AN NCS PREMIERE: “ERADICATION FROM THE TAINT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 062026
 

(written by Islander)

Earlier today my friend and NCS comrade DGR made an observation about certain kinds of brutal death metal that coincidentally turns out to be quite relevant to the song from Australia’s Caution that we’re about to premiere.

In the context of reviewing an album by New York’s Thaetas, he pointed to “a weirdly ardent vein of avant-garde approach in many brutal death and yes, even slam bands,” music that turns out to be “very intricate for the sort of caveman facade it puts on,” with compositions that can spin themselves into a whirlwind — “balls of vitriol that shift constantly in mercurial form.”

Those observations seem germane to the Caution song “Eradication From the Taint” that you’re about to take in. That’s not to suggest that Caution and Thaetas are cut from the same cloth, but “Eradication From the Taint” does display a kind of musical wildness that contrasts with the primitive and utterly bludgeoning thuggishness it also inflicts. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HYPERION — “FIDES NOVEM”

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Oct 062026
 

(written by Islander)

The Swedish metal band Hyperion have not been prolific, and they do not work quickly. They didn’t release their first demo until roughly three years after their formation, and six more years passed before they released their 2016 debut album Seraphical Euphony. But who would have guessed that a decade would drift by before a second full-length arrived?

Yet at last, a second full-length will be arriving on November 6th via Willowtip Records (who always seem to astutely know a good thing when they hear it). The name of Hyperion’s new album is Elysia.

Erik Molnar still leads the band, but the full lineup is different from the group that released Seraphical Euphony. After a decade of ideas gestating and work undertaken, it’s not surprising that the music has evolved as well, and we have a sign of that today in our premiere of a lyric video for Elysia’s second single, “Fides Novem“. Continue reading »

CLEARING THE SLATE ISSUE FIVE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 062026
 

(Our writer DGR has been playing catch-up on records released earlier this year when other distractions interfered with writing about them. Beginning in mid-July he has delivered four Issues (which you can find here, here, here, and here), and now we have Issue Five bringing together extensive reviews of four more records released in preceding months

For a brief period it did seem like there was light at the end of the tunnel of this experiment in trying to catch up with everything I’d been listening to and then trying to write about it here. Obviously, and as mentioned before, it has gotten out of control, but it has allowed me at least to keep up a steady pace of reviews. It looks like my overall “quantity” of reviews year over year will remain about the same, which has at the very least assuaged some of my concern that I have been slowly losing it as life has been taking turns beating the shit out of me on the other side of the virtual space.

My problem of course is that I have still kept finding new things, so I am now at a weird point where every four or five of these smaller writeups – insert laugh track here – I find some new thing that I want to tell the world about.

I’ve even seen a few of the ones that I’m intending to cover show up in other people’s musical collections that are posted here, which has lit up the center of my brain that likes to make me think that I’m smart and I am in fact on to something here. Whether this trend keeps up as I continue to carve my way through the year’s musical releases with the grace of a drunk elephant, I won’t be able to tell you, but 2026, in spite of so much of the year resting on the comfortable side of flaming dogshit, has produced a bumper crop for musical discovery.

A lot of our veteran bands may be playing it too safe and the “music as product factory” that dominates the upper part of heavy metal hasn’t done much interesting this year either, but the many bands I’ve been taking a gamble on seem to be working out in my favor. Or maybe it’s just self-hypnosis so I don’t fall into an existential crisis about what else I could have actually been doing with my time. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NIGHT GAUNT — “THE DEER AND THE HUNTER”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Oct 052026
 

(written by Islander)

As we are prone to do, more often than some literal-minded visitors approve of, we’re about to premiere a song that’s an extravagant exception to the command in our site’s title, and it arrives through the good graces of the mercurial Roman band Night Gaunt.

The name of the song is “The Deer and the Hunter“, and it’s the second track to surface so far from their new album Rupture, which will be released by Aural Music on November 6th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: UNTU — “RAMPOGAN”

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Oct 052026
 

(written by Islander)

Untu is an experimental death/thrash band from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, whose music fuses old-school extreme metal with Javanese gamelan — a traditional Javanese instrumental ensemble that includes such percussive instruments as gongs and the bronze saron demung. The group was originally formed in Los Angeles in 2015 as a large ensemble by composer Sean Hayward, and this year they have been working their way toward the December release of a four-song EP named Yet, I Smile.

In June Untu released the first song from the EP, “Batara Kala“, which we reviewed here. Two months later they released the second single, “The Dukun’s Hand“. And today we’re premiering a remarkable video for the third single, “Rampogan“, which will be digitally released tomorrow. Continue reading »

TO THE GRAVE – LIBERATION FRONT

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 052026
 

(Andy Synn heads into the slaughterhouse once again with Aussie antagonists To The Grave)

Sweet zombie jesus… this is a heavy fucking album.

And, to be quite honest, I could probably leave this review right there and end with a quick exhortation to “go listen to the damn thing if you don’t believe me” and call it a day.

But, considering the fact that I know the real reason you all come here is to imbibe my unique brand of trenchant insight and critical analysis… I suppose I’d better better drop at least a few more paragraphs about the absolutely monstrous new record from Down-Under Deathcore heavyweights To The Grave.

Continue reading »

ANAGNORISIS: “CAREGRIEVER”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 052026
 

(The Kentucky-based black metal band Anagnorisis are returning after a long hiatus with their fourth album, Caregriever, which will be released on October 23rd. Below you will find Wil Cifer’s review of the album.)

After a ten-year absence, this project is back with its darkest work yet. Black metal should be the darkest of all genres, but it often gets caught up in blast-beats and obligatory occult posturing and misses the mark. Where this album succeeded lies in where Zachary Kerr drew inspiration from: The title refers to the emotional toll that was taken upon him by acting as the caregiver for his now-deceased father-in-law. This is why the demeaning tug on this album’s snarls plays so effectively, because it is real, much like how Blake Judd of Nachtmystium screamed his agonized guts out about his addiction. Real darkness outweighs appropriating esoteric terms you are not truly studied in, though American black metal does tend to be more street-wise and less LARPing. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BEFOULED MALEDICTION, KILAT, I HELVETE, FERNDOM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 042026
 

(written by Islander)

For reasons that are too embarrassing to disclose I’m getting a very late start today. Fortunately, I did my listening in previous days and made my picks yesterday. It’s just the writing that I left for this morning.

With so much time already gone before I started, and honestly not feeling great, I again wondered whether I should bother with the writing since I’m just providing my reactions to music everyone can hear for themselves. Can’t I just say, “You should listen to this,” and leave it at that? It’s a recurring internal debate. And I resolved it as I always seem to do. But to keep this from being ridiculously late, I did shorten it from six selections to four.

By way of introduction, I arranged the music so you’ll start of in the midst of some fireballs, then pull back in a moody kind of interlude, then heat up again, and then drift away in contemplation of the season ahead (or the one slowly ending). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OBSCVRE SER, ASSUMPTION, RISE ABOVE DEAD, VOID SECTOR ZERO, ACÉDIA, DISFEAR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 032026
 

(written by Islander)

Yesterday was another Bandcamp Friday, when the platform waives its revenue share so that artists and labels can take in more money from their sales. There will be two more of those this year, on November 6th and December 4th.

In deciding what music to recommend in this column I nearly didn’t pay any attention to our in-box for the last two days, because I knew it would be flooded with messages from people trying to take advantage of the Friday benefit (and to be clear, I don’t blame them a bit). I already had plenty of possibilities from preceding days this week and last week.

But I wound up wading through the flood anyway, and fielding recommendations from assorted other people online. I didn’t listen to everything I listed for myself, because if I had, it would already be Sunday. But I listened enough to make the choices difficult. Here’s where I came down. I hope you’ll enjoy the picks. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GLYPH — “THE PENDULUM SWINGS YET…”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 022026
 

(written by Islander)

For the sixth time in the last five years we turn to the enigmatic U.S. black metal band Glyph, whose fourth album is being released today by Snow Wolf Records and Fiadh Productions. We gather that the project has had an uncertain future, perhaps drifting toward an end in favor of its sole creator’s other endeavors, and yet (thankfully) that time hasn’t arrived. As the album’s title says it, the pendulum swings yet….

Glyph’s convention-defying music has never been mundane, and for some listeners it might be “challenging”. At peak intensity (which is a frequent occurrence) it’s capable of creating electrifying experiences of overpowering catastrophe, an outlet for apparent pain and rage rendered in dazzling and delirious yet sometimes disorienting terms. In other less extravagant dimensions (a highly relative term in the case of Glyph) the music is capable of becoming spellbinding, but even then it tends to be emotionally harrowing.

It’s only fair that new listeners understand this when venturing into the new album, which we’re now premiering in full. It’s also worth understanding what was running through Glyph’s mind when creating these seven songs: Continue reading »

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