AN NCS PREMIERE: PROFANATICA — “MAGIC & MUHR”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jun 272016
 

Profanatica-The Curling Flame of Blasphemy

 

New York’s Profanatica have deep roots in the underground, with a string of short releases beginning in 1990. The band dissolved in about 1992 before releasing an album, but re-formed in 2001, though the first album still wouldn’t appear until 2007. Their fourth album, The Curling Flame of Blasphemy, is now set for release on July 22 by Hells Headbangers, the music prepared by the band’s two core members, drummer/vocalist Paul Ledney and bassist/guitarist John Gelso.

Last month I raved about the album’s first advance track, “Ordained In Bile”, and I’m about to start raving again, because we’re bringing you the premiere of a second song from this staggering new album: “Magic & Muhr“. Continue reading »

A MARYLAND DEATHFEST RECAP (PART 4)

 Concert Reviews  9 Responses »
Jun 042016
 

Alewife brunch1
Friday beer/brunch at Alewife with friends.

For those of you just now joining this series about Maryland Deathfest XIV, I’m in the process of highlighting the bands whose performances were the best of the ones I saw and heard in Baltimore beginning on Wednesday of last week.

Rather than doing a day-by-day recap, I’ve organized the bands into four somewhat loosely defined categories. Yesterday’s feature was a “Shades of Black” collection of black metal bands, and before that was one under the heading “Swedish (and Dutch) Death Metal Supremacy”. I’m calling today’s celebration “The Black Death“, not only because that describes the general style of music performed by the following six bands, but also because they all spread a lethal kind of auditory plague.

Presented in the order in which I witnessed the performances over 5 nights and 4 days, and I’ve again included my photos of each band (most of which are gathered at the end of this post). Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: PROFANATICA, STILLA, VUKARI, MARE COGNITUM, AUREOLE, NUKE, NÉVOA, KRODA

 Metal News, SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
May 082016
 

Profanatica-The Curling Flame of Blasphemy

 

As I explained yesterday, I’ve been off my game for yet another week, with less time than usual to collect new music worth hearing. In a (futile) effort to play catch-up, I collected some new things yesterday and a lot more in this post, which is again devoted to metal in a blackened vein.

PROFANATICA

New York’s Profanatica have deep roots in the underground, with a string of short releases beginning in 1990. The band dissolved in about 1992 before releasing an album, but re-formed in 2001, though the first album still wouldn’t appear until 2007. Their fourth album, The Curling Flame of Blasphemy, is now set for release on July 22 by Hells Headbangers, the music prepared by the band’s two core members, drummer/vocalist Paul Ledney and bassist/guitarist John Gelso.

The album’s first track, “Ordained in Bile”, appeared recently, and I really can’t get enough of it. The atmosphere is primitive and predatory, and its primal power owes much to its production (especially the drum tone, which you can feel right in your gut). Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: GLORIOR BELLI, SEPULTURA, AND PROFANATICA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

The subjects of this post are three full-album streams now available for listening.

The first is Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls by the French band Glorior Belli. It will be released on November 12 by Agonia Records. Our man BadWolf gave it a favorable review here. Three of your five regular NCS writers consider it one of the year’s best albums (and the other two haven’t weighed in). The full stream premiered yesterday at Stereogum, but you can also listen to it here, after the jump.

The second is a full stream of the new album by Sepultura, The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must be the Heart, which will be released in NorthAm by Nuclear Blast on October 29. In the US, the album is streaming exclusively at Metal Sucks, so you’ll need to go here to listen.

In light of certain accusations leveled at Nuclear Blast for not playing nice with web sites who don’t favorably review their releases, I thought it interesting that MS was selected for this stream, since their reviewer didn’t treat the album very well. We haven’t reviewed the album yet, and I haven’t heard it. But it’s Sepultura, and I thought that fact alone made the stream newsworthy. Here, by the way, is the album cover: Continue reading »

FREE SHIT FROM HELLS HEADBANGERS (INCLUDING NEW SONGS FROM MIDNIGHT, WITCH CROSS, PROFANATICA, AND IMPIETY)

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  24 Responses »
May 042013
 

Many of our readers are intimately familiar with Hells Headbangers, but for those who aren’t, it’s an online distro and record label specializing in death, black, thrash, grind, doom, and heavy metal. As a label, Hells Headbangers is home to a tremendous line-up of slaughtering bands, many of whom we’ve featured here at NCS. This morning I discovered that HH has made available a free summer comp of music from many of those bands. The comp consists of 20 tracks and includes brand new songs from forthcoming albums by Midnight, Witch Cross, Profanatica, and Impiety.

The comp also comes with artwork drawn by Antichrist Kramer as an homage to Slayer’s debut album Show No Mercy. The timing is coincidental, but it now seems like a fitting tribute to the late Jeff Hanneman. (There’s a track on the comp listed as a Slayer song . . . but it’s really Vomitor.)

The comp is available as a free digital download on Bandcamp, and HH says a double-LP and a CD version will be coming soon.

I’ve been blasting this shit this morning, and it’s awful strong. Links are after the jump, along with the new tracks and the complete album stream. Continue reading »