Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: SAMIARUS — “CRUSHED BY INFERIOR”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Samiarus took shape in the SF Bay Area among current and past members of Abnutivum, Meth Sores, Flesh Dungeon, Doomsday, Slaughteruin, Abstracter, and Mentor. The name they chose was intended as a reference to “the Arabic name of the leader of the Watchers in apocryphal abrahamic scriptures, a rebel angel who shared knowledge with men and birthed the Nephilim, becoming a danger to divine power and law and turning into the absolute usurper.”

First impressions of their black/death terrors arose from their Demonstration demo, released in January of this year, which included one original song, a cover of Absu‘s “Descent to Acheron”, and a recording of a live rehearsal. It brought to mind full-blown war zones, episodes of unhinged violence and splintering sanity, but infiltrated by ingredients not wholly dependent on antecedents like Blasphemy and Archgoat.

Now we have a Samiarus EP looming ahead of us, a 23-minute onslaught named Reign Destroyer that will be released by Sentient Ruin on April 25th. What we have for you today is the premiere of one of its 7 tracks, “Crushed By Inferior“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PYROMANCER — “VOLCANIC RAPTURE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 072025
 

(written by Islander)

The name Pyromancer rang bells around here when news of their forthcoming debut album broke, but they were distant bells, even though their resonance was ruinous. Looking back, we had a burst of posts in 2015 about Pyromancer‘s debut demo and then Kaptain Carbon‘s review of their performance at the spring 2016 Blood of the Wolf Fest in their hometown of Lexington, Kentucky.

Almost a decade has passed since then, an almost incomprehensible amount of time given the rushing pace of changes in almost every aspect of life over those years. Pyromancer did finally re-surface last year with a pair of songs on a split with Detroit’s Perversion released by Godz Ov War, and now comes the debut album, aptly named Absolute Dominion By Fire, set for release next month by Adirondack Black Mass.

The same two terrorizing dominators are still in charge — Master of Graveyard Torment (drums, vocals) and Conqueror Horus (guitars, vocals) — and as you’ll learn from the album track we’re premiering today, they haven’t backed off or backed down from igniting black/death conflagrations – bizarre black/death conflagrations. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AEONYZHAR, VEIA, FØSPHENE

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 062025
 

(written by Islander)

I spent yesterday marching and rallying. It felt good. I spent last night (way deep into the night) consuming a gallon of good whisky with friends who were like a hybrid of rabbits and wolverines, cautious and nimble but also fanged and fierce. This morning I woke up feeling like a crippled turtle.

I thought about not doing anything for this column, just leaving a gap between yesterday and tomorrow. But what might people think? Stroke? Heart attack? Pneumonia? Burst appendix? Going off the road and into a pylon? Is he dead, injured, sick, or what?

Reading what I just wrote, that sure sounds egotistical. More likely, few people would give even a passing thought to why this column never arrived. But more than momentarily, I’d feel like I’d fallen down on the job, in addition to being barely able to stand up this morning. Better something than nothing, so here are three very good somethings. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MIDNIGHT, ALIGN, FURNACE, STREGA, ARV, FLUISTERAARS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Apr 052025
 

(written by Islander)

I don’t have a “physically active lifestyle” these days, yet some nights my body acts like I just ran a marathon. Last night was one of those. I conked out and woke up more than 9 hours later. Not even the part of my brain that always nags me, even asleep, about the need to get this Saturday column in shape could resist the bear-like compulsion to hibernate.

So, a very late start today, made later by the time needed to overcome grogginess. Still groggy, even after reading godawful global news stories while inhaling a cocktail of caffeine and nicotine, I glanced at the godawful big NCS in-box. Here’s the first message I saw:

Please take a moment out of your day to listen to the new track from Casa Mondo “Same Words.” It is a taste of Afro Reggae Summer Niceness and would give your followers a warm fuzzy feeling 🙂

I nearly wrote back to ask how in the world we got on this person’s list. We must be on many lists that have zero to do with what we do, because I see dozens of e-mails like this every day from musically remote planets (remote from our own ugly little asteroid).

Of course I didn’t write back, but I thought, the only warm fuzzy feeling our followers might want from music at NCS would be a feeling of fungal infection. And “niceness”? I think our definition of “nice” is not what Casa Mondo had in mind. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SERPENTES, GOLEM OF GORE, CRUST, ANZV, CAGED BASTARD, SKUGGOR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 042025
 

(written by Islander)

I keep an electronic calendar and a paper calendar of premieres I agree to run for NCS. Belt and suspenders, as people use to say before suspenders went the way of the Dodo. But sometimes my pants fall down anyway, like when the plans of a band or label change and I’m being distracted by something else when I see that and then forget to change either calendar.

That’s what happened today. I had an album premiere on the calendar, but when I went hunting for the “assets” for the premiere I saw the e-mail chain where a schedule change had happened. So I found myself with time I didn’t expect to have today, and decided to make this roundup of new songs and videos as a bit of a head-start on the weekend roundups. My selection strategy was to pick the newest things I saw that I liked this morning. Hope you enjoy what I chose.

(In case you’re wondering, I do have assistants in my NCS work, but mainly they delete things I’ve written and introduce typos by walking across the keyboard. They’re less useful in keeping my pants up.) Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, MARCH 2025

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 042025
 


Forlorn

(Our Denver-based writer Gonzo is back with another monthly roundup of reviews and recommendations. Today’s varied collection includes four albums released in March and one from February.)

Well well, here we are again with a new month, and I’m writing this exactly a week later than I wanted to. Refused are officially fucking dead – at least, to everyone who saw them Tuesday night here in Denver – and I’m still getting my voice back after that show. “CAN I SCREAM” indeed.

It’s been quite the active week for heavy music around the Rockies. By the time this gets on our site, I’ll have likely already seen Meshuggah tear another hole in the space-time continuum, and I always look forward to that. I’m glad I managed to get this column out the door, though, as I’m headed to Roadburn in a couple of weeks for a much-needed break. Leaving the country, even if temporarily, seems to be the right move for now. There’s chaos and stupidity around every corner in the US, and I can only live in violent opposition to fascism for so long.

Since I don’t have high hopes for getting an April edition of this column out into the world, it’ll give you more time to dive into these 5 albums for March. You won’t be sorry. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CARCOLH

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 042025
 

(In February we had the pleasure of premiering and reviewing the newest album by the French doom band Carcolh, which is out now on Sleeping Church Records. Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ new interview with Carcolh vocalist Sébastien Fanton, and he again proves to be a wonderful conversationist.)

Five men from Bordeaux love and know how to make smart, traditional, almost textbook doom metal. And why not! Most of them did it years before Carcolh, and, let’s face it, they are professionals in their field.

“Carcolh” is a mythical half-snake, half-snail from French folklore, but this does not mean that the guys are “barely dragging their feet.” They managed to tell six stories in the 46 minutes of their third full-length Twilight of the Mortals, revealing in their own way the nature of human tragedies in the sublunary world.

This album shows that Carcolh maybe do not progress in a global sense of the word, but confidently move forward enriching their soundscapes with a lot of new nuances and semi-colours. All the instruments sound heavy, clear, rational, and tasteful. Sébastien Fanton’s vocal lines are harmonious and noble, matching the themes performed by his colleagues. Twilight of the Mortals is far from monotonous; its pace varies from the furious gallop of “The Battle Is Lost” to the crushing dirge of “My Prayers Are for Rain” or the twelve-minute long, multifaceted, and saturated “Empty Thrones”.

This material isn’t something one could easily digest in a case you aren’t into traditional doom metal, yet we did the interview with Sébastien, and it may help you to get how cool Carcolh are. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERHEERER — “URGEWALT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 032025
 

(written by Islander)

The title of Verheerer‘s new album (their third) is Urgewalt. Like many German words, it probably doesn’t have a precise English translation, but based on our own searches it could be rendered as “elemental force” — “a sense of raw, untamed, and powerful force, often associated with nature or something fundamental.”

In the context of the album, that force is the absolute will of humanity to destroy, to the point of self-destruction. The album’s even more specific context is the horror of World War I, as described in this press preview of the record (which will be released on April 4th by Vendetta Records):

The new album was composed and written with this basic idea in mind and with the First World War, which revealed a new level of cruelty and dehumanization and at the same time shaped our world like no other conflict to this day, the canvas was also found on which Verheerer paint their very own pictures. Of the loss of humanity in an industrial machine of destruction, of seduction and the mechanisms of power that make the incomprehensible possible in the first place.

And thus the album’s cover art (by Misanthropic-Art) is a fitting one — the remains of creatures who irresistibly fought and died, horns locked together and unable to escape. It’s a representation of the truth “that every supposed victory in this bloody game must be paid for all the more dearly.” Continue reading »

CORPUS OFFAL: “CORPUS OFFAL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 032025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile has a lot of ghastly and glowing things to say about the debut album from Texas-based Corpus Offal, which erupted in a spray of 20 Buck Spin‘s intestines on March 21st.)

I would say, in general and on average, I am more of a black metal fan than a death metal fan, looking back at both my listening habits over the years and the end-year lists (not yet here on No Clean Singing, so take this as a warning come December). Scientifically speaking, it’s a 65.212 to 34.788 ratio, but who’s counting. Anyway, admittedly, this year has been so far very tempting in that matter, threatening to turn the scales towards a more even split in said preferences.

Reason for this is, first and foremost, this gloriously twisted 2025 being already stacked full of fantastic death metal and we’re only three months in. Smoking hot, fermenting, rotting mounds of body parts stretching as far as the eye can see, what’s not to love? This is not just the onset of putrefaction, it is a full-blown bloom of abnormal flesh.

Poetically appropriate then, that we are visited today by the entity of Corpus Offal which rises from the corpse of another great American death metal band, namely Cerebral Rot, which dissolved last year after releasing two monster albums a couple of years back. Continue reading »

ZOLTAR REVIEW ROUNDUP: FRIGHTFUL, HUMANITY DELETE, STASS, PROCREATION, SUMMONING DEATH

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 032025
 

(Today our contributor Zoltar brings us reviews of five recently released or reissued OSDM albums, and you’ll find them all below.)

FRIGHTFUL – WHAT LIES AHEAD

Being smart doesn’t hurt does it? Especially in this highly competitive world… So kudos to Gdansk’s Frightful for realizing soon enough that the grind/death direction they were initially stirring their band to could well be a dead end, at least based on their lacklustre 2018 EP Cannibalistic Rites. Their second full-length What Lies Ahead takes what made their debut album Spectral Creator so great back in 2021 and just runs with it at full speed. At its very core, their music is pure death/thrash mayhem with that kind of inimitable sense of urgency, somewhere in between Schizophrenia-era Sepultura and mid-period Sodom. Continue reading »

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