AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EX CINERE — “NEGATIVE COMMEMORATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 142025
 

(written by Islander)

Ex Cinere is the solo work of Joe Waller, who has also created music under the name Sarasvati and with Adora Vivos and Amiensus (among other projects and groups). The last time we wrote about Ex Cinere (and the first time) was near the release of a 2024 debut single called “Ācennan“, which was followed later that year by a second single named “Eorþblód“.

What we’re presenting today is a video for another single, “Negative Commemoration“, so named because its intent is to restore a bit of truth to the whitewashing of an ugly figure on a day set aside for his sanctification by people who enthusiastically still traffic in his ugliness. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ACOD, ANTIFLESH, ASPERNAMENTUM, DAUÞUZ, DRAUGNIM, EX CINERE, HÄSSLIG, MACHUKHA, NAXEN

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Apr 072024
 

Last week I came across a verse from American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski that begins this way: “our public hell creates a / private hell and / there is no hell / except on / earth.”

Hell is a realm that exists in human imagination and belief too — a place in parallel to earthly existence or what comes after life. That is one way it exists on earth, even if it has no other existence, in addition to the public and private hells Bukowski wrote about — the hells that human beings make for others and for themselves.

I’m thinking about all these hells today, the realms of demons and the realms of human depravity and anguish, because I happened upon a sequence of new black metal songs and videos that I can only think of as hellish in one or more of those ways. Those songs fill up a lot of today’s collection.

But I only quoted part of Bukowski‘s verse. After positing that there is no hell except on earth he wrote: Continue reading »