OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 22): FIRST FRAGMENT, OPHIDIAN I, HANNES GROSSMANN, STORTREGN

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  No Responses »
Feb 012022
 


First Fragment

As explained yesterday, I decided to plow through my self-imposed end-of-January deadline for finishing this list because it became apparent to me that I had overlooked a number of tracks that really needed to be included. Worse than that, I had really given short-shrift to a few entire genres of extreme metal. Since one of my objectives for the list has been to give a snapshot of what the preceding year brought us across a range of genres, that deficiency needed to be remedied, at least to some extent.

Technical death metal is one of the genres that hasn’t really gotten the exposure it deserves in the list as it exists so far. Today’s installment is an effort to at least partially make up for that, and I’ve also included a technically adept band whose music is often classified as melodic black/death.

FIRST FRAGMENT (Canada)

“Let’s face it, 2021 has been a ridiculous year for the Tech Death scene.” That’s how Andy Synn began his review of First Fragment’s Gloire Éternelle, and who could argue with that? But it’s also fair to say that despite the intensity of the competition First Fragment still stood out. Continue reading »

A TRIPTYCH OF TECHNICAL TALENT – ALUSTRIUM / COGNITIVE / OPHIDIAN I

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 132021
 

(Andy Synn goes fishing in the Tech Death scene and comes back with a hell of a catch)

If there’s one common theme which unites these three albums – you know, apart from the fact that they’re all brand new additions to the ever-expanding Tech Death canon – it’s that each of them finds the band in question working hard, struggling some might say (though certainly not in vain), to carve out a space, a niche, an identity, for themselves in an already saturated scene.

Let’s face it, there’s no shortage of super-speed shredmasters out there all vying to be the fastest, the most complex, the most ridiculous, and this year alone has already delivered a bumper crop of both killer and filler releases running the gamut from the heaviest to the most histrionic (and everything in between).

One thing that I think we can all agree on though – and which, to a greater or lesser extent, all of today’s selections clearly demonstrate – is that technical talent is nothing without the songwriting skill to match it, because once the initial dopamine rush of being bombarded with a thousand notes a second wears off it’s the structural hooks, the infectious melodies, the subtle repetitions, that trigger the brain’s innate pattern recognition algorithms and ensure that what you’ve just heard gets filed away in your long-term memory, rather than just flying in one ear and out the other.

So let’s see if this particular trio have what it takes to make a lasting impression, shall we?

Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AMENRA, ANCIENT WISDOM, COFFIN LURKER, DEFLESHED, ENSLAVED, HANGING GARDEN, HELL STRIKE, IDOLOS, KILLING ADDICTION, KORGONTHURUS, OPHIDIAN I, PERILAXE OCCLUSION, SVARTA SANNINGAR

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 072021
 

 

The usual insanity of our in-box reached a fever pitch overnight, because it’s another Bandcamp Friday. That fever has been building all week in anticipation of the day, with the typical flood of new music reaching typhoon proportions. I’ve diverted some of that flood into this collection, a baker’s dozen of new songs and videos that range from the dreamy to the decimating, and includes both the re-surfacing of old gods and the emergence of promising new names – but without the usual artwork or my usual wordy reflections. Not everything is available on Bandcamp, but where it is available there, I’ve included links.

Mother’s Day is also on Sunday, but thankfully that doesn’t seem to have added to the torrent of releases. In catch-up mode, I’ll continue recommending more new music that day and on Saturday (if you don’t keep swimming, you drown). By the way, for those of you who don’t live in the U.S., “Mother’s Day” does not stand for Motherfucker’s Day, so most of you won’t have any reason to celebrate.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DYSANGELIUM, OPHIDIAN I, WILDERNESSKING, WINDS OF GENOCIDE, XERATH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 262014
 

 

For four days I’ve been on the other side of the country from my home in the Seattle area, and I’ll be working here for 10 more days. It’s one of those projects that engulfs me periodically, a night-and-day kind of thing that squeezes my blog time down to acorn size. I did make room late last night for some exploring and found the following new music I thought you might like. I sure as fuck did. Presented in alphabetical order by band name.

DYSANGELIUM

The German black metal band Dysangelium have a new album on the way from W.T.C. Productions. The title is Thánatos Áskēsis, it’s due for release on December 24, and it’s available for order here. I haven’t yet listened to the entire album, but I did catch Decibel’s premiere of one of the new songs yesterday, and have really been enjoying it. Continue reading »

AN EISTNAFLUG REPORT: PART 3

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 272014
 


Eistnaflug revelers.

(Gemma Alexander is a Seattle-based writer and NCS fan who visited Iceland in the fall of 2012 during the Iceland Airwaves festival and was generous enough to send us interviews with such bands as Angist, Beneath, Kontinuum, Sólstafir, Gone Postal, and Skálmöld. In July of this year she returned to Iceland for the Eistnaflug metal and rock festival (“Eistnaflug” being Icelandic for “flying testicles”), and we are once again the beneficiary of her writing. Today we present Part 2 of a three-part report on the festival, illustrated with Gemma’s own photos. Visit her own excellent blog here and check out more of her reporting on the festival at KEXP’s web site. Part 1 of her report for us is here and Part 2 is here.)

 

For the few of us who bothered with the hours before – or even slightly after – noon on Saturday, the desperate drunkenness of Friday night had given way to a comfortable morning buzz. Fewer than two dozen made it to the first show of the day at 1 p.m., AMFJ.

Which was too bad. Aðalstein Motherfucking Jörundsson is one barefoot guy at a little table in the middle of the floor. There wasn’t much to see, but there was a lot to hear. The set started out doomy and moved into a rave-worthy beat supporting vocals distorted beyond recognition. It was some killer industrial noise.

https://amfj1.bandcamp.com/ Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BENEATH

 Interviews  1 Response »
Nov 192012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Seattle-based writer and NCS reader Gemma Alexander happens to be a fan and student of all things Icelandic. After months of planning, Gemma journeyed to Iceland in late October to see the country, and she timed her visit to coincide with the Iceland Airwaves festival, which includes over 420 bands playing all over Reykjavík for five days, plus 400 more unofficial, off-venue performances.

Though Airwaves may be best known as an indie pop fest, it also includes performances by an impressive array of Icelandic metal bands. Knowing of NCS’ own appreciation for Icelandic metal and the attention we’ve paid to Icelandic bands this year, Gemma offered to arrange interviews with several of them. We previously posted her interview of Angist, and today we’re privileged to give you Gemma’s interview of two of the members of Beneath, whose killer debut album was released earlier this year by Unique Leader (featured at NCS here).

Gemma has also been blogging about her entire Icelandic vacation — and it’s wonderful. Do yourself a favor and check it out HERE. And now, here’s Gemma’s interview — with some Beneath death metal at the end.

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Beneath is fairly new, but the musicians behind the name are some of the heaviest hitters in Icelandic metal. Fronted by Gísli Sigmundsson of the historic Sororicide, with Unnar Sigurðsson of Ophidian I fame on guitar, and with drums provided by Atrum’s Ragnar Sverisson, Beneath came out swinging in 2009, winning Iceland’s first Wacken Metal Battle. An EP followed in 2010, with their first full-length, Enslaved by Fear, released this July. Needless to say, all of the usual metaphors involving blunt force trauma apply.

I was fortunate to meet with Gísli and Ragnar at Dillon Whiskey Bar in Reykjavík before the Iceland Airwaves festival. We talked about the band, their music, and the state of Icelandic heavy metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ANGIST

 Interviews  6 Responses »
Nov 122012
 

Angist: Halli (bass), Edda (vocals/guitar), Gyða (guitar), Tumi (drums); photo by Jose Carlos Santos

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sometimes great things happen to you when you least expect or deserve it.  Case in point: We have become acquainted over the ether with a Seattle-based writer and NCS reader named Gemma Alexander, who happens to be a fan and student of all things Icelandic. After months of planning, Gemma journeyed to Iceland in late October to see the country, and she timed her visit to coincide with the Iceland Airwaves festival, which includes over 420 bands playing all over Reykjavík for five days, plus 400 more unofficial, off-venue performances.

Though Airwaves may be best known as an indie pop fest, it also includes performances by an impressive array of Icelandic metal bands. Knowing of NCS’ own appreciation for Icelandic metal and the attention we’ve paid to Icelandic bands this year, Gemma offered to arrange interviews with several of them, and today we’re privileged to give you the first of those — Gemma’s interview of three of the four members of Angist, a very talented band we’ve featured previously at this site.

Gemma has also been blogging about her entire Icelandic vacation — which is still in progress. I’ve been reading her travelogue on a daily basis since it began, and it’s immensely entertaining. Not only is the subject matter fascinating, but Gemma is a superb writer. Do yourself a favor and check it out HERE. And now, here’s Gemma’s interview with Angist — with music at the end.

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NCS has talked about Angist before, when we were impressed by their EP, Circle of Suffering. Theirs is an impure take on death metal, featuring precision drumming from Ophidian I’s Tumi Snær Gíslason, and vocals that alternate between brutal growls and a banshee black metal shriek. Gyða Hrund Þorvaldsdóttir, and siblings Edda Tegeder Óskarsdóttir and Haraldur (Halli) Ingi Shoshan met me before the rúntur on the Friday before the Iceland Airwaves festival at Reykjavík’s Irish pub, Celtic Cross, to talk about the band and heavy metal in Iceland. Continue reading »

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN ICELAND (AND A FREE DEATHWISH SAMPLER)

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

To be clear, I’m not actually adventuring in the actual country of Iceland, though I wish I were, because it seems like a fascinating place, and even if the landscape turned out to be less dramatic than it looks in photos, I feel pretty sure I could get my head whomped pretty hard by some live metal.

No, the adventuring in this post is following up on some new music from a couple of bands we featured on our impromptu Iceland Metal Month series last month. One of the bands is Ophidian I, who we wrote about here. The other is Beneath, featured in this post. They’ve both started streaming additional tracks from their forthcoming albums, and the new songs are slaughtering me, in a good way — the kind of slaughtering where body parts come off and you eat them with the music ringing in your earholes and you realize that you don’t taste half bad despite what you might have thought.

Also, since I’m back on the subject of Iceland, I thought I might as well throw in some music from another band we haven’t covered yet. It’s not an Icelandic band. They’re actually from New York, but they recorded a new two-song 7″ at “Sundlaugin”, a studio in Mosfellsbær, Iceland, owned by the band Sigur Ros. (The session was engineered by Birgir Jón “Biggi” Birgisson.) The band is called Self Defense Family, and the music is a big, sweeping left turn away from our well-traveled path around here — but it has managed to sink its hooks in me. Maybe it will hook you, too. Continue reading »

MORE FIRE AND ICE FROM ICELAND: GONE POSTAL, ANGIST, AND OPHIDIAN I

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 312012
 

I should probably just go ahead and designate May as Iceland Metal Month at NO CLEAN SINGING. So far this month we’ve featured music from Severed Crotch (here), Svartidauði and Vansköpun (here), Azoic (here), and Dynfari (here). Since today is the last day of the month, I thought I’d close it out with three more Icelandic metal bands.

GONE POSTAL

This band from Kópavogur was formed in 2007. They released a debut full-length titled In the Depths of Despair in 2008 through Iceland’s own Molestin Records as well as three subsequent releases, of which Promo II (2011) is the latest.  In March of this year, they won the Wacken Metal Battle contest in Iceland, which will give them the right to perform at Wacken Open Air this summer.

I gather from a few things I’ve read that the band’s style of music through the early releases was a kind of experimental death metal. What I’ve heard are the three songs on Promo II, and those songs instead reflect a pronounced black metal influence. The music is shot through with ripping/roaring tremolo guitars, vicious rhythms, and an air of bleak dissonance. The vocal style flexes between harsh growls and eviscerating shrieks. The production is as raw as a fresh wound. Yet as cacophonous as the music often is, strange melodies ring out through the tidal wash of bile, lending the music a kind of sick fascination. Continue reading »