THE MACHINIST: “TOWERS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
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”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
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 »

MORTUARY: “GREAT BLACK EARTH”

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May 202026
 

(This is a guest review of a new EP by the veteran Mexican band Mortuary (released last month by HPGD Productions) written by Jason Kiss, also known as Lonegoat from Goatcraft and Lord Abyss from Amorphophallus Titanum.)

As I have grown older, my patience for speed metal has waned substantially. Nevertheless, I continue to hold an affinity for proto-death metal expressions in which speed metal is driven beyond the confines of its own limited logic and, through excess, transforms into something altogether more menacing and expansive.

One might argue that Morbid Angel on Abominations of Desolation, alongside Necrovore’s Divus de Mortuus and Possessed’s Seven Churches, were among the first to exemplify this rupture; they produced the conditions for death metal to emerge as its own original coterie unshackled to its speed metal roots. What compels me not is speed metal in itself, but rather this fractured threshold where the spirit of extremity in metal is nourished and an Aristotelian potentiality is actualized; where speed metal dies so that something more sinister can take its place.

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 »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KUR•NU•GI•A — “CARMINA INFERORUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
May 192026
 

(written by Islander)

Prepare to jump off your usual beaten tracks, indeed off the tracks of the world altogether, as we present Carmina Inferorum — Latin for “Songs of he Underworld”. This is the debut album of the mysterious Polish avant-black-death-metal band KUR•NU•GI•A (not to be confused with the Ohio death metal band Kurnugia or the Finnish black metal band Kurnugia). It will be released by Godz Ov War Productions on May 22nd.

Curious about the band’s rendering of the name and what it refers to, I found a source (here) that includes this description:

Kurnugi, also called Kur-nu-gi-a, was the Sumerian underworld. It was dark, vast, and final. It lay beneath the earth, beyond the Mountains of Sunset. Souls descended here after death, stripped of light and joy. The dead ate dust, drank from mud, and lived in shadows…. Kurnugi was not punishment; it was fate.

Those words increased my curiosity about the music before hearing a single note, as did a Lovecraftian chant that appeared in the announcement of the album by Godz Ov War on social media (a chant that’s interpreted to mean “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”):

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

But the album’s cover image and KUR•NU•GI•A’s band photos made me even more curious. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARBON TOMB — “REVERSED HEAD RENEWAL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 192026
 

(written by Islander)

Yesterday we premiered a song from Dysgnostic’s new album End Whispers (you should go listen to it if you haven’t), and today we’re premiering a song from the debut album of Carbon Tomb. It’s fitting that they follow back-to-back, because Carbon Tomb was started by Dysgnostic member Richardt Olsen, who’s the guitarist and screamer within this newer band.

Like Dysgnostic, Carbon Tomb play a form of dissonant death metal, but don’t leap to the conclusion that the two bands are twins. Truly, they are not — they’re more like cousins — though both are very good at what they set their minds to do.

We have an example of Carbon Tomb’s own distinctive songwriting prowess through our premiere of a song intriguingly named “Reversed Head Renewal” from their first full-length, also intriguingly named — Passage to a Neutron Star — in advance of the record’s release by Transcending Obscurity Records on July 17th. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: RELIQUIA / SILO / TYRANNUS

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May 192026
 

(Andy Synn returns to his homeland, in spirit at least, for another edition of the Best of British)

I’m still over in the good ol’ US of A at the moment, gearing up for this year’s edition of Maryland Deathfest, and while I’ve loved my time here – as always – I’ll admit that I’ve been feeling the occasional pang of homesickness every now and then.

So to help quell my longing for the green and pleasant lands of my birth I thought I’d put together another carefully-curated collection of British bands, from a variety of styles and sub-genres, to remind us all of what’s waiting for me when I get home.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PSICORRAGIA — “SOMBRAS LUMINOSAS”

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May 182026
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to share with you is a beautifully illustrated lyric video for a truly remarkable song, one that invites listeners to enter the valley of the dead and to commune with the frightening and yet seductive spirits who dwell there, to experience their gloom and sorrow, as well as their frantic confusion and their bursts of fiendish exhilaration.

The name of the song is “Sombras luminosas” (Luminous shadows), and it’s from Nekromanthra, the third album by the long-running Peruvian death/doom cult Psicorragia, now set for co-release on June 23rd by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Thrashirts (Peru). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DYSGNOSTIC — “THE LAST REFRAIN”

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May 182026
 

(written by Islander)

In 2022 the Danish brutal death metal band Defilementory announced a change of name to Dysgnostic and revealed a dramatic change of musical identity through the release of their first album as Dysgnostic — Scar Echoes. It was presented by Transcending Obscurity Records under the banner of magnificently chilling cover art by Dawid Figielek. As we described at the time, the performances on Scar Echoes “are technically impressive, their dissonant compositions are intricate and twisted, and their music is capable of creating atmospheres of mental and emotional ruin that are both electrifying and profoundly disturbing, and only barely tethered to the ‘real world’.

And now Dysgnostic return with their second album, End Whispers, also to be released by Transcending Obscurity (on July 10th). As you can see, this one also features stunning cover art, this time a frightening and unearthly creation by Belial NecroArts, and we are again privileged to premiere some of Dysgnostic’s new music, a song from the album called “The Last Refrain“.

Here is how T.O. introduces the album as a whole: Continue reading »

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