Jan 032019
 

 

(We present a 2018 year-end list by NCS contributor Grant Skelton, which consists of 15 miserable, mutilating, and mesmerizing titles, not all of which are metal.)

Salutations fellow metalheads! My choices this year were a bit more of a mixed bag than in previous years. Per our usual MO here at No Clean Singing, I tried to focus on bands whose albums seemed to slip into the proverbial cracks. I hope you find something you like here, and by all means leave me recommendations in the comments. Continue reading »

Apr 192018
 

 

I’ve been meaning to do this for about a week, and finally found time. I came across all of the following music in the course of surveying new releases for a SEEN AND HEARD round-up here at our putrid site, and thought it would make sense to package them together for extra catastrophe.

The music ranges from catastrophic funeral doom to catastrophic death metal with a heavy doom component, to something doom-centric but less easily describable at the end. I arranged the music in a way that would provide a bit of back-and-forth flow, so your blood doesn’t completely congeal and your heart doesn’t completely slow to a stopping point.

While I was writing this I thought about Andy Synn telling me that he’d come across a metal forum in which NCS was criticized by one or more idiots people for concentrating on “mainstream” metal. Yeah, right. Mainstream this right up your bungholes:

ZEIT

I’ve written frequently about this German band, who’s usual stock-in-trade is an amalgam of sludge and black metal (and some other ingredients). But for their latest EP, null., they decided to give the funeral-doom treatment to two of their previously released songs, and I’ll be damned, it turns out they’re just as strong in this other genre as they are in their main line. Continue reading »

Nov 132013
 

From out of the blackest pits of Groningen in The Netherlands, Tartarus Records will be co-releasing, along with Graanrepubliek Records and At War With False Noise, a split by two UK bands who deserve more exposure: Bismuth (from Nottingham) and Undersmile (from Witney). Each band contributes a single song to the split, but they are gigantic, collectively demanding more than 40 minutes of your time. It’s life and death in the low and slow lanes.

BISMUTH

Bismuth consists of vocalist/bassist Tanya Byrne and drummer Joe Rawlings. Bismuth released a debut EP last year by the name of The Eternal Marshes, and their contribution to this split marks their second release. It’s a 17-minute work entitled “Collapse”, and there could hardly be a better title for it — except this is not so much the sound of existence falling apart as it is the sound of existence being slowly dismantled in a titanic demolition project. Continue reading »