Islander, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Islander

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE: UNHOLD, THE ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE, HANGGAI, JESSICA93, ATRORUM

Oct 022015

In this post I’ve collected some songs I discovered recently that don’t fit our usual mold around here. As most people know by now, we no longer adhere strictly to the rule expressed in the site’s name — though I’m more faithful than some of our other writers. But the songs in this post are exceptions in more ways than simply the use of clean vocals; some of them aren’t even metal. But despite these departures from what I usually enjoy, all the songs have wormed their way into my head, and I thought you might enjoy them, too.

By the way, I spend very little time exploring music outside the boundaries of extreme metal, so these choices are hardly the result of some comprehensive survey. I came across all of them quite by accident.

UNHOLD

Untold are based in Bern, Switzerland. Their most recent album (their fourth full-length) is named Towering and it was released in January of this year. The song that’s gotten its hooks in me is a track called “Voice Within”. Continue reading »

REPULSIVE DISSECTION: “CHURCH OF THE FIVE PRECIOUS WOUNDS”

Reviews 3 Responses »

Oct 022015

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by Repulsive Dissection, released yesterday by Sevared Records.)

I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of slam-oriented brutal death metal, at all. It’s usually about as cookie-cutter in execution as deathcore is. And the reason I say that is not to bash anyone who personally enjoys slam, but merely to point out that for me the new Repulsive Dissection record is the exception to the rule. Church of the Five Precious Wounds is bizarre unorthodox madness, sort of like a more chaotic take on the kinds of deranged and technical death metal that Malignancy and Origin play. It definitely helps that the slam breaks are sparse, and used to great effect as a force of tension between the relentlessly racing nature and blasting throttle of their music overall.

Church of the Five Precious Wounds really never relents from start to finish, and more importantly, never bores or dips in quality at any point in the record. The songwriting itself is a lot more dense and busier than that of most of their peers. It’s maddening to hear how many different parts each song is composed of. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEMONSTEALER — “GENOCIDIAL LEADERS”

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Oct 012015

Demonstealer is best known as the frontman for India’s Demonic Resurrection, but what some may not know is that seven years ago he released a solo album under the Demonstealer name (…And Chaos Will Reign…) that was pretty damned good. And now he’s at work on a second solo album which will feature the phenomenal George Kollias of Nile on drums. Although the album won’t be ready for release until early 2016, today we’re giving you a taste of what Demonstealer has been cooking up through our premiere of a play-through video for a new single entitled “Genocidal Leaders“.

On this recording, Demonstealer has collaborated with Australia-based drummer Louis Rando (Impiety) and Demonic Resurrection guitarist Nishith Hegde (also a member of horror-metal band Albatross), who contributes a lead guitar solo. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): VREID, ORTHODOXY, UR DRAUGR, DEAFEST

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Oct 012015

Last night and this morning I engaged in an extended bout of metal listening and found not only a lot of new music I’m anxious to share with you but also some fantastic visual art. By chance, much of what I found is in a blackened vein, and so once again I’ve collected these discoveries in an installment of this irregular Shades of Black series. I have a lot to throw your way, and so it will come in at least two parts, with the other(s) headed your way on our site tomorrow.

VREID

It’s not an understatement to say that my NCS comrades and I are huge, slobbering fans of this Norwegian band. Okay… I guess I’m probably the only one who actually slobbers… the others just sweat a lot.

Anyway, I’m excited to spread the news that Vreid have now divulged some additional details about their new album and have also today premiered a video for the album’s title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE WEIR — “NO FATE”

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Oct 012015

Following their 2013 debut album Yesterday’s Graves, Calgary’s The Weir will soon be releasing their second full-length, Calmness of Resolve. It’s a four-track album (of over 40 minutes in length), and today we give you the chance to hear one of the new songs, a crusher named “No Fate”

In one sense, the song is like the photograph chosen for the album’s cover. There are aspects of beauty in it; it draws you in; but it’s also desolate and bleak — and the song begins to cast a long shadow right from the start with slow, groaning riffs, methodical tumbling drums, and a prolonged shriek of feedback. You’re at the start of a slow-motion train wreck, though you may not realize it yet. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VULTURE INDUSTRIES — “BLOOD ON THE TRAIL”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 3 Responses »

Oct 012015

Although I never managed to write a complete review of Vulture Industries’ fantastic 2013 album The Tower, I did write about every one of the three songs that premiered before the album’s release and chose the title track for our site’s list of 2013’s “Most Infectious” Songs, so that counts for something. The album is a strange and wondrous creation that sounds like nothing else I heard the year of its release — or since then either — and so I’m delighted that we have the chance to help premiere a new video for yet another song from the album: “Blood On the Trail“.

Apart from the fact that the song kicks large quantities of ass, the video was made by one of our favorite visual creators, Costin Chioreanu (who leads a damned good band himself [Bloodway]). Here’s what Vulture Industries had to say about the high-energy video: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TAMÁS KÁTAI (THY CATAFALQUE)

Interviews 2 Responses »

Oct 012015

Sgùrr is the name of the new album by Thy Catafalque, the remarkable solo project of Hungarian musician Tamás Kátai. As an ardent fan of the band, it was one of my most eagerly anticipated albums of this year, and now that I’ve heard it, it is one of my favorites of the year as well.

I was fortunate to hear the album well in advance of its October 16 release by Season of Mist, and even more fortunate to receive a copy of the beautiful digibook version of the album to look at as I listened. And to add still more good fortune, we were given the opportunity to premiere a song from the album named “Jura” — which you can explore here, along with my perhaps over-long review of the album and my photos of the digibook.

After I had spent significant time with the music on Sgùrr, I was left with many questions about it. I prevailed upon Tamás Kátai to satisfy my curiosity in the following interview conducted over the internet. Of course, the music speaks for itself (eloquently and powerfully), but the following discussion provides insights about Sgùrr from Tamás that I think will enhance listeners’ appreciation of this newest of his creations (and I’ve included two songs from the album at the end for those who haven’t yet discovered them). Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 63: STELLAR MASTER ELITE

THE SYNN REPORT 11 Responses »

Oct 012015

(In this 63rd edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy reviews the discography to date of Germany’s Stellar Master Elite — including their just-released third album, Eternalism.)

Recommended for fans of: Thorns, Satyricon, Aborym

The Synn Report isn’t just about covering bands retrospectively you know? In fact, frequently I’ll stumble across a band for the very first time and just feel compelled to write about them immediately (see Parts 57 and 60 for recent examples).

German grim-meisters Stellar Master Elite are another example of a band whose name has been floating around the various circles in which I wander for a while, but who – with their upcoming third album (which is being released today) – I’ve only just gotten round to checking out.

Their sound, though instantly memorable, is actually slightly hard to properly categorise. Certainly there’s a significant Blackened backbone to the band, but this is overlain with a Doomy, occult glamour and a shining skin of cyber-industrial synth work… so it should be no surprise to discover that the band named themselves after a song by legendary (if not exactly prolific) Industrial Black Metal forerunners Thorns… though it must also be said that the Germans are less chaotically aggressive overall, but far more ominously bleak in their approach!

So if you’re looking to get your grim, inhuman groove on, then you’ve definitely come to the right place! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIST OF NIHIL — “THE LAST WOUND OF GAIA”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Oct 012015

Last year the Greek band Mist of Nihil released their debut EP Buried Laments, which my comrade DGR greeted with open arms in his review: “The group are like crashing waves on the side of a rocky cliff and can bring on that drowning feeling that you’re looking for when you come to the doom genre.” Now the band are on the verge of releasing their debut album A Faint Aurora, with the kind of attention-grabbing cover art that will make it very difficult to overlook. The music is going to make its mark, too — as you’re about to discover through our premiere of the album’s final track, “The Last Wound of Gaia“.

This long song joins together passages of shimmering, ephemeral beauty, blood-pumping riffs and pulsating lead-guitar melodies, cavernous full-throated growls — and of course an aura of aching melancholy. Sombre, heavy chords that drag like chains across a killing floor link arms with high, clear, cascading guitar arpeggios that shine with changing light against a backdrop of darkness, very much like the auroras of the album’s title. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABIGAIL WILLIAMS — “LOST COMMUNION”

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Sep 302015

When our writer Andy Synn recently reviewed Abigail Williams’ new album The Accuser, he described the further evolution of the band’s sound from their last album Becoming as “inverting the moody introspection of its predecessor into a dark and brooding nihilism, creating in the process a distorted reflection and a dark inversion of their former sound that still shares many of the same traits and elements, but twists them into harsher, more dissonant shapes.”

Today we have the privilege of premiering for you another song from The Accuser. Andy described this new one, “Lost Communion“, as music “with a rolling swagger to it, shot through with a series of esoteric, piercing lead melodies that thread their way in and out of the blasting, grooving, melee, climaxing in the unexpectedly massive hooks of the song’s mid-section, with some frankly huge vocals and booming riffs offering a big payoff to the song’s rapid-fire build-up.” Continue reading »

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