THE MACHINIST: “TOWERS”

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May 232026
 

(Due to Islander being off in Baltimore doing Maryland Deathfest things, we will not have his usual weekend columns, but we do have (at least for today) another vivid review by DGR, who this time takes on a new EP by the crafty UK sonic terrorists who call themselves The Machinist.)

On the shorter and sweeter side of things we find ourselves landing upon the shores of the UK again with a new EP from the group The Machinist entitled Towers.

The Machinist are a self-defined industrial black metal band who cite Anaal Nathrakh and The Berzerker as being close comparisons to their sound. They are a three-piece consisting of a dual-vocal attack, walls of guitars, and enough programmed drums rattling about that it sounds like a hailstorm happening outside.

Towers is a three-song EP, arriving a year after their second full-length album Contempt For Life. And indeed, The Machinist have an overarching theme of dislike for humanity as a whole – as British bands tend to be experts in, disdain ranks fairly high – and if you did not have enough of it with Contempt For Life, Towers is the band on the offensive once again for another about twenty-five minutes worth of music dripping with dislike for the fact that you as a human being dare to exist. Continue reading »

VENTHIAX: “RITES OF RA”

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May 222026
 

(DGR continues to do the heavy lifting at our site while many of us (and him) are off at Maryland Deathfest, and today’s it’s a vivid write-up about a new EP from the Swedish old-school thrashers Venthiax, out now on Dying Victims Productions.)

Every year inevitably sees a smorgasbord of EPs released throughout the year. It’s enough that our own archive of them gets broken out into its own year-end post and usually runs just as long as our collection of album ratings.

EPs are often a realm of discovery, experimentations, and teasers of upcoming albums. This is something I personally enjoy quite a bit, because all of these snack-sized previews of groups and what sorts of headspace they may be in means you can sample so many groups in the same way a kid can go plowing through the sample segments of a candy shop. To be fair, I probably approach it with the same amount of joy.

It also allows room to explore genres that aren’t normally in your wheelhouse, not necessarily full-blown pig-ignorance but close enough. Old school throwbacks and thrash metal are definitely part of that on this end and the combination of the two have resulted in a fountain of bands that sound as if they’re time travelers from a bygone and especially kvlt era in heavy metal’s sound. Continue reading »

MELVINS / NAPALM DEATH: “SAVAGE IMPERIAL DEATH MARCH”

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May 212026
 

(A group of us NCS scribblers, including DGR, are currently at Maryland Deathfest. DGR wrote a bunch of reviews in advance so we’d have something to post while partying. The one below is one of those, and it seemed fitting to post it today since DGR ventured out last night in time to catch Napalm Death’s performance at the MDF pre-fest. He hasn’t been seen today, so far.)

Of the many releases that have hit within the first half of the year one of the ones that has been the most curious to me has been the release of the collaboration album Savage Imperial Death March among members of The Melvins and Napalm Death.

While it had been released as part of their tour together at the time of recording, this year’s digital unleashing of the album alongside a few added tracks is likely the first time many metalheads and those of us unfortunate enough not to live in a big touring market will get a chance to hear this combining of the brain-stems between the two bands. Continue reading »

FADING AEON: “FADING AEON”

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May 202026
 

(DGR prepared the following extensive review of the third album, self-titled, by the German epic melodic death metal band Fading Aeon, which was released in March of this year.)

It seems if nothing else, 2026 is going to be the summoner of old ghosts for yours truly as we find ourselves once again cycling back to review a band that we started covering over seven years ago. Now, if you’ll please ignore the part that we’re coming up on the site being nearly-seventeen as well, a few of us are going to stand up and listen to our knees pop louder than the thunder and lightning shows that’ve been happening outside our windows recently. Is it any wonder we seem to attract groups that’ve taken long hiatuses between albums for new premieres?

Germany’s Fading Aeon are one of a fleet of three-piece melodeath groups that’ve appeared in the past decade – apparently they have little time for the bullshit of your standard four-to-five piece lineup – although they occupy a different musical sandbox than most, favoring epic tales of battle and heroism instead, with the song lengths to match. It hasn’t been uncommon for the Fading Aeon crew to release an album consisting of five songs and yet still have a run time sailing well over forty-minutes in range.

The group’s newest self-titled album, which saw release in mid-March, is no different in that regard. As the band have matured, so too has their songwriting ability, and while they started out incredibly ambitious, what has made Fading Aeon something to watch is how they’ve grown into the role that they sought out to start with. Continue reading »

SUBMERGED: “RESURFACING NAUTICAL RUIN”

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May 152026
 

(We present DGR’s review of a new EP from the nautical brutal death metal band Submerged, which was released last month by New Standard Elite.)

We’ve been buried in an absolute gamut of albums over the past few months, and as is our usual tradition we have tried and failed to keep ourselves afloat in the flood of music. One day there will be maps drawn with shipwreck masts poking out of the water and one of them will just be the NoCleanSinging logo. Fitting then, given that today’s subjects are the San Diego, California brutal death metal group Submerged and their new EP Resurfacing Nautical Ruin.

A newer project of sorts, having been formed in 2023, Submerged were quick to break the dam on material, and after a demo in 2023, proceeded to pour out an album in 2024 titled Tortured At The Depths. Today’s EP Resurfacing Nautical Ruin – unleashed upon the world in mid-April via brutality merchants New Standard Elite – is the continued tale in Submerged’s torrent of music.

Gather up your diving gear then because we’re about to take a dip in the ocean of disgusting bass guitar tone, rattle-can snare, and vocals emerging from hydrothermal vents themselves for three songs and almost twelve minutes of singular violence and tremendous brutality. Continue reading »

EPIGRAM: “OBSOLESCENT”

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May 122026
 

(This is DGR’s review of the debut album from Epigram, the SoCal-based project of musician Luis Echevarria, who is accompanied on the album by drummer and additional vocalist Mikey Wilson.)

Believe it or not, the album you see before you here is not the first time we have reached across the expanse of the internet to discuss Southern California death metal group Epigram. While it is tempting to act as if we made it on the ground floor of their newest release Obsolescent, in actuality we spoke of the band way back in the horse-drawn cart days of 2017, briefly mentioning them among an absolute wall of releases in our year-end roundup, in the segment we dedicate to writing about all the EPs of the year.

Eight and a half years is a long time though, enough that we can cycle back around to the exact same dogshit world state – and the people running it – and yet the band themselves had, up until early March, been radio silent. Their re-emergence in early March with Obsolescent is – thanks to time – almost a relaunch of the band. With only an EP to their name before, it can seem as if the Los Angeles based crew are fresh faces on the scene, but surprisingly, even with that vast expanse of time between releases it sounds as if Epigram have taken the route of natural maturity on their previous sound as opposed to full-blown relaunch, creating blackened death metal with a very, very light symphonic touch that could easily have fought blow for blow with the mid-2010’s releases from Hour Of Penance like Paradogma and Sedition. Continue reading »

APOLAUSTIC: “NO PLENITUDE WITHOUT SUFFERING”

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May 112026
 

(We begin a new week at NCS with DGR’s review of the debut album from the Swiss band Apolaustic, which is out now on Transcending Obscurity Records.)

Often when a band splits with a long-tenured vocalist it can feel like the group have hard-capped themselves at about eighty percent of their potential. While the reasons why long-time vocalist Romain Negro stepped down from Swiss tech-death group Stortregn are likely out there, that sort of muckracking – while amusing – has never been something we’ve been too interested in here. Instead, we exist in a series of zeroes and ones: is person in band? is person not in band? and we roll from there.

Sometimes, lineup changes can even be refreshing; a new perspective can recharge a band. But when you have a creature created already so strong, it can feel a bit like you’ve hobbled yourself on both fronts. and the respective projects that form afterwards always land at “pretty good” but never the “spectacular” heights of old. Thankfully, Stortregn’s One Eternal release went far in assuring us that would not be the case and now we also have Apolaustic, a new solo effort from Romain Negro handling all of the songwriting and vocals while recruiting Nicolas Muller on drums and Merlin Bogado for bass and guitar work for an album that is not all too dissimilar from the high-speed extremity of Stortregn, except for the much, much larger taste for melodic black metal. The result is in an eight-song, forty-minute release entitled No Plenitude Without Suffering, and thankfully Apolaustic have also dodged the eighty-percent potential cap with an absolutely killer album. Continue reading »

ARCHITECTURAL GENOCIDE: “MALIGNANT COGNITION”

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May 092026
 

(Because Islander is goofing off at the NCS-sponsored Northwest Terror Fest this weekend, we won’t have his usual weekend columns, but we will have some reviews by DGR, including this one devoted to a new album by Houston-based Architectural Genocide.)

It took way too long to achieve this monk-like state of enlightenment but listening to Architectural Genocide’s newest release Malignant Cognition via Comatose Music all the way back in the middle of January, revealed that perhaps twenty-three minutes is the exact amount of this style of brutal death metal that you need in your life. Continue reading »

HANGING GARDEN: “ISLE OF BLISS”

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May 082026
 

(We present DGR’s review of the ninth album from Hanging Garden, released on March 20th by Agonia Records.)

I have struggled with how I wanted to start writing up Finland’s Hanging Garden and their newest album Isle Of Bliss. They’ve been “blessed” enough to join the club of groups whose opening review paragraphs have seen more rewrites each year than your standard superhero movie. It’s not any fault of their own either; the blame lies entirely at my feet.

I think a large part of the difficulty comes from the fact that although Hanging Garden have been active for the better part of two decades and have been very consistent in releasing albums or EPs (they seem to thrive on album-EP- album cycle with little breath in between), I haven’t been one to yell from the rooftops about them,  in spite of how much I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve done. So, in a roundabout way, it feels like any time I want to write about Hanging Garden I need to begin with an apology of sorts for not using my pulpit to preach their gospel to the masses.

Hanging Garden are one of the best out there in a saturated genre of melancholy-infused doom and goth-rock groups. Even when the band have been experimental – which surprisingly is where they first caught my attention with the very Paradise Lost-leaning Blackout/Whiteout in 2015 – before fully adopting a very melodramatic death and doom persona, their releases have been some of the most steady-footed, good-to-great collections you can find. There are athletes who would kill for Hanging Garden’s sort of batting average.

The even better part of all of this, now that the guilt of not being as loud about them as I could’ve been has been waylaid somewhat until their next release, is that the group’s newest album Isle Of Bliss – which saw release in late March via Agonia Records – is absolutely stunning and only reinforces the fact that the Hanging Garden collective are stealthily one of the best out there at this particular style. Continue reading »

GADGET: “COERCED”

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May 062026
 

(The Swedish grindcore veterans Gadget are returning with a new EP set for release on May 8th (on vinyl via De:Nihil Records), and what we have below are DGR’s enthusiastic thoughts about it.)

While it isn’t that long in terms of grindcore bands, given their “jump in and jump out just as quick” nature and the way so many grind projects are ephemeral blasts of sound that seem to appear and burn to the ground just as quickly, five years is a good-sized gap for new music from a project. Sweden’s Gadget haven’t had it easy either.

A period of lineup changes saw the group without a full-time vocalist for a bit and their first release post-2016’s The Great Destroyer was a split with Retaliation that saw Gadget contributing four songs, each with a different vocalist. The fire was still there and each song punched in at sub one-minute-and-thirty seconds. That was five years ago, though.

One of the highlight songs that did emerge from 2021’s Gadget/Retaliation split was “Intenso”, which featured vocalist Emilia Henriksson stepping behind the microphone for fifty-seven seconds of manic and relentless energy that was everything you might’ve wanted out of the blastbeat-driven firestorm style of grind that is composed entirely on the high-end, high-tempo side of things with little room for groove or chest-thumping low-end.

Emilia would eventually take over the vocals segment of the band in 2023 and be joined by Kristofer Jankarls on guitars as well as vocals for a double-headed attack, cementing Gadget in stable form for the three years since. 2026 marks the newest release for this lineup in recorded form, an eight-song and thirteen-and-a-half-minute blast of music known as Coerced. Continue reading »

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