Islander, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Islander

“THE QUEST FOR A MORNING STAR”: MUSIC FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE CLUB COLLECTIV TRAGEDY

Nov 242015

Around the world, this fall has been a season of tragedy, an ugly reminder that death takes the innocent every day. And it has included some especially terrible reminders of that fact for music fans. The slaughter at the Bataclan music venue in Paris on November 13 has of course dominated the news in recent weeks, overshadowing another tragedy that happened on October 30 at a club in Bucharest, Romania.

On that night, at an album release show at Club Collectiv for a local band named Goodbye to Gravity, an explosive fire broke out that has claimed the lives of 60 victims so far, including two members of the band, with more than 100 people still hospitalized, some still in critical condition. The catastrophe led to three days of national mourning, massive protests in the streets, and the resignation of Romania’s prime minister.

To raise funds for the victims of the tragedy (for both medical bills and funeral expenses), the noted Romanian graphic artist and musician Costin Chioreanu, whose name will be familiar to readers of this site, has released a collection of music entitled The Quest For A Morning Star via Bandcamp, and I think it’s worth your time and your money. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MYRKUR TALKS FAN ART (PLUS SOME RECENT MUSIC)

Premieres 11 Responses »

Nov 242015

Every year there seem to be one or two metal albums that become particular lightning rods of controversy. This year Myrkur’s debut album M was one of those. On the one hand, it has drawn praise — for example, it has just appeared in the Number 28 spot on DECIBEL magazine’s list of the Top 40 Albums of 2015, described as “a collage of icy vibes”, “haunted by demons and angels alike”, “true extreme metal, not intended for the weak, -hearted or -minded”. On the other hand, it has been the target of unpleasant assaults by various devotees of underground black metal who seem upset to the point of resentment by the attention it has garnered.

Well, the point of this feature really isn’t to rekindle that debate, it’s to share a video that’s an example of the positive interactions that can happen between musicians and their fans — a kind of feedback loop in which each inspires the other. It’s far from the only example, of course, but it seemed to me one worth spreading around. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEMIURGON — “TEATRO DEL COITO”

Premieres 1 Response »

Nov 242015

Last spring we had the pleasure of premiering a killer song from Above the Unworthy, the debut album by Italy’s Demiurgon released in June by Ungodly Ruins Production, and today we bring you the debut of a lyric video for a brand new Demiurgon song: “Teatro Del Coito“.

This new song is destined for release as part of a split with another Italian band, Valgrind. It’s a bit of an experiment for the band, as they recorded the song using drop-A tuning and wrote the song with lyrics in Italian. And for those who aren’t conversant in Italian, well, let’s just say that Demiurgon welcome you to the theater of sex. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCIENTIST — “THE LIGHTHOUSE”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 8 Responses »

Nov 232015

The experimental, Chicago-based metal band Scientist have recorded a follow-up to their self-titled debut album. This new album includes more vocals than the debut (contributed in part by some notable guests), but that doesn’t mean the music is any more conventional. It simply adds more dimensions to music that is still fascinatingly difficult to pin down.

The album’s title is 10100II00101, and it’s scheduled for digital and CD release on December 11 (with vinyl coming later from Hell Comes Home). For those who haven’t yet encountered Scientist, it’s the collaborative vehicle of these talented musicians: guitarist, vocalist, and founder Eric Plonka (Yakuza), guitarist/vocalist Patrick Auclair (Taken By The Sun), drummer Justin Cape (Taken By The Sun), and bassist Mathew Milligan (Making Ghosts).

I’ll also mention up-front the names of the guest vocalists: Stavros Giannopoulos (The Atlas Moth), Andre Almaraz (Pale Horseman), Anthony Cwan (Without Waves), and James Clayton Bowman. Aw hell, I might as well mention a few more notable names who are associated with this unpronounceable new album: Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 4)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Nov 232015

(Here’s Part 4 of our Norwegian friend Gorger’s entertaining multi-part feature on bands we seem to have overlooked at NCS. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here. And be sure to check out Gorger’s Metal.)

With Islander back in the saddle, I felt no hurry to complete this fourth part of Beneath the NCS Radar.

This was initially intended as the last episode of the series, but then the producers decided to give Season 2 a chance. I’ve discovered more music that deserves a larger audience. This leaves me with a question, though.

If this were to become a regular feature, the name would sort of bite its own shiny metal ass. If it’s presented on NSC, than it’s no longer off the NCS radar, and thus the very title becomes contradictory. Perhaps this minute dilemma is so
small it is negligible. Moving on… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXTREME COLD WINTER — “PARADISE ENDS HERE”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Nov 232015

Everything about Extreme Cold Winter’s debut EP is massive, frigid, and pitiless. Compared to what I’ve heard from the music of founder AJ van Drench’s previous death/doom band Beyond Belief, Paradise Ends Here is slower, more desolate and forbidding, and more brutally staggering in the force of its impact. The word DOOM belongs before “death” this time, and it deserves all the capital letters.

In keeping with the band’s name, the song titles and the apocalyptic lyrical themes are devoted to the extinction of heat, joy, and life. The music and the words — which can be heard clearly in the well-rounded and monstrous growls of vocalist Pim Blankenstein (Officium Triste, The 11th Hour) — conjure feelings of desperation and dread. When Blankenstein roars, “We came from far, from raging worlds to kill again the sun and moon!”, you can easily imagine that he’s talking about the band, even though he’s not. Continue reading »

ARKAIK: “LUCID DAWN”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Nov 232015

(DGR reviews the new album by Arkaik.)

The idea of a “tentpole” band is something that has been playing on the darkest reaches of my mind lately. Like an idea that has its claws slowly wrapping around you, so the tendrils have slowly wormed their way into my thoughts over the course of my album listenings for this review.

I’m definitely the most unqualified person in the world to opine about how the record label business is conducted, but I’ve always been under the impression that a lot of many label’s rosters often don’t exactly generate tremendous amounts of money, and under some business models there are usually two or three fairly huge bands that happen to bring in most of the money, and that tends to get kind of spread out amongst the rest of the label.

If it isn’t the profit factor, sometimes these bands I’m thinking of just happen to be the ones that seem to define the ethos of the label. In other words, there will usually be a band or two per label that seem to define what much of the roster sounds like, or they embody huge swaths of the sound — the exemplaries of the label, so to speak. In my mind, this is the case with Arkaik and their label Unique Leader. Continue reading »

SPAWNING ABHORRENCE: “THE WRITHING RHETORIC”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Nov 222015

Spawning Abhorrence from Leeds in the UK have finished work on their second album, The Sleepless One, and they’ve just released one of the new songs (“The Writhing Rhetoric”) for streaming. Even though we’re a few hours late to call it an actual premiere, we’ve decided to help spread it around because it’s an obliterating listening experience. And what better way to close out the weekend and get our game faces on for the new week than by getting obliterated?

I could probably just leave it at that, but I can’t resist adding a few more words of introduction, just so you have a better idea how the obliteration will proceed.

It will happen in a torrent of furiously writhing, viciously jabbing, and mercilessly grinding death metal riffs, accompanied by hyper-speed drumming and ghastly roars. And in the second half of this barrage, some interesting things will happen as the band give the song added texture, when a brief moment of near-silence paves the way for a combination of percussive blasting and dark, shimmering melody. Continue reading »

SUNDAY SELECTIONS: NACHASH, GEVURAH, MALENCONTRE, SEROCS, ABYSSUS, THE CORONA LANTERN, GRGA

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Nov 222015

As you can see, I decided to give the “Seen and Heard” title a rest for today, but that’s still what this post really is — another selection of music I’ve come across in recent days that I thought you might enjoy as much as I have. Most of what’s in here is new, some of it only newly discovered by yours truly. As is usually the case, the featured music is stylistically diverse. And because this is a birthday weekend at NCS, I decided to really load up this post with a lot of listening.

NACHASH

We’ll start this collection of music with the debut EP from Norway’s Nachash, a four-track offering entitled Conjuring the Red Death Eclipse. Though it was released in February of this year (through Unborn Productions), I only discovered it recently, and what a discovery it has been.

The four long songs on the EP are rich and multifaceted. The final track “A Necromancer’s Lament”, which is set to play first on Bandcamp, is like a melding of stoner doom and black metal; the riffs are so goddamn delicious that I got pulled headfirst into the rest of the EP as if I’d been sucked into a whirlpool. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THIRD SOVEREIGN — “SAKEI AI HLA / GRAVE OF HUMANITY”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 222015

India’s Third Sovereign released their debut album Destined To Suffer eight years ago. In the intervening years, the band relocated to a remote state named Mizoram in the northeastern part of the country and have now recorded a new album named Perversion Swallowing Sanity that’s due for release by the Transcending Obscurity India label in January of the coming new year. Today we bring you the album’s opening track, a two-part manifesto named “Sakei Ai Hla / Grave of Humanity”.

The song’s exotic introductory section builds an atmosphere that’s sinister and brooding, while introducing a skull-pounding riff that then quickly accelerates into a thrashing charge of death metal ferocity. With the vocalist barking and snarling at high speed, the band inflict a sonic beating that jabs hard and fast and then rides right over the listeners’ prone bodies in a gallop. The rhythmic grooves in the song are damned infectious, and the band take the music through its dynamic paces without ever sacrificing the overarching aura of malevolence and morbidity. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries