AN NCS INTERVIEW: JONAS LINDBLOOD (PUTERAEON)

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May 282025
 

(Our French contributor Zoltar conducted the following excellent interview with Puteraeon founder and vocalist/guitarist Jonas Lindblood in advance of Emanzipation Production‘s release of this Swedish band’s newest album on May 30th — an album we will premiere-stream one hour from now.)

“Dead but dreaming.” Howard Philipps Lovecraft probably never thought while writing for the first time about what would become his most famous creation in the aptly titled The Call Of Cthulhu nearly a century ago back in 1926 that, somehow, this conception would also ring true about his never-ending influence on extreme metal.

A lot has been said about how pioneers like Black Sabbath (‘Beyond The Wall Of Sleep’) or Metallica (‘The Call Of Ktulu’) early on associated the name of the master of Providence to distorted riffing on selected tracks, but lately more than a few bands like French weirdos The Great Old Ones or German epic travelers Sulphur Aeon have gone the extra mile by entirely dedicating their lore to his writings and monstrous cosmology.

The cool thing about Puteraeon is that they never jumped on the bandwagon to start with yet made it clear from their third demo what the deal was, going as far as doing a whole set of songs (The Extraordinary Work Of Herbert West) solely dedicated to one of Lovecraft’s most-beloved novels – and the source of inspiration for what remains his best movie-adaptation, Stuart Gordon-directed 1985 cult horror flick Re-Animator. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SIJJIN

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May 132025
 

(Here we present Zoltar‘s interview of Malte Gericke, bassist and vocalist of the pan-national death/thrashing band Sijjin, whose new album Helljjin Combat is out now on Sepulchral Voice Records.)

“I couldn’t be happier man.” Malte Gericke, aka Mors Dalos Ra, is relieved for probably the first time since the band’s split in 2021 not to be asked about Necros Christos, the cult and highly-mystical death/doom beast he led out and back to the abyss for over two decades. And he deserved the right to, as Sijjin, the to-the-point and proudly stuck in the ’80s thrash/death new band he had put together even before NC took their final bow, has proven not to be the expectative derivative but an entity on its own, far less entrenched in occult and cryptic atmospheres and doom-laden circumvolutions, way more straight-forward and unapologetically METAL, as in denim-and-leather-patches-furious-headbanging metal.

If their 2019 demo, later reissued on LP, and their debut album Sumerian Promises were treading on early Morbid Angel territories, as he once again puts it himself, their long-awaited sophomore and very riff-oriented album Helljinn Combat goes even more “back in time”. Old-school to the bone! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CONSUMPTION

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Apr 102025
 

(Here we present Zoltar’s interview with the ever-busy Håkan Stuvemark, the focus being on his death metal band Consumption, whose latest album Catharsis was released in January by Dusktone.)

Hard to say when the disease started spreading but most extreme metal historians (if there’s such a thing) would probably agree that General Surgery, Dead Infection, and/or Pathologist were the first ‘official’ Carcass clones, as early as 1988. And it somehow never stopped since then: Haemorrhage, Necrony, Golem, early Exhumed, Butcher ABC, etc. The list goes on and on and never ceased to grow. Yet, from time to time and despite the heavy competition, somebody decides to pick up the gauntlet and run with it, reaching for the extra yard, today’s case pick being Consumption.

Just like the ‘fake’ band The County Medical Examiners vowed in the ’00s to record the sequel to Symphonies Of Sickness but never got the time nor the will to record, Håkan Stuvemark from Wombbath decided instead to raid that even better guarded citadel known as Necroticism. And it looks like he’s having a blast doing so, as although he’s got his fingers in so many pies at the same time, he still did find the time to record three albums of pure Necroticism-worship over the course of five albums, the latest being the just-released Catharsis on Dusktone.

Yet based on what he’s telling us, there is more here to be found than ‘just’ extremely well-made fanart. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MORBIFIC

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Apr 092025
 

(On April 21st a group of labels will release a new album by the Finnish death metal band Morbific, and that induced our contributor Zoltar to reach out for an interview, which now follows.)

Samples of forgotten horror flicks, a crude-as-fuck production, distorted bass breaks one hasn’t heard since Impetigo‘s debut album back in 1990, dual vocals and lyrics about mutilating a corpse or draining into a tub various secretions of a putrefied body… You can’t really blame Finnish youngsters Morbific for beating around the (dead) bush can you?

Various splits and an EP plus three albums, including the soon-to-be-released Bloom Of The Abnormal Flesh, in, the trio stick to what they do best: old-school, primitive, and ghastly death metal, yet surprisingly catchy thanks to its underlining groove and straight-to-the-point attitude. Next to other rather ‘new’ European acts like Stockholm’s Repuked or Copenhagen’s Undergang, their undeniable faith in a certain deeply underground and untouched-by-modernism definition of what death metal stands for is undeniable.

And yes, based on their bass player and vocalist Jusa‘s not quite extensive answers, they don’t seem to give a fuck about anything, but it’s probably because at the end of the day, it’s just all about playing freakin’ death metal and celebrating gore, nothing less nothing more. Continue reading »

ZOLTAR REVIEW ROUNDUP: FRIGHTFUL, HUMANITY DELETE, STASS, PROCREATION, SUMMONING DEATH

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Apr 032025
 

(Today our contributor Zoltar brings us reviews of five recently released or reissued OSDM albums, and you’ll find them all below.)

FRIGHTFUL – WHAT LIES AHEAD

Being smart doesn’t hurt does it? Especially in this highly competitive world… So kudos to Gdansk’s Frightful for realizing soon enough that the grind/death direction they were initially stirring their band to could well be a dead end, at least based on their lacklustre 2018 EP Cannibalistic Rites. Their second full-length What Lies Ahead takes what made their debut album Spectral Creator so great back in 2021 and just runs with it at full speed. At its very core, their music is pure death/thrash mayhem with that kind of inimitable sense of urgency, somewhere in between Schizophrenia-era Sepultura and mid-period Sodom. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: IMPURITY

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Mar 112025
 

(Late last week Hammerheart Records released the debut album from the Swedish death metal band Impurity, and today we follow that with Zoltar‘s interview of all four bandmembers.)

We’ve seemingly been buried under an endless stream of classic Swedish death metal sounding bands lately, old and new, as if one could never get enough of THAT instantly recognizable buzzsaw guitar sound and part-old-school-death-metal-part-crust dynamic, more than thirty years after Left Hand Path originally dropped, turning the scene upside down. Not that it is a bad thing, mind you but the downside of this endless outpour is that fans tend to stick a rather tunnel-visioned view of what Swedish death metal was/is.

Granted, Entombed, Grave, and Dismember all wrote the rules most of their followers to this day strictly follow. But once you started going beyond the mandatory Into The Grave or Clandestine, less-talked-about or cursed by the ‘wrong label’ plague acts like Necrophobic or Hetsheads had their own say about what Swedish death metal could also be about, with a meaner, darker, and even satanic at times edge to it.

All four members of Impurity weren’t even born when said bands were first active but that didn’t prevent them from fully embracing their elders’ (morbid) vision, yet without trying to play the retro card. As a matter of fact, while being recorded at Studio Sunlight – yep, THE Studio Sunlight where ALL Entombed, Grave, and Dismember early misbehaviors were put to tape and where THAT guitar sound was basically invented – their just-released debut album The Eternal Sleep goes the extra mile by truly tapping into something more sinister and menacing. And as you can read below, they know their shit alright! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NOIRSUAIRE

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Mar 032025
 

(Later this month Khaoszophy Productions will release the latest EP from the French black metal band Noirsuaire, a prelude to a debut album that’s currently being recorded. In the following interview, our French contributor Zoltar conversed with Noirsuaire‘s mastermind N. about what inspires the band, how the work is done, and other topics of interest.)

There’s always been a certain, especially perverse flair to French black metal and although the scene hit a wall in the late ’90s and early ’00s once all its precursors like Vlad Tepes or Mutiilation had gone either silent or simply beyond the grave, it’s been more vivid than ever lately, and not just with bands perpetrating a certain local tradition.

Noirsuaire is a good example of a band — or project, depending on how you look at it, as it is basically one man’s doing, the secretive N., helped by a drummer and some external contributors – rooted in the classic European sound of the ’90s yet not solely dedicated to reviving the flickering flame of French black metal as it also is largely in debt to the Finns, mainly Sargeist and Satanic Warmaster.

Yes, from head to toes so to speak, this is pure ’90s black metal alright, down to its extremely coded black and white imagery and staccato riffing, yet with a genuine FOAD attitude that really sets them apart, down to coming up with a short-but-sweet two-track EP of Misfits covers (Death Comes Ripping) simply because they felt like doing it… Continue reading »

ZOLTAR’S SHORT BUT SWEET: CRANIAL TORMENT, ETERNAL DIRGE, HOROH, PYRE

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Feb 172025
 

(Our French contributor Zoltar has provided us with short reviews of four recently released records, two of them reissues of music dating to the ’90s and two of them brand new, from just a bit earlier this year.)

CRANIAL TORMENT – STADES OF REPRESSION

There weren’t that many ‘pure’ death metal bands to speak of in Greece in the late ’90s, one of the only notable exceptions being Inveracity and their killer debut Circle Of Perversion released through Unmatched Brutality (who else?) back in 2003. The thing is that most of the leaders of the movement, like Septicflesh – or Septic Flesh in two words as they were called back then – Horrified or Nightfall (the latter featuring a then rather unknown yet super promising drummer called George Kollias who would soon rise to fame with Nile), had all moved on to greener pastures.

So to say that local hardcore maniacs like Vassilis ‘Bill’ Benakis (guitar and vocals) and future Repulsive Echo Records founder Kostas Vaxevanos (drums) were wasting their time talking to a wall would be quite an understatement. Yet as Cranial Torment the pair nevertheless recorded no fewer than three demos – the second being almost album-length, clocking at 30 minutes – in between August 1998 and May 1999 before vanishing into oblivion, until now. Continue reading »

ROTPIT AND DRUID LORD JOIN FORCES IN ROT-FILLED SPLIT EP

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Feb 072025
 

(Here, our contributor Zoltar shines a light on the recently released split Doomed To Rot by two death metal devastators — Druid Lord from the U.S. and the German/Swedish group Rotpit.)

Split releases may appear like a thing of the past but, Satan be thanked, some cool bands and underground labels out there carry on that long tradition, let it be by pure opportunity or, in today’s case, simply to show each other some good old respect. And why the hell not? Especially when the two bands in question aren’t exactly playing what you would call, well, half-ass death metal.

Here in the US, you’re probably more familiar with DRUID LORD: Formed over fifteen years ago by former EQUINOX and ACHERON veterans Peter Slate (guitar) and Tony Blakk (bass & vocals), completed since 20016 by KILLING ADDICTION’s Chris Wicklein (guitar) and MASSACRE’s Elden Santos (drums), they’ve been growing in strength over the course of three albums and a whole bunch of splits, showcasing their heavy-as-fuck doom/death take on the classic Floridian style.

On the flipside, you’ll find the Swedish/German supergroup ROTPIT, spearheaded by Ralf Hauber from REVEL IN FLESH, assisted by his partner-in-crime in HEADS FOR THE DEAD Jonny Pettersson (the man of a thousand bands/projects like WOMBBATH, HUMAN HARVEST and so on) and, on drums since last year, Erik Barthold from LEFT HAND SOLUTION. Last November, the lads released Long Live The Rot, a downtuned delicacy of epic proportions that would make BLOODBATH barf and run for cover. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PUTRED

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Feb 062025
 

(On January 20th a quartet of international labels released Megalit al Putrefacției, the highly anticipated second album by the Romanian death metal band Putred, and to follow up on that we now present Zoltar‘s interview of the band’s main man Uriel Aguillon, who as you’ll see has quite a history.)

Even from a European point of view, Romania remains one vast uncharted territory in terms of extreme metal, despite the fact that Metal Archives lists no fewer than 500 bands, with only the late Negurā Bunget having left a deep and still brooding mark (although the band ceased to exist over eight years ago). Yet somehow for those who know where to look in the deepest pits of the underground for the latest death metal sensation, a few low-key acts like Vorus, Reveler or Demoted kept coming back lately. Turns out all those bands/projects share more or less the same members, with guitar player, sometimes vocalist, engineer, and producer Uriel Aguillon at the very center of it.

Interestingly enough, Aguillon was born and raised in the US and was living in the country until a decade ago. Yet what is now, according to him, his main focus Putred might be one of the very first death metal bands to use Romanian for their lyrics. Not that it should stop you on your track, as song-titles like “Aura Macabra” or “Parasit In Purgatoriu” easily let you know what kind of murky swamps you’re about to enter.

Speaking of which, most of the music featured on the band’s just-released second album Megalit Al Putrefacției, after a whole bunch of demos and splits, is as fetid, lumping instead of running, while its decayed flesh reeks the kind of foul odor only downtuned and primitive old-school death metal manages to summon.

The fifty-year-old musician agreed to shed a light on his background, Putred‘s newest offering, how he ended up in Romania, and why playing death metal with your wife is far more entertaining than attending a couple’s night out at your local bingo club. Continue reading »

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