October 2015 - Page 2 of 11 - NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: INTEGRITY — “HUMANITY IS THE DEVIL” (20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

Oct 272015

I heard about Cleveland’s Integrity long before I heard them. Other bands across a wide range of genres have dropped their name as an influence like I drop cigarette butts on the sidewalk. To this day, I get press releases pushing new bands because they sound (something) like Integrity. Integrity broke ground, and they broke minds.

Almost twenty years on from the release of the band’s landmark Humanity Is the Devil, Magic Bullet Records is releasing an anniversary edition of the EP. This edition features a new treatment of Pushead’s original album cover by artist Josh Bayer and comes with Dwid Hellion’s complete lyrics, along with an updated narration by him on the album’s last track.

And it has been remixed by Joel Grind (Toxic Holocaust) with guidance from Hellion and Integrity guitarist Aaron Melnick and remastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege — and that has brought an added power and immediacy to the recorded music that probably wasn’t even possible in 1995. Continue reading »

OTARGOS: “XENO KAOS”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Oct 272015

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the French band Otargos.)

Full disclosure: I’ve been a big fan of this band for a long time now (although, curiously, I don’t think I’d seen them live until this year’s edition of Incineration Festival), and have loyally followed them as they’ve transitioned, slowly but surely, from the more overt blackness of their early years, to the denser, more Death-tinged sound which they now wield.

Yet whilst their new album, Xeno Kaos, most definitely (even defiantly) continues this progression away from the realms of Black Metal, it also simultaneously takes both a step forwards and a step backwards from its predecessor, dropping the thrashier edge found on Apex Terror whilst making more room for a grimly oppressive Industrial undercurrent reminiscent of 2010’s No God, No Satan.

This clanking, industrialised soundscaping is nothing new to the band, obviously, but the way it’s deployed here alongside the steadily more Death Metal-leaning metallicisms that the band have made their stock-in-trade puts me strongly in mind of Norwegian extremists Zyklon (or perhaps their cousins in Myrkskog).

So, if you’re a fan of either of those bands (or simply a long-time Otargos fan curious as to where the band’s more deathly ambitions have taken them) then read on! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: XUL — “MALIGNANCE”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Oct 272015

In preparing to write a few words about our premiere of this hair-raising album from XUL, I went back and read what I wrote about a XUL song we premiered earlier this year from their lethal 2015 EP Extinction Necromance, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I think my mind was so exploded by the music that I forgot where I put it. I’m warning you now that the same thing may have happened when I started writing this post after listening to XUL’s Malignance.

That’s the name of this British Columbia band’s 2012 debut album, which was originally self-released and is now getting a gilded reissue by Redefining Darkness Records, with remastering executed by Ken Sorceron (Abigail Williams), eye-catching new artwork by Remy Cuveillier (Headsplit Design), and a previously unreleased bonus track. Continue reading »

A DUAL REVIEW: MENDEL (“OBLIVION”) AND PAUL WARDINGHAM (“THE HUMAN AFFLICTION”)

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Oct 272015

(TheMadIsraeli returns to NCS with reviews of 2015 albums by two instrumental maestros — Mendel Bij De Leij and Paul Wardingham.)

Of the instrumental metal albums I’ve listened to this year, these two are definitely the top tier out of the bunch so far. There will be more multi-album reviews coming, in the spirit of clearing the way for the super big/important releases I’m also stoked about.

MENDEL: OBLIVION

Mendel is one of the most enjoyable instrumental metal listens you can partake of next to Jeff Loomis right now. Part Yngwie, part death metal, and all regality, Oblivion is an interesting listen that is so full of ideas it can also be rather exhausting — but in a good way. Continue reading »

TOURISM: AT THE GATES-DECAPITATED-THE HAUNTED-HARMS WAY and WOLVHAMMER-ATRIARCH

Metal News 3 Responses »

Oct 272015

If you haven’t noticed, we don’t make an effort to keep you fully informed of newsy announcements, including tour announcements. There are only so many hours in the day, and some of those must be devoted to things like eating, sleeping, evacuation of bodily waste, and punching the clock for people who expect us to earn our salaries and could care less about our precious metal blog.

However, I did spy a couple of mainly U.S. tour announcements yesterday that I thought were worth publicizing, even at the cost of evacuating some waste in my chair to make up for the time required to prepare this post. Hard choices.

AT THE GATES – DECAPITATED – THE HAUNTED – HARMS WAY

The first tour, which was announced yesterday, will happen in February and is headlined by Sweden’s At the Gates and includes for almost all the appearances Decapitated (Poland), The Haunted (Sweden), and Harms Way (Chicago). I presume none of these bands needs an introduction. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUNAR MANTRA — “GENESIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Oct 262015

So close and yet so far away, mysterious and unknowable for most of our existence, the Moon has exerted as strong a pull on human imagination as it has on the tides. With its reflected light waxing and waning, it alternately casts the night into deepest darkness and illuminates it with a ghostly pallor, spawning tales of night terrors and visions of things beyond the material plane. And for millennia, it has been associated with madness (there is a reason why the words “lunatic” and “lunacy” are derived from the moon’s Latin name, luna).

The debut album, Genesis, by the Scottish black metal band Lunar Mantra brought all these thoughts to mind, and not just because of the band’s name. In many ways, the album captures the mystery and the powerful influence of our closest celestial neighbor on our imaginations — as well as its link with madness. Genesis is indeed “a nightside odyssey through the formless void”, as one press description has it — a disorienting and arcane experience that proves to be spellbinding. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: LOCRIAN (ANDRÉ FOISY)

Interviews 2 Responses »

Oct 262015

(Comrade Aleks brings us this interview of André Foisy, one of the members of Chicago’s Locrian, whose latest album Infinite Dissolution was released this year on the Relapse label.)

It’s harder to speak about Locrian with every album they record. This trio from Chicago started with extravagant blackened doom / drone sessions, but over time they have just gone astray in labyrinths of sound researching and experiments. Their newer works keep a cinematographic and psychedelic touch; it’s subjective yet it’s close to the truth if you look for truth in extreme music…

What is Locrian? I have no univocal answer for you. Maybe André Foisy will give some hints in the interview we did with him because of Locrian’s release Infinite Dissolution. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: JACEK GRECKI (LOST SOUL)

Interviews 5 Responses »

Oct 262015

(KevinP brings us another installment of his brief-interview series, this time posing questions to Jacek Grecki, vocalist/guitarist of Poland’s mighty Lost Soul, whose powerful new album Atlantis: The New Beginning we premiered last week.)

K: People who have not heard about you before might instantly jump to the “it’s a Polish band that sounds like Behemoth” mantra. This may be a good or bad thing (depending upon the person). And while I’ll admit certain countries may have a “sound” that permeates through multiple bands, Lost Soul started in 1990 as a death metal band and gravitated to technical (sorta) death metal over the years, while Behemoth started in 1991 as a black metal band, then moved to black/death, and now to modern death metal with theatrics. So I think the facts speak for themselves on that particular issue.

J: You know, Lost Soul isn’t such a popular band as Behemoth is. People rarely double-check historical facts about one of the lesser known representatives of the music scene. I think it’s natural to compare one band to the other, better known to the less known in this case. As they say: no matter whether it’s good or bad, what matters is people speak about the band. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KALL, SOLOTHUS, TARNKAPPE, KNIVES, DEVATION, VOD, EXUVIUM

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Oct 262015

Although we featured quite a lot of music, both new and old, this weekend, we’re far from exhausting our new discoveries. And so we begin the new week with a large collection of recently discovered songs. Most of these are ones that caught my eyes (and ears), and Austin Weber contributes one as well. Coincidentally, every band has a one-word name, which I find pleasing for reasons that make no sense at all.

KALL

I’ve been following Sweden’s Kall since mid-2013, initially because I learned that their line-up included members of the late lamented Lifelover, and later because I discovered how good their music is. I was a big fan of last year’s self-titled debut album (reviewed at length here), and I learned this weekend that the band are now working on their second full-length, projected for release before the end of this year via Catatonic State. There’s also a new song from the album available on Bandcamp — and it’s really good. Continue reading »

GOATPSALM: “DOWNSTREAM”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Oct 252015

I am late in writing this review. I’ve had this album since mid-August and have enjoyed it over multiple listening sessions since then. It deserved more prompt attention, and it deserves even more words than I’m devoting to it now. On the other hand, the album isn’t projected for release until early next year, so I suppose I’m not too late.

The name of the album is Downstream, and it was created by a part-Russian, part-Ukrainian group named Goatpsalm, whose ranks include members of another very good, but very different, band — Sickrites. Continue reading »

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