Aug 022013
 

Yesterday was kind of a strange day here at the NCS metallic island. We put up a big stream of posts, but most of them were short-and-fast alerts about new tours or new songs, because your humble editor was preoccupied with the demands of his fucking day job and didn’t followed through on more time-consuming ideas that were originally slated for the day. Better luck today.

I’d like to begin whatever emerges at NCS on this Friday by flattening you with some metal of fucking death. I have two songs. I heard both of them yesterday when I came up for a gasp of air from the miasma of my paid work. If you like fucking death metal, I believe you will smile when you hear them (after you finish picking up your teeth).

WAR MASTER

War Master are a new discovery for me. They’re from my one-time hometown of Houston, Texas, and their last release was a 2011 debut album named Pyramid of the Necropolis. They’ve now recorded a new EP entitled Blood Dawn, which will be released on August 7.

Last month they began streaming an advance track on Bandcamp called “Bastard Horde”, which can be obtained right now for $1. It’s goddamn titanic — a blasting, grinding, heavy-as-hell battle-tank on a merciless old-school rampage in the vein of Bolt Thrower. The monstrous riffs and irresistible grooves in this baby will smash you into smithereens. I’m in love. Or at least in lust. Continue reading »

Apr 162011
 

(Thanks go out to NCS reader/commenter Surgical Brute for today’s guest post, which focuses on five bands that may be new to you; they were certainly new to me, but I’m damned glad I know about them now: Anatomia, War Master, Grave Ritual, Adorior, and Ilsa. I’m also happy to learn about the Rites of Darkness festival that, to date, has confirmed appearances by 41 bands, including the likes of Behexen, Demonical, Interment, Mitochondrian, Sargeist, Valkyrja, and Vasaeleth, in addition to the bands that are the focus of this post.)

Okay, as you know, Islander was looking for some articles to use as fill-ins so he didn’t lose any days on the NCS website. I stupidly said Id try to put something together for him, and…well… here we are.

I guess I should start with a little bit about me. My name’s Rob, but I usually use the tag SurgicalBrute (no there’s no story behind it . . . so don’t ask). Compared to a lot of you, I’ve only been into metal for a very short time, but after dabbling with metalcore a little bit I found Amon Amarth’s Twilight of the Thundergod. I couldn’t stop listening to the title track, and I’ve been devoted to the metal gods ever since. I listen to most of the different styles (grindcore being the exception), but I prefer either old school death metal or folk/viking metal.

Now, I’m not much of a reviewer; frankly, I suck at it. So I was trying to figure out what I should write about. Well, as some of you may know, I try to stay pretty tapped into metal’s underground.  So I figured I’d make a suggestion list of bands most of you may not have heard about. I’ll also include a brief description of theses bands

This isn’t just any list though. No . . . I’m going to tell about 5 lesser known bands you should check out at Rites of Darkness 3, which is happening in San Antonio, Texas, on December 9-10.  (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »