(Today, NCS writer BadWolf inaugurates a new personal series.)

No Clean Singing has made its name in the metal underground by focusing on the undiscovered cutting edge. Bringing relatively unknown, but sweet, bands to prominence is our stock and trade. That said, as our resident grumpy old man, I’ve made a New Year’s resolution: to listen to more old metal albums.

Why? I don’t know, really. There’s no reason to believe that something will be better or worse based on its age—music is not wine. I suppose I just have a renewed interest in retrospective activity, period: I read old books, I watch old movies, listening to old music just feels right. I’m not trying to escape into the past (Obama over Reagan any day of the week, even if I hate them both), but I’m trying to understand what it was like to have a brand new Iron Maiden album in my hand.

It should be noted: I adore Iron Maiden. Their influence on modern extreme metal may be in question to some, but their prowess is never in question. Maiden used to (and on occasion still do) write the best narrative metal songs. They still have the best frontman in guitar music—and the most multitalented! Oh, and they innovated both twin guitar octave harmonies and ‘the gallop.’

Imagine metal without the gallop rhythm. There would never have been a Slayer. I think it’s safe to say that without Slayer there would be no extreme American metal as we know it. There would be no death-chug without Maiden. But that’s a discussion for another time.

The genre term “Cascadian black metal”, most often used with reference to bands such as Wolves in the Throne Room and Agalloch, seems to be gaining in popularity. Some purists don’t like it because it’s a geographic reference instead of a description of the music and because it’s both over-inclusive and under-inclusive, i.e., there are black metal bands from “Cascadia” who don’t sound like WITTR or Agalloch and don’t share their philosophical perspective, and there are bands outside Cascadia who do.

Personally, I don’t think about this debate too much, despite the fact that I live in “Cascadia”. Consciously or not, I’m starting to think of a certain style of black metal as “Cascadian”, regardless of where the band is located and regardless of whether they have a nature-centric philosophy, just because it’s a convenient shorthand for a certain kind of sound.

To me, it stands for a style of music that incorporates not only traditional black metal instrumentation and vocals but also melodic, “post metal” ambience, prog-metal instrumentals, or even stoner-type shoe-gazing jams. So, for example, I think of San Francisco’s deafheaven as playing Cascadian black metal, even though they’re not from the Pacific Northwest and probably wouldn’t label themselves that way.

The music of Wildernessking reminds me of deafheaven’s music and, to a lesser extent, that of WITTR and Agalloch — and I’d throw in Krallice, Cormorant, and Enslaved for good measure. But Wildernessking isn’t from anywhere remotely near Cascadia. They’re from Cape Town, South Africa, and they’re off to a brilliant start.

(TheMadIsraeli enthusiastically reviews the new album from Tasmania’s Psycroptic.)

Napalm explosions of technical-as-fuckity-fuck riffs everywhere. Death induced by intricate, fusion-fueled, machine-precise drum attacks. Soul-rending incantations in the vocals. And, like . . .

EVERY POSSIBLE FUCKING THING THAT CAN BE RIGHT ABOUT DEATH METAL.

 
Psycroptic are the shit.  I think we all know this, but it’s SUCH a magnitude of the shit that sometimes . . . sometimes there’s a man . . . well, he’s the man for his time and place . . . and . . .

Ok, enough Big Lebowski quoting.  Sometimes an album needs to be defined, because sometimes we’re just not ready for what comes at us through our speakers, headphones, tin cans attached with strings, whatever your preferred listening apparatus is, because Psycroptic will cause said apparatus to melt at scorching hot temperatures and then burn their music directly into your skull so that it infinitely repeats itself with no off-switch.  The pain will be great, but it will also be purifying.

I’ve seen and heard some complaints about this band since the departure of vocalist Chalky and the introduction of current frontman Jason Peppiatt.  Don’t like him?  Time to get over it.  I think he is bringing a much-needed, more-focused approach to vocals that matches Psycroptic’s surgically precise instrumental assault.  He has a powerful voice, he sounds pissed — like he wants to kill — and  that complements the killing music.

In the realm of infernally regal blackened death metal, the bands that continue to rise up first in this writer’s mind are Polish juggernauts Behemoth and Hate, despite the fact that the blackening has worn off them over time, at least in sound if not in attitude. Of course, they are not by a long stretch the only bands who have brought about such a strikingly hellish union of those musical styles. Porvoo, Finland’s Coprolith have done it, as I discovered in listening to their new EP, Hate Infected.

This forthcoming, three-song offering is a prelude to the band’s second full-length album, which is projected for release in the fall of this year, and it follows the band’s 2010 debut album, Cold Grief Relief (which I haven’t heard).

The title track sets the hook right away with a thundering riff and a ripping lead melody. It’s a tasty combo of eminently headbangable groove and occult atmosphere. The melodic guitar solo brought a smile to my face, and so did the vocalist’s deep roars and chilling shrieks. The black hasn’t worn off Coprolith’s death metal.

“Chemical Suicide” proves that the title track was no fluke. A dark melodic lead floats over another killer riff that’s prime headbang material. It sounds like a giant industrial machine shaking the girders in some hellish manufacturing facility, implacably punching out war machines while a horned foreman exhorts the demon workers from a bullhorn.

I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, so I prefer to believe that, in person, Portland’s Elitist aren’t as inhumanly corrosive as their music. Yes, they say, “Our fucking lives ended when we started this band”, but they probably love their parents. Unless they killed them and ate their fingers like french fries.

Despite the fact that the music sounds like helpless bodies being dragged through a trough of broken glass and then dumped in a pit of salt so the lacerations will burn like a motherfucker before Elitist pee on them, they’re probably loyal friends and gentle lovers.

The jagged slurry of metallic slag that flows through these songs surely doesn’t flow through the veins of the band members. The tortured screams and ghastly howls in the music surely don’t come from the bleeding throats of caged demons within their bodies. If you were having a beer with Elitist, they wouldn’t really go for your throat like famished hyenas. They’d probably even buy a round.

This is what I prefer to believe — but after listening a few times to the band’s 2011 Season of Mist album, Fear In A Handful of Dust, I wouldn’t bet on any of it.

Can you name the band signed most recently by the venerable Century Media Records? Well, you’re looking at them. They’re from Valence, France, and they go by the name NecroWretch. And here’s where you say, “Necro who?”

In their careers as musicians, they’ve led something of a charmed life. Before being signed by one of the largest and most prestigious of metal labels, they had produced a grand total of two demos (in 2009 and 2010) and a four-song EP in 2011 — Putrefactive Infestation. The signing announcement came yesterday and it included this quote from Jens Prüter, head of A&R at Century Media Europe: “The Putrefactive Infestation 12″ dominated my turntable for some months and I’m sure the upcoming album will be as sick and heavy!”

Yes, of course, there will be a forthcoming album — though it hasn’t been written yet. The label that released the 2011 EP (Detest Records) first plans to release a 7″ NecroWretch EP titled Now You’re In Hell on March 10 at Asphyx’s album release party at the Turock club in Essen, Germany, where NecroWretch will also be performing. That new EP will include an original NecroWretch song and a Death cover.

Of course, I became curious about the Putrefactive Infestation EP — this four-song collection that landed an unheralded French death metal band on Century Media. I tracked it down and spent time listening to it yesterday, and it’s a very promising find — an authentic throw-back shrouded in cemetery stench and Sunlight Studio sonics, flavored with hair-raising blackened vocals and, of all things, hooky (but evil) melodies.

(Yesterday, a new splash-page photo greeted visitors to the official web page of Killswitch Engage — part of which you will see after the jump in this post. It shows a new figure front-and-center in the line-up, Jesse Leach apparently back in the fold. So, it’s fitting that today we’re launching TheMadIsraeli’s series on his all-time favorite albums with this post on a record by Jesse Leach-fronted Killswitch Engage.)

This is the beginning. This will be my Top 20 albums of all time.  Yes, an all-time list — the bane of any music lover, including me, but I cannot deny the effect that certain albums have had on me.  Whether because of their musical merit or more personal connections, I’ve never been able to drop these 20. No other albums in recent memory, no matter how good, have come close to knocking these off their pedestals.

I originally chose from a pool of 50, and from among those I’ve had  a list of 20 planned out for a while, though a few of those have changed as I’ve thought more about it (although the majority have been forever constant).

It’s fitting that I should start the series with this album on this day, given the recent signs that KSE’s original vocalist Jesse Leach has returned to the band. For me and many others, that’s a sign of hope that Killswitch Engage will finally rise back up to metalcore prominence.  Maybe it won’t, maybe I’m just nostalgia-driven at the moment. We’ll see.

When Alive Or Just Breathing emerged in 2002, I had just made my official transition into metalhood.  I had abandoned my shameful nu metal past and adopted the ways of the brutal and the fast.  The first two metal albums I ever bought (at the same time no less) were Slayer’s Reign In Blood and In Flames’ Whoracle.  This was around 2001-2002, I can’t remember exactly.  What is important is that the metalcore movement was about to take its first steps into prominence.

(Today, NCS reader/commenter KevinP review Lacrima Mortis, the new album by The 11th Hour, which is being released today in the U.S. The album was written, performed, and produced by Ed Warby (Gorefest, Hail of Bullets), with harsh vocals provided by Pim Blankenstein of Officium Triste.)

I’ll admit to being a Warby Weenie.  I love Gorefest as well as Hail of Bullets, so I followed the production process of this album (via  Facebook) more than any other album before.  I was naturally excited for its release, but also a bit worried, as I had hyped it up in my mind.  Most albums never quite match my expectations and they seem like a letdown initially.  I’m happy to say this is one of those rare instances where the hype was exceeded.

What you get here is 52 minutes of doomy death metal across 7 tracks, filled with clean and harsh vocals, soulful piano melodies, along with some (dare I say) uplifting guitar riffs.  It does everything the first album did and improves upon it 10-fold.  This is the way you want a band to improve:  Stay true to their sound and keep polishing and refining.  Frankly, this album is so stunning, I have no idea where they go from here.  It will be a daunting task to follow up.

I can’t pinpoint any specific song over the others, as the entire album is so strong, everything about it just works and falls into place.  And if I sound overly “gaga” about this, I AM.  I don’t find many doomy death records you can just put on over and over again and enjoy this much.

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album from Orange County’s Bleeding Through, which is out now on Rise Records.)

Anyone who was around when the metalcore explosion was happening and followed its development should know who Bleeding Through are.  Their revolutionary (and unmatched to this day) combination of hardcore brawn, black metal venom, thrash metal fanaticism, and death metal brutality — all with symphonic overlays courtesy of the only female keyboardist in metal worth a living fuck — has yet to get old for me.

I remember when people were pronouncing Bleeding Through’s demise when founding guitarist Scott Danough left the band after The Truth and thought they would start sucking, but Bleeding Through has been proving everyone wrong ever since, writing their best material on their last two albums, Declaration (2008) and Bleeding Through (2010), which showed that Scott apparently didn’t have much to do with the song-writing process at all.  So what’s the verdict on this band’s new album The Great Fire?

This is their most brutal yet most experimental effort yet.

This is a much faster, much more visceral and frantic Bleeding Through than we’ve ever heard before.  At the same time, this is also the oddest Bleeding Through, mainly due to Marta Peterson’s new-found sense of adventurism in the keyboard and symphonic department.  Adding instruments and sounds that were begging to be incorporated into Bleeding Through’s music — organs, harpsichords, fucking electronic-as-all-get-out pad sounds that are lo-fi as shit — she has helped create a much more blackened atmosphere than has been heard before.

For anyone who thinks we’ve been insufficiently faithful to the name of this site in recent days, I have a few things for you this weekend that will set you straight.

As record labels go, I think Throatruiner has to be a short-listed finalist for best label name ever. They have also been putting out some tasty releases, if your taste runs to unstructured violence. Take this one for example. It’s a three-way split with international flavor. The three bands are as follows:

AS WE DRAW •• Described as a French “post-metal” band, their contributions to this split follow up their 2010 album, Lines Breaking Circles. Throatruiner recommends them to fans of Ken Mode, Breach, and Old Man Gloom.

EUGLENA •• A Russian band whose preceding release was an EP called An Anxious Surface. Throatruiner compares their music to that of Buried Inside, Plebeian Grandstand, and Botch.

HEXIS •• This is a Danish band that slathers together hardcore, black metal, and sludge. By coincidence, they were recommended in a recent NCS comment by Old Man Windbreaker.  Before contributing to this split, they released a self-titled EP and then a full-length album called XI that debuted last year. Throatruiner recommends them to fans of Celeste, Crowpath, and Blut Aus Nord.

Each of these three bands contributed two songs to the split. I have some quick reactions to them them after the jump, along with a stream of the whole split — which can be downloaded for free or for any price you think is fair.