SHADES OF BLACK: ALIÉNATION, AM I IN TROUBLE?, ANTUMBRA

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 012024
 

As you can see, this week’s SOB is very short. I had a late night out with my spouse and friends and a really long hibernation afterward. Also, not long from now, I’ll be heading out again to watch the broadcast of an inconsistent Seattle football team trying to beat a pretty bad New York football team. They’re playing in the East so it’s an early start here in the West.

The upshot is, I don’t have much time to write about music this morning. I thought about not trying to do anything with this column, but man, for 15 years and counting I’ve really hated to leave a void on any day at NCS.

With time short and too many things to choose from, I made the arguably bizarre decision to focus on the three black (or “blackened”) metal bands who e-mailed us most recently about their music – none of whom I knew anything about before listening. Purely by coincidence, all their names begin with “A“. Purely by coincidence, they all turned out to be good, in very different ways. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BALEFIRE, BENEATH MOONLIGHT, DREAMING DEATH, FRACTURED INSANITY, KONKHRA, OCELOT OMELET, PLAGUEFEVER, PRIMEVAL MASS, PYRE

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 302024
 

I have to remind myself that less than half of our visitors had a Thanksgiving Day holiday last Thursday. I checked, and only the U.S. and Brazil celebrated the holiday that day. Here in the U.S. it launched a 4-day holiday, because most people who are relieved from working on Thanksgiving get Friday off too, so it’s a time when lots of people check out of their routines.

It’s not an entirely lazy holiday for a lot of people because the Thanksgiving Day tradition usually involves getting together with family and friends and cooking, and the day after is the ridiculous shopping splurge of Black Friday. But for me, the holiday does make me feel lazy.

I didn’t completely check out of all my routines. We still had lots of NCS posts on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, because I’ve never believed in honoring holidays at our site, and for our writers outside the U.S. those were just two more nothing-special days.

But I admit I did succumb to long bouts of laziness and therefore didn’t listen to much new music the last couple of days. I thought seriously about taking today off from NCS, but as you can see, the old compulsion wouldn’t surrender. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DYING GROTESQUE — “CELESTIAL”

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Nov 282024
 

(written by Islander)

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., where our site is headquartered. Among other things to be thankful for, those of us who live here are grateful that we don’t inhabit a country torn by war. The people who live in Ukraine aren’t so fortunate, and they’re on our minds today as we present the premiere stream of a new album by the Ukrainian death metal band Dying Grotesque.

This band was first created in the suburbs of Kyiv, Ukraine in 2018 as a one-man project by Vadym ‘Silvan’ Tsymbaliuk. With the addition of new members in 2020, the project became a band, they released their debut album Sunflower Tide, and they began performing live at a number of gigs and festivals throughout Ukraine.

The name of their new album is Celestial, and it will be released tomorrow by Archivist Records. Its themes are described as follows:

The story behind Celestial depicts the violent absurdity and the grim futility of human existence, which appears to be completely insignificant comparing to the endless darkness of cosmic void and all the undiscovered mysteries it conceals.

Continue reading »

ALTA ROSSA – A DEFIANT CURE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 282024
 

(Andy Synn hopes you’ve saved some space in your year-end lists for A Defiant Cure)

As we approach the end of the year I should probably think about preparing for my annual “List Week”, wherein I take over the site with five days of posts rounding up the “Disappointing”, “Good”, and “Great” albums of the year (the ones I’ve heard enough to be able to form an opinion on, anyway) culminating in my “Critical” and “Personal” top tens.

But with everything that’s been going on recently I haven’t had the time or the energy to really get stuck in yet (which might be a problem, considering I plan on kicking things off on the 09th).

That being said, not having things set in stone yet means there’s still room for a few surprises to make an impact (and I plan on reviewing new, and upcoming, albums, right up until the start of “List Week”)… and one of those surprises which has the potential to massively shake up my “Personal Top Ten” is the recently-released second album from French firebrands Alta Rossa.

Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME XI: CHAOS REIGNS

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 282024
 

(Daniel Barkasi returns to NCS with another monthly roundup of reviews and recommendations, this time focusing on eight albums released in October 2024.)

I don’t want to harp on this for too long, as NCS is an outlet that many use as an escape from the perils and frustrations of day-to-day life. We choose to reside within the realm of positivity, embracing the music that we collectively love. However, as someone who steadfastly believes in honesty, truth, facts, science, and logic – the US just by a razor-thin majority decided to embrace disinformation, fallacy, wild conspiracy theories, and authoritarian populism.

It’s sad, and it will harm people. People that we love and care about. If we want to get practical, it’s going to hit the pocketbooks of US citizens hard. Healthcare – while already a cruel joke – could get a whole lot worse. As a type 1 diabetic who is dependent on artificial insulin to exist, it’s scary. A lot of folks are scared, and rightfully so. Fundamental rights have been already taken away, and there’s plenty of risk for more.

Aren’t we tired of living in interesting times? Personally, bring on the quiet, boring, and mundane. Just not in our music. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MANDROÏD OF KRYPTON — “COSMIC SARCOPHAGUS”

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Nov 272024
 

(written by Islander)

From the fantabulous cover art adorning this Swiss band’s new album to their fantabulous name, I was inexorably drawn to Mandroïd Of Krypton‘s new album, and the record’s name was also an attraction: Cosmic Sarcophagus.

Those were the first hooks here, but not the band’s previous music, of which I was ignorant. Our humble site was in existence when Mandroïd Of Krypton released their first album and an EP in 2012 (Our Brilliant Embassies and Angry Space Zombies), and when they followed those with a second album in 2015 (Hyperkaossmarket), but we missed them despite the also-excellent names of those releases.

And that’s okay, because the nine-year gap between that last release and this new one is suggestive of the possibility, if not the likelihood, of musical changes, especially because of lineup alterations that occurred during that period. So, we can take Cosmic Sarcophagus on its own terms, and leave to others a mapping of the band’s nine-year musical evolution. Continue reading »

PUTRID VOMIT CHRIST: “PERPETUAL INTERCOURSE”

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Nov 272024
 

(What follows is our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri‘s distinctive review of a distinctive new demo by the Vietnamese death/doom band Putrid Vomit Christ, which will be out in December on the House of Ygra and Godz Ov War labels.)

“The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life’s intimacy does not reveal its dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.”
― Georges Bataille

Doom and its iterations mongrelized with the wails of the departed are not my usual fare, but I gave a demo a spin that might be of interest to death-doom adherents.

If you stare in the mirror long enough and repeat phrasal ministrations of deification, you might be able to channel some putridity; that’s if you practice your guitar and get some friends who know their shit to join your band. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VÖLVA — “DESIRES PROFANE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Nov 262024
 

In mid-October we premiered a riveting video for a song called “The Tower” by Sweden’s “avenging witches of black metal,” Völva. It was from Völva‘s debut album Desires Profane, which is set for co-release on November 28th by Fiadh Productions (for LP) and Grind to Death Records (for CD).

The album is described as “ten hymns to the lost souls of their persecuted sisters, incinerated upon the murderous bonfires of Christianity,” as “a scalding assault of vehement rage,” and as a pursuit of “themes of Satanic feminism both in a spiritual cosmic sense as well as using your free will, body and lust as vessels to sin for a higher purpose”.

And if that’s not clear enough, Völva reinforce their message and what fuels their music with these words:

Völva are intolerant to any behavior implying someone else taking any right to claim that their color of skin, heritage or geographical belonging entitles them to be superior to someone else. Needless to say, but as satanic feminists living in a society like ours, there’s no end of the hatred we feel against the male white supremacy. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INVERTED CROSS — “ETERNAL FLAMES OF HELL”

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Nov 252024
 

On their debut album Eternal Flames of Hell the Barcelona band Inverted Cross wickedly uphold a lot of age-old metal traditions: the traditions of the five-pointed star, of bullet belts and gauntlets, of goat-headed demons and blasphemous words, and of course the inverted cross itself.

But more to the point, they uphold the traditions of venomous black thrashing speed metal that will get rattled heads hammering and heated blood rushing, proudly and violently following the ripped path of such bands as Destruction, Sodom, Kreator, Deathrow, and Violent Force.

Today you’ll get the full blast of their hellfire, as we premiere a complete stream of Eternal Flames of Hell in advance of its November 29 release by Helldprod Records. Continue reading »

PANZERFAUST – THE SUNS OF PERDITION – CHAPTER IV: TO SHADOW ZION

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 252024
 

(Andy Synn advises you to make room in your year end lists for the new Panzerfaust album, out now)

There were a lot of really good records released last week, including the highly-anticipated new Opeth album (which – while perhaps a little overhyped – is less a “return to form” and more a band finding a new form which combines aspects of both their pre- and post- Heritage years), the brain-manglingly brutal new one from Defeated Sanity (which we should be covering soon), and even a cool new EP by the name of Welcome to the New Dark Ages, Part 2 (which, obviously, I may be a little biased towards…).

But, as a long-time Panzerfaust fan – one who, occasionally, feels like he was the only one who really liked the doomier, gloomier sound of Chapter III: The Astral Drain – there was no way I wasn’t going to share my thoughts on the fourth and final part of the band’s Suns of Perdition saga.

The only question being will it all end with a bang… or with a whimper?

Continue reading »

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