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

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
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 »

SHADES OF BLACK: ALIOTH BOREALIS, ACHERAD, THUNRAZ, DØDSFERD

 Album Reviews, Forthcoming Albums, LISTMANIA 2015, LISTMANIA 2016, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 242024
 

(written by Islander)

I haven’t kept a running count, but I think a substantial majority of the music I’ve written about in these Sunday columns has consisted of singles, usually advance tracks from forthcoming albums. A couple of reasons for that:

First, I can put our spotlight on a lot more bands and records that way. In the time it would take me to listen to and scribble thoughts about one album, I can do that for pieces of six or seven albums.

Second, I don’t think I’m great at writing album reviews. I find it difficult to provide some kind of succinct discussion because I always feel like I’m leaving out important aspects of the music, and so I often get bogged down in the details. Even when an album is already out I feel that way, even though it might be a silly feeling since everyone can listen and discover the details for themselves.

All of that makes today’s collection a rarity, because today I’ve chosen to write about three albums that have already been released, and one new song (and video) that’s a bonus track for the vinyl edition of another album that’s already out. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTAR OV ASTERIA — “ÉNA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 222024
 

If you’ve heard the first single released from Altar Ov Asteria‘s debut album you know these two German women (Satyra and Melpomene) aren’t cautiously feeling their way forward, haltingly trying to figure out who they are musically. They named that song “Kataklysm“, and a sonic cataclysm is what they made — a devastating, exhilarating, and wholly engulfing experience.

The rest of the album, entitled Éna, is equally self-assured, both in its music and in its conception. Altar Ov Asteria liken it to “a storybook of hellish Sodom”, imagining (as Dante and Homer did) “a world full of mysteries and realities woven into each other”, creating allegories of human dystopia through an intertwining of viscerally assaulting, immensely heavy black metal and unorthodox atmospherics.

What we have for you today is the premiere stream of Éna as a whole, all five songs, in advance of its release by the Dusktone label on November 29th. Continue reading »

DJEVEL: “NATT TIL ENDE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 192024
 

(Today we welcome to NCS a Croatian metal writer currently based in Oslo, Norway, who goes by the name Chile. He brings us the following review of the new album by the Norwegian black metal band Djevel, just released by Aftermath Music.)

Yes, talk about being on a roll. While some bands would take their sweet time to release an album or two, Norwegian forces of otherworldly nature and all things black in the form of Djevel, have come back to us with their ninth album in just fifteen years of existence. Some would raise an eyebrow or two to this prolific manner in this day and age, but we are raising our glasses and horns to another devilish masterpiece.

Appropriately titled Natt til ende (Night to the End) and released in the middle of the dark November by Aftermath Music, the album packs a punch so fierce that the fury unleashed can be felt up to high heavens, which makes even more sense when we heed the words of T. Ciekals, the creative force behind Djevel: Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: CODESPEAKER / HIDDEN MOTHERS / STILL

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 182024
 

(Andy Synn presents three more high quality cuts of pure, A-grade British beef)

Let me tell you something… I love my band, and I love the music that we make (did I mention that we have a new EP out this Friday?) but the truth is we’ve never really found where we belong in the UK Metal scene.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve played with and befriended some great bands, and at one point even had our own little mini-clique of others like us (Rannoch, Talanas, Spires, Luna’s Call) who also didn’t really “fit in”.

But we’ve always felt like (and, as far as I can tell, been considered) “outsiders”.

However, the three bands I’m talking about today are not only three of the most promising acts in the UK scene (two of whom recently released their long-awaited sophomore albums, with the third being about to release their highly anticipated debut) but could all easily fit together on one bill without sacrificing their own distinct identities.

Which, I guess, also makes them the perfect picks for this edition of “The Best of British”!

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FURZE — “COSMIC STIMULATION OF DARK FANTASIES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Nov 142024
 

(written by Islander)

In April of this year the Trondheim-based “black psych metal” project Furze released a new album named Caw Entrance, its first full-length in six years. (We featured some crazed insights about it in our Comrade Aleks’ interview of Woe J. Reaper last July.)

Surely some significant amount of time would be necessary before he did something else under the banner of Furze, some period of recovery before his head could begin spinning again, and spinning ours — but NO! He quickly began musically self-medicating again, and the result is a second Furze album that’s now set for release tomorrow by Devoted Art Propaganda and Polytriad Fingerprints.

The new one is named Cosmic Stimulation of Dark Fantasies, which is a good description of the music and its apparent intent. You’ll see, because here on the eve of its release we’re presenting all the songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TOXAEMIA — “REJECTED SOULS OF KERBERUS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(written by Islander)

Four years ago we premiered a couple of songs from Where Paths Divide, the eye-opening debut album of the Swedish death metal band Toxaemia that was ultimately released by Emanzipation Productions. We began one of those premieres with the following paragraphs, which four years later are still relevant:

“What causes a cult Swedish death metal band to come back to life after almost 30 years of silence? Not fame and fortune, at least not in the case of Toxaemia. Their roots go back to 1989, and their early demos and other recordings in 1990 and 1991 can legitimately be considered part of the pioneering sound of early Swedish death metal, but they’re not a household name in 2020. Rather than trying to cash in on a name, it’s a much better guess that this revival was spawned by one thing and one thing only: passion for the music.

“Sure, you might guess that nostalgia had something to do with it, but when you hear the music they’ve now made on a debut album that gestated this long, what you feel is fire and fury.”

Why are those words still relevant? Because the creative fire that fueled Where Paths Divide didn’t die away to embers. If anything, it has blazed higher in a new Toxaemia album named Rejected Souls Of Kerberus that we’re proud to present today, in full. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DRAGONCORPSE / GLASSBONE / MINUALA / SALLOW MOTH

 SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(Andy Synn dives into four recent short-but-sweet releases)

There’s been a lot of truly excellent EPs released this year, with at least a few more still to come (as a matter of fact, we’ve got our own new EP coming out just next week).

And although, for reasons previously stated, my time is probably going to be a little more limited than usual over the next month or so, I’m hoping to at least cover a few more of them before “List Season” officially kicks in.

Beginning with the four succulent morsels of metallic goodness that I’ve elected to feature here today.

Continue reading »

HALIPHRON: “ANATOMY OF DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 122024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the sophomore album by the Dutch symphonic black/death metal band Haliphron, which was released a few weeks ago by Listenable Records.)

Truth be told, I hadn’t expected to see a second release from Haliphron to go sliding across my desk so soon after the first album had hit. Of course, it is often said that you have forever and a day to write your debut, and sometimes you have people who can’t seem to stop writing once that initial spark has been lit, and they burn brighter than a star lightyears away. Sometimes you’ll have people join the band with a bevy of ideas already percolating in their heads, as in Soilwork and Aborted‘s tendencies to have someone join and release a new EP soon after. And sometimes groups will wind up with an excess of material and it would be a shame to let that go to waste.

There’s a multitude of the cases available with Haliphron‘s lastest release via Listenable Records, Anatomy Of Darkness, but picking one certainly does help to mentally square the fact that we’re looking so soon at a second album. Continue reading »

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