Islander, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Islander

SHORT BUT SWEET: SLÆGT — “BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED”

Oct 052015

This is the second of three brief reviews I’ve written for posting today, giving attention to three new or forthcoming short releases that I’ve really been enjoying. This one covers an EP entitled Beautiful and Damned by a Danish band named Slægt, which will be released next month by NecroShrine Records and Iron Bonehead Productions.

I’ve had the advance copy of this EP sitting in my queue of things to listen to for a while, but when I happened to see that BOTH Metal Sucks AND Stereogum’s “The Black Market” column had praised it, I thought I ought to pay attention to it. Because seriously, how often does that confluence of opinion happen?

Beautiful and Damned is Slægt’s first release since their debut black metal album Ildsvanger, which appeared early this year — though the music is apparently quite different from that album (which I haven’t heard), as is the fleshed-out line-up. Though remnants of black metal still adorn this new music, the band have incorporated a fascinating blend of other styles that makes this EP unusual, and unusually good. Continue reading »

INFESTING SWARM: “DESOLATION ROAD”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Oct 052015

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Germany’s Infesting Swarm.)

Some band names… they… just don’t really reflect their musical content. There you go. I said it.

As much as I love Rotting Christ, for example, it still occasionally strikes me as odd to hear that name in conjunction with the martial grandeur of their recent (and, I would argue, best) material. Similarly the name Septic Flesh doesn’t exactly line-up with the gothy symphonic pomp and circumstance that the band deal in exclusively these days (and, I would argue, wasn’t even a great fit for their early years).

Germany’s Infesting Swarm are another band whose name sits ever-so-slightly awkwardly with the sound of their music, with a moniker more suggestive of the blood-and-bile splattered aesthetic of a Brutal Death Metal band (or, at a push, a skittery Tech-Death band) than the gloom-shrouded Post Black Metal that they actually deal in.

Still, a wise man once wrote that “a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet”… so the real question, maybe the only important question, is – how good is the music? Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: RUINEBELL — “EMBERS’ GRAVE”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Oct 052015

This is the first of three brief reviews I’ve written for posting today, covering three new or forthcoming short releases that I’ve really been enjoying. The subject of this one is an EP entitled Embers’ Grave by Ruinebell from Finland and Spain (released this month by Doomentia).

Ruinebell caught my eye this past summer when they released the first single from this second of their two EPs to date. The band is a collaboration between Lasse Pyykkö (guitars) and Pekka Koskelo (drums) from Finland’s Hooded Menace, and vocalist Dopi from Spain (ex-Machetazo, ex-Dishammer, now playing in Bodybag). And if those names don’t get you interested in Ruinebell, there may be no hope for you. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COLD NORTHERN VENGEANCE — “PIERCED BY THE TREE”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Oct 052015

I bet I know what you’re thinking: I bet you’re thinking about the cover art up there, the one for Maelstrom, which is the second album by New Hampshire’s Cold Northern Vengeance that Moribund Records will be releasing right before Halloween. Start thinking about this instead: a song from the album named “Pierced By the Tree” that you can stream at the end of this post.

The song is in some ways familiar and in other ways surprising. It builds like a strengthening storm, introduced by the crash of water, by the wail of the wind, by the swell of dark noise and the crush of pounding bass chords. Cold, raking melodic riffs descend in cascades, pierced like lightening by a high lead guitar melody. A baritone voice begins to intone the lyrics in a solemn manner while the guitar slashes around it and the bass thunders overhead. A somber melody swirls through the song, taking hold of your mind as it courses through the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BLACK RAINBOWS

Interviews 1 Response »

Oct 052015

(Comrade Aleks interviews Gabriele Fiori of the Italian band Black Rainbows.)

I like bands with ambitions. I like bands who know what they really want and do not sit on their asses waiting for big fat labels to lend them a helping hand. So this somewhat strange and stoned interview is a form of respect to the Italian psychedelic stoner band Black Rainbows (Rome, Lazio).

The band’s founder Gabriele Fiori (vocals, guitars, keyboards) started his musical career in the good yet pretty slow band Void Generator. The decision to leave Void Generator helped Gabriele to start his new full-time band Black Rainbows and his label Heavy Psych Sounds, and now the band has four full-length albums in its discography alongside four smaller releases. I was lucky enough to catch Gabriele between Black Rainbows tours, and here’s a verbatim report of our talking. Continue reading »

VARATHRON: “THE CONFESSIONAL OF THE BLACK PENITENTS”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Oct 042015

With a career that stretches back to 1988 and a panoply of stellar releases over that span of time, Varathron have cemented their place in the pantheon of Greek black metal, despite the fact that vocalist Stefan Necroabyssious has been the only constant in the band’s line-up. And yet, perhaps against the odds, the band have only continued to grow in creativity and power as the years have passed. Their last album, 2014’s Untrodden Corridors of Hades, was a landmark achievement, and while some might expect that their new “EP” The Confessional of the Black Penitents is simply a placeholder in between full-length releases, it is in fact yet another remarkable sign that Varathron are scaling new heights rather than resting on their laurels.

I put the acronym EP in quotes because this release includes roughly 40 minutes of music. It is probably being labeled as such because only three of its seven tracks are new songs, with the others consisting of live performances of songs from previous albums. But don’t think that those live tracks are some kind of filler — they are amazing to hear; they would be worth having even if The Confessional… included no new songs at all. And they make this “EP” a great jumping-off point for new fans who are just discovering the band, providing a musical retrospective on where the band have been as well as an electrifying statement of where they are today. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (HELLHAMMER, CELTIC FROST)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 11 Responses »

Oct 042015

It’s Sunday, and that means it’s time for another glance into the past of metal. This week we’ve got songs from two bands, rather than one, but they’re pretty closely related — in addition to being tremendously influential in the development of both black metal and death metal.

The Swiss band Hellhammer was active from 1981 –1984. According to Metal Archives, they released three demos in 1983 leading up to the 1984 EP Apocalyptic Raids, which was later reissued in 1990 under the title Apocalyptic Raids 1990 A.D., along with two bonus tracks that had originally appeared on 1984’s Death Metal split, including “Messiah”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SHEVILS, ABBATH, PERTURBATOR, MOLOKEN

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Oct 032015

This is a good news, bad news story. The good news is that while I was driving home last night after seeing Bell Witch and Lycus perform in Seattle, I had the pleasure of seeing a beautiful vista in the sky above me, so beautiful that I had to pull over and take this photo with my phone. The bad news is that it was 2:30 a.m. when it happened.

Just in case it’s not clear, that’s waaaaay past my fucking bedtime. So I slept in this morning, and now I’m late getting together a post for this Saturday. I’m also a bit foggy in the head, but not so foggy that I can’t recognize a good song when I hear one. And I’ve actually got three good new songs in this post that I heard this morning, plus one very cool new video — presented in the order in which I heard and saw them. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): MAÏEUTISTE, THIS GIFT IS A CURSE, PYROMANCER, REBEL WIZARD, HUMM, GATEWAY

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 10 Responses »

Oct 022015

Yesterday I began a multi-part collection of new music in a blackened vein. I broke the post into two parts because I had so many new music streams I wanted to recommend. I probably should have broken this post into two parts as well, to make a total of three. But what the hell… As much music as you’ll find here, I hope you’ll find time to at least sample all of it, because it’s all very good and very diverse.

MAÏEUTISTE

I’ve written before about individual songs on the new self-titled debut album by the French band Maïeutiste (and we premiered one of them), but now the album has been released (by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions) and all the songs are available for streaming and acquisition on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE… BLACK DAHLIA MURDER SONGS

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 15 Responses »

Oct 022015

(Andy Synn returns to an irregular series in which he identifies favorite things that come in fives.)

Earlier today I finally found time to finish off my monthly helping of reviews for London Metal Monthly, the free magazine/webzine for which I moonlight when I’m not terrorizing the NCS readership with my overly-opinionated and utterly scintillating wordsmanship.

It’s a very different way of working than we have here at NCS Towers, with (relatively) stricter deadlines and (much) stricter word counts. In fact it’s a real struggle sometimes to say something meaningful about an album in only 140 words. Often, in-depth detail has to take second place to a focussed discussion of overall quality. If I’m very lucky I can find room to give an impression of the overarching themes and vibe of the album, but generally if I want to say anything particularly meaningful it has to be short, sweet, and succinct.

One of the albums on my slate this time around was Abysmal, the seventh slab of Melodic Death Metal might from our much beloved friends in The Black Dahlia Murder, and since I didn’t really have time to go as deep into the album as I might have liked, I’ve been inspired to put together this little list pulling together some of my favourite “deep cuts” from the band’s post-Nocturnal era.

So… shall we begin? Continue reading »

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