Islander

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 1

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014  12 Responses »
Dec 242014
 

 

Welcome to Part 1 of our list of 2014′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the other songs as we add them to the list, go here.

As was the case last year, I’m starting the rollout of this list before finishing the selection. Between the list of candidates I built for myself over the course of this year and the songs recommended by our staff and our readers (here), I have more than 700 tracks to choose from. I’ve listened to most of them at least once, but the selection process isn’t finished. It will be a work in progress — all the way up until I make myself stop.

Which means, as was true last year, that I have no idea how many songs will be on the list. Last year’s list consisted of 73 songs. I’m going to try really hard to make this year’s list shorter — but who knows? All I really know is that this thing isn’t going to write itself. If I don’t start it now, The Ides of March will arrive before I finish it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEVOURING STAR, KRES, LEGION OF ANDROMEDA, WORSHIP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 242014
 

 

Rumor has it there’s some holiday tomorrow, with lots of talk about happy and jolly. I’m not feeling it myself. I’m more in the mood for head wreckage. I found these new songs over the last 24 hours that do the job nicely — music that’s full of power and passion, and no joy.

DEVOURING STAR

Last month we had the pleasure of premiering (here) a new song by a Finnish horde named Devouring Star from their forthcoming debut album Through Lung and Heart, on the Daemon Worship label. Since then two more songs from the album have been revealed, the latest one just this morning. Austin Weber described the song we premiered as “an apocalyptic ode to true worshipers of the dark arts, teeming with sourness and bitter pain and delivering a bludgeoning and a sense of horror comparable to few.” The new song is no less decimating.

“The Dreaming Tombs” is an unmitigated onslaught of percussive hammer blows, howling riffs, and wretched vocal extremity. The music swirls like a cyclonic vortex, broken in places by a massive doom-drenched stomps. It’s bleak, black, brutally ferocious music that very effectively creates an atmosphere of calamity and collapse. Continue reading »

WIL CIFER’S TOP 10 BLACK METAL ALBUMS OF 2014

 LISTMANIA 2014  13 Responses »
Dec 242014
 

 

(In this post Wil Cifer presents his list of the year’s best black metal albums.)

At this point half the bands in metal today are trying to be blackened something, so here are the top ten black metal bands, that aren’t death metal bands trying to grim it up or post- rock bands with some anguished screams mixed in… these are all bands that are so pure… so cold. The cream of the crop this year came from not only Norway, but also France, Canada, Sweden, Chicago, and the Deep South. So here we go… Continue reading »

TYRANNY ENTHRONED: “OUR GREAT UNDOING”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 232014
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new second album by Tyranny Enthroned from St. Louis, Missouri.)

Tyranny Enthroned are one of America’s best death metal newcomers.

That could be viewed as a bit of a hyperbolic statement, but to me it’s absolutely true. I was already in love with the band’s debut Born of Hate, which I have reviewed here, but their sophomore opus Our Great Undoing cements them as a death-dealing titan worth watching.

It would be odd for me to quantify how this album functions as a sophomore release, especially considering just how important the second album is in any band’s career to either showing their stuff or getting dismissed. A lot has changed, and at the same time nothing has. The Polish influences of Behemoth and Hate are still a core of their sound, and they do maintain that layer of American militarism, but their riffing and songwriting is much less derivative and is now molding and establishing more of a definitive identity for them. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: A YEAR-END LIST FROM TR00 NATE

 LISTMANIA 2014  17 Responses »
Dec 232014
 

 

(We renew another cherished annual tradition as we present a year-end list of metal from Tr00 Nate (ex-The Number of the Blog) — whose own blog is here.)

Another year, another list. I’ve always enjoyed doing these lists, starting way back in 2009 when I made my first post on The Number of the Blog. Since then I’ve managed to make one every year, with various amounts of effort put into them. It’s weird that I consider my main stretch of internet blogging to have been with Number of the Blog, yet I only made two lists for that, while this will be the fourth I’ve written for No Clean Singing. Anyways, my adoptive home has asked me back to write for them again, and I’m all too happy to do so.

2014 wasn’t quite the year 2013 was. Last year it felt like there was a huge deluge of just great releases coming from every corner of the planet. This year I really had to think about my top 20. The top 10 was easy, but after that it was a struggle to think of the truly great great albums that came out this year. Not to say that numbers 20 through 11 are forgettable albums. I think they’re all great. It’s just that last year the struggle came from whittling it down to twenty as there were so many albums I wanted to talk about that I couldn’t fit on the list. Some of this might be jadedness as I’ve listened to a lot of stuff that people have thought is awesome, and if I had heard it like two or three years ago I would’ve been all aboard that shit. But now I just get a “yeah that’s cool” reaction to so much shit. It’s kind of depressing, but it does make the stuff that breaks through all the better. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INVIDIOSUS — “OVERLORDS OF THE APOCALYPSE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 232014
 

 

(In this post Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new single by Minnesota’s Invidiosus.)

You may have already heard the music of Invidiosus here at NCS this year through one of my previous posts about them. Their album from this year, Malignant Universe, often reminded me of Origin in places, although it also drew from all over the death metal spectrum and was also infused with some grindcore love. If you haven’t check that record out yet, you need to. To end your year with an ugly metallic present, the band recorded a new single called “Overlords Of The Apocalypse”, and asked us to premiere the video for it, which doubles as a song premiere since today is its release date as well.

The video was shot during an Invidiosus Halloween show, and it offers up an amusing gore-soaked twist on your typical performance music video. The band members and the audience are dressed absurdly, with D. Todd Farnham in a Satan outfit slappin da’ bass taking the cake. Guitarist Kevin Alter dressed up as bad guy Lo Pan from the legendary John Carpenter film Big Trouble In Little China comes in a close second.

As the video progresses, you see its story take shape; a hammer-wielding maniac who also carries a knife first murders the doorman, then proceeds to start violently killing members of the audience once inside. By the end of the video, the mysterious deranged assassin has murdered every single member of the audience. It’s done in a tongue-in-cheek way, and I thought it was a hilariously original concept. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: XIBALBA, GREY AURA, AETHYR , SWAMP WITCH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 222014
 

 

I spent most of my listening time this past weekend delving into shades of black (and also trying to narrow down the candidates for our Most Infectious Song list). But I also did a bit of additional searching for new things to recommend, and here’s what I found — along with a contribution from Grant Skelton who has a recommendation of his own at the end.

XIBALBA

I discovered that last Friday Xibalba debuted a song named “Invierno” from their forthcoming LP, Tierra Y Libertad. The album is coming out on January 27 via Southern Lord and sports fantastic cover art by Dan Seagrave.

Based on past experience, I was expecting something crushing and savage, and I wasn’t disappointed. “Invierno” is one big sonic meat tenderizer. Everything about it is immensely heavy and dark, driven by a combination of needling and piledriving riffs, and with a couple of skull-smashing breakdowns. It’s an exclusive stream, so go here to listen: Continue reading »

OCULUS INFERNUS: IN WHICH THE PROFESSOR REFLECTS UPON ANOTHER FULL YEAR OF MUSIC

 LISTMANIA 2014  20 Responses »
Dec 222014
 

 

(The esteemed Professor D. Grover the XIIIth once again provides us with his year-end list of personal favorites, and an eclectic list it is.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. I apologize for my recent silence, but real-life intrusions (growing children, job promotions, that sort of thing) have made it all but impossible for me to write. Still, I listen when I can find the time, and as such, I return to provide you with my annual year-end review. As always, my list has reached an absurd size, with fifty albums and a separate list of fifteen demos and EPs. However, my comments about each album may not be quite so in-depth due to the aforementioned lack of time.

First, we have the EPs, demos, and singles that I enjoyed this year. Sometimes a shorter release can better capture my memory due to its short run-time, because I can listen to it more and really, truly digest it. These fifteen are all excellent releases. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2014 EDITION)

 LISTMANIA 2014  33 Responses »
Dec 222014
 

 

(For the fourth year in a row our old friend SurgicalBrute weighs in with his list of the year’s best metal.)

Okay, let’s be honest… When it comes to end of the year lists, no one really cares about these intro paragraphs. They’re usually some anecdote about how this was a such great year in metal, and truthfully, we all know I could be writing erotic hobbit fan fiction up here and most of you wouldn’t notice… You’re going to skip right to the music. So I’m just going to make a couple of quick points

First, I don’t know if it was the abnormally grim and frosty weather that we got last winter, but this past year seemed to be a particularly strong one for black metal… at least for me.

Second, this was probably the hardest list I’ve written. Lots of good albums came out this year, but there wasn’t a whole lot that actually stood head and shoulders above the rest. It just seemed like a year full of very solid, enjoyable releases.

So, with that out of the way, on to the important stuff (…and no, there’s no particular order to this). Continue reading »

IN PRAISE OF… MESHUGGAH

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Dec 222014
 

 

(This is more than a show review… this is Andy Synn’s analysis of why Meshuggah rise far above their legions of imitators.)

Two nights ago I was lucky enough to witness the sheer awe-inspiring power of Meshuggah lay waste to a packed Roundhouse in London, as part of their 25th (!) Anniversary tour.

As I’m reviewing the show for another publication (because I am, at heart, a whore for attention and approbation) it didn’t seem right to also review it here for NCS. However, the whole experience did stimulate more than a few different thoughts in my head, and so I wanted to at least take the opportunity to write a few of them down, and maybe go a little deeper into exactly why I think Meshuggah are such an important, vital band in today’s metal scene. Continue reading »

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