LISTMANIA: AN INVITATION

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  64 Responses »
Nov 222012
 

At least in my crazy country, Thanksgiving is a pivotal day in the year. Today, people who are lucky eat too much in the company of friends and/or family.  Tomorrow, people begin spending money they don’t have on presents people don’t need. And today also begins the countdown to the end of the year.  From now ’til then, people take stock of the year and begin making lists of the best and worst that the year has brought us.

In the world of metal, that means lists of the best albums (and sometimes the worst).  Back in 2009, when this site was just an ugly, smelly baby a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were the year’s best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. It’s just too damned much work, and I’m allergic to work. Fortunately, we have some other regular contributors who have more energy, and we’ll be publishing their year-end lists in December. We’ll also be publishing the year-end lists that major metal publications and “big platform” web sites are compiling; we started doing that yesterday with DECIBEL magazine’s list of 2012’s Top 40 Albums.

We’re also inviting some other folks to give us their lists in the form of guest posts for this site. And we’ll also have our annual list of the extreme metal songs we thought were the most infectious of the year. Soon, I’ll post an invitation for your song suggestions.

But we ain’t stopping there. If YOU have made your own list of the best metal albums you heard this year, we want to see it. Because we’re fucking nosy like that. (details about this invitation are after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL! – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC: THE MOST METAL METAL

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  17 Responses »
Nov 212012
 

(Here we have a guest post by NCS reader/commenter Old Man Windbreaker.)

Come, join One to gaze at the red hot glow of… uh… never mind. “Hot blonde blacksmith lady pounding hot metal” is all that needs to be said.

Old Man Windbreaker greets you over the worldwide web, in the manner that you imagine yourself being greeted over the worldwide web by a stranger (or Ziltoid). Greetings.

One recently found Oneself fascinated with the thought of metals – metallic chemical elements, that is. After all, if anything is metal, a metal surely is. With this in mind, One attempted to examine what it means to Oneself when One describes something as metal. One found that anything One considers metal deals with themes of death, destruction and darkness; or at least induces thoughts of such. So, one should simply examine history for the metal most closely associated with death. For reference (and annoyance) here is a picture of the periodic table of chemical elements.


Continue reading »

LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  51 Responses »
Nov 212012
 

Well, here we are, the day before Thanksgiving, and year-end listmania is already upon us. Shit, most people don’t even turn on Christmas lights and start playing carols until the day after Thanksgiving. But DECIBEL magazine has broken the ice. Their January 2013 issue is in the mail, with Phil Anselmo’s baleful stare gracing the cover, and inside is the magazine’s list of the Top 40 Albums of 2012.

We previously reported that DECIBEL named All We Love We Leave Behind by Converge as Album of the Year, and now we know which albums fill out the other 39 spots.

Half the fun of year-end lists is the controversy they generate. It’s virtually a given that no serious fan of metal is going to agree 100% with any other fan’s list of any year’s best albums, because, after all, being disagreeable is one of the hallmarks of metal culture. And so there will be disagreements with DECIBEL’s list. I have a few of my own already. But let’s also be clear: in my humble opinion, DECIBEL is far and away the best metal print mag in existence, I certainly respect the opinions of their writers, and I think this list is definitely worthy reading.

Apart from generating controversy and discussion, year-end lists are worthwhile because they’re a source of new discoveries, and at least in my case that’s certainly true of the DECIBEL list. It makes me want to track down some albums I overlooked.

After today, we’ll be continuing our own Listmania series at NCS — and there will be more details about that (and invitations for your lists) in a special Thanksgiving Day post tomorrow. For now, check the DECIBEL list after the jump . . . prefaced by a few random observations. Continue reading »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US: NCS TURNS THREE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, Welcome  103 Responses »
Nov 212012
 

NO CLEAN SINGING is three years old today. We opened the doors on November 21, 2009, and we’ve posted something (or several somethings) every damned day since then. Of course, the fact that we’re still here after three years doesn’t mean we’re worth a shit, only that we haven’t given up.

Whether this birthday is a cause for celebration or for mourning, depending on your perspective, it does seem like a good time to do three things: Explain who we are (because we seem to have accumulated a lot of new readers in the last year); take note of some accomplishments; and offer a few words of thanks.

WHO WE ARE

On birthdays it’s always nice to reflect upon your origins. This blog began as a protest against the kind of clean singing that was infiltrating metalcore music at the time (what temporarily happened to Bury Your Dead three years ago was the specific provocative incident). My two co-founders and I weren’t dead set against all metal with clean vocals — we announced from the beginning that there would be Exceptions to the Rule — we just found that the kind of extreme music we preferred usually didn’t include them.

Since then, we’ve expanded our horizons to include a much greater variety of metal, with more clean singing in the mix, though I’ve hung on to the site’s original name despite (or maybe because of) how confusing it may be to newcomers. My original co-founders fell by the wayside long ago, ultimately to be replaced by a cadre of regular writers and many irregular ones. Actually, to be brutally honest, we’re all pretty irregular. So’s the music. So, it’s a good fit. Continue reading »

POWERLESS, PART 3: NIGHTFALL, PINKISH BLACK, AND SAILLE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Nov 202012
 

For most of yesterday and last night, the NCS headquarters was running on generator power and brutally cut off from the internet due to a DSL failure produced by one of our lovely Puget Sound winter storms. At some point while yours truly was sleeping the sleep of the just, the internet connection came back on, and I spent a few hours this morning catching up on what I missed in the world of metal.

Turns out I missed a lot. This is the third of three posts in which I’m collecting the best of what I missed while the NCS HQ was cast into outer darkness yesterday. I’m running through the music in alphabetical order. Featured in this Part 3 are Nightfall, Saille, and Pinkish Black.

NIGHTFALL

Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants, the 2010 album from this long-running Greek band (now with an international cast), was my introduction to their music. It was a hell of an introduction: I became an immediate fan. Nightfall have now recorded the follow-up to that album, with the title Cassiopeia. The new one is due for release by Metal Blade on January 18, 2013, and pre-orders are being taken here. Yesterday brought the premiere of a lyric video for the album’s first single, “Oberon and Titania”. Continue reading »

POWERLESS, PART 2: BOSSK, CHAOS INCEPTION, AND DECADES OF DESPAIR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 202012
 

For most of yesterday and last night, the NCS headquarters was running on generator power and brutally cut off from the internet due to a DSL failure produced by one of our lovely Puget Sound winter storms. At some point while yours truly was sleeping the sleep of the just, the internet connection came back on, and I spent a few hours this morning catching up on what I missed in the world of metal.

Turns out I missed a lot. This is the second of three posts in which I’m collecting the best of what I missed while the NCS HQ was cast into outer darkness yesterday. I’m running through the music in alphabetical order. Featured in this Part 2 are Bossk, Chaos Inception, and Decades of Despair.

BOSSK

Bossk are a band from Kent in the UK whose name rings bells, but whose music was an undiscovered country to me until this morning. It appears that after releasing a couple of EPs, a DVD, and a split, the band called it quits in 2008 or 2009. However, Bossk revived earlier this year and have recorded a new single named “Pick Up Artist” that debuted in September and is still available for free download here.

I found out about the song earlier today and liked it immediately. It begins with pounding drums and sludgy chords and breaks into an up-tempo, post-metal bone-breaker with caustic vocals, lots of low-end punch, and swirling guitar leads. Past the half-way point, the hammering power abruptly stops and the song turns into an almost dreamlike flow of chiming notes and hypnotic rhythms. Damn cool music. Continue reading »

POWERLESS, PART 1: CONVERGE, ACRANIA, ACRIMONIOUS, AND AMENDFOIL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Nov 202012
 

I stayed home from work yesterday. I picked a bad day to do that. Yesterday afternoon we lost power on our island due to a really nasty day-long storm that raged through the Puget Sound area. We got the generator going, but the DSL service in our area went down at the same time the power did, and it didn’t come back before I went to bed. This morning, the power and the DSL were both back.

The experience vividly demonstrated how obsessive I’ve become about this fucking blog. Being disconnected from the internet for about 12 hours prevented me from keeping up with what was happening in the world of metal. I experienced feelings of anxiety and intense frustration. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

It got so bad that I drove in the darkness  through the driving wind and rain to the ferry terminal, where the power was on and an internet connection was available. I sat there for about 30 minutes, getting this morning’s first post ready to appear automatically and doing a bit of web surfing, and then decided I shouldn’t leave my wife alone in our powerless house any longer and went home. Fucking sick, that’s what I am. I need help of some kind.

This morning I spent hours catching up on what I missed while the net connection was down. I found dozens of interesting-looking things. Even after winnowing out the ones that turned out to be less interesting than they first appeared to be, I still have more shit to share than would manageably fit in one post, so I’m dividing them into three posts, of which this is the first. I’m going to cover the new music and videos in alphabetical order.

But before diving in, here’s one piece of breaking news: Year-end listmania is almost upon us, and it begins with DECIBEL magazine selecting All We Love We Leave Behind by Converge as its Album of the Year. Here’s the proof, as it appeared on the Converge Facebook page: Continue reading »

EARTHSHIP: “IRON CHEST”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Nov 202012
 

(NCS contributor Tyler Lowery provides this guest review of the new album by Earthship from Berlin.)

In due respect to Earthship’s new album Iron Chest, I’m not going to grease the wheels with any quippy one-liners or give any background at all. I’m just going to hit the ground at a sprint and let the music do its own talking. Earthship have released their second album, and it isn’t an exercise in extravagance or even beauty. It’s raw, no-nonsense sludge metal that would rather kick your teeth in than wow you with any fancy tricks, and because of that, it’s excellent.

The album starts with a bang and rarely slows down. The guitars shake and rumble through stripped-down leads and coherent riffs that have only one job — keep the movement gritty and propel the song into the next battering ram. The bass is fuzzier than a gerbil’s jewels, and the drums are loud and rudimentary. There aren’t tricky solos or self-indulgent post-rock inspired passages of layer upon layer of quiet sound that eventually arrives at something akin to satisfaction.

The leads are brilliant in their simplicity. You won’t find any weedly weedly here. The washed-out guitars play the part of caravan, carrying the music from the beginning to the end. Where your death metal lead guitar will slice through songs like a well sharpened knife, the guitars on Iron Chest present a more blunt approach. Each song is like a club coming swiftly down on the top of your skull. Continue reading »

STREAMS: INCANTATION, HELL MILITIA, UNCLE ACID & THE DEADBEATS, AND AEON

 Metal News  1 Response »
Nov 192012
 

 

This is just a quick note to let you know that four albums are now streaming in full at various locations around the interhole. All four of them are definitely worth checking out.

INCANTATION

Incantation’s ninth album, Vanquish in Vengeance, will be released on November 27 by Listenable Records. It’s their first album since Primordial Domination was released in 2006. It was mixed and mastered Dan Swanö at Unisound. It sounds vicious. It’s streaming exclusively at DECIBEL’s online site, which you can find via this link.

HELL MILITIA

We featured these French marauders not long ago. Their new album, Jacob’s Ladder, is due for release on November 20 via Season of Mist. Today, Brooklyn Vegan began streaming the album in full.  It can be ordered here now. It’s really good. The SoundCloud player at Brooklyn vegan is also embeddable, and so you can check it out here right after the jump. Continue reading »

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