Most people are starting to take a break from their usual daily grind this time of year. School is out for most studious types, working stiffs are about to get some days off, and those who are independently wealthy are continuing to do independently wealthy things, but more so. But not your friends at NO CLEAN SINGING. We are not — I repeat, not — fucking off. There will be no breaks, no dead days, no holiday filler at NCS.

To the contrary, we’re drowning in good content at the moment. Here’s a taste of what’s to come between now and the end of the year:

We will have more year-in-review posts, including more best-album lists from musicians you’ve heard of and guest posts from our more avid readers, plus BadWolf’s Best of 2011 list (in two parts) and a continuation of TheMadIsraeli’s reviews (or re-reviews) of the best albums he heard in 2011.

We will have some interesting interviews, including one tomorrow of the mastermind behind that Swedish band who coined That Word, which I’m trying not to over-use becauth it doeth thomething funny to my mouth, and a BadWolf interview coming your way on Thursday of the driving force behind a band whose recent release has been popping up on a shit-ton of Year’s Best lists.

Andy Synn has promised us a special SYNN REPORT to close out 2011 plus (with luck) two more album reviews. We’ll have some opinion pieces that we expect will provoke discussion. We’ll continue to report on new music we find interesting. And beginning next week, I’ll start rolling out my list of 2011′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

And last but not least, we will have an exclusive song premiere that we’re very excited about. In fact, we will be unveiling that particular piece of psychopathic viciousness tomorrow. So, stay tuned. Like your creepy uncle who shows up uninvited for holiday dinners, we’re not going anywhere.

Century Media has released a free Winter music sampler. Like all samplers, it’s a mixed bag. Given individual variances in taste, no label sampler is going to please everyone from the first track through the last. According to my tastes, this one includes some great or good songs by some great or good bands, some songs I’m interested in hearing from albums I haven’t spent time with yet, and some I could care less about, too. But all in all, there’s a high percentage of quality here.

Also, it’s free.  You’ll need to give an e-mail address and zip code to get a download code. The download page is at this location.

I decided I couldn’t wait until the next monthly NCS round-up of forthcoming albums. This piece of news deserves its very own separate post. Because it’s Dying Fetus. To begin, I think I need to quote yesterday’s press release in full:

“John Gallagher, guitarist and vocalist of DYING FETUS, has announced that the group has entered the studio to record their new full length album. The band will once again be working with longtime producer Steve Wright (Slipknot, Misery Index) at Wrightway Studios in Baltimore, MD.

Set to be released in mid 2012 through Relapse Records, the album will feature nine tracks and is a “return to roots“ with production focused slightly more on slam than in the band’s last few works.  Thematically, the album is set to be a good old-fashioned piece of social and political commentary in the style of DYING FETUS as we have come to know.  An official release date and album title will be announced shortly.

“The last album had some groove in it,” stated John, “but [it] was basically a lot of tech; this one is a return to form of older DYING FETUS albums, so to speak- more modern production though, of course.”  ”Everything’s tight,” John adds; “…the sound is crushing, the drums are amazing”.

That’s the end of the quote. What do it mean, this return to form, this slightly greater focus on slam? Do they mean this?

“One Shot, One Kill” (Stop At Nothing) (2003)

Or this?

“Praise the Lord (Opium of the Masses)” (Destroy the Opposition) (2000)

Or this?

“Fornication Terrorists” (Killing In Adrenaline) (1998)

The waiting is the hardest part. There are so many forms to which Dying Fetus might return. All the forms are mangled and obliterated, with the beauty to be found in the twisted shapes of destruction, and all flesh laid waste.

Damn, I sort of lost my mind there for a minute. Sorry about that.

In other news, Dying Fetus have announced a series of special South American shows in mid-January. Here are the dates and places:

January 11 Buenos Aires, Argentina @ Asbury Bar
January 12 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil @ Underground Cultural
January 13 Recife, Brazil @ Burburinho Bar
January 14 São Paulo, Brazil @ Manifesto Bar
January 15 Santiago, Chile @ Club 334
January 17 Bogota, Colombia @ TBA
January 18 Armenia, Colombia @ TBA

They’ve also confirmed appearances at the 2012 Maryland Deathfest and at France’s Hellfest.  The press release says they intend to tour extensively in support of the new album. I assume “extensively” means, “fuck, Seattle is on the ass end of nowhere, do we really have to play there? okay, shit, we’ll do it.”

For continuing updates on Dying Fetus, visit their Facebook and MySpace pages, or just continue to monitor NCS because we’ll be following the progress of this album . . . closely.

Yesterday, in a post called “Humbled”, I expressed dismay and confusion over the fact that a post I wrote nearly two years ago as a joke — an insignificant piece of news about Elize Ryd, Amaranthe, and Kamelot — has turned out to be the third most popular post we’ve ever run at NCS, measured by page hits on that post, proving that completely lame-ass bullshit sometimes drives traffic.

This prompted some of you to ask which posts hold the No. 1 and No. 2 ranking in popularity at this site since we started the thing. Here’s the answer:

The most popular post — with nearly 11,000 page views, and counting — is Andy Synn’s review of Deconstruction by The Devin Townsend Project. In fact, if you google “devin townsend deconstruction review” today, you’ll see Andy’s post as the No. 6 search result.

A few things about this are interesting. First, this piece only appeared less than seven months ago, so it’s built up quite a following in a relatively short amount of time. Second, it’s one of the longest posts we’ve ever published, but that hasn’t seemed to deter readers from checking it out (though, to be brutally honest, I have no good way of knowing how many people have actually read the whole thing). Third, the hits on Andy’s review continue to roll in. I remember there was a big surge shortly after the review appeared, because Devin Townsend posted about it on his Twitter feed and on Facebook, but even over the last 30 days it ranks No. 20 in terms of page views at NCS. And fourth, this tends to prove that not only does completely lame-ass bullshit drive traffic, quality drives traffic, too.

Ironically, although Deconstruction is one of the year’s best albums in the estimation of nearly all of us who write regularly for NCS, I haven’t yet seen it appear on a single “Best of 2011″ list published by the bigger blogs that cover metal.

Now, on to our second most popular post ever . . .

Our second most popular post, with more than 7,000 page views to date, is a news piece I wrote last May about Cameron Argon and Burning the Masses, which included a short interview. It has also continued to pull hits on a continuing basis, though not to the degree that Andy’s post has.

I’m not nearly as surprised by this result as I was by the Elize Ryd post. Cam Argon has a huge fan following in his various personae, whether he’s creating dubstep or remixes of other band’s songs as “Big Chocolate” or providing brutal vocals for his Disfiguring the Goddess project or for other bands, and I’ve sporadically published other features about him and interviews with him. Unlike Elize Ryd and Amaranthe, I’m a fan of his.

So anyway, if you were curious about our most popular posts, the mystery has been solved.

(We interrupt our girl-growler programming with this message and invitation from TheMadIsraeli.)

I greatly apologize to all of you NCS readers for the lack of content I’ve been providing.  School is the enemy of everything that is metal.  Of this I’m convinced.  I realize that Islander keeps up a constant influx of good stuff, but I mean, it’s okay to admit the truth.  We both know it.  This site would die without me.

After the 15th, I intend to provide you all with a slew of content — content that I’m not exactly against changing to suit your whims. In fact, I’d like to give you the chance to dictate what I will finish out this year with in terms of content.  Let me know what might be of interest, whether it be reviews, topical articles, or me trying my hand at random-ass shit.

The only officially planned things I have at this point are my year-end list of best albums and a review of Ever Forthright’s full-length debut.  This shit isn’t enough.  I need more!  So please suggest content ideas, either via the comments or my email at TheMadIsraeli@nocleansinging.com so I can make good use of my downtime from school which begins in the next coming week.  I’ll have two and a half weeks of time off to take advantage of.  Help me use it wisely.

In an effort to make up for inflicting Amaranthe on you in today’s first post, I’m going to spend the rest of the day serving up female-fronted metal that’s more in line with our tastes here at NCS. We’ve run features on female growlers in the past, and I’m not going to repeat any of that. Instead, today’s mini-series will focus on bands who we’ve never mentioned before on this site. Coincidentally, I’ve learned about all of them over just the last 30 days. At least musically, I’d honeymoon with any of them over Amaranthe.

This first one I discovered only this morning. This South Florida band is called Wykked Wytch, and their vocalist is a chick who calls herself Ipek. Wykked Wytch has recently signed with Goomba Music for the release of their fifth full-length album (scheduled to hit the streets on February 14) called The Ultimate Deception. A press release describes the music as “a unique mixture of black, death, thrash metal with melody, technicality, and aggression.”

The album was recorded at Lambesis Studios in San Diego, it was mastered by Alan Douches, and it features Kevin Talley (Daath) as a session drummer. The album art is by Marcelo Vasco, who’s done work for lots of name bands including Dimmu Borgir and The Faceless — and it’s a fucken eye-catcher. In fact, it’s the first thing you’ll see after the jump.

Sweet, huh?

So, about the music: There’s a teaser trailer that includes song clips from the album and video of Ipek screaming her guts out. Sounds like she can (a) shriek like a black metal banshee, (b) growl like a death metal animal, and (c) do some decent clean vocals, too. The music sounds interesting, too. Here ya go:

(Andy Synn wrote the following opinion piece.  If we don’t get some comments on this one, I’ll be quite surprised. Andy’s got some questions at the end, and we’d love to hear your answers.)

Here’s a question that’s been on my mind for a while now; what do we do when our heroes let us down? What happens when the bands we love go off the boil, make weird creative decisions, or just simply move away from playing the music for which we fell in love with them?

Music is an intensely emotional topic, and one which promotes a peculiar kind of loyalty to develop in those of us who love it deeply. As metal fans in particular, we seem to embody the very extremes of this trait; treat us well and we will die for you, cross us and our wrath and enmity shall be eternal. Indeed, once a certain line is crossed it’s very common to see a band written off as “dead” by any number of their former fans.

Most recently, however, I’ve been trying to take positive steps when confronted with this situation. Rather than entering into either a) a defensive flame war on behalf of our fallen heroes, or b) seizing on the opportunity in order to heap my own well-earned scorn on the victims of this public derision, I have instead been taking the fall of our chosen heroes to promote potential successors who are ready and waiting to step up and take on the mantle.

This does, however, raise one further issue: to what extent we, as metal fans, are willing to accept our heroes being replaced and (if that is the case) do we actually always have one eye out for the Next Big Thing – not the one who’ll necessarily sell the records and get the airplay, but the one who will step into the well-worn shoes of our heroes once they have gone to the sacred feasting halls of Valhalla?

Now 3 particular albums/events inspired these thoughts recently…

1)  Morbid Angel – Ilud Divinum Insanus

The recent shitstorm engendered by the new Morbid Angel record has provided me with ample opportunity to promote several worthy successors to their crown. Interestingly, though, the fall from grace of the mighty Morbid Angel was worsened by their constant attempts to justify their unimpressive return with claims of sonic “experimentalism”, as if adding pseudo-industrial/techno elements was some awe-inspiring revelation handed down from on high, rather than the cack-handed and awkward juxtaposition of styles that it ended up being. What’s most mind-boggling, however, is that the current line-up of MA features one Thor Anders Myhren, also known as Destructhor, from Mykrskog, who have been mixing steamrollering industrial beats with paint-stripping death metal since long before the morbid king’s return to the scene.

Be that as it may, whenever I come across a lost and disillusioned soul whose life has been turned upside down by this seeming betrayal, there is one album that immediately springs to mind — the electrifying, eclectic, and downright esoteric bludgeoning of Triumvirate by The Monolith Deathcult. Unlike Morbid Angel’s most recent offering, this actually fuses a brilliant variety of techno-industrial elements and symphonic excess onto a chassis of pulverising death metal utterly seamlessly, making a whole that is far, far greater than the sum of its parts.

Compare:

2) Opeth – Heritage

Now Heritage is far from being a bad album, but to my mind it is a remarkably uninteresting one. Before you say it, that’s not due to the lack of death vocals or anything of that sort, as the record has several strong moments which demonstrate unequivocally that Opeth can capture that energy and life without recourse to the use of more stereotypically “extreme” elements. For me, and indeed this seems to be the common consensus amongst many listeners, the issue is that the album just doesn’t go anywhere, seemingly content in being a tribute to its influences without doing anything new with them.

“Prog” as a sub-genre (and progressive music of a certain, general type) has one particular strength, and that is its willingness and ability to indulge in musical expansion and experimentation with a fearless and unbounded spirit. However, this strength can also easily become its greatest weakness, as the gutters are filled with those who became so intoxicated with their own inveterate freedom of expression that they lost themselves in an aimless and directionless haze of self-indulgence.

To my mind, this is precisely the malaise that afflicts the latest Opeth record. In becoming disillusioned with the more metallic elements of their music, the group chose to dive helter-skelter into a more classically seventies sound, embracing it wholeheartedly but allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by this ability to indulge their every whim and impulse. Instead of taking the palette of colours and influences they have been given and painting a new picture, something evocative and filled with life, they seem instead to have taken an almost childlike delight in simply mixing colours together, which unfortunately almost always produces something rather faceless and… brown.

Now Novembers Doom may be less overtly progressive than their Swedish peers (although that perhaps is only by comparison), but their latest record Aphotic is a masterpiece of vibrant colours and deep shadows, evocative light and shade melded in equal measure through a fusion of progressive dynamics, soothing acoustic ambience, and raging death metal fury. As an Opeth successor, it’s a record with big shoes to fill, but the band have big feet with which to do it. If you do miss that doom-laden fire that Opeth have abandoned, then this should definitely fill the hole in your life.

Compare:

3) Metallica – St. Anger/Death Magnetic/Lulu

Here’s the big one. A band who have fundamentally lost the plot and become at best a nostalgia act, and at worse a fundamental embarrassment. Despite some good moments here and there on both St. Anger and Death Magnetic, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Metallica have lost the sense of identity and energetic drive which they once had in their youth and, in doing so, have tried to regain it or replace it with often terrifically bad results. Their attempts to remain relevant have been half-baked at best, and their efforts at pushing the envelope of their sound, attempting to perhaps reignite that fire through an exploration of other realms, have suffered from a realisation that, as a band, they “could” do something, with little to no consideration of whether they “should” do something.

Most frequently I have been responding to the pained outcries of my metal brethren by recommending that they check out V by Norwegian titans Vreid. Now unlike the previous two situations, this one has been a much harder sell, as it requires the recipient to be at least slightly open to the multi-variate potentials of black metal as a source of creativity and art. Considering Metallica’s ubiquitous and mainstream status these days, that’s often a risky proposition, as you can often never tell what sort of Metallica fan you’ll be dealing with. But for those of a more musical and metallic frame of mind, V melds the best of Metallica’s early years, the speed and energy of Ride The Lightning with the progressive and complex compositional skills of Master Of Puppets, with the ethereal melodies of Norwegian folk influences and the primal ferocity of predatory black metal. If you can handle the harsher vocal style, then just compare their blackened take on ravenous thrash metal dynamics with any of Metallica’s own attempts to recapture their lost youth….

Compare:

So tell me, who have I missed? Who are the declining divas, aging disgracefully, and who are the unappreciated side-kicks just waiting for their chance to step into the spotlight?

Your humble editor has returned from a most excellent vacation in cloudland, during which my spouse was satisfied that I didn’t spend too much time blogging and was therefore reasonably happy with me (I was hoping for deliriously happy, but she knows me too well to get delirious). The time away from my usual blogging output was good for me, too, because I’m now anxious and excited to dive back in. You know the old saying about absence making the heart grow fonder; so it does.

I was able to restrict my attention to NCS because of all the help I got with daily content, not only from our usual suspects Andy Synn, BadWolf, and TheMadIsraeli (thank you, my brethren, for stepping up), but also from all the folks from around the U.S. and the world who bravely answered my appeal for guest posts (sometimes with multiple submissions per writer). Between November 1 and today (yep, there’s one guest post left, and it will appear later this morning), I posted 23 guest pieces — every one that I received, without exception.

And so I extend a special NCS laurel, and hearty handshake, to our guest contributors in the order of their appearance: jeimssi, Kazz, Austin Slagle-Knauss, the prolific Willard Shrapnelspear, Trollfiend, Stephen Parker, The Baby Killer, Phro, Alex Layzell, ElvisShotJFK, MaxR from Metal Bandcamp, VyceVictus, SurgicalBrute, and The Artist Formerly Known As Dan. All you guys killed it, and therefore prevented me from being killed or mutilated by Mrs. Islander.

Apart from giving credit where credit is due, I’ve got two more things to say (after the jump).

First, a few people e-mailed me to say they would be doing guest posts, but those didn’t come in before I returned. To those folks, I would say: Send them anyway! Just because I’m back doesn’t mean the guest posts must stop. We have a big tent at NCS, and until it blows away in a Seattle winter storm, there’s room for all.

Second, I want to encourage all of those who sent me guest posts for use during my extended annual vacation to do it again whenever the spirit moves you — and I want to extend that same invitation to anyone else who’s interested in trying their hand at metal writing, or who is already writing for another blog and wants to go slumming here at NCS. I think it keeps things fresh, and freshness is a plus, even if (especially if) it’s fresh corpsemeat.

Now, more cloud pics from my island vacation.

Are you like me? When you watch lingerie ads, do you wish there were a death metal sound track? I thought so. I mean, doesn’t everyone wish for that? Well, Agent Provocateur has made your fondest dreams come true.

Agent Provocateur is a UK-based maker of high-end lingerie. And by high-end, I don’t mean the kind of butts that defy gravity. I mean the kind of lingerie made for people with more money than sense. Agent Provocateur’s latest line of undergarments, with an S&M flair, is called Soiree. To promote these look-good, feel-good undergarments, the company made a promotional video that’s kind of a horror-movie take-off, that is, if you find supermodels feasting on each other scary.

The video was directed by a guy named Justin Anderson, working with Agent Provocateur’s Creative Director, Sarah Shotton. According to Justin, “Putting Agent Provocateur and horror together seemed the natural direction for the collection, but we needed a music track that would add a layer of humour.  Sarah came up with the idea of using a Death Metal track which would be perfect for the brief, and I promised her I would make a film that would be like listening to Slayer whilst reading Italian Vogue.”

Wow. It’s like Justin has been stalking and surveilling me. How did he know that I like nothing better than listening to Slayer while reading Italian Vogue? I mean, it’s like having bacon with your cheeseburger. In this case, Justin went with a Parisian-based band called Omaha Bitch. Watch the ad after the jump (for those watching this in a public place, there’s bare boobage in the vid . . .).

Agent Provocateur Soiree 2011 from Agent Provocateur on Vimeo.

Did that scare you? Did it tickle your nether parts? Did it just strike you as weird? Did it make you curious about Omaha Bitch?

Well now, if you haven’t gotten enough boobage or enough Omaha Bitch, I found this video. This is my kind of war movie.

Only two days have passed since I began my vacation, and I’m already feeling mellow. My brain is slowing down, as I would imagine the molecules of freezing water slowing as they approach the tipping point between liquid and solid. Time is passing, but the firing of neurons in my head are becoming muffled, and so time is beginning to feel like something that happens to other people, but not to me. I am entering a kind of stasis.

Part of me relishes this experience, and part of me is disturbed by it. While wallowing in the absence of any need to act, I am not yet entirely comfortable. Why is this? I know why. It’s because daily life in the Western world makes no room for mellowness, except grudgingly. You can make your own room for it, but in my case there’s a nagging fear that if I become completely mellow, I will be crushed like a line of ants in the path of a steamroller. While you meander at the pace of universal entropy, something or someone else is at the steamroller’s controls and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your inner peace.

Is this a sickness or simply a clear-eyed recognition of the way the world works?

Where was I? Oh yeah, feeling mellow. I haven’t been listening to metal, because it has dawned on me that I have almost no metal that’s mellow. The only recent thing that comes to mind is Devin Townsend’s Ghost. I may listen to that. Surely I have something else that will suit my current mood, something that will ease my irrational worries and aid me in the honeyed slide into . . . mellowness. Do you have any ideas?  (more after the jump . . .)

That’s the question I’d like to ask. And come to think of it, there’s no good reason to confine this question to the State of Metal. Just tell this — what do you listen to when you want to become mellow? Or when you’re already mellow, and you want to enhance the feeling of mellowness, when you want to push away the nagging anxieties of the daily shitstorm and simply . . . be who you are, without interference from anything outside your mind.

And by the way, if you get what you need in order to reach or enhance that state from music that’s a fiery maelstrom of end-of-the-world explosiveness, well, I’m not ruling that out either.

Comments.  Please.