AN NCS PREMIERE: MORS.VOID.DISCIPLINE — “SANGUINEM IN ANUM CAPRAE PUTRESCENTIS EIACULANS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 162026
 

(written by Islander)

Take it from someone who’s been struggling to write about music for 16+ years: It’s not easy to capture sounds in words, or to represent how they alter feelings and inspire the imagination without running afoul of triteness or tedium. A humbling challenge to be sure, but even more humbling when we run across the prose of the honcho behind Sentient Ruin Laboratories. Here, as a pertinent example, is an excerpt from the label’s linguistic preview of an album that’s the source of a song we’re about to premiere:

Chilean bestial goregrind terror-cult Mors.Void.Discipline emerge from the bottomless dungeons of South America’s extreme metal underground with their debut full-length monstrosity Txketh)ëké, a twenty-minute obfuscation of terror-spawning bestial war metal destruction swathed in the flesh-eating violence and maggot-infested putridity of 90’s goregrind.

Cryptic and malignant beyond thresholds comprehensible to man, Txketh)ëké projects forth a cancerous aural perversion in which the war-mongering assaults of Blasphemy collide with early Carcass’ mangled and deconstructed sonic butchery. Its astonishing hideousness and violence are not only shaped by its unequivocal descendancy, but further complexed by the peculiar antediluvian and occult aura historically permeating Chile’s underground scene, as well as by the band’s enigmatic inner workings and imagination harvesting perversions from beyond the reach of sanity.

You see? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OSMIUM GATE — “WATERS OF NATRON”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 162026
 

(written by Islander)

We are genuinely thrilled today to introduce you to Osmium Gate, a two-person instrumental metal band “forged in the shadows of Salt Lake City, Utah”. Those two people are guitarist/bassist Drew Ehrgott, known for his work in Reverence Of The Martyr, and drummer Rene Gomez, “whose percussive presence reverberates through Ibex Throne, Yaotl Mictlan, and his bass work in Pan-Amerikan Native Front.”

Osmium Gate was formed in December 2024, and they now have a debut album named Cannibal Galaxy set for release on March 13th. We’ll share these further words from the press materials we’ve received, already excerpted above: Continue reading »

CONVERGE: “LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 162026
 

(Last Friday Converge released their new album Love Is Not Enough, and below you’ll find Wil Cifer’s thoughts about it.)

It is always an exercise in objectivity when you are reviewing one of your favorite bands. For me, they are under more scrutiny as they set my expectations high, leaving me with certain boxes to check off as I am listening. The larger their catalog, the more expectations their legacy has built.

I am not surprised that the hyper-aggression of Boston hardcore legends Converge has endured, now 11 albums into their career. Their new album does find it being refined and often being more of an Entombed-like stomp. There are some thoughts on the idea that seem to be stuck on the chaos of what they do, but in truth, compared to albums like When Forever Comes Crashing, it is a much more streamlined effort that is more accessible to a larger metal audience. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HEIDEN, FARSON, MALAURIU, GALARE, LYSERGIC, LIGATION

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 152026
 

(written by Islander)

Getting a late start today. In yesterday’s roundup I mentioned that I had a cold. I took some over-the-counter stuff last night to help me sleep through it. I woke up 10 hours later, so I guess it worked, and hence the late start.

I picked all of today’s recommendations yesterday, and though my head is infected, these songs proved to be both more viral and more virile than the rhinovirus. I’m very happy with the choices and hope you will be too.

By way of preview, things begin in what we might call avant-garde territory, and then move in more punk-influenced directions, and then you’ll get blistered and beaten. At the end is an album that’s outside the usual boundaries of this column, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to give it a further push. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MELECHESH, KADAVEREICH, ARCHITECTS OF AEON, A FOREST OF STARS, THE HOLEUM, VOIDSPIRE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 142026
 

(written by Islander)

I felt a cold coming on yesterday when I woke up, and that was quickly followed by the discovery that anyone trying to get to NCS experienced frantic meltdowns from their browsers, which warned people that our site was insecure and might expose all their personal finances and identities to theft, might turn their children into ghouls, might cause cats to have sex with dogs, etc., etc. In other words, it seemed our site’s SSL security certificate had expired.

Or at least that’s what I concluded based on some googling, because I hadn’t received any advance notice or warning. I had forgotten what an SSL is, had no idea when we implemented it, and was completely clueless about what I was supposed to do to fix the problem. I e-mailed our IT consultant, who I think must have implemented SSL for NCS years ago (I still haven’t heard back from him).

I also opened a support ticket with our security provider, because our web host told me they maintain the site’s security certificate. I haven’t heard back from them either — though late yesterday afternoon the scary browser warnings stopped, so I guess they remewed our certificate, but I really am still in the dark about the whole incident. Which means I’m also in the dark about how to prevent this bullshit from happening again.

Oh, and my cold was also in full bloom by late afternoon yesterday. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: EXORCISED — “HATRED KNIFE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 132026
 

(written by Islander)

On March 13th a new Spanish underground label named Cruel Gates Records will release Fire & Sulfur, a debut album from the Spanish band Exorcised.

Born from the ashes of the thrash band Madsher, Exorcised have devoted their hellish energies to the creation of old school death thrash, taking their cues from such bands as Deicide, Morbid Angel, and Devastation.

Today we have an example of the infernal sonic madness they’ve created through our premiere of a lyuric video for a song from their debut full-length named “Hatred Knife“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEIMLER — “DARKNESS FALLS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 132026
 

(written by Islander)

In 2023 the Spanish death metal band Deimler released a concept album named Immortalized that was based on Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking 1979 movie Alien. Following that up, guitarist/vocalist Pako Deimler decided to pay tribute to a personal favorite series from the ’90s — The X-Files. More specifically, Deimler’s new album, Darkness Falls, is based on one episode from the show’s first season that itself was named “Darkness Falls”.

That was a standalone episode in which Mulder and Scully went looking for a group of loggers missing in the Olympic National Forest in Washington State (which coincidentally isn’t far from the HQ of our site), only to be confronted by a deadly form of mutant insects. Pako has said that he loves that episode in particular because of its “atmosphere” but also because it’s “one of the few episodes where the main characters have a hard time and are truly in great danger.”

The new album is now set for release on March 20th by Awakening Records, and what we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video for its second single — the title track “Darkness Falls“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GUYOÐ

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 132026
 

(Below you will find our Comrade Aleks’ interview with guitarist Dohrn from the Austrian metal band Guyođ, whose new EP was released late last month.)

The Austrian band Guyođ announced themselves in 2023 with their debut, Heart of Thy Abyss. That furious work, at the intersection of extreme death metal and doom, unpolished and thunderous, was imbued with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Herman Melville, lending the album a special charm. Their up-to-date half-hour-long release, Death Throes of a Drowning God, which another band would list as a full-length album, is considered by Guyođ to be an EP. This mini-album consists of four full-length tracks, each nearly six minutes long, and four noise drone interludes, collectively titled “Signal,” but with a numbered designation.

Regardless, Guyođ, ignoring convention, delivers listeners dark, concentrated, and meaty stuff. According to the band, one of the ideas behind the EP was to create more disturbing and savage material compared to their first album, and they have succeeded in this quest. This time, the celebration of chaos and madness is presented in the form of vigorous, monstrous death metal with a touch of extreme doom and black metal. At times (“Behind the Walls of Ice”), one is tempted to use the adjective “avant-garde,” but that would be pretentious… but why not? This feast of entropy has its share of deceptive calm, as in the track “Hestia Drowning,” but there are also poignant moments.

Guyođ have taken a creative approach to such a relatively short work, and if you’re looking for a little shake-up, check out this EP. And yet I hate to talk about how I see the music, especially when there’s a chance to talk with its author. Another interview with Dohrn (guitars) is here before you. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WAMPYRIC RITES — “UNDER THE TRAGIC FULLMOON OF THE VAMPIRE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 122026
 

(written by Islander)

Vampires and other undead entities reputed to feed on the essences of living humans have figured in the folk mythologies of many cultures around the world for millennia. Fear of such creatures has led to episodes of mass hysteria, executions, the exhumation and decapitation of corpses, and of course the staking of suspected revenants through the heart.

(Many such incidents and more are documented in Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World, an exhaustive scholarly work by John Blair published just last November.)

Vampirism lives on in our imaginations (hopefully, only there), itself a deathless dream that the passage of millennia can’t exorcise. In our tiny corner of modern culture, black metal has kept the nightmares alive more than any other sub-set of metal, and one of the most prolific exponents over the last seven years has been the Ecuadorian band Wampyric Rites.

This band’s newest album, Under the Tragic Fullmoon of the Vampire, is now set for release by Inferna Profundus Records tomorrow — Friday the 13th of February — and on the eve of that dreadful event we have a full stream of the album for your consideration. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NECROFIER

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 122026
 


photos by Brian Sheehan

(On February 27th Metal Blade Records will release a new album by the Houston-based black metal band Necrofier, and the quality of the music convinced our friend Ben Manzella to reach out for the following interview with the band’s vocalist and guitarist Bakka.)

As I’m sure other writers here at No Clean Singing would agree, most record announcements or press releases eventually become like white noise. You feel like you can predict the claims and wording of it being the “best album we’ve made yet”; or, especially in metal, depending on the genre, the claim that the music is “the most brutal thing you will hear all year.” However, when I read about the upcoming release of Transcend Into Oblivion, none of these traps were set, and I knew I’d be eager for this conversation.

During a succinct and relaxed time of conversation with Bakka, vocalist and guitarist of Necrofier, I aimed to hear a bit more about the creative process involved in the detailed song structure that is Transcend Into Oblivion, as well as the recent move to Metal Blade Records. Continue reading »

 Older Entries