SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WILD BEYOND, FELL RUIN, OF WOLVES, TENEBRIS, BELL WITCH & AERIAL RUIN, SOULFRACTURE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 182025
 

(written by Islander)

Life outside the doors of NCS reminded me again that there is life outside the doors of NCS. Which is to say that unforeseen occurrences pushed back the time I wanted to spend listening to and writing about new metal for this roundup, so I’m late finishing it. No need to go into detail but, well, a baseball playoff game last night and needing to get my wife to an early ferry boat this morning had something to do with it.

There’s no baseball playoff games today and my spouse is now out of town, just me and the cats holding down the homestead, so there’s a decent chance I’ll have a more on-time roundup of black(ish) metal ready for tomorrow. As for today’s selections, I think they’ll keep you off-balance as you move through them. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: APHOTIC

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 112023
 

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(In this new interview Comrade Aleks engaged in a fascinating discussion with Nicolò Brambilla from the genre-bending Italian metal band Aphotic, whose debut album Abyssgazer was released last spring by Sentient Ruin.)

The chronicles of death-doom know two bands named Aphotic, and both are great in their own way. Aphotic from the US was a short-lived band formed by ex-members of Dusk; sadly, it was split in 2005, leaving just three EPs behind.

Aphotic from Milan was founded in 2020 by ex-members of the death metal act Ekpyrosis: L. Zeit (bass, vocals), F. Abisme (drums), and N. Gazer (vocals, guitars, synth). Their colleague from Fuoco Fatuo, K. Coil (guitars), joined Aphotic in 2022 right in time to take part in the recording of the band’s first album as a guest. Abyssgazer was released through Sentient Ruin Laboratories and Nuclear Winter Records in March 2023.

The band tends towards rather “doomed” death metal with a few influences outside these genres, and Abyssgazer is remarkable with its rich textures, highly intense delivery, and in-depth atmosphere, which fits its concept well. The philosophy of Cosmology is hidden between its lines and manifests itself through the play of celestial lights and ugly shades born from phenomena beyond human understanding.

Nicolò Brambilla aka N. Gazer revealed a lot of interesting facts about Abyssgazer in the current interview. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BELL WITCH AND AERIAL RUIN

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jun 112020
 


photo by Lauren Lamp

 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Erik Moggridge (Aerial Ruin) and Dylan Desmond (Bell Witch), whose bands have collaborated on an album named Stygian Bough Volume 1, which will be released by Profound Lore on June 26th, and we thank Bailey Sattler and Rebecca Laverty for helping to make this discussion happen.)

Bell Witch are well-known to our readers and widely praised among modern doom metal bands as one with unique vision and inspiration, varying from funeral doom to sludge. Started in Seattle, 2010, as a duet of Dylan Desmond (bass, vocals) and Adrian Guerra (drums, vocals), Bell Witch brought forth three full-length works, though the last one, 2017’s fantastic Mirror Reaper (2017) appeared after Adrian’s death and featured the work of Jesse Shreibman (organ, drums, vocals). And as Dylan has continued Bell Witch’s toll as a duet alongside Jesse, there was always another man who took part in all the band’s albums as an honoured guest.

And that man is Erik Moggridge, who performed guitars in the legendary death / thrash crew Epidemic back in late ’80s and in the psycho death experiments of Old Grandad. Who could have predicted that his acoustic project Aerial Ruin would inspire such deep devotion among fans and would take part in a tight collaboration with Bell Witch? What do both projects have in common? What led to their fresh collaboration, Stygian Bough: Volume 1? We’ll find out in this inspiring interview together with Dylan and Erik themselves! Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: BELL WITCH/AERIAL RUIN, ENTARTUNG

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 292020
 

 

This would have been a good day for an OVERFLOWING STREAMS post, because there’s a great volume of new music I’d like to recommend. But there wasn’t time for that. As a fall-back, it would have been a good day for a SEEN AND HEARD post, with fewer offerings but more elaborate words. But no time for that either. So as a last resort, because I wanted to recommend something today beyond what we’ve already posted, I’ve resorted to a format that is painfully short on music.

The title of the post, by the way, doesn’t mean that the two tracks I’ve chosen are quick ones, only that I’ve had to be quick about putting this together. I do think both songs are fantastic, and go together well.

BELL WITCH / AERIAL RUIN

Stygian Bough Volume I is the name of a new collaborative album by the Pacific Northwest bands Bell Witch (Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman) and Aerial Ruin (Erik Moggridge). These three have collaborated before, both on recordings and on stage, but not in this way. Here, they have composed and performed all five songs on the album as a trio. Continue reading »

AUSTIN TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 1)

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 182018
 

 

On Monday of this week we completed a three-part post providing photographic memories of Northwest Terror Fest 2018, thanks to the artistic eye and skilled technique of New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor. Today we begin another three-part photo retrospective featuring Teddie’s photos, and this time the focus is on another NCS co-sponsored festival that took place earlier this year — Austin Terror Fest — whose organizers and staff also played integral roles in helping us successfully put on the second edition of NWTF in Seattle.

The second annual installment of ATF took place in the heart of Texas on June 15-17 and featured performances by 30 bands from around the U.S. (and outside it). A small number of those overlapped the line-up of NWTF, but most did not. By all accounts, it was a great event, and the energy comes through in Teddie’s photos. Work has already begun on the 2019 edition of this Texas-based festival.

Teddie’s westward trip from New Orleans took longer than expected, and so the following montage of her pics from ATF’s first day includes only the final four bands who played on June 15th, at the Lost Well venue. We’ll have complete photo spreads of the second and third days in the following days here at NCS. Continue reading »

ROADBURN 2018, A PHOTO RECORD: DAY 4

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
May 292018
 

 

The 2018 edition of Roadburn Festival is in the history books. From April 19th through April 22nd at the 013 venue in Tilburg, The Netherlands, metal fans got the chance to choose from among performances by more than 100 bands across four stages and a fascinating array of musical genres. NCS was fortunate to be represented by the fantastic New Orleans-based music photographer Teddie Taylor, who made a visual record of the event for us.

We left it to Teddie to decide which bands to see; no doubt she had a lot of difficult decisions to make — and we had difficult decisions of our own in determining which of her images to share with you (they’re all really damned good!). We’re dividing this collection of pics into four parts, one for each day of Roadburn 2018. You can find her photos from Day 1 here, Day 2 here, and Day 3 here. Continue reading »

ROADBURN 2018, A PHOTO RECORD: DAY 3

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
May 242018
 

 

The 2018 edition of Roadburn Festival is in the history books. From April 19th through April 22nd at the 013 venue in Tilburg, The Netherlands, metal fans got the chance to choose from among performances by more than 100 bands across four stages and a fascinating array of musical genres. NCS was fortunate to be represented by the fantastic New Orleans-based music photographer Teddie Taylor, who made a visual record of the event for us.

We left it to Teddie to decide which bands to see; no doubt she had a lot of difficult decisions to make — and we had difficult decisions of our own in determining which of her images to share with you (they’re all really damned good!). We’re dividing this collection of pics into four parts, one for each day of Roadburn 2018. You can find her photos from Day 1 here, and Day 2 here. Continue reading »

A DIRTY (HALF) DOZEN: ALTARAGE, BELL WITCH, LENG TCH’E, NE OBLIVISCARIS, PROGENIE TERRESTRE PURA, SPECTRAL VOICE

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 232017
 


Altarage

 

(Andy Synn brings us this compilation of six reviews.)

I’ve said it a few times already… but it bears repeating here… there’s just SO much music to listen to that even I can’t keep up with it properly.

But hey, trying is half the battle, right? So here’s my attempt to make some sort of dent in the ever-growing pile of albums which we have yet to review here at NCS… some of which are several months old, some of which are very new indeed! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BELL WITCH, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, CLOAK, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 232017
 

 

The unwelcome intrusion of non-blog life has forced me to truncate my usual verbose reactions to the music I’ve selected in this mid-week round-up (cue the weeping and the gnashing of teeth), but I wanted to be prompt in spreading the word about the following items, all of which appeared either yesterday or this morning.

I picked these five new songs in part because they provide a quite varied array of what metal in the modern era has to offer.

BELL WITCH

The new Bell Witch album, Mirror Reaper, will be released by Profound Lore on October 20, with an album cover by Mariusz Lewandowski that we won’t soon forget. The album consists of one continuous 83-minute piece that unfolds as a single track. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BELL WITCH, SUMMONING, INCANTATION, OBITUARY, BOLT THROWER, BLASPHEMY, SXUPERION, SERPENTS LAIR, FIREBREATHER, ORBSEVEN

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 082017
 

 

This is, obviously, a humongous round-up of things I’ve recently discovered. I’ve organized it in this way:

First up there are two news items that feature imagery and info about eagerly anticipated new releases but no music. Then I’ve got new videos and music streams by (or related to) a quartet of venerable and revered bands, followed by new advance tracks from two younger favorites who are returning with new releases this year. And then I’ll close this out with music from two bands whom I’ve just discovered.

BELL WITCH

On most days I post a piece of usually dark or surreal artwork on our Facebook page. I keep an archive of what I’ve posted over the years, as a way of trying to avoid repeating myself. In that archive I’ve counted 22 paintings by the Polish artist Mariusz Lewandowski that I’ve posted over the years since I began doing that, which I think is proof of how strongly I like his creations. But as far as I can recall, he has never created artwork for the cover of a metal album… until now. And his cover for the new Bell Witch album will surely stand as one of the best album covers of the year, if not THE best. Continue reading »

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