite some time. Add to that the pummeling sounds of Ghost Bath and the dark electronics of Snakes of Russia, and we had a varied collection of fantastic acts to take in.

So off to Orlando we trekked to a usual landing spot in central Florida – the incredible Conduit – for a memorable evening of heart-wrenching musicality. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DOWNPOUR / OFNUS / SACRED NOOSE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 202025
 

(Andy Synn recommends a trio of recent releases for your listening pleasure)

I originally intended to publish this piece a while ago… only I couldn’t quite lock down exactly which three albums I was going to write about.

For a while I considered including the new Abduction album, only to realise that since we share a drummer these days that probably crosses a few ethical boundaries (I don’t have many, it’s true, but I do have some).

And though I initially intended to include the new one from Wren as my third choice (I’ve written about them before after all) some crossed-wires here at NCS Central meant that one of our regular guest-writers ended up including them in one of his articles… which meant I had to go back to the drawing board again.

Thankfully, however, I don’t think you’re going to be disappointed by the three artists/albums I’ve chosen to cover – two of whom are making their official debuts here at the site – as they’re all more than deserving of your time and attention on their own merits and in different ways.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GALVORNHATHOL — “III”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 202025
 

(written by Islander)

Today, on the eve of its release, we present a full stream of a new album by the one-person German band Galvornhathol, whose name (we are told) “is derived from Tolkien’s Sindarin script and can probably translated to ‘(dark) metal axe'”. That is intended to draw a contrast between the man-made world of iron and axe and the band’s lyrical themes, which connect to spiritualism (non-religious) and nature.

With respect to those themes, we’ll begin by sharing Galvornhathol‘s description of the new album:

“III” concludes the trilogy that started with the conveniently titled “I“. A journey from the earth, to below the clouds and now to the stellar realm of stars and galaxies. Tinged with metaphors for the facets of human life, encased in an interstellar poem of the matter, dark and light, all round us, that we call “nature”. Providing an uneducated guess of what our future might hold; providing we keep living our present, the listener might come to the conclusion that, while we are able to observe objects that are millions of lightyears away, we refrain from looking ahead into our own time to come. Whatever the future might hold; onwards. Ad Astra. Continue reading »

PREVIEWING FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2025: AN EXCLUSIVE NCS INTERVIEW

 Interviews, Metal News  1 Response »
Mar 202025
 

(This coming July the Fire in the Mountains festival will take place at the Red Eagle Campground in the Blackfeet Nation in northwest Montana, with a spectacular lineup of performers and many other attractions. In the following exclusive interview, our man Gonzo talked with festival organizers Jeremy Walker and Shane McCarthy about how FITM got connected with its new location, what inspires the event, and a lot more.)

It was a clear, calm day in Denver. A cloudless sky left plenty of room for the Colorado sun to focus its fiery wrath directly onto my bare head. Sometimes putting on a hat is all but necessary when living up here. Today, I was woefully unprepared.

While walking down Broadway, one couldn’t be blamed for questioning whether spring had come a week or two early. At this elevation, Mother Nature tends to be especially fickle, and any Denverite knows you should probably dress like you’re going skiing at the beach before going outside during this time of year. It’s a decidedly weird aesthetic, but I don’t make the rules.

I was on my way to the dark depths of Trve Brewing, my usual haunt for getting a midday beer and hiding from the sun’s persistent wrath, especially in summer. I am no stranger to this place, and it’s one of my favorite dark corridors in which to lurk and drink.

Today’s visit would be different, though. I’d be meeting up with Jeremy Walker and Shane McCarthy, two of the gentlemen behind the curtain of the Fire in the Mountains festival, to talk about the event’s long-anticipated comeback, where that journey has taken them since its last appearance in 2022, and how in the hell they managed to get Old Man’s Child to play their first-ever US show as a headliner.

I was fortunate enough to have experienced this festival in ’22, when Enslaved and Wolves in the Throne Room were featured, and I can say without exaggeration that it was a life-changing weekend. It became very clear to me back then that this was more than just a music festival. This was something special.

With all that in mind, I’d been looking forward to today’s conversation with Jeremy and Shane for weeks. Continue reading »

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