AN NCS INTERVIEW: FER DE LANCE

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Oct 012025
 


photo by Matt Chains

(Comrade Aleks has brought us a truly excellent interview with members of Chicago-based Fer de Lance, whose enthusiasm for metal and their own music-making is highly infectious. Their latest album, which is an exception to the not-entirely-serious rule in our site’s title, is also an excellent one, and worth checking out before, during, or after this very engaging discussion.)

Around 2019, MP Popeye (vocals, guitar) and Pat Glockle aka Rüsty (bass) left the Chicago heavy doom band Professor Emeritus, so it took their friend Lee Smith another six years to find a new lineup and record a second, and by the way, very cool, album. But it was all part of a cunning plan, as MP and Rüsty quickly found collaborators (Scud on drums and J. Geist on guitars) and formed their own band, Fer De Lance, and in 2020 recorded the EP Colossus, followed by their full-length debut, The Hyperborean, in 2022.

To Fer de Lance‘s credit, they didn’t waste any time and are already thundering along with a second, more powerful album. Fires on the Mountainside combines a number of musical concepts, among which are doom metal, classic heavy metal, even some elements of Mediterranean folk, and the epic nature of Viking-era Bathory. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GORLEBEN

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Sep 252025
 

(On October 15th the German band Gorleben will have their second album released by Darkness Shall Rise Productions. The music and other aspects of the album are fascinating (as we’ve already previewed), and so is the following interview conducted by Comrade Aleks with Gorleben member 235U.)

Gorleben was named after a municipality in Saxony, next to which an ill-famous radioactive waste storage facility is located. Hence the radioactive hazard sign in the logo, hence the nicknames of the participants taken from the names of radionuclides, hence the themes of the songs.

43 minutes of Menetekel are divided into four tracks. “Countdown” begins with a dreamy psychedelic theme accompanied by the sounds of nature, but gradually “the electricity turns on” and the melody becomes doomy, menacing, and heavier. It’s strange, but at some point it seems that two different tracks are playing: something like mid-tempo gothic metal and melodic death-doom in the vein of Katatonia. Gorleben know how to keep their identity yet also keep to the “Katatonia” scenario, further adding to their palette a duet of growls and harsh female screaming.

Suddenly, electronic samples penetrate the composition, and the riffs become chopped, industrial, and the male growl is replaced by a heart-rending black scream. In short, a lot happens in the first thirteen minutes of the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: EMISSARY

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Sep 232025
 

(In this new interview our Comrade Aleks talked with Michel Regueiro from the Spanish thrashing death metal band Emissary, whose debut album was released last March by Fetzner Death.)

Michel Regueiro (guitars, vocals) and Hlib Overchuk (drums) from Barcelona got together in 2023 in the name of old-school thrash/death metal, and believe me, they wasted no time recruiting Philip Graves (guitars) and Cosmil Martin (bass) and soon had eight tracks for their debut album Eldritch, which came out earlier this year.

The telling cover-art and track titles “The Shadows Lengthen in Carcosa”, “Hobb’s End,” and “At the Throne of Chaos” promised Lovecraftian horror in slightly atypical form. Indeed, I’ve gotten used to hearing Lovecraftian mythology in black, death, or at least, doom bands, but Emissary play their variations on themes in a completely traditional thrash vein with a bit of death overload. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HOODED MENACE

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Sep 222025
 


photos by Pasi Nevalaita

(Finland’s Hooded Menace have a new album on the way, set for release on October 3rd by Season of Mist, and today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with Lasse Pyykkö.)

My eyes filled with tears of affection when I put my hand on Hooded Menace’s seventh album Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration. These seven tracks captivate with the inspiring melodies of ’80s heavy metal, the mood and sound of ’90s death-doom, and even a hint of VHS horror soundtracks. These songs warm with a reminiscence of early Paradise Lost, and even Harri Kuokkanen‘s exemplary death metal growl at times recalls the roar of Holmes in his prime.

Meanwhile, the guitar harmonies (Lasse Pyykkö‘s specialty) can’t help but evoke sheer metal classics. Drummer Pekka Koskelo, with a quarter-century of underground experience, hammers away with the focus and intensity of the possessed — and in short, this trio is a dream team.

I can’t hide my excitement with this driving, filled-with-hooks record, but I prefer to hand the floor over to Lasse Pyykkö himself; he has a few things to tell about Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SILENT TOMBS

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Sep 192025
 

(Today we happily present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Victor Mercado, vocalist of the Mexican doom/death metal band Silent Tombs, whose excellent debut album will be released by Personal Records on October 17th.)

Islander already wrote about the forthcoming release of Silent Tombs’ album Mourning Hymns from Beyond, and it’s hard to add something new to his words. This bunch of experienced extreme metal musicians from Colima, Mexico managed to create a stunning melodic death-doom masterpiece combining all the key influences of the genre yet obtaining a clear individual touch.

These mid-tempo songs built of riffs heavy as a coffin lid, soaring breathtaking melodies, and a firm, vivid rhythm-section accompanied by killer growling parts make a modern classic. I’m still surprised with the top level of this release and its mature, natural vibe, and I bet that this interview with Victor Mercado will give you an answer to some questions you may have after listening to the first singles from Silent Tombs. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: COLOSALIST

 Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 122025
 

(On September 9th Hoggorm Music released the debut album of Colosalist, a Czech band of veteran members split between Norway and Czechia. Comrade Aleks fell for the album and arranged the following excellent interview with Colosalist‘s well-spoken founder Petter (formerly Petr) Staněk.)

In the mid-’90s Petr Staněk was a guitarist and vocalist in two Czech bands – the death metal crew Scapegoat and the doom band Silent Stream of Godless Elegy, but the first one only managed to record a few demos, and creative differences forced him to leave the second one somewhere around 2001. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Petr moved to Norway, managed to play gothic with LiveEvil and industrial with Robotized, and then remembered the past and started Colosalist.

He recorded his first Colosalist EP Pass into Oblivion with the bass guitarist of the Czech band Endless, Petr Hutin, back in 2014, but it was only seven years later that he assembled a full line-up and recorded his first large-scale work Two Suns. Petter Staněk is now joined by two more former members of SSOGE: Zuzana Zamazalova Klementova (vocals, violin) and Filip Chudý (bass), as well as Jan Jaglarz (drums), who played in the gothic doom band Euthanasia since 1994, and Tomáš Paulus (guitar) from Second Chance.

Well, this is some kind of miracle, but as a result, Two Suns sounds like a decent doom album from the second half of the ’90s with significant gothic metal influences and the characteristic sound of SSOGE of that period! “Creeping Frost” with its rhythm, rough vocals, and violins laid on driving metal reminds one of the album Themes. It’s even interesting that Petter’s voice hasn’t changed much in a quarter of a century! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: RAUHNÅCHT

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Sep 102025
 

(Not long ago the Antiq label released a new album from Rauhnåcht named Zwischenwelten. It is a very impressive and moving assembly of music, and so are the eloquent answers given by the band’s mastermind Stefan Traunmüller in response to the questions of our Comrade Aleks in the interview we present below.)

Stefan Traunmüller is a veteran of the Austrian underground. His first project was the melodic black gothic band Golden Dawn, founded in 1992, and it’s still somehow alive. But Stefan also took part in about a dozen projects, the most fruitful of which is Rauhnåcht. Zwischenwelten (“In-between Worlds”) is the fifth album in the fifteen-year history of the project, not counting five smaller releases.

The new forty-minute full-length consists of six compositions, performed in the spirit of nostalgic, charged, and aggressive (by measure of anger-management courses) yet atmospheric black metal. Conceptually, as one can already assume from the cover of Zwischenwelten, Stefan adheres to pagan positions with an emphasis on the spirit of old Bavarian legends.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t call this work totally “pagan” or “folk”, and the author himself entitles his creation precisely – “Alpine black metal”. Hence the prickly cold of high-speed black metal and the sublimity of contemplative ambient, providing short-term respites along with infrequent acoustic interludes – it’s a breathtaking journey through the blizzard and piercing cold of the mountainside in the company of old spirits of that land. The vocal parts are represented not only by screaming, but also by clean, harmonious singing, which is characteristic of pagan metal in general.

All the elements of Zwischenwelten are composed in such a way that you easily agree that Stefan‘s black is precisely Alpine, and Stefan is the best choice if we want an excursion in the world of Rauhnåcht. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PROFESSOR EMERITUS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 042025
 


photo by Liz Gollner

(In June of this year Chicago-based Professor Emeritus released a long-awaited second album, and our Comrade Aleks was so taken with its melding of epic doom metal and traditional heavy metal that he reached out to the band’s founder, guitarist, and keyboardist Lee Smith for an interview that we now present below. As you might have already guessed, the music is an earned exception to the “rule” in our site’s title.)

Born in Chicago, 2010, Professor Emeritus didn’t hurry: their debut album Take Me to the Gallows (2017) gave the world a formula for not the newest, but a refractory alloy of epic doom metal and traditional heavy metal. The resulting blend was further alloyed with a fantasy concept, and in the end this material, enlivened by a passionate presentation, was good despite all the rough edges.

It took eight more years to make the second album, and the reason is simple: only guitarist Lee Smith remained from the first lineup. I don’t know what happened there, but the former bassist and the vocalist of Professor Emeritus started their own doom band, Fer de Lance, so in the end everyone wins, yet it obviously took time to find replacements.

Having retained a significant influence of Candlemass in their doom, Professor Emeritus strikes with the power of bands like Argus and Memento Mori, and even the rudeness of archaic Manowar. The mood of the new vocalist Esteban Julian Peña’s lines in A Land Long Gone changes from ominous battle cries to melancholic philosophizing. Esteban became a real find for Lee, and I suppose here he has more opportunity to open up than in his original band Acerus. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ORDO KARNIVORUM

 Interviews  1 Response »
Sep 022025
 

(Here is Comrade Aleks‘ interview of guitarist/vocalist Sergey from the Russian black metal band Ordo Karnivorum, who released their second album last spring.)

Ordo Karnivorum was founded in Ivanovo, Russia two or three years ago. It is now a trio: Sergey (guitars, vocals), Alexander (guitars), and Eugenia (bass). Their unholy debut as a duo, Noir (2023), drew some attention to the band, but due to the low live activity it was easy to get lost among other black metal bands. However, their new crushing full-length work The Restless should change the rules of the game.

Live, unpolished sound, high-quality stuff, and a fanatical approach to deathly black metal with harsh vocals and macabre philosophy make me feel some sympathy to the wicked Ordo Karnivorum. Let’s take a look at the band’s inner machinery, maybe we’ll find something interesting there! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: IRGA

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Aug 252025
 

(In this new interview, a very interesting one, Comrade Aleks conversed with Piotr Podkolzin, the person behind the Moscow-based progressive/melodic black metal band Irga, whose newest album Black Pine Needles was released this past June in cooperation with Svanrenne Music.)

Irga from Moscow was started as an instrumental black metal project with a concept based on the story of a fictional haunted village where wrong things happen on a daily basis. Piotr Podkolzin was the sole member of Irga, but the release of the first album Welcome to Magovei inspired him to continue with guest musicians.

Logically, the project’s sophomore album – recorded now with live drums and vocals – turned out to be a product of another level. Black Pine Needles is an excellent example of modern (in a good sense of the word) and quite progressive black metal with an individual approach. Here we go deep into the dense grimness of Irga’s chthonic spirit alongside Piotr himself. Continue reading »

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