Islander, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Islander

LISTMANIA 2015: ABOUT.COM AND LA WEEKLY

LISTMANIA 2015 49 Responses »

Dec 092015

Since we first began our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza, I’ve limited the year-end lists we re-post from other web sites to those with cross-genre coverage and very large audiences, mainly to see what people who may only dabble in metal are being told they should listen to. Flagging those year-end lists also provides a place where NCS readers can go if they’re interested in recommendations for music outside of extreme metal. I, of course, have no such interest, but I’m trying to be broad-minded at this time of year.

Today I’m re-posting lists that appeared yesterday on About.com and LA Weekly. The first qualifies as a “big platform” site. The second is something of an exception, but honestly, I was getting tired of re-posting lists from big sites that only included one or two metal albums.

ABOUT.COM

About.com is a huge web portal that covers a broad range of subjects, including home care, interior decorating, parenting, travel, money management, health care, food, careers, sports, and technology. They also have an entertainment channel, and if you burrow down into the large array of entertainment coverage you will find About.com Heavy Metal, with a staff of metal writers led by Chad Bowar. Yesterday, they published their list of 2015’s “Best Heavy Metal Albums“. It’s a ranked list of 20, preceded by a list (in alphabetical order) of 20 “Honorable Mentions”. And here are those lists: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): BLOT, DENIGRATA, LUSTRATION, NOCTURNAL DEGRADE

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 7 Responses »

Dec 082015

Here’s the second part of a post I began earlier today reviewing and recommending a selection of albums, EPs, and individual songs I’ve been enjoying recently that are (mostly) in the vein of black metal. Once again, no two bands sound alike, though their music is fueled in part by elements of black metal.

BLOT

Long-time NCS reader and musician CarlSk sent me a very strong recommendation for this next band — so strong that I bought their new album before listening to it. The band is Blot, they come from southern Norway, and in mid-October they released their debut full-length Ilddyrking, which follows a self-titled EP from 2009. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): BATUSHKA, THE LION’S DAUGHTER, TOSKA

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 13 Responses »

Dec 082015

This is the first part of a two-part collection of recent discoveries I’ve made in the vein of black metal, plus one that isn’t black metal but is still spiritually as black as a corpse charred in a napalm attack. As will become obvious, I’ve chosen this particular group of bands in part because no two of them sound alike.

BATUSHKA

Batushka are a Polish band whose members have not been disclosed, but they are reputed to be from well-known bands. Their debut album Litourgiya was released on December 5 by the Polish label Witching Hour Productions. It makes an astonishing impact from the very first song, and all the way to the end.

The music is dark, heaving, and very heavy — with bombastic outbreaks of wildfire and thunder — and the bleak, majestic melodies are effective at getting under the skin. But what sets the music apart and makes the album especially memorable are the vocals. In addition to the incinerating shrieks that you might expect in a black metal album, you’ll hear reverberating liturgical chants in what I’m told is Church Slavonic — the language used in the Orthodox Church in such places as Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as nations in the Balkan Peninsula. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: METAL NAMES ON NPR MUSIC’S LIST OF 50 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 9 Responses »

Dec 072015

I’ll repeat what I’ve written in years past, because it remains true: NPR (formerly National Public Radio) is an American national treasure, one that has somehow survived as a non-profit national radio and on-line broadcaster (with 900 public radio station members) despite largely weaning itself from governmental support and being the target of repeated political attacks by the American right wing. According to Alexa, its online site is the 148th most popular of all U.S.-based web sites and the 568th most popular in the world.

Today NPR Music posted a list of its 50 favorite albums of 2015. It’s a cross-genre list, reflecting the broad demographic of NPR Music listeners. I’ve siphoned off the metal albums from the overall list and am presenting them after the jump.

In years past, NPR has also separately posted a list prepared by writer Lars Gotrich of the best metal albums. I’ve always looked forward to that list, but I understand (sadly) that it won’t be happening this year. So, we must make do with this: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ORGAN (ALESSANDRO BRUN)

Interviews 1 Response »

Dec 072015

(Comrade Aleks has interviewed Alessandro Brun of the Italian band Organ, who have recently released a debut album, and here is what he learned.)

The name of this band could be interpreted in many ways, but as I have a compilation of Johann Sebastian Bach compositions under the name “Popular Organ” it’s not such a difficult task indeed.

So this particular Organ was formed in Italian Belluno by four friends — Alessandro De Pellegrin (bass), Giulio Fabbro (drums), Luca Rizzardi (guitars, vocals), and Alessandro Brun (guitars, vocals). It’s said that Organ plays doom, but it’s only a half truth as their music has wider influences and a disturbing atmosphere, as if it’s the soundtrack for a Dario Argento movie. The band’s first album Tetro (“dark” or “gloomy” in Italian) was released two months ago and soon attracted my attention.

After listening to it few times, I made the decision to put a few questions to the band and clarify some things. Alessandro Brun was the one who answered my questions. Continue reading »

EITERORM’S INFECTIONS OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 11 Responses »

Dec 072015

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs is the only list I personally make for our site each year. As you know, I rely a lot on recommendations from readers in assembling the master list of candidates — which is why I’ve again invited readers to leave their recommendations in the Comments on this post. And because it’s my only list each year, I’ve never posted anyone else’s except to welcome them in that Comment section. But mainly, no one has ever asked to put their own “infectious song” list on the site as a separate post.

However, this weekend I received an e-mail of infectious songs from eiterorm, a long-time NCS reader, commenter, source of musical recommendations, and occasional guest writer, who lives in Norway. He didn’t ask that his list be posted as an article, but he put so much effort into it and it was so well-written (and the list is so good) that I thought I should share it — even though there’s a significant risk that a number of his own selections will appear on my own list when I start to roll it out within the next week. Anyway, here are eiterorm’s selections and explanations: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: METAL NAMES ON LISTS OF THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2015 FROM STEREOGUM, ROLLING STONE, AND SPIN

LISTMANIA 2015 16 Responses »

Dec 072015

As part of our year-end LISTMANIA series, we bring you lists of the year’s best metal from a few print zines with wide circulation and from some cross-genre web platforms that get orders-of-magnitude more eyeballs than we do. In the case of most of these other lists, we do this as a way of peaking at what the wider world sees, since our world is very narrow and subterranean. In this post, we’re looking at Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and SPIN. It won’t take you long to read the metal names on these lists.

STEREOGUM

Stereogum is a music web site founded in 2002. It’s part of the same SPINMusic network that includes the SPIN webzine (featured at the end of this post) and Brooklyn Vegan, among other music-oriented sites. SpinMusic says that Stereogum reaches more than 700,000 music fans a month.

In past years, Stereogum has published a list of the year’s best metal albums, and I assume that will happen again this year — and we’ll pay attention to that, because their staff of metal writers is a good one. But last week Stereogum rolled out its list of The 50 Best Albums of 2015 — not limited to metal. I perused the list in an effort to spot metal names, and below I’m listing what I found, along with their placement in the overall list. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: METAL NAMES IN THE POPMATTERS LIST OF THE 80 BEST ALBUMS OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 9 Responses »

Dec 072015

PopMatters is a popular culture web site with broad coverage of music, film, television, books, comics, software and video games — you name it. Its articles get picked up regularly by the mainstream media, and it claims a readership of more than 1 million unique visitors per month. In other words, it fits the profile of “big platform” web sites whose lists of the year’s best metal we usually re-post here at NCS as part of our own LISTMANIA series — for the entertainment value of seeing what the great unwashed masses are being told is the year’s best metal.

Today, PopMatters published its list of “The 80 Best Albums of 2014″. In past years they’ve published a separate list of the year’s Best Metal Albums, and I assume they will this year, too. But in case they don’t, I thought I’d share the metal albums that appeared on their “80 Best” list (which crosses all genres) and identify where they appeared, by number ranking. I mean, it was painful for me to go through all 80 names and sort these out, so I’m damned well going to share my work product. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TEMPLE OF EVIL — “THE 7TH AWAKENING”

Album Reviews, Premieres 5 Responses »

Dec 072015

Today it’s our pleasure to help premiere the debut album by the black metal band Temple of Evil from Nicosia, Cyprus. Entitled The 7th Awakening, it will be released in a 6-panel digipak of 500 copies on January 7, 2016, by Deathhammer Records, and it’s available now on Bandcamp as well. And as you can see, it is accompanied by the striking artwork of Khaos Diktator Design — not only for the album cover but also for individual songs.

Temple of Evil’s unholy ranks consist of an agile bassist who doubles as a blood-freezing vocalist, a pair of riveting six-string guitarists (one of whom doubles as the keyboardist), and a drummer who is both acrobatic and a lethal blaster. Together they have created a dark and dramatic full-length, one that is esoteric and unearthly in its aura, both solemn and savage, grim and gripping. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY: WAFT, ELFSGEDROCH, CRUST, SLOTH KING, DEAFEST, HIGH INQUISITOR WOE

Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Dec 062015

I’m going to try to spend time today working on a few reviews I’ve been meaning to write for weeks, but of course I must also make time to risk stroke and/or heart failure by watching the Seahawks take on the Vikings in the wasteland of Minnesota. If the site goes dead tomorrow, you’ll know I didn’t survive the game without a trip to intensive care (or at all). But I do have a few songs I’d like to recommend before indulging in those other activities.

One thing I should mention before I get started: Some of these songs come from entire EPs or albums that have already been released and are deserving of complete reviews, even short ones. But I fear I won’t be able to manage that, so I’m only writing about individual songs and hoping that you’ll dig deeper on your own if you like what you hear.

WAFT

The first song comes from an album I’ve been enjoying for longer than any other release collected in this round-up — so it comes first. The name of the album is Chronolith and it was released via Bandcamp in August by a South Carolina band named Waft. Waft‘s Bandcamp page includes this comment: “Written over the course of four years. Recorded live over two days”. Continue reading »

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