OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 15): ABDUCTION, BLACK RABBIT, ANZV

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  No Responses »
Jan 222026
 

(written by Islander)

I always confront two challenges in making this list — which songs to include overall, and which ones to group together in each segment. In trying to solve the second conundrum I sometimes conceive of connections that make the grouping seem logical, though at times my “logic” must certainly seem perplexing to others.

Tomorrow will be a decent example of an intentional combination, for reasons I’ll explain then. Today really isn’t that, but more just a grabbing of three songs I thought belonged on the list as they jumped out at me from the early part of my alphabetical list of candidates when I scanned through it for the umpteenth time since December. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 042025
 

(Andy Synn takes yet another look back at what May had to offer us)

For anyone keeping count… yes, this is the third edition of “Things You May Have Missed” that I’ve done in a week, which is a testament to just how much stuff I missed last month while I was busy shirking my blogging responsibilities.

Hell, the truth is there’s more than enough artists/albums left over on the proverbial cutting-room floor – Escarnium and Eschaton, Orphaned and Obsidian Tongue, Morgu and Mayon, etc – to make up at least one more of these articles too (if only I had the time).

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SERPENTES, GOLEM OF GORE, CRUST, ANZV, CAGED BASTARD, SKUGGOR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 042025
 

(written by Islander)

I keep an electronic calendar and a paper calendar of premieres I agree to run for NCS. Belt and suspenders, as people use to say before suspenders went the way of the Dodo. But sometimes my pants fall down anyway, like when the plans of a band or label change and I’m being distracted by something else when I see that and then forget to change either calendar.

That’s what happened today. I had an album premiere on the calendar, but when I went hunting for the “assets” for the premiere I saw the e-mail chain where a schedule change had happened. So I found myself with time I didn’t expect to have today, and decided to make this roundup of new songs and videos as a bit of a head-start on the weekend roundups. My selection strategy was to pick the newest things I saw that I liked this morning. Hope you enjoy what I chose.

(In case you’re wondering, I do have assistants in my NCS work, but mainly they delete things I’ve written and introduce typos by walking across the keyboard. They’re less useful in keeping my pants up.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NIGHTMARER, BONE WEAPON, GRAND CADAVER, VADIAT, ANZV

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 102023
 

This has been a rare week when we didn’t have at least one premiere on the calendar every day. That gave me the time to do not one, not two, but three round-ups of new songs and videos, including this one. And I ought to have time for a fourth one tomorrow.

The timing has been fortuitous, because the past week or two has been jammed with new singles and advance tracks from forthcoming records that have piqued my interest (and should pique yours), including the following four, with news of a new reissue at the end.

NIGHTMARER (U.S./Germany)

This tremendously impressive band moved from strength to greater strength over the course of their Chasm EP (2016), their debut album Cacophony of Terror (2018), and their Monolith of Corrosion EP (2021), and now they’re returning with a second album named Deformity Adrift that’s set for release on May 5th via their label Total Dissonance Worship in the US and Vendetta Records in Europe. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANZV — “ISIMUD”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 012022
 

The Portuguese band ANZV is only a few years old, but harnesses the talents of experienced veterans. Through their forthcoming debut album Gallas, they explore an incredibly chilling conceptual vision. The description they give is worth reading in full, and we’ll get to that later in this feature, but for now let’s sum it up as a journey into an underworld of nihilism and despair, a free-fall into the surrender of will and self, becoming nothing at all.

In portraying such harrowing visions ANZV intertwine death metal and elements of classic and post-black metal, and they do so in tremendously powerful and gripping fashion. One song from the album (“Inane“) has already had a lyric video premiere, and today we bring you a second song — “Isimud” — which comes with its own cover art that you can see above. Continue reading »