HVRT – CANCERBLOOM

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Nov 262025
 

(The new album from Hvrt comes out Dec 05… and Andy Synn says you won’t have to wait, or weep, much longer)

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I’ve often thought about starting a more Black Metal (or, at least, “blackened”) project of my own, something that sits somewhere between Black Anvil, Black Breath, and Mantar, on the sludgier, punkier side of things… all nasty riffs, gnarly grooves, and stripped-down, hook-heavy songs designed to take no prisoners and take no shit.

There’s only two problems with this, so far:

  1. Finding the right collaborators has proven difficult, as I just don’t seem to know the right people or have the right contacts (and we’d obviously have to be compatible, both musically and personally);
  2. Hvrt kind of already got there first.

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AN NCS PREMIERE: HVRT – VERGISSMEINNICHT / NEZABUDKA

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Feb 242023
 

(Andy Synn presents a new track whose subject matter is painfully relevant on this particular day)

Did you know that today it’s been exactly one year since Russia invaded Ukraine?

If you didn’t… well, I wouldn’t necessarily blame you. It certainly doesn’t feel like the war has been going on that long, even though it somehow also feels like it’s been going on forever.

Let’s face it, the human brain has difficulty processing events like this, especially over long periods of time, and that goes double when we’re not being directly affected (and I won’t even pretend to understand what those actually in the war zone must be going through).

It’s an all too human response, and one which makes it all too easy to grow numb and jaded, to simply accept this as “the new normal” and forget what fuelled our anger and our abhorrence in the first place.

But the song/video we’re premiering today asks us, implores us, not to forget. Not to blind our eyes or cover our ears, but to heed the cries of the dead and the disappeared and to remember those who have been lost… because sometimes that’s all we can do.

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UNSUNG HEROES OF 2020: HVRT / KRUELTY / KVLL

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Oct 082020
 

 

(Here’s a trio of enthusiastic reviews penned by Andy Synn, accompanied by a lot of crippling music)

Those of you who’ve been with us here at NCS for a while will, possibly, know that I usually do these “Unsung Heroes…” articles in January/February as a way of catching up with bands who I didn’t get around to reviewing the previous year.

You also may have noticed… it’s October 2020. Which means I’m kind of jumping the gun a little. But damn, I didn’t want to wait until January to get these three artists/albums written up because they deserve all the love and attention I/we can muster right now. Continue reading »