LISTMANIA 2018: A YEAR-END LIST FROM GRANT SKELTON

 LISTMANIA 2018  12 Responses »
Jan 032019
 

 

(We present a 2018 year-end list by NCS contributor Grant Skelton, which consists of 15 miserable, mutilating, and mesmerizing titles, not all of which are metal.)

Salutations fellow metalheads! My choices this year were a bit more of a mixed bag than in previous years. Per our usual MO here at No Clean Singing, I tried to focus on bands whose albums seemed to slip into the proverbial cracks. I hope you find something you like here, and by all means leave me recommendations in the comments. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLODSKAM — “ROUTINES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 032019
 

 

How bands come to exist and the connections between their lives and their music is usually of only secondary importance (if important at all) to the appreciation of the music itself. Yet in some cases it proves interesting, and might even shed a bit of light on what we’re hearing, and this is such a case.

We are told that the origins of the Swedish black metal band Blodskam dates back to 1998 when the two brothers Aghora and Dödfödd (as they have named themselves) “decided it was time to put the family madness on public display”. But rather than fighting in public to the dismay of their parents (or maybe they did that, too), they began writing music. But it took quite a long time for the bad seeds planted then to bear fruit, “due to other musical engagements, and some mental health issues”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEOLITH

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 032019
 

 

(Comrade Aleks returns to NCS in 2019 with more interviews, beginning with this one, in which he talks with Levi, vocalist of the long-running Polish black/death band Neolith, who are now at work on a fifth album.)

Neolith is a pretty old band from Poland. They started as a death/doom outfit in 1991, and kept a down-tuned vibe for almost a decade. A series of demo-tapes and the full-length Igne Natura Renovabitur Integra (INRI) were influenced by the UK Doom Trinity’s stuff to some degree. However Neolith’s anti-Christian message demanded a more suitable form of exposure, and they’ve done it in a blasphemous death/black metal way from their second album Immortal (2004) through the fourth one, Izi.Im.Kurnu-Ki (2015).

The band are half-way to new work, I Am The Way, and we had a nice talk with Neolith’s initial vocalist Grzegorz Lukowski, a.k.a. Levi. Continue reading »

DGR’S QUEST TO TURN 2018 INTO A COFFEE TABLE BOOK – ISSUE FOUR: 20-11

 LISTMANIA 2018  12 Responses »
Jan 032019
 

 

(Here’s the fourth installment of DGR’s 5-part year-end effort to sink our site beneath an avalanche of words and a deluge of music. The concluding Top 10 will appear tomorrow.)

A confession: For a long time the only words in this whole writeup prior to me breaking the whole thing into five parts and actually listing the bands was just a whole bunch of swear words. Even though I’ve been doing this for nine years now I still will occasionally try things I learned in writing classes over the years or even some things I’ve read about since then. Stream-of-consciousness writing is one of those, but the only thing I’ve learned from doing that in the context of talking about albums of the year is that I’ve assembled a pretty neat collection of permutations of the word ‘fuck’ that I’ve gathered from popular culture over the years.

It was at this point that I began going back through our review archives so that I could even remember what came out this year. Metal-Archives is also a tremendous help in that regard, since I often can’t remember what I talked about in January unless I’ve listened to it since then. It’s also one of my favorite things to do because I get to have a laugh at how far back I have to go in the segment tagged ‘Reviews’ on the site. I know that we’ve missed more than a few albums, but as it stands now,  our first review of something from 2018 is about forty pages back. And there can be anywhere between five to fifteen albums per page of results — depending on how we grouped them for each article.

I know that’s just reflective of the ‘relentless march of hashtag content’ that the internet has become, but it still makes me smile. If I ever need a reminder that heavy metal is — somehow, despite all the odds and all the editorials about rock music dying — a lively as all hell genre, that’s enough for me. I guess there will always be room for cathartic release via loud instruments, or the various experimentations outside of the tradional music sphere to which this genre loans itself. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HOSTILIAN — “REGRESSIVE INSTINCTS” (DRUM PLAYTHROUGH)

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Jan 022019
 

 

In the summer of 2017 the Indian metal band Hostilian released their debut EP, Monolith, and now they’re just roughly two weeks away from the release of a second EP, this new one entitled Catalyst. It’s a four-track affair exploring dark themes concerning the human condition, in which the worst of our instincts are also seen as the most indomitable, driving us to become a catalyst for the ultimate destruction of life on Earth.

The new EP’s closing track, “Regressive Instincts“, is the subject of a play-through video featuring Hostilian drummer Rajiv Kumar, and it’s our pleasure to premiere it today in advance of Catalyst‘s January 18 release. Continue reading »

DGR’S QUEST TO TURN 2018 INTO A COFFEE TABLE BOOK – ISSUE THREE: 30-21

 LISTMANIA 2018  1 Response »
Jan 022019
 

 

(Here’s the third installment of DGR’s 5-part year-end effort to sink our site beneath an avalanche of words and a deluge of music.)

Now that I’ve broken it out from the tremendous bulk of the rest of my year-end collective, I’m amused by how much world traveling this specific subset of the list does. It spends a surprising amount of time in France (which has done very well for itself these past few years), some time in the States, some time in Australia, and even manages to touch base with both Canada and Sweden for a few. It is also probably the most varied intsallment so far — the tech-death crews make a strong play here, but you’ll also start seeing some of the prefix-core resurgence that happened recently, as well as some ugly-as-fuck grind (on two fronts). And then there’s however in the hell Author & Punisher might be described.

Oh, did I spoil that Author & Punisher is making an appearance here? Whoops. Well too bad, Beastland is fucking killer but if you want to know why you’ll have to read on and see just where the San Diego noise-engineer found himself. There’s still a lot of list left to go, and knowing me, at least two-thousand more words of intro paragraph left to be written somewhere so let’s get the third chunk of this motherfucker going. Continue reading »

A SWARM OF THE SUN: “THE WOODS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Jan 022019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Swedish group A Swarm of the Sun, which will be released by Version Studio Recodings on January 11th.)

After debating with myself for a while I’ve decided that the best way to kick off my 2019 at NCS is by… covering some minimalist, melancholy, and mostly instrumental Post-Rock where the vocals, sparingly used yet sublime, are delivered in a plaintive, cleanly-sung croon.

Who, me, contrarian?

In all seriousness though, A Swarm of the Sun’s previous album, The Rifts, was easily one of the richest, most rewarding musical experiences of 2015, so much so that I was compelled to include it in my Critical Top Ten of the year alongside other such impressive entries from bands like Sulphur Aeon, Bell Witch, and Alkaloid.

Hence you can probably imagine just how eagerly (and impatiently) I’ve been waiting for the band to produce this follow-up, which is scheduled to hit the streets (and the internet) next Friday. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2019 — FULL LINE-UP ANNOUNCED (TICKETS ON SALE NOW)

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jan 022019
 

 

For the third year in a row, NCS is proud to be involved in the planning and presentation of Northwest Terror Fest, which will take place in Seattle, Washington, on May 30 – June 1, 2019, with a special pre-fest show on May 29th. Yesterday NWTF announced the complete festival line-up and launched on-line ticket sales (following an offering of discounted early-bird passes last fall that sold out fast).

As in the festival’s first two years, the 2019 event will be spread across three venues. Each night performances will rotate back and forth between the main stage at Neumos and the cozier confines of Barboza, which adjoins Neumos. Soon after one band finishes at one venue, the next band will start at the other, so that there are no overlaps or conflicts, and it will be possible for ticket-holders to see every band on the line-up. And then, following the performances at those venues, there will be additional performances at the Highline bar to extend the fun past midnight.

The three main nights of the 2019 edition of the festival will be headlined by Cirith Ungol, Wolfbrigade, and Pig Destroyer at Neumos, and by Dawn Ray’d, Iskra, and Khôrada at Barboza. The “after parties” at Highline over the three nights will include shows by Bongzilla, Indian, Bongripper, and more. In addition, the pre-fest show on May 29th at Highline will feature a “quiet” set by Thou, an acoustic performance by Austin Lunn of Panopticon, and a solo synth set by Slasher Dave of Acid Witch. Continue reading »

ANDKRISTNI 2018

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 022019
 

 

(On the 21st of December, the Andkristni 2018 festival took place at the Gaukurinn venue in Reykjavik, Iceland, and our Norwegian friend eiterorm made the trip west for it. He was kind enough to share with us the following report, photos, and music streams.)

A few weeks back I saw an online poster for Andkristni 2018, and took notice of the eminent lineup for this one-day festival, with several bands I had never seen live before. A little later, the event came up in a conversation with a friend, and we were both curious about what it would be like to see these bands live. It was then that I thought: “Hey, I have a day of vacation left. I should go to Reykjavík.” And just like that, the decision was made.

Now, I’ve never written a show report before, and I rarely ever read them myself, because they simply don’t interest me. When I mentioned to Islander that I was going to attend Andkristni 2018, however, he asked me if I wanted to write a report for the blog, preferably with some photos from the night. I declined the idea of doing a publishable report, but offered to make a personal summary for him instead. Then several other friends made similar requests, and now look what happened – I ended up writing a full report anyway. (Unfortunately, the photos in the report are mediocre at best, but I didn’t want to experience the concerts through my phone screen and therefore spent little time taking photos.) Continue reading »

PHLEBOTOMIZED: “DEFORMATION OF HUMANITY”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 022019
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new comeback album by the Dutch symphonic death/doom band Phlebotomized (who were the subject of an interview at our site last August), which is set for release on January 7th by Hammerheart Records.)

There is a good argument to be made that Phlebotomized are singlehandedly responsible for the genre we know as symphonic death metal.  It’s hard to imagine that bands like Fleshgod Apocalypse, Septicflesh (especially Septicflesh, the stylistic parallels are there), and the like would have turned out the way they did without Immense Intense Suspense, in my mind one of the greatest albums that has ever been created in the history of metal. I enjoyed the band’s sophomore album prior to their original split-up, Skycontact, with its odd left turn to a sort of psychedelic funeral doom style, but Immense Intense Suspense is what the band is most known for, for good reason.

Deformation Of Humanity is a comeback album, arriving more than 20 years after Skycontact, that’s very distinctly in the tradition of what Immense Intense Suspense established — death metal punctuated with synths and strings that runs the gamut from melodic death metal to traditional death metal, grindcore, and funeral doom, all mixed together into a cauldron of all-consuming void magik in sonic form. Continue reading »

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