AN NCS PREMIERE: DÉTRESSE — “LES NUITS JAUNES”

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Sep 032026
 

(written by Islander)

This trio of talents from Austria and Québec who joined together to form Détresse introduced themselves just last year through a startling debut album named Pessimismes, released by Vendetta Records. We described its music as “emotionally raw, explosively cathartic, and unrelenting in its intensity”, but also as “saturated in agony and hopelessness”, “ruined as well as raging”, and wholly “engulfing” in its varying emotional torrents.

Pessimismes was an eye-popping, heart-stirring, and soul-sinking debut, so much so that it landed Détresse at Julfest in Austria earlier this year, followed by a two-week European tour alongside Miserere Luminis in April, and will put them on stages in another tour alongside Darvaza, Merrimack, and Helleruin in December 2026, which will include appearances at Eindhoven Metal Meeting (Netherlands) and De Mortem et Diabolum (Germany).

The December touring activity is prompted in part by Vendetta Records’ forthcoming October release of a second Détresse album — Misères. The press materials for the new record offer this description:

DÉTRESSE’s second album MISÈRES deals with the misery of mankind and human hardship. It explores how oppression, deprivation, and despair shape everyday existence, blurring the boundaries between past and present. Shaped in raw, unadulterated soundscapes it provides a journey to the darkest parts of humanity.

Last month we had the pleasure of premiering a song from the new album named “Verrottet“, and today we premiere another one — “Les Nuits Jaunes” — which features vocals and lyrics by a notable guest. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AMAROK (AND ANDREW BLACK) — A REIMAGINING OF “LEGACY”

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Sep 032026
 

(written by Islander)

The Northern California metal band Amarok have demonstrated towering, far-seeing ambitions since their inception more than 15 years ago. With their self-titled debut EP in 2010 they began identifying their songs with Roman numerals. That EP was also more than 45 minutes long, spread across three songs. After a trio of splits, their 2018 debut album Devoured continued with the Roman numeral designations (which had continued on the splits), counting forward from VI through IX in a double LP that nearly reached ten minutes above an hour. And then in 2024 they released their second album Resilience, another double LP (X through XIII) that again exceeded an hour of music.

Over the course of those extensive releases Amarok has moved from funeral doom into a hybrid of doom and black metal, while also continuing to narrate evolving reflections on the natural world, the dangers created by human folly and oppression, the suffering caused by great loss, and a search for transcendence and hope through determined perseverance.

Over the course of those monumental releases Amarok have also made a lot of talented friends and admirers (in addition to amassing a devoted following of fans), the evidence of which will be revealed in a follow-up to Resilience named Overcome.

Overcome is yet another double-album, and is perhaps best considered as a companion to Resilience. Set for release on September 25 by Toronto’s Hypaethral Records, it includes ten remixed and reimagined interpretations of the five songs on Resilience by notable artists from across the experimental and extreme metal spectrum — two different versions of each of those five songs (which is how you get from five to ten tracks). Those ten artists include Ethan Lee McCarthy (Primitive Man), Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum), and Andrew Black (Mizmor/Hell live), as well as Sinuous Void, Only Now, Collapse, Gridfailure, DJ Eons One, Mirroriddian, and Auto Seer.

One song from Overcome has already been revealed, and today we premiere a second one — a reimagining of Amarok’s “Legacy” by the afore-mentioned Andrew Black. Continue reading »

EXITIUM SUI – UNRAVELLING

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Sep 032026
 

(Andy Synn has some grim delights to share with us today, from an album set for release tomorrow)

The weather here in the UK has recently taken a turn for the worse, shrouding us in a grey cloud of damp and humidity that somehow manages to combine Meditteranean swelter with Scandinavian chill at the same time.

What this signals, of course, is that our glorious (read: parched) days of Summer are now over, and we’re staring right down the barrel of another wet and wild Autumn/Winter.

And what better way to prepare for this than with the latest sepulchral slab of oppressive blackened Doom from the one and only Exitium Sui (AKA Chris Gebauer).

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WINCE AND FRISSON — “TUMULT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 022026
 

(written by Islander)

In February of this year we helped introduce listeners to Wince and Frisson, a “dissoblack and death metal” duo consisting of Triumvir Kaleido from North Carolina and Steve Wiener from New Jersey. In February we premiered a striking animated video created by Triumvir (who’s responsible for all of the band’s artwork) for the song “Kärrhäxan” from Wince and Frisson’s then-forthcoming debut album Tumult. What we’ve got for you today is a premiere stream of that album in its entirety in advance of its September 4 official release..

Wince and Frisson introduce the album with these words:

Tumult – a virulent cocktail of extreme metal genres. Seven tracks, all blackened and swathed in dissonance. It gets to the point immediately and offers no rest to the listener until its conclusion. All the while, guitarist, bassist, and vocalist Triumvir Kaleido maniacally spews warped interpretations of his experiences with religious and psychological abuse, and struggles with mental health.

But of course we have our introduction to what you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

GOROD: “THE EMBER GONE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 022026
 

(We present a review by Professor D. Grover the XIIIth of a new album the French metal band Gorod which was released last Friday.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. As you may have picked up on in recent years, I’m a big fan of modern technical death metal (not that I mind the classic old-school stylings of Death, Cynic, Pestilence, and Atheist). In recent times over on Bluesky I ranked my top twenty modern tech-death albums (read: post-Necrophagist), one album per artist, and my number one with a number belonged to Gorod’s Process Of A New Decline. It was probably the album that truly made me love tech-death and it’s an incredibly influential album for me even to this day. I’ve loved everything Gorod have released, both before and since, but there’s been a definite evolution in their style over the years, a creeping prog influence that has culminated in The Ember Gone. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

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Sep 022026
 

(Andy Synn caps off another busy month here at NCS with four more albums you may have overlooked)

Like I said last week, for the most part we prefer to focus our attention on bands who we think deserve more exposure or who simply aren’t as big as we think they should be, rather than expending our time and energy on artists who have been thoroughly covered elsewhere.

For example, I’m probably not going to be crafting a full Mastodon review this time (it’s a good album… occasionally a very good album, but occasionally held back by a few dud moments and an excessive length) or writing about the new Sigh (which, so far at least, I’m really not a fan of), as both those bands have already received more than enough coverage, so a few extra words from us – positive or negative – is unlikely to have much of an impact.

The four artists I’ve chosen to feature today, however, have never been written about here at NoCleanSinging before, which should make for some fun discoveries for all of us.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BESOTTEN — “CRUENTATION”

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Sep 012026
 

(written by Islander)

Let’s cut to the chase: The track you’re about to hear from the U.S. death/doom band Besotten is an absolute horror-show of a song, and one that turns out to be insidiously infectious — a brand of death metal that’s simultaneously as foul and festering as the corruption of unburied corpses, as feverishly devouring as swarms of enormous maggots, as soul-draining as incurable cancer, and as bone-smashing as a phalanx of battering rams.

It’s disgusting, ghoulish, and nerve-firing in its hostility, but we predict it will also really gets its blood-stained hooks stuck deep into listeners from a first run-through, and thus leave you besotted (couldn’t resist that). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LIFESWALLOWER — “DEFY MY WORLD”

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Sep 012026
 

(written by Islander)

The UK band Lifeswallower brings together four experienced musicians with disparate musical backgrounds who combine a wide ranges of influence from rock and metal. Today they are releasing their self-titled debut EP via the Prog On! Recordings label in Manchester, covering (in their words) “the blastbeat intensity of death metal, to the pacey riffage of thrash metal, whilst leaning into the mathematical complexity of prog with a side-serving of their own unique take on things”.

As a further preview of what the music brings, Lifeswallower recommend the EP for fans of Gojira, Morbid Angel, The Black Dahlia Murder, Sikth, and Tool.

To help spread the word about this release, we’re now premiering a sinister and intriguingly immersive video for a song from the EP called “Defy My World“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CARDINALS FOLLY

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Sep 012026
 


photo by Tomi Mäenpää

(On October 9th Cruz Del Sur Music will release Let the Posers Fall!, a new album by the Finnish doom band Cardinals Folly. This provided an occasion for our Comrade Aleks to re-connect with the band for an extensive new interview with Mikko Kääriainen that we present below.)

A band like Cardinals Folly can afford to title their albums in such a brazenly provocative manner…  Such Power Is Dangerous! Our Cult Continues! This Is No Church! And this time Let the Posers Fall!. This is the Finnish doom masters’ seventh full-length release in nearly twenty years, and the band, led by vocalist and bassist Mikko Kääriainen, excels not only in the studio but also on tour. Mikko, albeit with a varied lineup, has not only conquered Europe but also made it to the US, which, given the lack of major label support, is an achievement in itself.

Incidentally, thanks to touring, the Cardinals Folly lineup almost broke up, and Mikko recorded new material with Joni Takkunen, who drummed in the band for 12 years, and Tuomo “Space Doom” Kosonen, guitarist of Pohjoinen. Considering Mikko’s stubbornness and obsession with his creation, I’m not surprised that these changes haven’t affected the new album’s quality. Let The Posers Fall! is a blast, and there’s some truth to the pathos of the joke in the title.

Cardinals Folly are still as good at everything related to jaunty trad-doom and solid heavy metal, and their songs seem to have even more of the latter. Here’s our traditional interview with Mikko, and it’s traditionally good. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NONTINUUM — “AS I LEAVE THIS BODY”

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Aug 312026
 

(written by Islander)

Today we help pave the way for the return of the Australian black metal band Nontinuum after an extended absence, and so a bit of background may be useful.

They were originally founded in 2010 as a bedroom recording project rooted in atmospheric and depressive black metal, and their debut demo Dwelling In Oceans was released shortly afterward through Misanthropic Art Productions.

Two years later they made their live debut as a full band at Devil’s Arcana Festival and released their first full-length album, The Stars You Gathered, The Stars I Destroyed — and then Nontinuum seemed to disappeared.

More than a decade later, the original line-up reunited for a performance at Essence Festival in 2025 and are now working on the follow-up to The Stars You Gathered, The Stars I Destroyed.

The first sign of their new work is the song we’re premiering today in advance of its September 3 digital release — “As I Leave This Body“. Continue reading »

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