NOTT: “HIRAETH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 052023
 

(What we have here is Todd Manning‘s review of Hiraeth, the new album by the duo Nott that’s set for release on August 18th by Silent Pendulum Records.)

It’s probably not helpful to call an album ‘heavy’ on a website such as No Clean Singing, but what I want to get across is that the new release by Nott, Hiraeth, is immensely, cosmically, insanely heavy. This duo, consisting of Julia Geaman on drums and Tyler Campbell on guitar, bass, and vocals, now hail from the Pacific Northwest and play a brand of death-doom that will surely cause California to fall into the ocean.

Starting with the opener “Torn”, Nott unleashes riffs that sound like a boulder being dropped off a skyscraper. They deal in a similar vein of apocalyptic atmosphere as Ulcerate but there exists an additional dimension of darkness here that sets them apart. When the occasional blast beat surfaces, there’s a darkness not unlike early Immolation. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: UNDULATION, GATHERING STONES, NOTT, NUCLEAR DUDES

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 212023
 

I started working on this roundup of new music on Juneteenth, the U.S. holiday that was observed two days ago. Couldn’t finish it in time, due to a little celebration of the day that I was involved in. (Even my white-as-chalk family in central Texas celebrated it when I was growing up there eons ago, mainly for the excuse to feast on soul food, not so much to commemorate the final surrender of the Confederate army, and it has stayed with me even here in Washington State where it became an official holiday only last year). I couldn’t finish the roundup yesterday either, but finally, success.

Still buried in new music and with my brain knotted trying to figure out what to do, I decided to cut this Gordian knot by focusing on just a few recent releases from bands in the Pacific Northwest near where I live now. Although they’re all from the same region, however, you’re in for a real musical roller-coaster ride.

UNDULATION

First up is An Unhealthy Interest in Suffering, a head-spinning debut EP released by the Seattle band Undulation about 10 days ago. Here’s how the band themselves describe their music:

“Behind an oozing velvet curtain stand Undulation, Le Gran Guignol of Cascadia. Through the dappled sunlight of broken rose windows, their ritual begins like a writhing, pulsating wyrm thirsty for innocent blood. Painting a horrid beauty like gallows in a field of flowers, their cacophony blooms into a blurred, surreal vision of melodic blackened death metal. Undulation cometh.”

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOTT — “4”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 212019
 

 

This makes the second time in as many years that we’ve hosted the premiere of music by the Italian black metal band Nott, which is the creative vehicle of the lone wolf Mortifero from Lombardy. Last year the occasion was a song from an EP named Vestigium Mortis, and today it’s the advent of Nott’s fourth album, simply entitled 4.

Like the album title, the eight songs presented here are identified by numbers — chapter numbers in a musical volume. And this particular volume of Nott’s works will be released on November 30th by Third I Rex, in advance of which we’re hosting this complete stream of the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOTT — “LIFELESS WILL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 052018
 

 

The obscure Italian black metal band Nott, which is the work of the lone wolf Mortifero, has released three albums so far since 2013, the most recent of which was the Disfacimento full-length last year. And although that album may still be fresh in the minds of Nott’s adherents, the band has chosen to present a new EP this year, the title of which is Vestigium Mortis. Five of these seven tracks were originally composed more than a decade ago, intended for a first album that was never recorded, while the opening and closing tracks were composed by Noctuaria for Nott in 2018.

Vestigium Mortis will be released by the Italian label Obscvrvs Records on September 15th. While that seems a long way off in a world that rushes at a frantic pace, we have something for you that will make the wait worthwhile and fortify your patience: the premiere of a track from the EP named “Lifeless Will“, which is one of the songs first composed years ago and now finally recorded. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NÒTT — “WHITE. COLD. DEATH.”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 282017
 

 

Those of you who’ve been visiting us for years are quite familiar with our continuing admiration of the Minnesota band Amiensus, whose releases we’ve followed closely and written about frequently ever since the appearance of their debut album Restoration in 2013. And so we were intrigued when we learned that Amiensus frontman (and Fail to Decay bassist) James Benson had started a separate solo project named Nòtt as a vehicle for creating music that combines bleak and progressive elements of black metal.

We can now reveal that Nòtt’s debut album is nearing completion and is projected for release in January of the new year, and we can go further than that — because today we’re premiering the first single from the album, a song called “White. Cold. Death.“, which is now available for free download at Bandcamp. Continue reading »