STEALING AXION: “MOMENTS” (A REVIEW)

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Aug 242012
 

(TheMadIsraeli follows up our full-album stream of the debut album by Stealing Axion with this review.) 

I have been so hyped for this album it’s hard for me to even quantify.  Stealing Axion absolutely wowed me with their self-titled free EP (which I reviewed here); it combined progressivism, the best groove in the Meshuggah/Textures school of thought, and a refined sense of dynamics between brutality and melody.  The band demonstrated that they knew how to write really fucking good metal and how to hit a broad spectrum of notes while carrying all of it off equally well.

In my mind, Moments is the quintessential modern metal album, demonstrating the best of what modern groove has become in heavy music.  I am going to warn NCS readers, this album is DEFINITELY an exception to the rule, with close to a 50/50 split of brutal and clean vocals going on here.  As with all exceptions to the rule though, I TRY NOT to review something that breaks our mantra unless it’s really fucking good.  Moments IS really fucking good, I assure you (unless you’re just a kvrmudgeon).

A few facts you need to know about this album before I begin: It’s a concept album about the end of the world.  Because of its particular story, the song flow is a bit askew from what you might expect (e.g., the album starts with one of the softest songs).  It is LONG (77 minutes), and a lot of the longer songs are peculiarly structured.  You won’t get the payoffs you’d typically expect on what feels like a buildup, and songs don’t end on the notes you’re absolutely convinced are coming, but by the same token some of the moments of brutality on this album completely wreck your intestines when you least expect them to pop up.  This is a truly progressive album. Continue reading »

AN NCS FULL-ALBUM PREMIERE: “MOMENTS” BY STEALING AXION

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 242012
 

We’ve been watching the rise of Tacoma’s Stealing Axion since first hearing their sweet 2010 self-titled EP (reviewed at NCS here). Now the band are on the verge of seeing the release of their full-length debut by Inside Out Music and Century Media. Entitled Moments, the album will hit the streets on August 28 in the U.S. and a day earlier in Europe — and we’re giving you a stream of the entire work beginning today.

Stealing Axion join together a variety of musical components — off-kilter, jack-hammering rhythms; intricate and often mesmerizing guitar performances; memorable, beautiful melodies; and an effective contrast between abrasive, harsh vocals and clean, clear singing that echoes and soars. (And for those newcomers to the site, despite our name we do make exceptions when the metal is as good as what’s on Moments.)

The music weaves together brute-force aggressiveness, higher-order complexity, and shimmering atmospherics, delivering a blend of piston-driven body-movers and progressive stylings that send the mind surfing on astral waves. The songwriting is excellent, and the musical performances are all top-shelf. The album was mixed and mastered by TesseracT guitarist/producer Acle Kahney, and it sounds fantastic, producing the clarity and separation that best suits this kind of progressive, technically demanding music.

Moments is a long, ambitious work that demands serious attention, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to hear. Fans of bands such as Textures should find it especially appealing, but we recommend that every devotee of metal give this a try. The stream begins next . . .  Continue reading »

RAPED BY PIGS: “GUSHING ORGASM 2”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Aug 242012
 

(Phro reviews the new EP from Raped By Pigs, who are from Peru. If memory serves, this is the first review of music by a Peruvian band at NCS.)

Sometimes bands choose weird, offensive names just to be…well, weird and offensive. Other times, bands choose those names because they embody the music so well. Peru’s Raped by Pigs is definitely in the latter group. As you can probably imagine, they would be most accurately pigeon-holed as a slam/brutal death metal band, if one wanted to get all taxonomical and shit.

But, as much as I love grouping band into genres, sub-genres, and penis size, I couldn’t find any pictures of these guys’ dangly bits (kinda makes you question their metal cred, doesn’t it?), so we’ll have to actually talk about their music instead. Damnit.

Gushing Orgasms 2 is not the music of the apocalypse, but the music of the survivors’ great grandchildren sitting around a campfire of dried out human shit. These unfortunate descendents swing back and forth between the mad, ecstatic joy of surviving as the world slowly burns itself out like a dying sun and the slow, furious sobs of remorse at the loss of deep dish pizza only glimpsed in half-forgotten ancestral memory. (“WHY?” they scream, “WHY DIDN’T THEY SAVE THE PIZZA??”)

But, pizza-lamentations aside, this music is basically just heaviness. It’s like falling asleep at the beach and waking up to two, bulbous, blubbery sea lions making sea lion babies on top of your chest, their sea lion sex juices splattering all over your face as they grunt and heave, pounding away on top of you. The fat fucks don’t even notice you gasping as your rib cage cracks and collapses around your lungs and you slowly suffocate. Continue reading »

THINGS SEEN AND HEARD: haarp, SKÁLMÖLD, BLOODRED HOURGLASS, AND GOBLIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Aug 232012
 

I thought this artwork was cool. It’s name is “Ocean In Motion” and it was created by Oana Cambrea. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post. I just wanted to put it someplace where I wouldn’t lose it. It did make me think of synchronized swimming, though something like this would have been much more fun than the event as it’s performed at the Olympics. Anyway, at the end of this post I have the only example I know of where synchronized swimming was metal. But onward to other new metal things I saw and heard recently.

haarp

Speaking of cool album art, I saw the cover of the next album from NOLA’s haarp. It’s called Husks and it’s set for release on September 18, 2012 through Housecore Records. I didn’t really dive deeply into this band’s last album (2010’s Filth). I remember listening to one track at a time when I was in a hurry, I didn’t immediately fall in love with it, and I moved on to something else.

This new one was recorded by Housecore’s Phil Anselmo (Down, Pantera) and mastered by Pig Destroyer’s Scott Hull, and that gets me interested in giving this band a second chance. Based on a press release, it appears there may be some new twists in this album, in addition to the band’s core mix of hate-filled sludge and grind. Check out the cover after the jump, and one more piece of related artwork created for haarp. Continue reading »

MASACHIST: “SCORNED” ON THE WAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 232012
 

Masachist is a Polish band I feel I should have known about before now, given that they include two members of Vesania — drummer Dariusz “Daray” Brzozowski  (formerly with Vader, and live drummer for Dimmu Borgir) and bassist Filip “Heinrich” Halucha — and two former members of Decapitated — vocalist Wojciech “Pig”/”Sauron” Wasowicz (Anal Stench) and bassist Heinrich again — in addition to whirlwind guitarists Thrufel (ex-Azarath) and Aro (Shadows Land, Torquemada).

The band released their debut album (Death March Fury) in 2009, and they have a follow-up entitled Scorned due for release on September 3 via Selfmadegod Records. Yesterday the band released a song from the new album called “Opposing Normality”, which follows a previously released track, “The Process of Elimination”. Both songs are definitely worth hearing.

The music is bone-jarring death metal, fast and technical but somewhat unorthodox in its approach, with scale-leaping, minor-key riffs, unexpected ambient passages, and eerie soloing. There’s an alien quality to the songs, both machine-like and insectile, like the scurrying and swarming of a hive of bio-mech centipedes the size of mastiffs. It’s both brutal and otherworldly, like a death metal version of Blotted Science.

I’m digging this strange brew, but I’m curious what you make of it. Check out the two songs after the jump and leave some comments. Continue reading »

AUTHOR AND PUNISHER: “TERRORBIRD” (THE VIDEO)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 222012
 

In March of this year, BadWolf introduced us to Author and Punisher via this post about the artist and his new album Ursus Americanus, which was released in April by Seventh Rule Records (and is available for streaming and purchase here). For those who missed that, Author and Punisher is the industrial solo project of one Tristan Shone, who has become something of a geek hero by creating his own bizarre machine instruments.

To quote BadWolf: “Author and Punisher pulls influences from the more drone/groove oriented Industrial of Godflesh, as opposed to the thrashier (and poppier) Ministry school. . . . The songs on Ursus Americanus roll over the listener with heft and weight sorely lacking in most modern Industrial music. . . . I wager Tristan Shone could make a decent living off science fiction and horror film composing if he weren’t an employee at the National Center for Microscopy. . . . During my second run-through, I closed my eyes and imagined technological carnage unfolding against the movie screen that is the inside of my eyelids.”

Well, BadWolf doesn’t have to rely solely on his imagination any more. Thanks to the awesome DECIBLOG, I discovered this morning that Author and Punishment has released a new music video for a song from the latest album called “Terrorbirds”. BadWolf streamed a live version of the song with his March review, but this new video provides a horror story to go with the music. It was directed by Augustine Arredondo and stars Rob Crow (Pinback, Goblin Cock), and it’s delicious. Now we know what a Terrorbird is.

Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »

DRAMATIC FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF WINTERSUN’S “TIME I”

 Metal News  27 Responses »
Aug 222012
 

Wintersun’s new album Time I has been six years coming, and now that it has been completed and a firm release date (October 12) has been announced, you can almost hear the sound of massed panting by the band’s global network of fanatical fans. Yet their eagerness is perhaps matched by their curiosity. What will the new music sound like? Will it be in the vein of the band’s smashing debut or will the passage of six years have changed  the sound into something new and unexpected?

Well, we now have the first concrete impressions of the music because two days ago Wintersun threw a listening party in Helsinki, Finland, to which certain metal journalists were invited. One of those present for the first chance to hear the album from start to finish was Arto Mäenpää, editor of the Finnish KAAOSzine web site. He wasted no time putting his impressions on-line, with a track-by-track description of the music, calling it “a pure masterpiece and the best Finnish metal album to come out it 2012!” He also called it “a musical version of Lord Of The Rings.”

Of course, Arto’s original text was in Finnish. This, however, proved no problem for the intrepid staff at NO CLEAN SINGING. We just converted all of those strange words into English through Google Translate, which, as regular readers of this site well know, always reveals hidden meanings in the native tongue of arguably the most metal country on Earth, per capita. Fucking good pancake.

So, after the jump, feast your eyes on a vivid track-by-track description of Wintersun’s new album, as rendered by Google Translate, with a few notes by yours truly in brackets.

Continue reading »

RED THINGS SEEN AND HEARD TODAY: SATAN’S WRATH, RED DESCENDING, P.O.O.R., AND MARK RIDDICK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Aug 212012
 

In browsing today’s happenings in the world of metal and pulling together items to share with you in this post, I noticed a coincidence: All of these items have something to do with red. I don’t know what that means. Probably nothing. I hope I’m not bleeding inside.

ITEM ONE: SATAN’S WRATH

I saw that Metal Blade had established a landing (or launching) page for a new album entitled Galloping Blasphemy by a two-man Greek “Satanic blackened thrash” band by the name of Satan’s Wrath. It’s due for release on September 25 in North America and a few days earlier in Europe. The album cover is above. It’s red.

I was intrigued by two things about this release. First, the band’s bio claims that they are “the only band in the world in communication with thy master through ceremonial black magic and necromantic rituals” and that “one member alone controls 13 satanic covens worldwide and organizes the most hideous sabbaths which our lord graces in the form of the black goat.” It also seems to dedicate the album to the glory of Belial, Lucifer, and Astaroth. I’m guessing you probably won’t find this CD at Walmart.

Second, I saw this quote from Brian Slagel, the founder and owner of Metal Blade: “When I first heard Satan’s Wrath it transported me back three decades to the early days of the label when I loved bands like Slayer . . . and Possessed . . . . What will always impress me about the heavy metal genre is its ability to borrow from the past and boldly wear it’s influences on its sleeve, while still sounding fresh and relevant to the time it was created. Satan’s Wrath are one of those bands . . . .”  Continue reading »

TYRANT OF DEATH: “CYANIDE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Aug 212012
 

(In this post, DGR reviews the latest release from Toronto’s Tyrant of Death.)

The Tyrant Of Death name should probably be familiar to a lot of you by now, especially since I’ve started making appearances at the lovely NCS. Tyrant Of Death is an industrial death machine that occasionally drifts into grind-filled territory, made up of two musicians. One provides the vocal work and the other, by the name of Alex Rise, handles the musicianship and most of the footwork.

For a long time Tyrant Of Death was an instrumental guitar project. Some of the releases (and there have been a ton) have come to include a lot of vocal work provided by musician Lucem Fero. Lately they’ve seemingly rotated, one instrumental, one more vocals-based. Also, until recently, the Tyrant Of Death stuff has been free (and occasionally still is) as a show of good faith. That changed with the last disc, ReConnect, which I thought was a good album but not necessarily the best of their work.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that the Tyrant Of Death project is still prolific, releasing a flood of material, although not quite at the breakneck pace of previous years. Only five months have passed since ReConnect, yet here we are again with another album called Cyanide. This one is largely instrumental, with the occasional vocalization (if you can even call it that) to provide atmosphere. As such, it’s something of a return to previous sounds and at the same time a combination of many older elements into something new.

Because of this I have to apologize that this review may be shorter than what I usually write (I know some of you are already looking for the nearest razor) due to the fact that Cyanide is Tyrant Of Death boiled down to its very essence. It is a disc consisting of a giant wall of loud guitars, relentlessly fast drumming, and eerie-as-hell song structure. Continue reading »

GIANT OF THE MOUNTAIN: “VALLEY OF THE ROGUE”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  15 Responses »
Aug 212012
 

It’s so damned nice to hear a relatively new band you like move from strength to strength from one release to the next, and Giant of the Mountain have done that. Their new release, Valley of the Rogue, is their best work yet, but it’s more than that. It’s an unusual and unusually good song that should open a forest of eyes.

Yes, the new release by this Texas two-piece is one song — but it’s also a nearly 20-minute long song. Although I haven’t done any scientific surveying, I’d guess that the idea of a 20-minute long song produces more groans than squeals of anticipation among most metal-lovers. And, no doubt, it takes some grapefruit-sized cojones (and ovaries) to attempt something of that magnitude. There are certainly far easier ways to go, especially if you haven’t yet so firmly embedded your place in metal history that you can do whatever the fuck you wish.

But I’m here to tell you that Giant of the Mountain have pulled it off. I suppose that a talented musician could go back through this song and syphon off riffs and motifs and figure out some way to convert it into multiple songs, but this really sounds like a work that was conceived – and works extremely well — as a unitary experience. It isn’t cleanly divided into movements, and it occupies its length naturally. It’s one fascinating head-rush of music, a chaotic symphony of the damned. Continue reading »

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