AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “STRETCHED UNTIL WE BLEED”

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Nov 042024
 

(written by Islander)

Spreading the word about new music from Minnesota’s GraveSlave has become an NCS tradition. What else would you call it when we’ve hosted seven premieres in support of their releases since 2016 — today marking the seventh occasion?

To be brutally honest (which is the only kind of honest we know how to be around here), tradition is often a hollow thing, perpetuating events or activities that have often long lost their meaning or value. But not in this case. We continue welcoming GraveSlave because their music has so consistently been… welcome!

And so it is again today, when the occasion is the debut of a new video for a song from their most recent release, the Relinquish, Life EP that detonated earlier this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “IN THE MOUTHS OF GIANTS”

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Oct 082021
 

 

Last summer we had the pleasure of premiering the title track from No Center, the latest album by Graveslave from the Minnesota Twin Cities, which was subsequently released on July 30th by TRVASFUK Music, adorned by the terrific cover art of Adam Burke. In an effort to sum up the music, we called it “a rich and relentlessly dynamic mix of sounds and sensations, which underscores the progressive elements of Graveslave‘s brand of death metal… intense in different ways and highly memorable”.

If you overlooked the album, today we have a reminder of just how good it is. What we’ve got today is a new music video for the album’s epic and unnerving closing track, “In the Mouths of Giants“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “NO CENTER”

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Jul 162021
 

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

That opening stanza from Yeats‘ famous poem The Second Coming has sprung to this writer’s mind more than once over the last year, and came to mind again in thinking about the title of Graveslave‘s new album — No Center — and its title track, which we’re premiering today. But apart from what’s been happening all around us, the times have also had a way of hollowing people out, and it’s that aspect of existence that seems to be the song’s true focus. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “FATAL PUSH”

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Mar 092020
 

 

We know a thing or two about the music of Graveslave and we’ve seen a thing or two about their taste in videos. And no, we’re not selling property and casualty insurance — it’s death metal we’re peddling today, accompanied by a video that will bring smiles to many hardened faces.

Yes indeed, this isn’t the first time we’ve helped spread the music of this Minneapolis band to the soon-to-be-bruised masses. In 2017 we premiered their aptly titled debut album Sick/Nasty, which we summed up as a dynamic, body-mangling, brain-twisting thrill-ride — “an utterly wild, technically pyrotechnic, stunningly brutal fireworks display” that combined “thuggish skull-cleaving with eye-popping explosiveness, slow, sinuous sensuality and gruesome morbidity, and solos that will make you drool”.

And now Graveslave have just released a hellacious new EP named Devotion, the first of two brutal deathgrind EPs the band plan to release this year. Today we’re presenting a music video for a track from this first one named “Fatal Push” — a video that presents… well… a sharp contrast between what you see and what you hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “SICK/NASTY”

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Jun 292017
 

 

You may not have noticed, but we had some nasty technical difficulties at our site today, thanks to an update from the company we pay to keep our server from becoming infected with malware (created by among the lowest forms of human life), said update disabling our ability to edit and publish new posts. I’m normally a calm, patient person. Today, for hours, I felt violently unhinged.

Ironically, the principal casuality of this bizarre takedown by our paid protector was a band whose music actually provides the kind of cathartic release that might have prevented me from trying to throttle the throats of the people who caused this mishap if they’d been within reach of my clutching fingers. Listening to Graveslave‘s album one more time tonight, I feel calmer. It is Sick/Nasty, and as you will discover, it is sick and nasty — but it holds other delights as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “SLIT THROAT AND GARROTE”

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Jun 212017
 

 

Well, you can’t say Graveslave have given you no warning about the foulness of the new music video you’re about to see. They did name the song “Slit Throat and Garrote“. And they did name the album from whence it comes Sick/Nasty. And then there’s that cover art.

But just in case you’re a bit slow on the up-take, let’s just put it right out there: Don’t watch this video right before you eat. Probably should’t watch it on a full stomach either… unless watching someone being strangled with their own intestines improves your appetite or your digestion.

Sick/Nasty is this Minneapolis-based death metal band’s first album, which includes guest vocals by Cryptopsy’s Matt McGachy on the opening track. We first encountered them through our premiere of a funnier and less gruesome video last year for the band’s single, “Strange Days”, and before that they assaulted listeners with a 2015 EP named Wormtongue. They seem to have been just warming up with those previous releases, because this new track is an even more serious body-mangler and brain-twister. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAVESLAVE — “STRANGE DAYS”

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Apr 202016
 

Graveslave-Strange Days

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new song and video from Graveslave.)

Ever since Todd Farnham from Invidiosus (and Amiensus!) first got in touch with me about helping premiere music for his sick band several years ago, he has consistently kept me in the loop with a ton of awesome new metal bands close to his neck of the woods. Earlier this year he showed me Sunless, which Islander himself made mention of at NCS, and I myself covered at Metal Injection. Recently he tipped me off to another band I was new to called Graveslave, whose members are split between Minneapolis and Denver.

Liking what I heard by them at the time, I agreed to help them launch a new video that doubles as a song premiere for a new single by the band called “Strange Days”. While not everyone out in the world is celebrating today, Graveslave is, since it’s 4/20! As such, the video is a weed-themed ode to the horrific perils that Reefer Madness warned us about all those years ago. Continue reading »