August 2016 - Page 3 of 11 - NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 3): THY CATAFALQUE, WALDGEFLÜSTER, KAECK, OBITUARY, PREDATORY LIGHT, EAT THEIR OWN, LORD IMPOTENT, SUMA

Aug 262016

As I explained yesterday, what you’re reading now was supposed to be Part 2 of a two-part post that we began with a selection of new songs compiled by DGR. Before I could finish this thing, some new tracks by Meshuggah and Asphyx appeared, and I decided to throw those at you right away. (Speaking of big names, a new In Flames song also appeared (here), but it mainly depresses me.)

Before something else happens to cause further delay, let’s get into the following new music and videos from eight bands — five of whom are old favorites, plus three new discoveries. (Yes, this is what happens when a round-up is delayed — it grows like a bramble of thorns.)

THY CATAFALQUE

In mid-July we premiered the first advance track from Meta, the new album by Thy Catafalque. It was a heavy beast, maybe even a surprisingly heavy beast for those who may have formed their expectations for this album based on last year’s Sgùrr. The surprises don’t end there. For example, I can now share with you another song that premiered elsewhere yesterday: “10^(-20) Ångström“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EYE OF SOLITUDE — “CENOTAPH”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Aug 262016

(Grant Skelton reviews the new album by the UK band Eye of Solitude and brings us the premiere of a full album stream.)

I’ve truly grown to love sad metal. A prevalent stereotype among the folks who do not understand our beloved genre is that all metal fans are depressed. Yeah, even suicidal. But sorrow, despair, depression, and even suicidal ideation are not unique to metal fans.

In a study published in Frontiers In Psychology, Ai Kawakami intended to find out just why people like sad music. While Kawakami and his fellow researchers used classical pieces for their study, the result is what counts. The participants in the study enjoyed listening to sad music. “Musical emotion,” Kawakami said, “encompasses both the felt emotion that the music induces in the listener and the perceived emotion that the listener judges the music to express.” (Find out more here.)

Certain kinds of metal are for partying and abusing your liver. Other kinds probably give many of us a healthy outlet for aggression so that we don’t wind up in a padded cell. But some metal — and I definitely place London’s Eye Of Solitude in this category — give us something else. I was recently given the pleasure of listening to their latest album Cenotaph. And what exactly does this album give the listener? In a single word, I’d say humanity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SWAMPCULT — “CHAPTER III — AL-AZIF NECRONOMICON”

Premieres 1 Response »

Aug 252016

For very good and well-proven reasons, the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft has inspired the music of countless metal bands across a range of different genres, but few have embraced the great man’s writing quite like the Dutch duo SwampCult have. Their new album The Festival — which will be released on October 2 by Transcending Obscurity — is based entirely on a Lovecraft story that bears the same name, and the album traces that story from start to finish, with each song representing a different chapter in the unfolding narrative. In addition, the album will be accompanied by a special story card for each song.

Today we have for you a stream of The Festival’s third chapter, a song called “Al-Azif Necronomicon“, along with a close-up image of the story card accompanying that track: Continue reading »

ODDITIES: A LIST ASSEMBLED BY NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Aug 252016

(Neill Jameson (Krieg) joins us again with another compilation of recommended music, this time focusing on some metal releases that don’t easily fit into established genre definitions. To check out the other playlists Neill has brought us, they’re collected here.)

Listening to the new Urfaust that’s coming out shortly really got me to thinking a bit, which doesn’t happen too often. The subject of the hamster wheel turning in my head was bands that fall outside of a specific subgenre but are still in the metal realm. Outsider metal I suppose. Bands that are still just as dark and carry the same emotional weight but can’t be stuck inside “black” or “death” metal strictly, probably in academic “nerd” terms or whatever you’re calling them in the comments section of popular metal sites you claim not to read. Anyway, a few of them came to mind which I wanted to share, so I’m sitting in my office writing this as a proper way to avoid reality for a bit, much like these bands are also a proper way to accomplish the same thing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): MESHUGGAH AND ASPHYX

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Aug 252016

Earlier today I posted Part 1 of a planned two-part Seen and Heard round-up of new music, with the first Part prepared by my comrade DGR. What you’re looking at now isn’t the Part 2 that I had planned to write, because while I was toiling away on that, Meshuggah and Asphyx released songs from their new albums. Rather than tack them on to my original selection of cuts for Part 2, which is already pretty large, I decided to throw them at you now, and convert my original Part 2 into Part 3. Unless something else pops up and Part 3 becomes Part 4, because I haven’t yet figured out how to make time stand still.

MESHUGGAH

The title of Meshuggah’s eighth album is The Violent Sleep of Reason. Nuclear Blast plans to release it on October 7. That’s obviously a big deal, given how vastly influential Meshuggah has become over the years, not to mention the high quality of their music. The first single from the album, “Born In Dissonance” premiered not long ago at Rolling Stone, along with an interview of drummer Tomas Haake, who as usual wrote the lyrics for the song. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HAUNTED

Interviews 3 Responses »

Aug 252016

(Comrade Aleks returns to NCS with another interesting interview. This time he talks with the Italian band Haunted.)

Haunted appeared in Italian Catania recently, and Twin Earth Records has already released their self-titled debut album. I was lucky enough to get it beforehand, and I must tell you – it’s something! Take Windhand stoner doom and crop their endless monotonous riffs, retaining those hypnotic female vocals and overall compositional frame; then add some charms and… and whatever else Haunted puts into their songs?… Yes, I had to find out their secret ingredients and I welcome you to share the pleasure of digging deeper in the Haunted territories. The whole band is here to tell about their brand new work. Continue reading »

LATEST ROUND OF BANDS ANNOUNCED FOR MARYLAND DEATHFEST 2017

Metal News 9 Responses »

Aug 252016

About an hour ago the organizers of Maryland Deathfest announced another round of bands confirmed to appear at the 2017 edition of the event. Here they are:

Batushka (Poland) (exclusive U.S. appearance)
Birdflesh (Sweden)
Chepang
Cognitive
Die Choking
English Dogs (UK)
Exhumed
Genocide Pact
Gorgasm
Malevolent Creation
Stormtroopers of Beer (official S.O.D. cover band featuring Dan Lilker and Jocke & Adde/General Surgery)
Suppression
UxDxS (Denmark) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): ULCERATE, VADER, KINNEFRET, KUNSTZONE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Aug 252016

DGR volunteered for round-up duty while the oaf who usually does this was furiously scribbling introductions to premieres over the last 48 hours. Said oaf is now working on his own round-up contribution, which will become Part 2 of this post later today. Meanwhile, here are DGR’s picks for noteworthy new songs and videos that emerged in recent days.

ULCERATE — EXTINGUISHED LIGHT

If you heard an immense boom recently and had to look around and wonder what the fuck was that?, it was likely due to the release of a new song by abyss-dwelling death metallers Ulcerate, from their October 28th album Shrines Of Paralysis. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: DAWN OF DEMISE — “THE SUFFERING”

Premieres 1 Response »

Aug 242016

On August 26, Unique Leader will detonate a brutality bomb, releasing a new album named The Suffering by the Danish punishers in Dawn of Demise. The album arrives in the 13th year of the band’s career and is the one about which they are most proud. When you hear it, it won’t be difficult to understand why they feel that way — and hear it you shall, because this post includes the debut of a full album stream a few short days before the official release.

The album includes 11 tracks, which were engineered, mixed, and mastered by Tue Madsen (The Haunted, Behemoth, Aborted, Leng Tch’e, Moonspell, et al) at his Antfarm Studios. And while the Unique Leader label has been home to some of the world’s most blisteringly technical death metal bands, you’ll find this album was cut from a different cloth. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VINTERBRIS — “GAZING AT A FALLEN SKY”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Aug 242016

In 2014 we wrote repeatedly about a superb album called Solace by Norway’s Vinterbris. What first drew our attention to the album even before hearing the music was the artwork created for Solace by an artist we greatly admire, Kim Holm. In addition to a cover piece, Holm created separate illustrations for each song on the album (which we collected in one place here). Having been lured into the album by this artwork, we found the music to be a treasure as well. We even included a song from Solace on our list of 2014’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

We now have a fine occasion to revisit Solace because Triton’s Orbit will be reissuing the album next month in a slipcase edition featuring Kim Holm’s artwork, and in advance of that release Vinterbris have also made available their first lyric video, for a song on Solace called “Gazing At A Fallen Sky” — which we are happily premiering below. Continue reading »

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