DEMISERY: “HIVE OF MUTATION”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Nov 142011
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Demisery.)

I’ve found the torrent of death metal albums coming out this year to be fairly underwhelming, if that wasn’t already obvious by my lack of reviews for albums in this genre.  Thankfully, reinventors of the wheel like Kartikeya and keepers of the old guard like Vallenfyre have proven to me that death metal can still be as awesome as it was back in the glory days of the 90’s; you just gotta know where to look.

Demisery is definitely one of the bands this year who’ve proven that point. Founded and totally driven by instrumental groove-metal master Keith Merrow and his newly found partner, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson, Demisery have produced what may very well be my favorite death metal album of the entire year: Hive of Mutation.

It’s old school with the right amount of tastefully inserted modernism. It’s got great riffs out the ass, and the songwriting is compelling and killer.  The fact that the music is the product of only two guys is pretty astounding, with drums, guitars, and bass all being tracked between the two of them, and Gord providing all vocals. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

PORTAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Nov 132011
 

This post is nothing more (and nothing less) than a bunch of fairly recent odds and ends I threw together about Portal. Portal is not a band whose music I immediately liked when I first heard it. It’s grotesque, rending, soul-shuddering noise; if there’s such a thing as avant-garde death metal, then I guess that’s what Portal plays. But the music has grown on me over time, and I’ve become fascinated by the band.

In this post, I’ve collected a Portal remix of another band’s music, news about Portal’s next album, a recently released video of Portal performing “Swarth” in 2008, a big batch of cool photos from a November 11, 2011 show in Brisbane, and — hot off the presses — a just-released video of the band performing at that same show.

ITEM ONE

Portal is one of several bands and producers who were asked by Bloody Panda to remix their 2009 album, Summon. The remix album, Summon: Invocation will be self-released by Bloody Panda on November 15. Brooklyn Vegan has been periodically streaming songs from the remix album, but the first one to which I paid attention was the one that Portal did — because it’s Portal.

The song is called “Saccades II”. Portal’s mastermind, Horror Illogium, described the remix of the song in a brief Brooklyn Vegan interview published last week: “This was the first and only remix that we have experimented on. In this instance, the eerie feedback on the bass guitar distortion became the epicentre of the mix in which we built around, we chose to use what tracks already existed and simply warp them into a kind of descent.” Continue reading »

PORTUGUESE METAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Nov 132011
 

Yesterday I got an intriguing e-mail from an NCS reader named Vasco recommending two Portuguese metal bands. I had already decided to schedule a guest post for today from VyceVictus about Korean metal, and it seemed fitting to accompany that one with another nation-based focus.

I would guess that more Portuguese metal bands are better known globally than their Korean brethren, but at least in the U.S., they’re still relatively under-the-radar. As best I can recall, we’ve only featured one Portuguese band since starting NCS — Utopium — and I can only name two others off the top of my head: Moonspell and Heavenwood. So today we’re doing a small bit to patch one of the many holes in our global coverage by providing music and information about the two bands from Portugal recommended by Vasco — Daemogorgon and Bless the Oggs.

DAEMOGORGON

Daemogorgon is a black metal band who came into existence in 2005. They produced a demo CD called Mortiis Tivmphvs and last year saw the release of an EP titled CHAOS.THROUGH.PHOBIA. The band are currently at work on their debut album. Vasco sent me a link to a song from the EP called “Temple Dementia”, and I gave that one a listen. Continue reading »

KOREAN METAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Nov 132011
 

(Today’s guest post comes to us from an NCS reader who goes by the name VyceVictus. He has seen a bit of the world, it seems, including South Korea. Here at NCS, we enjoy spotlighting metal from lesser known corners of the metallic universe, and so this post fits us like a glove.)

During my time in South Korea, I was introduced to the local metal and hardcore scene in Seoul. I was just getting into metal at this time, so the scene was particularly influential; my first ever live show and mosh pit was in Korea.

I’d like to share with you guys a few of the bands that I experienced. Mind you, some of this stuff ranges back quite a few years, so it might seem a little dated. Rest assured, there are some master-level headbangers to be found amongst these catalogs, and I rock these albums in regular rotation to this day. I hope you will too.

VASSLINE

The first is from the band Vassline, probably the premier Korean Metal(core) band. They are relatively popular veterans who are still active over 15 years in. They received the Korean equivalent of a Grammy for best rock album a few years back, which should be a solid indicator of their acumen. I’m not versed enough to accurately define musical styles, but to my ears their sound is a mix of Heaven Shall Burn and Arkangel with a heavy injection of Screamo coursing through the veins. Take a listen: Continue reading »

THROWN TO THE SUN: “OF OCEANS AND RAINDROPS”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Nov 122011
 

(TheMadIsraeli provides these quick notes about a Turkish band’s debut release.)

Thrown To The Sun is a band without much readily available public information, at least as far as I can tell.  They are a progressive death metal band from Istanbul and… that’s about it.  You can check them out on Facebook here, and I’m advising you to do so.

This little discovery was the product of one of my random downloading sprees.  I was intrigued by the album art, as well as the band’s geographic location, since as we know, not much Turkish metal makes its way into the ears of Western listeners.

I pressed play and so began the album’s intro, “Adrift”.  By the album’s end, I had learned that what we have here, from start to finish, is an awesome mix of the progressive tendencies of Death mixed with the Middle Eastern stylings of Melechesh.  Suffice it to say, this shit is quite good, with melodic riffs interlaced with tasteful moments of chaos, jarring tempo changes, and some nice growl-to-clean vocal interplay.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM DIM MAK, AMON, AND THE MAN-EATING TREE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 122011
 

The by-ways of the interhole that I usually prowl on a daily basis in search of entertainment for myself and you have remained largely un-trodden by me since I began my vacation. No recent spoor of mine will be found along those trails. Consequently, they probably smell as fresh as springtime after a light rain. However, emissaries of NCS have been snuffling along those paths like boar hogs in rut, waiting for the scent of something in heat, something that will raise their . . . hackles . . . and reporting back to me their olfactory finds.

Here is what yesterday’s e-mail brought my way, thanks to advance boar-like scouts who will receive credit in due course: A new song from the almighty Dim Mak (U.S.-New Jersey) and two new music videos from Amon (U.S.-Florida) and The Man-Eating Tree (Finland).

DIM MAK

The new Dim Mak album is titled The Emergence of Reptilian Altars. It will be released on November 29 by Willowtip Records, which is accepting pre-orders here. If you don’t know about Dim Mak, you can find a brief history that I posted here, along with the first single from the new album. Thanks to the same NCS reader who alerted me to that first song (Kevin), I’ve discovered that Dim Mak have released a second song. This one is called “The Secret of the Tides of Blood”, which is an inspired song name, and it’s available for streaming and purchase via Willowtip’s Bandcamp (at this location).

This is a superheated blowtorch of a song with massive hammering chords of minor-key melody, jaw-dropping drum progressions, turn-on-a-dime changes in time signature, a psychedelic guitar solo, and paint-stripping vocals. In a word, it’s a stunner. I’m so anxious for this album I’m nearly peeing myself. Check out the new song following the jump. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ARCHSPIRE

 Interviews  1 Response »
Nov 122011
 

Archspire is a young band from Vancouver, BC, who’ve come a long way in a short time. I first discovered them near the end of 2010 via one of our MISCELLANY posts and I’ve been tracking their news ever since. They feature two guitarists who blaze away on 7- and 8-string guitars, a bassist who works wonders on a 6-string fretless bass, and a drummer and vocalist who match them stride-for-stride. They churn out head-twisting streamers of technical death metal that should appeal to fans of bands such as Origin, Decrepit Birth, and Spawn of Possession.

Earlier this year, Trendkill Entertainment released their debut album, All Shall Align, which has been extremely well-received by both fans and critics, and they’re now about to embark on a European tour headlined by Decapitated. I recently got the chance to interview vocalist Oli Peters and guitarist Dean Lamb, through the good graces of Trendkill’s Virgil Palazzolo. The interview follows, and there’s some Archspire music at the end for those of you who haven’t yet tumbled to this band.

********

NCS: It’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since we first wrote about you guys at NCS. A lot has happened since then. You got signed by Trendkill, All Shall Align has been favorably reviewed far and wide, you’ve been gigging a ton, and you’re over 3,000 likes on Facebook — but the biggest recent news is the European tour with Decapitated, Aborted, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Cyanide Serenity. That is one hell of a line-up. How did this thing come about for you?

Dean: Well, we have been working with Virgil at our label, Trendkill for the past few months on setting this up. He has taken on a huge budget to help us out on this one, and it would have been impossible if it weren’t for his initiative and support. It’s really huge for us, and we can’t wait to show Europe what we can do, and what we’ve worked so hard on these past couple years.

Oli: It’s a huge honor. Virgil has done an incredible job and we wouldn’t be where we are right now without him. Continue reading »

ESOTERIC: “PARAGON OF DISSONANCE”

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
Nov 112011
 

Metal album names rarely seek to describe the sound of the music that lies within. The name of Esoteric’s new album comes close. Much of the music on the album is indeed a paragon of dissonance. But what is not dissonant on the album, juxtaposed with what is, is what makes the music so remarkable.

In dominant form on most of the songs is the aural equivalent of a planetary catastrophe, something akin to the Chicxulub asteroid that impacted the Yucatan peninsula roughly 65 million years ago and killed off an unfathomable numbers of species, including (probably) most dinosaurs. Titanic distorted riffs are accompanied by screeching psychedelic noise to produce an overwhelmingly bleak panorama — the pounding of protesting life back into primordial ooze by a downpour of anvils from above.

Nearly as slow-paced as funeral doom, the songs paint a picture of the inexorable eradication of light and life, and the truly harrowing vocals (a combination of gruesome abyssal roars and the kind of abraded, hair-raising shrieks more common to black metal) cement the feeling of impending extinction.

If this were all that the songs achieved, kudos would still be due, because the music so excellently embodies the power of doom metal, especially when it’s layered with stylistic borrowings from death- and black metal. But we come back to what is not dissonant . . . Continue reading »

THRONE OF KATARSIS: “VED GRAVEN”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Nov 112011
 

(NCS guest contributor Trollfiend emerges again from his lair to provide this review of Ved Graven, the new album by Throne of Katarsis.)

Like a lot of people, I reacted pretty negatively toward Sasha Frere-Jones’ piece on black metal in The New Yorker magazine (featured at NCS here).  However, upon reflection, I have decided that he was just examining something he knew little about through the lens of The New Yorker‘s oeuvre, and probably shouldn’t be faulted for that.  So with that in mind, I have decided to review Throne of Katarsis’ new album Ved Graven in a similar vein.

Throne of Katarsis hails from Norway and could be said to embrace the legacy of the so-called “True Norwegian Black Metal” (TNBM) scene in the same way that avant-garde sculptor Naum Gabo embraced the abstract conceptions of Wassily Kandinsky and evolved them, along with the synthetic gemoetries of his older brother Antoine Pevsner, into the perhaps narcissistically coined legacy of Constructivism….though it’s plain to see that their nihilistic worldview borrows an instinctive post-Nietzschian schadenfreude zeitgeist from Heidegger.

The band displays a certain neo-Satanic pageantry that evokes the remarkable dance-dramas of Izumo no Okuni in the Tokugawa shogunate-Edo period of the 1600s, as well as the kumadori stage makeup of Ichiwaka Danjuro from the same time, though one might assume that this style of performance is currently enjoying a downturn in popularity, much like the Saruwaka-machi era of these Japanese dance-dramas. However, the transcendence of these blaspheming iconographies is assured via cathartic self-expulsion; as Descartes tells us, “…something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind.”  I couldn’t agree more.  (more erudition after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BLACK GOATS AND CANDLELIGHTS: 10 Metal Record Labels on Bandcamp

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Nov 112011
 

(We’re really pleased to feature today this guest post by MaxR, the proprietor of Metal Bandcamp, an extremely useful site that maintains a close watch on new metal being added to the Bandcamp platform. In this post Max focuses on labels who have established Bandcamp outposts and he provides a ton of great music to illustrate what’s available.)

You probably know about Bandcamp, the place where bands can release their music as free downloads or for a price (including the popular name-you-price option). You can get awesome free demos like the one from epic doomsters Pallbearer or you can buy albums from DIY bands like progressive black metallers Cormorant. What you may not be aware of is that many metal record labels have set up camp (harh harh) on Bandcamp. I will describe some of them and provide links and Bandcamp players to a great selection of metal – much of which hasn’t been covered on No Clean Singing before.

CANDLELIGHT

First up is Candlelight Records. They add five albums per week to their Bandcamp, either new releases or from their catalog. And they are pretty smart about it. New Opeth released? Hey, we got their first three albums. New Insomnium out? We have Above the Weeping World and Across the Dark for ya. And they even have Bandcamp exclusives – apparently the original mix of Quietly, Undramatically was pretty crappy, so now you can get a remix by Woe mastermind Chris Grigg. Check it out, it’s raw and melodic black metal. Continue reading »

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