AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INBORN SUFFERING — “PALE GREY MONOCHROME”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 042025
 

(written by Islander)

Inborn Suffering came together in Paris in 2002. They released two albums that made substantial impact craters in the landscape of doom, Wordless Hope in 2006 and Regression To Nothingness in 2012, and then they sunk into lightless depths for a long time. After returning with singles in 2023 and 2024, they now have a new album for us that will be released on February 7th by Ardua Music.

The name of the new album, Pale Grey Monochrome, is not an inviting one. It’s more fitting as a description of a winter sky hiding the sun beneath a curtain of slate that stretches from horizon to horizon than as a come-on for new music. It seems to promise a colorless gloom, drab and featureless. There is a reason for the name, but the music is the antithesis of monochromatic, as you will soon see. Continue reading »

DISRUPTED: “STINKING DEATH”

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Feb 042025
 

(Today we bring you Zoltar‘s review of the recently released third album by the Swedish death metal band Disrupted.)

There’s a good reason why Lik got signed to Metal Blade Records a few years back, and no, it hasn’t anything to do with both their guitar players joining respectively Katatonia and Bloodbath. No, if on the surface their classic down-to-earth approach to SweDeath may not look and sound that much different from the 7,564 Entombed clones popping out here and there (although it should be said that their main influence remains Dismember but I digress), underneath the fat layers of HM-2 effects pedals and downtuned guitar, they had, one could say, class. Yep, that extra-but-fuck-I-can’t-really-put-my-finger-on-it-although-it’s-here element, that Midas Touch if you will, that set them apart. Or maybe they just had better songs?

Off Ludvika in the dead center of the country, the very same little town where Peter Tägtgren’s Abyss studio is located, Disrupted have the same problem, so to speak. To those of the outside, they’ll probably look like another bunch of dudes pretending it’s 1993 all over again who hired Daniel Liljekvist back in 2018 right after he had left his drum stool in Katatonia (them again) to get some attention. Especially since their early material – 2014’s Heavy Death EP and the equally imaginatively-titled Morbid Death three years later – didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IMPURIST — “EVOLVING CORTEX”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 032025
 

(written by Islander)

Impurist are a new death metal band formed in Hull, England in 2023. Their lineup features former and current members of Extreme Noise Terror, Gorerotted, Winterfylleth, and Introrectalgestation. They proudly proclaim that they have taken influence from the bands they grew up listening to, and they obviously must have grown up listening to violent horrors.

Impurist made their recording debut in April of last year with an EP aptly named Punishment Without Mercy. Since then they’ve recorded a second EP entitled Evolving Cortex. It will be released by 783label on CD, cassette tape, and 12″ vinyl — and the vinyl edition will include the band’s debut EP as the B-side.

The new EP, Evolving Cortex, includes three songs, and we have some thoughts about each of them — along with the premiere of a frightening animated lyric video for the title song. Continue reading »

VACUOUS: “IN HIS BLOOD”

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Feb 032025
 

(Here we have Wil Cifer‘s review of the second album by the UK death metal band Vacuous, which is set for release on February 28th by Relapse Records.)

Death Metal continues to gain popularity with bands like Cannibal Corpse as festival headliners and playing arenas. Its aggressive release makes it perhaps the most fun of all metal sub-genres yet it is all too often stuck in its ’90s nostalgia. This leads to bands idolizing the Morbid Angel‘s and Obituary‘s of the past and not always pressing forward with fresh new sounds and songwriting that moves beyond the bounds of its double-driven and growled vocals.

The sophomore album of Vacuous, In His Blood, finds the band breaking out from the pack to create their niche and find their way without leaning too heavily on their influences. Sure, guttural vocals are the main narrative, but other anguished vocalizations are employed, to give the tormented-larynx approach more purpose, rather than an obligatory gurgle underlying the frantic din. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MNAJDRA, PLUTONIAN SHORE, PURE WRATH, SIVYJ YAR, SLEEP PARALYSIS, SVRM, UTHULLUN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 022025
 

(written by Islander)

In both these Sunday columns and the more genre-scattered ones I do on Saturdays I tend to write about individual songs more than complete EPs or albums. That allows me to cover more ground, and to bring more bands and their forthcoming releases to people’s attention.

The downside is that lots of listeners don’t really put much weight on individual songs. They want to know about the complete record, maybe through a review or more likely by listening to all of it when that becomes possible.

I don’t have any way of knowing whether the pluses of my strategy outweigh the minuses, but I’m wedded to it for better or worse. Today’s column is a classic example of that, though I have included a trio of complete but short EPs in the mix. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, BALMOG, JUODVARNIS, DARK MEDITATION, GRAVEWITCH, MESSA, MARES OF THRACE, IMPURITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 012025
 


These are bathrooms I visited in Port Orchard, Washington

(written by Islander)

It’s been a hell of a week hasn’t it? More like a week from hell. The daily news has become a series of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the ghastly ones whose details have frequently appeared on the cover of metal albums.

On the other hand, it’s been a heavenly week if you focus on the kind of music that typically makes its way into these Saturday roundups. So let’s forget about the news for now and move right to that!

MANTAR (Germany)

I’m never going to not rush to check out new music from Mantar. (Forgive the double-negative, I guess I haven’t completely forgotten about the news.) Especially when it’s prefaced by this kind of statement from guitarist/vocalist Hanno Klänhardt: Continue reading »

THE GREAT OLD ONES – KADATH

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 302025
 

(Andy Synn traverses the dreamlands in search of the meaning and measure of Kadath)

My history with the musical cult known as The Great Old Ones is a long and storied one indeed.

Way back in 2014 I selected their stunning second album (and still their finest hour, in my opinion) Tekeli-li as one of the best albums of the year, and not long after that I was enraptured by the band’s headlining performance at The Black Heart in London (a show which, despite them moving on to bigger stages, remains their most iconic performance in my mind).

In the years since then I have written about the band multiple times, offering my thoughts on both their live shows and their subsequent recorded output – 2017’s bigger and more bombastic EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy and 2019’s more furious and ferocious Cosmicism – and remained a faithful acolyte through it all.

And yet there’s always been a part of me wondering, and worrying, if they’d ever be able to recapture that same sense of magic – that immersive, otherworldly atmosphere – which permeated their early work(s).

But… perhaps the stars have finally aligned once more?

Continue reading »

WARDRUNA: “BIRNA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Jan 292025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile prepared the following extensive discussion of Wardruna‘s just-released new album Birna.)

Bears have been a constant presence in our minds, stories, and myths from the times undreamed of. It was those first encounters between our ancestors and the majestic dwellers of the forest that shaped our very understanding of nature. For the bears, so perfectly aligned with the changes of the seasons, were like a beacon that shone its light on our wandering hearts and thus setting us on a path of revelation, a path from which we have strayed away in our complacency. Time has come again to take the road less traveled and return to the shade of the trees and the rustling of the leaves.

If there is one band in existence today that we would call upon to take us back into nature’s realm, there is no other better candidate than Wardruna. This Norwegian force of (and for) nature needs no particular introduction, as they have forged their own blazing trail from the noctilucent North into the hearts of the world. Their Runaljod trilogy is a towering achievement in modern music and serves both as an inspiration to many and as a reminder that we belong to the Earth and not the other way around.

Released on January 24th by Sony Music and By Norse Music, the sixth studio album by the band is called Birna and sees their mastermind Einar Selvik reaching for inspiration deep into the dens and the burrows of the earth where the hibernating bears dream on their moss-covered beds. The concept behind the album is best described by the band itself: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBSCURE SPHINX / SLAUGHTERSUN / ΘΛΊΨΙΣ

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 282025
 

(Andy Synn promises to review more EPs this year… we’ll see about that!)

Every year I promise that I’m going to feature and review more EPs here at NCS… and every year I fail spectacularly at this, and have to jam in all the short-form releases of the year into my annual “List Week” instead.

But, mark my words, this year things are going to be different! Although, I might have said that before…

Continue reading »

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