SHADES OF BLACK: AHAMKARA, AN AXIS OF PERDITION, SJÁLFSMORÐ AF GÁLEYSI, TODESTRIEB, NOITASAPATTI

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 172024
 

I have to be brief today, because I’m compelled to leave home soon for a few hours. An appointment you really don’t want to hear about, and one I’ll be attending masked, in an effort not to infect people around me with my shitty cold. So, without further ado….

AHAMKARA (UK/U.S.)

I think most NCS visitors know by now that we don’t report “the news”, i.e., announcements of new bands or records, if there’s no music streaming. There’s too many such announcements and too few of us. If there’s no music available yet, we just wait until there is, and then see if we think it’s worth recommending.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and I’m beginning with one. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, SAVAGE LANDS, FRONTIERER, ASS TO MOUTH, ROTTEN SOUND, RITUAL FOG, SKAPHOS, THE SWORD, SOLIPSISM, PLAGUEFEVER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 162024
 


Mantar photo by Sonja Schuringa/Chantik Photography

I have my second miserable cold in two months, and how are you doing? I’ve been focusing on music that I thought would help blast the snot out of my head. I’ve included a lot of that below. I can’t tell that I’ve really come un-clogged, but it has made me feel better in other ways, including providing catharsis for being so pissed off that the virus has hit me again so quickly.

As you can see, I had time enough to do lots of listening and watching yesterday and this morning. As usual, the music from the 10 bands featured below isn’t all I heard and liked, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I moved some of my choices to tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, and others I hope I’ll get too somewhere down the road. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: A DEAD POEM — “IN FORGOTTEN DIMENSIONS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 152024
 

(written by Islander)

Some people are still alive who remember a time in the early ’90s (because they witnessed it) when the now well-defined genres of extreme metal weren’t so sharply separated, when there was a commingling of styles such as gothic doom, black metal, and melodeath. Others who weren’t contemporaneous witnesses have experienced those moments by listening to such records as Paradise Lost‘s Gothic, Katatonia‘s Dance of December Souls, or Rotting Christ‘s A Dead Poem.

It is no coincidence that the Brazilian duo of Marlon Combat and Carlos Misanthropic chose A Dead Poem as the name of their band, because their aim was to grasp and revive the intertwined aesthetics of doom and black metal manifested by records such as those.

Their first efforts in that direction were captured in their Absence of Life EP self-released last year (and then released in a limited CD edition early his year by Cold Art Industry Records). That caught the attention of the eclectic Personal Records, which is now primed to release A Dead Poem‘s debut album Abstract Existence on December 13th.

Some of the songs from the album have already surfaced (and opened lots of eyes and ears), and today we’re bringing you another one, a stunner of a song named “In Forgotten Dimensions“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HOSTILIA — “POWER OUT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 152024
 

(written by Islander)

We have a hell of a good story to share with you, one that’s probably well-known in the environs of Gothenburg, Sweden, but probably less well-known elsewhere, including here in North America. It’s the kind of story which reminds us that some of today’s best-known and most influential metal bands first seized attention decades ago as teenagers.

And, in addition to a hell of a good story, we’re also sharing one hell of a good song and video that features the young Gothenburg-based thrashers Hostilia.

First, here’s the story: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JOSÉ LUIS CANO BARRÓN

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 152024
 

(In the following interview, Comrade Aleks presents a very interesting discussion with Mexican writer José Luis Cano Barrón, the founder of Under Fire Records and the author of numerous books about metal. The main focus of this conversation (but not the only one) is his book about Bathory and Quorthon, an English translation of which has been released this year by Pagan Records.)

Bathory is one of the most influential extreme metal bands of the past, as Quorthon, its constitutor, was one of the first to lay the foundation for the black metal genre, and he was the one and only who formed the rules of viking metal. Almost each album he recorded differs from another, but even the most controversial of his releases, like those two he did in the mid-’90s, got recognition.

Quorthon passed away twenty years ago on February 17, 2004, and it felt terribly wrong that there weren’t books about his career and Bathory’s history. Yet, it’s easy to understand why, because he always avoided revealing details of his personal life and preferred to work alone, so there weren’t many evidences that could help to recreate some episodes of his life accurately.

Long story short: Pagan Records released an English-language edition of José Luis Cano Barrón’s book From Hades to Valhalla… BATHORY – The Epic Story. And I couldn’t ignore it, so here we have José, who not only shared his look at Bathory’s story, but also revealed some of his plans, which may excite other bookworms like me. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TOXAEMIA

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 142024
 

(Yesterday we premiered a full stream of the new album by the Swedish death metal band Toxaemia — which will be out tomorrow via Emanzipation Productions — and today we follow that with our French contributor Zoltar‘s excellent interview of Toxaemia co-founder and bassist Pontus Cervin.)

Before the internet and Ebay (later on, Discogs) ruined it all, collecting obscure early extreme metal items was a fun if sometimes quite frustrating adventure. These days, even the least memorable and 134th Entombed copycat gets the momentary chance to shine thanks to all those reissues flooding the market and surfing on the general impression that artistically speaking the early ’90s were the golden years of Swedish death metal (spoiler: they were). But three decades ago, the genre was deemed ‘passé’ and most of the bigger bands were left to choose between jumping on the bandwagon or splitting up, whereas the low-profiled or unlucky ones were simply buried six feet under, seemingly forever.

For a long time, Toxaemia was first and foremost remembered as topping the ‘impossible to find’ list of early SweDeath items next to Expulsion, Goddefied or Mastication. Released in January 1991 on the mighty Seraphic Decay imprint, their sole ‘real’ release, the Beyond The Realm EP, with its thrashier take on classic death metal would quite often fetch insanely large sums of money whenever one copy would happen to pop up on Ebay. 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 PREMIERE: WULDORGAST — “COLD LIGHT OF REASON”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 142024
 

On Monday of this week we hosted the premiere of a song from Malevolent Lycanthrophic Heresy, the forthcoming third album by the Pennsylvania-based black metal band Luring that’s coming out December 13th on Iron Bonehead Productions. Luring is a member of “the Order of the Broken Sword,” a group of musicians who’ve apparently known each other for about 20 years. Another member of that circle, Azathoth’s Dream, released their debut album Nocturnal Vampyric Bewitchment on IBP last year, and we also hosted a premiere for that one.

And now we come to yet a third entity within the same circle, a duo who took the name Wuldorgast. They too now have a debut album set for release by IBP on December 13th, one named Cold Light, and today we’re again hosting a song premiere in support of the album. The title of this track is “Cold Light of Reason“. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023 WRAPUP

 LISTMANIA 2023  1 Response »
Nov 142024
 

(written by Islander)

I can hear you asking, “Why the hell is a post about 2023 year-end lists popping up in November 2024?” A valid question. And the answer is: Because I fucking forget to do this when I was supposed to do it.

Well, I only partly forgot. You probably don’t remember, but in December 2023 and January/February 2024 I was wholly consumed by a project for my fucking day job, so consumed that I didn’t have time to put together my usual list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs for 2023, and didn’t have time to do the “WrapUp” post for our annual LISTMANIA series. When time eventually did become available, that’s when I forgot.

I only remembered yesterday, when launching this year’s LISTMANIA orgy with a copy/paste of Decibel‘s Top 40 list for 2024. And even though probably no one else but me has remembered that I never did the 2023 WrapUp post, it gnawed at me, like weevils in the grain-sack of my head. Begone you weevils! Here’s the WrapUp, 10 months late. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40 FOR 2024

 LISTMANIA 2024  19 Responses »
Nov 132024
 

(written by Islander)

Well, holy shit, is it already time to begin our site’s annual LISTMANIA orgy? Lo and behold, it is.

It has become an annual (and reflexive) tradition at our putrid site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list, because they always seem to burst from the starting gate sooner than anyone else — and they’ve done it again this year, even earlier than they did in 2023.

I need to repeat, of course, that the reason we also use their list as the launching point for all of our own forthcoming YE features is because, in my humble opinion, DECIBEL is still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal. Their list also always generates healthy discussions (and sometimes unhealthy ones), so it’s still a fitting way to launch the latest LISTMANIA season apart from the list’s early-bird status.

The DECIBEL 2024 list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2024 edition (with Cirith Ungol on the cover), which hasn’t yet hit my own mailbox, but DECIBEL again decided (for the tenth year in a row) to scoop their own list rather than letting leeches like me leak it. They published the list on-line yesterday, and so I can now again re-publish their list without too much guilt, beyond the sheepishness that comes from being one of the factors that forced them to start outing themselves in the first place. Continue reading »

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