November 2016 - Page 3 of 11 - NO CLEAN SINGING

LISZT: DANTE SYMPHONY (1857)

Nov 232016

(We welcome a guest writer known as Lonegoat, a name many of you will recognize as the Texas-based necroclassical pianist behind Goatcraft, whose latest album Yersinia Pestis was released earlier this year by I, Voidhanger.)

Liszt crossed the boundaries of both romanticism and modernism, and it’s futile to cast him into a specific period of classical music because he was driven by his will to impose himself beyond the categorical spheres of the music at the time. His ingenuity in composition was matched only by his virtuosic abilities which gained him much fanfare, much like how the surface aesthetics of something draws the bystander in and wows them, and with subsequent discernment, reveal a world to discover that’s seemingly beautiful and terrifying.

It can be said that Dante’s Inferno was created to scare the beejezus out of people by thrusting their intellects into hellish landscapes, and Liszt did indeed grant it a power to do so even more. The man was his own full symphony on piano, and when he spent his time on his symphonic works, a logogenesis emerged. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: NEGATIVE SYMBOLS — “WITHOUT VOICES”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 232016

Berlin-based Benedikt Willnecker has performed on stage as the bassist for Der Weg einer Freiheit and was also bassist and songwriter for Ära Krâ, both of them bands we’ve praised repeatedly at our site, but he has now struck out on his own with a solo instrumental project called Negative Symbols. On November 30, Negative Symbols will release its debut album Without Voices, and we have a full stream of this riveting new release for you today.

The album is a substantial 47 minutes in length, but it’s so engrossing that the pace of time seems to change as you listen, passing in a flash or perhaps even standing still. Stripped of vocals and lyrics, it evokes direct emotional responses in an interplay between the changing moods of the music and the experiences that have shaped where you live in your own head. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, HIDEOUS DIVINITY, CROWHURST, VOIDTHRONE, CRYPTICUS

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Nov 222016

I bet you thought we were finished posting for this Tuesday. Nope, I just got waylaid by my day job on the way to finishing this thing, but now having surmounted those obstacles, I give you this round-up.

This collection a bit different from the norm, in that I’m including a couple of items that aren’t hot off the presses. But we’ll begin with two that are, and then conclude with a new Megamix treat from Crypticus that you probably won’t hear anywhere else.

MORS PRINCIPIUM EST

The artwork up there is by one of my favorite metal artists, Berlin-based painter Eliran Kantor. I’ve already posted it on our site’s Facebook page and made it the cover photo on my personal page. How could I not put it here as well? The artist describes it as “an apocalyptic homage to Vermeer’s ‘The Astronomer'” — and here’s what that famous work (completed in 1668 and on display at the Louvre in Paris) looks like: Continue reading »

ONI: “IRONSHORE”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 7 Responses »

Nov 222016

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album by the band Oni.)

Some of you old-timers might remember that I was super-hyped on Black Crown Initiate. I enthusiastically reviewed their debut EP and while I didn’t review their first album, I absolutely loved it. 2016 rolled around, and Selves We Cannot Forgive rolled around and it was… not the BCI I was hyped on. The album was a complete disappointment in fact, and I was extremely, extremely dismayed that the band had already seemingly fallen off the horse. We’ll see what the future holds, but as to what made me lose faith in the band, it was their conversion to a rather directionless, meandering style of songwriting combined with riffs that were barely riffs.

Oni are poised, already, to kick Black Crown Initiate off their own throne where they once brandished a distinctive brand of technical, groovy, yet poppy and melodic progressive death metal. The two bands share many similarities, but with Oni taking it a step further and adding even more influences and elements. I don’t think you can say Oni sound like BCI, but to my ears they have definitely taken the BCI formula and brought it to the next level, whether doing so consciously or not. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SITHTER — “CHAOTIC FIEND”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 222016

Chaotic Fiend is the name of the new album by the band Sithter from Tokyo, Japan, and it’s also the name of the album’s opening track. The song, in the band’s words, is “our invitation from hell”. And so it is.

While rooted in the traditions of sludge/doom bands such as Grief, Eyehategod and Buzzoven, Sithter push their music into realms where psychosis, violence, and psychedelic hallucinations reign. They’re bone-breakers and conjurors, equally capable of bending necks and administering psychoactive poisons straight to the bloodstream. The album’s title track, which we’re bringing your way, is a good example. Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “SHRINES OF PARALYSIS”

Album Reviews 12 Responses »

Nov 222016

(DGR reviews the new album by New Zealand’s Ulcerate.)

There’s a certain sort of apocalyptic reverie one takes on as a state of mind when reviewing an Ulcerate disc. The now long-running New Zealand-based death metal three-piece have made a career out of creating music that sounds tailor-made for the end of the world. When the Earth’s crust is rended asunder and magma comes shooting up into the air, Ulcerate are one of the groups that I am expecting to provide the mood music, like the band playing on the Titanic, on a planetary scale.

Keeping in mind that among the group’s discography are albums with names like Everything Is Fire and The Destroyers Of All, you can see why that description might feel apt. Ulcerate play a deafening form of death metal, one that is largely cavernous and often cataclysmic in its impact. They have grown in popularity over the years and have become a cultural landmark in the death metal scene as a whole. They are able to channel utter destruction in their sound and have done so for quite some time.

Only a few groups out there get to name a song “Weight Of Emptiness” and have it feel like it was built to fit that song, not just because it sounded cool. The same goes for Ulcerate’s newly released album Shrines Of Paralysis, which came out at the tail end of October, three years after the release of their last album Vermis. Shrines continues Ulcerate’s trend of auditory destruction, a slow death march to oblivion, and over the course of an hour it’s hard not to feel like there is some sort of darkness spreading through your veins. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KHONSU (S. GRONBECH)

Interviews 6 Responses »

Nov 212016

(TheMadIsraeli interview S. Gronbech, the man behind Norway’s Khonsu, whose excellent new album The Xun Protectorate we reviewed not once, but twice.)

Tell us about yourself, about Khonsu and what made you decide to start this project?

Well, to go really far back in time, my father has always been a hobby musician and when growing up me and my brother Arnt “Obsidian C.” Gronbech from Keep of Kalessin played around with his instruments and recording equipment from a very young age. He had several guitars – both acoustic and electric — a keyboard, and piano, and I think I was 6-7 when I first recorded some of my own music on my his 4 track tape recorder. So listening to music and the joy of making music has always been a part of my family, and without this early environment I would probably never have been a musician today.

My father also felt it would be important to keep learning to play instruments by going to professional lessons, but I didn’t like it very much and he more or less had to force me. I have never been interested in learning to play something someone else has already made, so I came to most lessons unprepared and had not rehearsed. So eventually I quit. I’ve always preferred to improvise and be creative on my own. So I actually have very little knowledge of music theory, and most of the time I have no idea what the chords or scales I am playing are even called. Continue reading »

OSKOREIEN: “ALL TOO HUMAN” (A REVIEW AND AN INTERVIEW)

Interviews, Reviews No Responses »

Nov 212016

(We are very fortunate to welcome back our friend Justin Collins (who spends most of his writing time over at Metal Bandcamp) with this guest review of the new album by Oskoreien, accompanied by a very interesting short interview of Oskoreien’s creator, as well as Justin’s equally interesting thoughts about the album’s subject matter.)

It was not even two months ago that we got to reacquaint ourselves with Oskoreien — the excellent but long-quiet black metal project of Jay Valena. Oskoreien contributed two songs to a split with Botanist. (Read my babble about it here.) I, for one, was very pleased to hear Oskoreien again, and was pleasantly surprised to listen to Valena try his hand at a decidedly more electronic sound than what he’d given us on his black-metal-meets-acoustic full-length. So you can imagine my delight when I learned that Oskoreien would be putting out a second album, All Too Human, hot on the heels on that split.

What kind of direction would Valena take this time? My first introduction to the album was a one-sentence description that Islander passed on to me from Valena, stating that, “It’s a concept album about free will inspired by the story of Charles Whitman.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: STENCH PRICE — “LIVING FUMES”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Nov 212016

When Austin Weber introduced our early-September premiere of a song and video from the new album by Stench Price, he referred to them as a “supergroup on an obscene scale” with a “highly adventurous” approach to grindcore that has enabled them “to rise above the majority of garden-variety grind in the modern era”. As further proof of the truths in those statements, we have another new Stench Price song and video for you today. The name of this track is “Living Fumes“, and it features Dan Lilker of the legendary Brutal Truth.

Stench Price is the brainchild of Siberian composer and bassist Peter Shallmin (Escapethecult, Kamlath), and in aid of his nefarious cause he enlisted not only Danny Lilker but also these other notable names from around the world: Continue reading »

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… BLACK METAL

Mosh Pit 51 Responses »

Nov 212016

(Here we have an opinion piece by Andy Synn, and as always we welcome your comments.)

As most of you should know by now, I generally love Black Metal. Of course I don’t love every band or every particular sub-species of the style, but overall there’s just something about the music and the ethos of the genre – an intensity, an atmosphere, a sense of stubborn individuality — that really speaks to me.

I also particularly love the fact that Black Metal, although denigrated by many for being too insular and restrictive (and, in fact, also celebrated by many for the former), is actually one of the most musically open and creative genres in Metal when you really dig into it.

From the most Avant-Garde to the most Punk, from the most Melodic to the most harshly Industrial, from the Post/Progressive/Atmospheric side of things, to the punishing panzer-style of pure blasting blasphemy… and more… to my mind the core essence of Black Metal is a refusal to be restricted or defined by the expectations of others. It’s about freedom and the ability to “do what thou wilt…”

But, of course, that itself raises some problems. Continue reading »

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