Islander, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Islander

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY (PART 1): ALFAHANNE, DALKHU, DYSPHOTIC, GHOST

Jul 192015

Happy goddamned Sunday to one and all. I spent a lot of time yesterday making my way through new songs and short releases that I had noticed over the last week and found quite a lot to like — so many that I planned four posts about what I found. I’m not sure I’ll succeed in writing all four of them before the new week buries me in other things, but I’ll at least do the first two today — a two-part collection that includes seven new songs from forthcoming albums and one new single. I’ve arranged them in alphabetical order by band name, and the first four are collected here.

ALFAHANNE

The second album by Sweden’s Alfahanne, Blod Eld Alfa, will be released by Dark Essence Records on September 11, and the label has now debuted a song from it named “Skallerormsgift”. It features guest vocals by Kvelertak’s front guy Erlend Hjelvik. (The album also includes guest appearances by Nattfursth (Sorhin), Spellgoth (Horna, Turmion Kätilöt), and Shining’s Niklas Kvarforth). Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 28): VOLTURYON AND HOUR OF PENANCE

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014 2 Responses »

Jul 182015

Well, when I made the announcement that I was going to resume the roll-out of our list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs — five months after the last installment in the series — I did warn you that I probably wouldn’t be posting a new installment every day. But I didn’t think I’d let three weeks go by after the last installment. Sorry about that.

Anyway, here are two more songs for the list, and I have two more in mind for tomorrow — and if perchance you don’t know what this list is about, you can find an explanation here.

VOLTURYON

Volturyon’s vicious little five-track gem of an EP, Human Demolition, was a particular favorite of my comrade DGR (reviewed here). Thanks to him, I finally listened to all of it a couple of weeks ago, and yeah, I’m sold. There are really no weak spots on the EP, but one song in particular stands out as the most infectious, and that one is the next addition to this list. I’ll borrow from DGR’s review: Continue reading »

INFERA BRUO: A REVIEW OF “IN CONJURATION” AND THE PREMIERE OF “ASTROGENESIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

I’ve been on a Bindrune Recordings roll this week, with a review of the new Panopticon album on Monday, a review of the new Alda album on Wednesday (with a song premiere), and now this review of the new album by Boston’s Infera Bruo — and a premiere of one of its stellar new songs. I’ve been living with these three albums for a while, and life has been good. If it’s not too much to hope for some justice in the world, it should be good for these bands and this label as well.

Infera Bruo’s new album In Conjuration is the band’s third full-length, following their 2011 self-titled debut and 2013’s Desolate Unknown. In the past, the band’s music has drawn favorable comparisons to that of Enslaved, and no doubt the new album’s progressive casting of black metal will again invoke remembrances of those masterful Norwegians. These new compositions are often complex and challenging in ways that should appeal to fans who appreciate avant-garde approaches to extreme metal. But the album is also a very dark and unsettling beast, with an affinity for tension-ratcheting intensity that rarely reaches the breaking point. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ADVERSARIAL — “CURSED BLADES CAST UPON THE SLAVESCUM OF CHRIST”

Premieres 11 Responses »

Jul 172015

The last two releases by Adversarial have been short ones — a split with Paroxsihzem last year (Warpit of Coiling Atrocities, reviewed here) and another one with Antediluvian in 2012 (Initiated In Impiety As Mysteries, reviewed here). Both of them were stunningly good — and so I’ve had supremely high expectations for the band’s second full-length, Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism. As high as they were, those expectations were elevated even further after I saw the band’s obliterating set on the final night of this year’s Maryland Deathfest.

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, when you have such high hopes for a new release, you find yourself at least somewhat disappointed when it finally arrives. Not this time.

Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism will be essential listening for fans of black/death. It’s Adversarial’s best work to date, which is saying something — a journey into a vortex of lightless chaos that’s both terrifying and somehow entrancing. Today we are privileged to unsheathe this black knife as we premiere one of a very strong album’s strongest tracks, “Cursed Blades Cast Upon the Slavescum of Christ“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GRIFTEGÅRD

Interviews 3 Responses »

Jul 172015

(A day late because of my own screw-up, here’s the second of three interviews we have this week from Comrade Aleks — and today he talks with Ola Blomkvist of Sweden’s Griftegård.)

“G” is for Graveyard in English. “G” is for Griftegård in Swedish, and it means the same thing, I swear! So Griftegård is a universal name for any really heavy band. This one was born in 2004 in the Swedish city of Norrköping, “Swedish Manchester”, as it’s said.

The band’s main features were crushing and depressive doom metal and lyrics dealing with Christian images and their interpretation. Well, it’s a strong combination and it works well if you have no prejudice. But what kind of prejudice can we talk about, considering the world of professional heavy music?

Griftegård had only one weak point – for ten years of the band’s existence they had only one full-length album, Solemn Sacred Severe, but good news came in April 2015, as I discovered that Ván Records is going to release something new from these men. What kind of news are they ready to share? Ola Blomkvist, the band’s mastermind, is here to tell us. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST CONFIRMS 45 MORE BANDS FOR MDF XIV

Metal News 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

No one is going to bitch about not getting their money’s worth at MDF XIV. Today, the organizers of Maryland Deathfest announced the names of 45 more confirmed bands for the 2016 edition of the best metal fest in the U.S. (and one of the best in the world). This humongous list of new entrants swells an already impressive (and impressively full) list of previously announced bands. Here are the new names:

The Afternoon Gentlemen (UK)
Buzzov*en
Centinex (Sweden)
Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin (Italy)
Crypt Sermon
Dehumanized
Demonical (Sweden)
Demonic Christ
Deranged (Sweden)
Discharge (UK)
DOOM (UK)
Dopethrone (Canada)
Dragged into Sunlight (UK) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIABOLUS ARCANIUM — “HERALD OF DARKNESS”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Jul 172015

In this post we present the premiere of “Herald of Darkness”, a song from the forthcoming debut album Path of Ascension by Diabolus Arcanium from Chennai, India.

The orchestral component of the band’s music makes its presence known immediately in a waltz-like melody augmented by choral voices. The orchestration remains a dominant and dramatic feature of the song, becoming more sweeping and bombastic after the metal instruments come in and lead vocalist Hex begins to snarl his lyrics with bestial vehemence. The power and bombast of the symphonic sound lends a theatrical air to the song, with a heavy, jagged edge added by the metal riffing, the thrumming bass line, and the rumbling drumwork.

But the aural spectacle of the orchestration (arranged by keyboardist Archon) is matched by Hex’s extended guitar solo — a fiery, flamboyant performance that works hand-in-glove with the pageantry of the symphonic music. Continue reading »

SARPENTRA: “SUPERNOVA”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by Russia’s Sarpentra, which is out now.)

Hyperbole is a funny old thing. On the one hand it’s kind of fun to engage in, particularly if done so in a knowing, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, kind of manner. We love this music, so why not go all out? It’s an extreme genre, so let’s go wild!

But, on the other, when misused it definitely has a tendency to be more than a little misleading and to set up unreasonable expectations (something which I’ve been accused of myself only recently).

To wit, one of the reasons I elected to review Supernova was to try to counter some of the hype I’ve seen being thrown around, with words like “genre-redefining” and “revolutionary” being bandied about as if they were going out of style.

So I suppose what I really want to do with this review is to encourage you to take this album on its own merits, and not as if it’s the second coming of [Insert Famous Band Here]. Heck, if you really want to you can just scroll down to the bottom and listen yourselves, without taking any account of what I’ve written.

But for those of you who maybe want a little more context to inform your listening, or who simply enjoy reading articles about killer Death Metal albums… read on! Continue reading »

AUSTIN WEBER’S BEST OF 2015 SO FAR: PRIME CUTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND (PART 2)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Jul 172015

(In this multi-part post, Austin Weber brings us his recommendations for some of the best albums released during the first half of the year. Part 1 is at this location.)

Lever Of Archimedes

Today we start off with Lever Of Archimedes, a death metal trio from Washington, D.C. Triptych Disentanglement is the band’s first release, and in just three songs and a a brief 13 total minutes the band proves themselves to be a technical tour de force in the vein of Archspire and Beneath The Massacre, while mixing in a Conducting From The Grave melodic feel and grit at times. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SADISTIC RITUAL — “FUNERAL RAID”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Jul 162015

Unspeakable Axe Records is on the verge of releasing a new EP named Edge of the Knife by Atlanta’s Sadistic Ritual, and today we’ve got for you the premiere of the EP’s second track: “Funeral Raid“.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sadistic Ritual, they claim inspiration from such old-school slaughtering thrashers as Kreator, Sodom, Razor — and of course Slayer. And when you hear “Funeral Raid”, you’ll appreciate that Sadistic Ritual isn’t yet another straggler in the gaggle of new-school re-thrash bands. Listening to this song is like grabbing a severed power line, jamming it down your throat, and experiencing the thrill of your head bursting into flames.

The incendiary riffs erupt right out of the gate and don’t let up. Augmented by a couple of white-hot whammy-bar solos and a rancid, mad-dog vocal attack, “Funeral Raid” is a full-on adrenaline rush fueled by the spirit of old-school savagery. Continue reading »

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