SEEN AND HEARD: BEHEMOTH, CYTOTOXIN, FALLUJAH, GHOST

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Only five days ago Bandcamp announced that it would continue Bandcamp Fridays in 2025, with the first one happening today. Before that, it wasn’t clear that they would continue, so it caught most of us by surprise. But word obviously spread very fast. What was already unfolding as a packed week for new music became a typhoon over the last few days. I was already agonizing about what the hell to do for tomorrow’s usual SEEN AND HEARD roundup, but now I feel like someone caught on the beach as a towering tidal wave rushes ashore.

Bandcamp Fridays are always an ideal time to spread the word about new music, but because of other duties around here I rarely have enough time to pull something together until the day after. I really don’t have much time for it today either, but felt like I needed to do something to make tomorrow’s task even a bit less overwhelming.

What I decided to do is a bit out of character for myself and the site as a whole: focusing exclusively on some of the bigger names in metal (or in one case, metal-adjacent). We don’t ignore the big names around here, as long as what they’re doing is good, but we often use them as a way of luring people into music from bands whose names are much more obscure. If I’d had more time, that’s what I would have done with this small roundup. It was just easier and faster to stick with these four.

But of course, none of these four new songs and videos would be here if I didn’t think they were worth recommending. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RITUALMORD — “THIS IS NOT LIFELOVER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Few long-gone bands from the underground still have as passionately devoted a following as the Swedish group Lifelover. Two of that band’s surviving members have worked together under the name Ritualmord to create a debut album that will be released tomorrow by Unjoy – Art & Ritualia. That pedigree alone would attract Lifelover fans to the album like iron filings to a magnet, but almost like a rebuff of an old lover, Ritualmord named their album This Is Not Lifelover.

And the album’s name is mostly true, but not entirely true. It isn’t Lifelover, but to use a cliché, there are some Lifelover nucleotides in Ritualmord‘s DNA — though indeed it’s true that the other ingredients of their musical polymer are quite different from what a Lifelover fan would expect and possibly hope for — though it may reflect where Lifelover would have gone (to more vast and mind-bending places), had it lived.

In lieu of typical PR promotional texts, the two people behind the album, ( ) (Kim Carlsson) and 1853 (Johan Gabrielson) have crafted a different kind of introduction, and we ought to begin there in presenting today’s album premiere: Continue reading »

EMPTY THRONE: “UNHOLY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 072025
 

(At the end of February Downfall Records released the debut album from a group of U.S. metal veterans who’ve taken the name Empty Throne, and today we have DGR‘s extensive and enthusiastic review of what they’ve accomplished on this first full-length.)

One of the most appreciable things about Empty Throne and their new album Unholy is that within the first minute of the opening song “Abbey Of Thelema”, you have a pretty good idea of exactly how this album is going to go and what the band sound like. It has been some time since we’ve had a release that has so clearly laid its cards on the table with an opening furnace blast of music quite like Empty Throne do up until the quiet guitar break in that opening song.

You’ll have a sense of just how much of the group’s death metal with a hint of melodicism, blackened thrash, and gnarly razor-sharp guitars you’ll want from the band right about that point. That’s not to say that Empty Throne aren’t happy to provide other things, but that opening minute lays out the core of a very ambitious band who across six songs and forty minutes have a lot to say — and as it turns out, at a very fast and teeth-shattering tempo as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LISTLESS — “DEVOID”

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Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Listless is a new depressive black metal project born from the mind of Aidan Crossley, the guitarist and vocalist of the atmospheric black metal band Liminal Shroud from Victoria, BC in the Canadian West.

Those familiar with Liminal Shroud will detect some kinship in the music of that band and Listless, but in the case of this new project, Aidan has drawn inspiration from the likes of Austere, Woods of Desolation, Coldworld, None, and Gris, as well as depressive rock elements from bands like Lifelover and Psychonaut 4.

On April 25th, Hypnotic Dirge Records will release the self-titled debut album of Listless, and what we have for you today is a video for the first haunting and harrowing song revealed from the album. Its name is “Devoid“. Continue reading »

SOM – LET THE LIGHT IN

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 062025
 

(Andy Synn does his best to let the light in… let’s see what it reveals, shall we?)

I think it was pretty much the day I started writing here that I began chipping away at the whole “no clean singing” thing here at NCS.

Granted, it was always more of a tongue-in-cheek statement, rather than a strict edict, as the site had been featuring bands with various forms of clean singing, off and on, well before I got here.

But I’ve definitely been responsible for bringing a fair number of bands – bands with nary a hint of harsh vocals in their sound – to the site that probably wouldn’t have been covered here otherwise.

And since I was the one to first bring Doom-Pop/Dream-Gaze quartet SOM to the site’s attention – first with my review of their debut album, The Fall, followed by my write-up of their stunning second album, The Shape of Everything (which also made it into my Critical Top Ten of 2022) – it only seems fitting that I continue to make a mockery of everything we stand for by sharing my thoughts on their upcoming third album, Let The Light In (out next week on Pelagic Records).

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NECRAMBULANT — “UPHEAVAL OF MALIGNANT NECRAMBULANCE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 062025
 

(written by Islander)

The Arizona band Necrambulant have a new album coming out tomorrow on Gore House Productions. Ever-interested in improving my vocabulary, I tried to look up the meaning of “necrambulant”, especially because a variant of the word also appears in the album title: Upheaval of Malignant Necrambulance.

Turns out it’s not in any dictionary (not yet). According to an 11-year-old interview of Necrambulant guitarist Ron Clark at Teeth of the Divine, it’s a word the band made up by combining the prefix “Necro” with “Ambulant” — “just a fancy way to say ‘Zombie.'”

At the time of that interview Necrambulant were about 9 months beyond the release of their debut album Infernal Infectious Necro-Ambulatory Pandemic. It might be time for another interview to figure out why it took the band so long to release more music, with 9 years passing by until their 2022 EP A Feast of Festering Flesh, and then 3 more years until this new second full-length, coming out a chunky dozen years after the first one. (I did find a quartet of more recent interviews, but they were all just the kind of stock questions that could be doled out to any band, and none of them delved into that question.)

But really, the answer is just a matter of bystander curiosity. It’s irrelevant to whether anyone should be paying attention to the band’s new album. Whether attention should be paid, of course, is a function of the music and the tastes of the listener. You’ll get to taste the whole thing — and it will get to taste you raw, without benefit of cooking or seasoning — because we’re providing a full stream today. Continue reading »

NIHILITY ACROSS AMERICA 2025 AT THE DNA LOUNGE, SAN FRANCISCO

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 062025
 

(The Polish titans Decapitated recently finished their Nihility Across North America Tour, with support from Incantation, Darkest Hour, and Exmortus. Our friend Ben Manzella caught their February 27 show at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge and provided us with the following report and his photos of the performances.)

It is hard for me to believe that it was nineteen years ago that I started to desire to be at a concert almost any night that it was possible. For obvious reasons, this has hardly been possible but I couldn’t help but be reflective as I walked into the DNA Lounge for the Nihility Across North America tour. As I think I mentioned in my review of Decapitated’s show last year, Vogg was the first person to allow me the time to interview them in person. We haven’t been able to talk again in person since that night, but it still means a lot to me. It was great to be able to see this tour celebrating a pinnacle moment in the career of Decapitated. Continue reading »

SEPTICFLESH: “AMPHIBIANS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Mar 062025
 

(In advance of their recent North American tour with Vltimas and Ex Deo, the Greek band SepticFlesh released an EP named Amphibians, and our DGR gives it a review here.)

If you’ve been following the news around tours for the past five or so years you’ve likely noticed an increasing trend of groups surprise-releasing singles – sometimes collaborative ones, which are immense fun – or EPs just prior to the tour happening. Aborted did it for their most recent tour; Machine Head did a combo song with the vocalists of Unearth, In Flames, and Lacuna Coil making appearances; and Lamb of God combined forces with Mastodon for their full album playthrough tour not too long ago.

The genesis of these songs can often lay in the cutting room floor from previous album sessions since creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum and are highly unpredictable, but whereas it felt like groups constantly needed to have something to get them out on the road, now it has morphed into something more akin to revitalizing the current album cycle for a few more rotations around the sun.

Just as equally though, you do get lucky and a band will find time to sneak into the studio for a few and crank out ideas that’ve been haunting them like shadows ever-present in the corner of their vision. Bearing in mind that SepticFlesh‘s newest release crashes ashore a bit over two and a half years after their album, it would be hard to guess what led to which. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, FEBRUARY 2025

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 052025
 

(In this column our Denver-based friend Gonzo brings forward five albums of varied kinds of heaviness for your consideration, all of them released in February.)

Well, February came and went, and I’m still catching up on the absolute onslaught of heavy music that emerged from it – hence the noticeable delay in putting this column together.

Alas, shit happens. I’m still recovering from last night’s Cavalera show here in Denver, in which the eponymous brothers Max and Igor led their band through a crushingly heavy Schizophrenia set that was played at breakneck speed. Even the Chaos A.D. encore cranked up the BPM. And just before they were ready to call it a night, they hauled none other than Jello Biafra on stage for a downright cathartic cover of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” except “Punks” was replaced with “Trumps.”

In place of a politically charged tirade of my own, I’ll just lazily approve the above with a “fuck yes” stamp of approval and carry on.

Anyway, here’s some music you should listen to that came out last month. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HERSIR — “PURIFICATION OF FIRE”

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Mar 052025
 

(written by Islander)

The Swedish band Hersir wear the trappings of ancient hellish menace and vicious savagery. They seem to have named themselves for Viking raiders. They titled their debut album Hateful Draugar From the Underground (in Norse mythology the draugar were reanimated corpses or the restless dead). And the album includes songs called “Holocaust Winter“, “Purification by Fire“, and “Valgaldr” (an Old Norse word for spells that raise the dead).

And have no doubt, there is indeed much about their formulations of black metal that are hellish and vicious, but their thematic inspirations from ancient Nordic spirituality and folklore also give their music an unearthly and epic aura, both frightening and wondrous. Perhaps most unexpected from the outward trappings mentioned above, this is a refined beast, a wicked creature in which a certain kind of dangerous elegance lurks beneath the black cloaks, the decayed skin, and the ravenous and hateful hungers.

So if you might be expecting “bestial black metal,” perish the thought. It thus makes sense that their label Darkness Shall Rise (which will release the album on March 28th) invokes the influence of classic Darkthrone, Enslaved, Emperor, or Isengard. And you’ll understand all of this better when you hear the song we’re premiering today — “Purification of Fire.” Continue reading »

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