Islander, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Islander

LISTMANIA 2015: KEVINP’S BEST OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 8 Responses »

Jan 042016

(KevinP weighs in with his year-end list of top EPs and albums.)

441 albums. That was the total amount of metal I consumed this year. Easily the most I’ve ever listened to and almost double last year’s consumption. Even though most of these are from my Albums of the Month columns (if you have followed that, GOOD, if not, get with the program in 2016), there are 3 that made my final list that I either overlooked initially or grew on me enough over the course of the year to warrant inclusion.

All 12 number one albums from the monthly series made the list (naturally), but not all of them held up, as 3 albums in my Top 10 were not ‘Best Of’ their respective month. Anyways, enjoy the list. Hopefully, there’s some new music you overlooked that I put on your radar. Feel free to discuss what albums tickled your fancy in the comments below. Continue reading »

ABORTED: “TERMINATION REDUX”

Jan 042016

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new 20th anniversary EP by Belgium’s Aborted.)

I fucking love Aborted, especially their last two albums. It’s no secret that here at NCS we were foaming at the mouth like a horde of ravenous hyenas and cackling as we ripped apart the carcasses of Global Flatline and The Necrotic Manifesto when they came our way. To my ears, The Necrotic Manifesto, compared to Global Flatline, signified a departure from the sound the band had always been semi-attached to. Until then, every Aborted record had included the more technical, more tempo-dynamic flare reflected on Global Flatline, although I think most would agree that Global Flatline was their sound taken about as far as you were going to get.

The Necrotic Manifesto was even more aggro than any Aborted release before it. It was streamlined, grindier, noisier, faster, and more belligerent, while largely ditching the more dynamic song-writing of previous Aborted albums. And in between those two albums, Aborted had acquired guitarist Mendel bij de Leij, whose solo project we have covered before (along with his and vocalist Sven’s side project, System Divide — which appears to have transformed into the band Oracles).

So where does that leave Termination Redux? When it comes to EPs, I see them as serving one or more of three specific purposes nowadays: You use them to introduce your craft; you use them to tide people over with some goodies before the next big release; or you use them to plant the flag — to sow the seeds of a new direction and sound in a digestible format, or sometimes to make a defiant statement of said new direction and sound.

I do believe that Termination Redux is the third of those types of EPs, signifying an interesting evolution in the band’s music, capped off by the gesture of re-recording the opening song of one of their most praised early records, Engineering the Dead. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: A LIST OF FAVORITE RELEASES FROM MICHAEL GONÇALVES (WINDFAERER)

LISTMANIA 2015 7 Responses »

Jan 042016

(This year we had the pleasure of premiering two songs from the wonderful new album by New Jersey’s Windfaerer, along with a review — all of that can be found here — and now we bring you a diverse year-end list from Windfaerer’s vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gonçalves.)

This year has been an insane year for metal and I had a hard time catching up with everything. The damn year has flown by so fast that I still think it’s 2014. Here’s to 2015 and all the wonderful releases it has brought us! The following list is in no particular order. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (DISSECTION)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 14 Responses »

Jan 032016

The first two albums by Sweden’s Dissection are among my all-time favorite metal albums. They proved to be enormously influential, and they have had enormous staying power. It’s about time that we featured them in one of these Sunday look-backs at past releases.

In April of 2011 we published a guest post by “Kazz” in which he identified some other bands that were contenders for the heirs to Dissection’s throne. It’s still a really good read, and I recommend it to you:

https://www.nocleansinging.com/2011/11/04/heirs-to-the-throne-dissection/ Continue reading »

EAGERLY ANTICIPATED 2016 RELEASES: A LIST OF OUR OWN AND AN INVITATION FOR YOURS

Listmania, Metal News 62 Responses »

Jan 022016

Our LISTMANIA 2015 series isn’t over yet. In fact, we have more year-end lists coming your way over the next two weeks from our own staff, from old friends, and from invited musicians. And I’ll also continue rolling out my list of 2015’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. All of that will resume on Monday. But having said that, we’re also looking ahead to what 2016 will bring us.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday assembling a list of 2016 releases (by band name) that I’m interested in, most of which are expected during the first quarter of the year. This isn’t a comprehensive list by any means — I have no doubt I’ve forgotten or overlooked a lot of things — but it’s a massive list nonetheless. Continue reading »

HAPPY NEW YEAR, ALL YOU MOTHERS

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 39 Responses »

Jan 012016

I don’t know how many actual mothers actually stop here, but we welcome them. At the same time, what I really wanted to say in the title of this post was…

… “Happy New Year, All You Motherfuckers”, because that’s what Frank the Tank would say. (Hail Suffocation.)

But some small percentage of our visitors will find this post via a status I’ll post on Facebook, and our Facebook overlords get their buttholes in a pucker when you use a word like “motherfucker”, at least if you have even one douchebag follower whose life is so bereft of meaning that they report people who use words that would cause the children they will never have to turn cross-eyed, at least until those fictional children get older and realize the true meaning of the word “motherfuckers” when contemplating their parents. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 8)

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 3 Responses »

Dec 312015

I was going to add these songs to our Most Infectious list eventually, but it seemed like posting them this week, on the last day of the old year, was the right thing to do — especially the first song.

This list is supposed to be devoted to infectious extreme metal songs, and the first two below don’t really fit that description. But just about every year I’ve bent the rules a few times, and today is one of those. To see the other songs on the list so far, use this link.

MOTÖRHEAD

With Lemmy’s death this week, Motörhead has perished as a band as well. But obviously the music will never die. Though the band couldn’t have known for sure that Bad Magic would be their last studio album, they went out strong. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: DECKARD CAIN’S MALADIES OF THE EAR — 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 4 Responses »

Dec 312015

(After quite an absence, our old comrade deckard cain rejoins us with a list of his favorites — both metal and not-metal — from 2015.)

And yet another year of death, destruction, and hopelessness has come to pass. Religion still culls by the thousands, earthquakes still shake people’s idea of reality, capitalism and poverty are still in vogue, guns have turned into mouthpieces, digital connectivity is constantly separating man from himself. No longer do we have communities nor are we individuals, just a floating image of what could have been on somebody’s idea of a mirror. The Damocles sword no longer hangs over our heads, it is recast into the guillotine that falls ever so swiftly, upon our neutered minds.

Paranoia will consume us before the source from where it stems does……

And here, solace is only found in the darkest of places… in that very form of music that finds its essence in the throes of realism. Continue reading »

WIL CIFER’S TOP 10 EXPERIMENTAL / PROGRESSIVE METAL ALBUMS

LISTMANIA 2015 6 Responses »

Dec 312015

(This is the last installment of Wil Cifer’s year-end series. Part 1 focused on “Mainstream” metal, Part 2 on black metal, Part 3 on death metal, and Part 4 on doom.)

The emphasis here is sometimes on the experimental and sometimes on the more progressive side of things. Some of these bands have pushed the bounds of what they do so far that it’s hard for any label to confine them, much less “metal”. They are all in their own way heavy. Heavier emotionally than most of the more conventional metal that came out this year. There are jazz artists throwing up their horns, and a New York hipster who wants to burn the traditions of metal like a church in Norway. Some shred, others show a more difficult level of mastery in connecting their instruments to their bared hearts.

Here are the albums that gave their middle finger to what you thought heavy was supposed to be. They are ranked according to what Last FM told me I listened to the most.

10. John Zorn – “Simulacrum”

This slab of wonderful weirdness, is more accessible than his classic Naked City album. He has put John Medeski together with the guitarist from Cleric, who I had no clue could shred like this. Yes thats right, it’s the dude from Medeski, Martin and Wood, playing with a dude from a metal band. There is more Crimson and Zappa influence on this one than what you normally hear from Zorn. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ENTROPIA, END OF PROCESS, IFRINN, MORBOSIDAD, DEATH FORTRESS, 1914, NEVERENDING WINTER, AND MYSTIC MYSTERIES

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 12 Responses »

Dec 312015

I had intended to post most of the new music in this collection on Sunday, hot on the heels of Saturday’s Shades of Black post. However, I was distracted by the sound of a passing car, chased it for a few blocks, and then forgot what I had been thinking by the time I found my way home (I also blame those squirrels for not stopping so I could lick them). Other distractions have materialized since then, including the death of Lemmy Kilmister.

On the bright side, I discovered more excellent new songs as the days have passed since Sunday; in fact, I heard the first three in this collection only after the weekend. The result is a rather humongous assembly of music, but please don’t let the quantity deter you from wading hip-deep into it, because there are a lot of gems to follow. And besides, it’s my last round-up of new music for 2015!

I really do hope you’ll like everything here as much as I have, and I hope you have a great New Year’s Eve too. As is often the case with these Shades of Black posts, I want to thank my Serbian friend “M” for linking me to much of what you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

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