AN NCS INTERVIEW: CATACOMB

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 192023
 

(In late March of this year Xtreem Music released the monstrous debut album by the French death metal band Catacomb, and today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the band’s co-founder Ben Bussy.)

Catacomb is such a cool and grim title that Metal-Archives shows us over ten bands with that name, though some of them have been inactive for years. I believe that Catacomb from Toulon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur was one of the first who chose it.

This death metal crew started to praise the Ancient Ones in 1990 and was a quite active unit of the French death metal underground even though the band went through two splits in 1994 and 2003. However, its founders Ben Bussy (bass, vocals) and Tony (guitars) were able to resurrect the monster once more in 2018, and with the help of Bress (drums) and Ronan Kermarec (guitars) they started to record new stuff.

The result of this returning from the grave are the EP Back to Unknown Kadath (2022) and the fresh and meaty LP When the Stars Are Right from Xtreem Records. It’s mister Bussy who says today: “Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn!!!” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THULCANDRA, ROTTEN SOUND, CATACOMB, LAMP OF MURMUUR, KAAL NAGINI, OSSAERT, MENSTRUAL VAMPIRES, BÜDDAH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 152023
 

I’m very happy about all the music in this mid-week roundup. I’m also very happy about the way it all lines up.

A big part of the fun of doing these collections is not just finding new songs and videos that I think are worth recommending, but also choosing the ones that either flow together well or instead ricochet off each other in unexpected ways. There’s a little bit of both strategies in what I chose for today, but mainly this roundup is designed to quickly elevate your adrenaline and then keep it surging. Lots of good cover art today as well.

THULCANDRA (Germany)

I searched out the first time we wrote about Thuldandra at this site. It was in June 2010, when NCS was barely seven months old. The occasion was an extensive review of the band’s 2010 debut album Fallen Angel’s Dominion, in which I included an extensive discussion of the band’s back-story, with notes about the C.S. Lewis space trilogy that was the source of their name. It was evident even then that they held the potential of becoming the truest heirs of Dissection. Continue reading »