December 2016 - Page 4 of 12 - NO CLEAN SINGING

HOLIDAY CHEER: SVART CROWN, DAEMONIAC, TURIA, TÓXICA, DESTRIERS, UNDRASK

Dec 242016

Once upon a time everything seemed to slow down during the holiday season… or at least everything other than the consumerist frenzy of gift-buying. But now in many ways the final weeks of the year seem as busy and eventful as all the other weeks, both at work and almost everywhere else. This year we even got announcements of a new nuclear arms race that no one asked for — what better way to celebrate peace on earth and good will to men!

I did notice a fall-off yesterday in the flood of messages arriving in the NCS e-mail in-box, but there were still a lot of new-music announcements, and I found even more in my Facebook news feed. There’s a risk that much of what I saw and heard will be overlooked, with many metal-oriented sites and blogs taking time off and many fans diverted from their phones and computers by holiday activities. So I decided, for the hell of it, to devote this Christmas Eve round-up exclusively to news and music streams that appeared (or that I discovered) for the first time yesterday.

Mind you, what follows isn’t everything I noticed, or even everything I enjoyed. I’ve made these selections to provide diversity of sound, and I’ve saved a few nasty things for tomorrow because NCS always does its best to reduce Christmas Day to a smoldering ash heap — praise and glory to Sol Invictus! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABSCESSION — “THE FINAL FURNACE”

Premieres 1 Response »

Dec 242016

On this 24th day of December, 2016, the thoughts of some people are turning to contemplations of peace on earth and good will to men (and women). Abscession are more intent on reducing the planet to a smoldering cinder. Their objectives are made manifest in the title of their new single, “The Final Furnace“, and even more undeniably in the music itself.

The song, which is being released in digital form today, is the first track from a forthcoming album that bears the working title Rot of Ages, and we present it to you in the form of a lyric video. It comes emblazoned with cover art painted by Mattias Frisk, frontman of Vanhelgd and an artist responsible for artwork on behalf of such other fine bands as Ghost, Miasmal, and Entrapment. Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 5)

LISTMANIA 2016 8 Responses »

Dec 232016

(DGR created year-end lists of great length. He wrote many words about each listed item. Your humble editor feared that the site would collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it reared its bulk in a single post, and therefore decided to split it up, with one part appearing each day this week. Follow these links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. And guess what? There’s still one more part left to come after this one.)

You knew this was coming, or you would if you had been around here the last few years. It’s been a long-standing tradition here at NCS that when the Listmania series happens, I take the filter completely off and just produce a gigantic screed of words that is occasionally interrupted with album art, music streams, and album titles with little numbers next to them. This year is no different.

In my attempt to rationalize an enormous year of music, I’ve capped my list at fifty albums, ranked in order of whichever numbers my fingers were closest to on the keyboard. On top of that, I have my usual small collection of not-metal stuff, some fun stuff, my list of shame, a likely happy face where number 8 should be because I’m a moron and put the numbers in front of a parenthesis and WordPress translates that into an emoticon, and my personal favorite award that I hand out each year.

The 50-album list continues today, counting down the top 10. What’s left after that will come your way on Monday. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TEMPLE OF DEMIGOD — “THE GREAT OLD ONES”

Premieres, Reviews 3 Responses »

Dec 232016

The Lovecraftian mythos of The Great Old Ones can be musically interpreted in different ways, and within the realm of metal it has been. But the overpowering horror and ancient, terrible power of Lovecraft’s creations seem to cry out for the grandeur of a symphonic treatment. Others have attempted such a thing; few have been as successful as Temple of Demigod in the new album we’re premiering today, which boldly takes The Great Old Ones as its name.

The great peril of all symphonic metal is its tendency in the hands of many bands to become cheesy, or simply too monochromatic and uninventive to add much of worth to the underlying metal elements of the music, or so incessantly bombastic that it tends to produce a mind-numbing effect over the length of an album. These are all pitfalls that Temple of Demigod masterfully avoids, and the success is all the more impressive because The Great Old Ones is the work of only one person. Continue reading »

KRALLICE: “PRELAPSARIAN”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 7 Responses »

Dec 232016

(Andy Synn has pounced with alacrity upon the just-released Prelapsarian by Krallice and prepared this timely review.)

Oh you poor, deluded fools… did you really think we were done with reviews, simply because we’re currently mired in the depths of Listmania? And did you really think that I was done writing, just because my week-long list-stravaganza, was finally done?

Perish the thought.

In truth I’d actually intended to get more writing done this week, but I ended up being busy practically all day (and all night) Tuesday, and somewhat hungover on Wednesday… so this is my first real chance to sit down and get my brain back into gear. Worry not though, as I have at least one more review, and this month’s edition of The Synn Report, planned for next week.

But, in the meantime, let’s cast our eyes (and ears) over Prelapsarian, the latest dose of extravantgarde extremity from the ever-prolific Krallice. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: MATHCORE, MATH-ROCK MANIA, AND INSTRU-METAL (ANOTHER YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN WEBER)

LISTMANIA 2016 2 Responses »

Dec 232016

(This is the third part of Austin Weber’s four-part year-end list series. To check out Part 1, which focused on variants of death metal, go here, and to see the lists focusing on black metal and grind, click this.)

As 2016 comes to an end, I remain quite thankful to Islander for allowing me to contribute here over the last few years. I really believe in this site and our mission of sharing more of what’s out there than most other sites. So with that in mind, if anyone about to intake this hasn’t seen my prior year-end lists here at NCS, I try to do something different than most people.

My goal is to bring you a massive alternative list of my favorite lesser-known releases of the year, divided into several parts. Which means I won’t post a lot of releases that you see on other lists. Not because I didn’t dig a lot of them, but because you already know about them and will be seeing a lot of the same names being repeated elsewhere.

Undoubtedly some of the releases will be ones you’ll know or heard mentioned in passing, but hopefully you’ll find more new bands and music you were unaware of overall. Quotes that appear below the following releases were pulled from my reviews, multi-band articles, and song premieres from music covered here at NCS and my 2016 posts from Metal-Injection. You’ll also find some new mini write-ups for releases I didn’t get a chance to cover anywhere this year, but loved as well. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: THE TOP 10 SONGS I HEARD FOR THE FIRST TIME YESTERDAY

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 20 Responses »

Dec 222016

This time of year there are always a few people who ask whether I’m going to post my own list of the year’s best releases. Again, the answer is no, because making the effort would be too paralyzing. I have enough trouble deciding whether to wash my underoos or let them ferment for another week.

On the other hand, I do kind of feel left out of the year-end LISTMANIA frenzy, so I thought I’d put together a Top 10 list, but one that’s a bit easier for my overtaxed brain to process. These are the 10 best songs I heard for the first time yesterday.

Hey, don’t laugh! It wasn’t that easy — I listened to more than 20 new songs yesterday, so I did have to make some decisions. Of course, I couldn’t be bothered to rank these 10 tracks; there’s a limit to how far I’m going with this.

SHAARIMOTH

The first song is “Faceless Queen of Bloodstained Dreams”, which is from an album I’ve been anxiously awaiting — the second full-length by Norway’s Shaarimoth, which is arriving more than a decade after the first one. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A TOP TEN LIST FROM TODD MANNING

LISTMANIA 2016 6 Responses »

Dec 222016

(We’ve rolled out some very long year-end lists, with more of them to come, but this one by NCS contributor Todd Manning is a compact, though varied, 10 items in length. Enjoy.)

As years go, 2016 has been a real kick-in-the-balls, and further down the road we probably won’t talk too much about the year in music, except maybe about everyone that died. That being said, it was the first year I really threw myself into writing about music on a regular basis and I have to thank No Clean Singing, AvantGarde-Metal.com, and Burning Ambulance for being willing to publish my semi-coherent ramblings. Doing a top ten list seems like a nice culmination to my efforts and a chance to interrogate all the music I’ve heard and see what really made an impression.

This list is as much for myself as it is for anyone else, though it has been a challenge to force myself to rank all the music I’ve heard this year. By my estimation, I’ve heard approximately 115 full 2016 releases, primarily from Metal and Hardcore. I can’t tell you how many individual songs I’ve heard, fragments of albums, and so on. It seems like a lot, but I’m pretty sure there are others who have listened to quite a few more.

I sketched out this list quite a few times and it kept changing from day to day. I decided it was time to just finish the damn thing, but will of course list a few runner-ups as well. So without further ado… Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 4)

LISTMANIA 2016 6 Responses »

Dec 222016

The 50-album list continues today, continuing the countdown through No. 11: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: CVLLED KVLT COLD CVTS AND INTELLI-GRIND (MORE YEAR-END LISTS FROM AUSTIN WEBER)

LISTMANIA 2016 10 Responses »

Dec 222016

(Yesterday we began the roll-out of Austin Weber’s year-end NCS lists with a feature focused on variants of death metal, and here we present his second list, with a focus on black metal and grind.)

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