THE SYNN REPORT, PART 35: SUNNA

 Exceptions to the Rule, THE SYNN REPORT  12 Responses »
May 062013
 

(Andy Synn brings us another edition of THE SYNN REPORT, focusing on a band who’s off our usual beaten path.)

Recommended for fans of: Nine Inch Nails, Ulver, A Perfect Circle

So this will be the third Synn Report in a row emanating from the British Isles… I’m not sure why… possibly some sort of deeply repressed guilt or sense of ingrained responsibility to the UK metal scene? Who knows. Don’t worry though, I’ve already set out who the next edition is going to focus on, and they’re not from the UK, so I think we’re safe from any pro-imperialist accusations.

After two distinctly death metal flavoured editions in a row we’re heading into more unusual waters this time around, with a band who come to NCS from a rather different direction.

Forming in 1998, Sunna have had a very up and down career in the British underground. Arriving at the tail end of the nu-metal years the group were lucky enough to avoid being tainted with the same artificially-angsty brush, while also benefitting from a renewed interest in more arty and more dramatic forms of rock/metal (which some would say was a counter-counter-culture response to the more… clunky… forms of mainstream metal at the time).

Dealing in a sound somewhere between the industrial groove of early Nine Inch Nails, the pulsing ambience of Massive Attack, and the soaring riffage of A Perfect Circle – with underlying influences from both Bowie and The Beatles (at their most psychedelic) – the group delivered their well-received debut in 2000, before completely and unexpectedly falling off the radar. It was over nine long years later that the group would return with their follow-up record, continuing even further along their esoteric, industrial/electro-ambient path.

By the release of their third album the band were essentially a solo project of vocalist/guitarist Jon Harris (along with contributions from a number of notable other musicians), but continued to deal with their themes of inner turbulence and turmoil through the medium of their complex compositions and thought-provoking, often painfully honest, lyrics. Continue reading »

FULL ALBUM STREAM OF “DIDACT” BY MEANS END

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  6 Responses »
May 012013
 

(In this post we deliver unto you a full-stream of the new album by Sweden’s Means End, which we preface with the following introduction by NCS writer TheMadIsraeli. And yes, it’s an exception to our usual rule . . . the one about singing.)

Yes, it’s that time again.  It’s time for more thall.

Means End are the final link in a triad of bands who are all conjoined by “that word”, mainly because Vildhjarta, Uneven Structure, and Means End have all shared members at some point or another.  Something about this seems to have produced a certain magic that’s undeniable.  All three bands have taken a style of metal that at this point, in other hands, has become trite, overdone, and less appealing than chugging a jug of smegma and rotten milk, and somehow managed to rejuvenate it while establishing distinctive identities for themselves.  Means End certainly have a sound all their own.  Yes, they have recognizable influences (and who doesn’t in this day and age?), but what they do with those influences really shines and stands out.

The Didact is fifty-one minutes of jazzy, funky, rhythm-driven, progressive groove metal with one of the best vocalists in metal right now.  The music is cinematic, enigmatic, but still seething, with fangs dripping in battery acid.  It’s this band’s sense of dynamics, moving between the gorgeous and moments when they bring the hammer of thall down upon you, that really stands out.  The soft parts don’t really feel “soft” per se, because this band’s tendency toward ever-evolving key transitions produces more a sense of unease than a simple break from the heaviness.  However, when the heaviness does hit, it pretty much implodes your intestines. Continue reading »

YOUR HAIRLESS CAT PHOTOS FOR THE DAY

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

Yeah, hairless cats. We don’t have enough hairless cats here at NCS. Actually, the only other time we had a hairless cat at NCS was in this post from three years ago, of which I’m still awfully damned proud. But today I saw some hairless cat photos that just seemed to cry out for a feature.  Voila!

POTERGEIST

The first photo is up above. It was taken by none other than Seth Siro Anton (Septic Flesh), and the subjects are Alex S. Wamp of Greek “swamp metal” band Potergeist and Sethi. That’s Sethi on top. I think it’s a badass pic.

Before seeing it I didn’t know anything about Potergeist, but now I know that they have a new album on the way named Swampire and that Mr.Anton will be doing the cover art for it. In hunting for Potergeist music, I found two things that I liked. The first is a cover they recently recorded of Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard”, which appears on a Greek tribute to Sabbath named Sabbath Cadabra that Metal Hammer Greece is giving away with issue #340 (it went on sale April 2). Some fuckin’ juicy riffs in this thing, not to mention a sweet blues harmonica, a nice guitar solo, and some squalling vocals.

Before I get to the second thing I found, here’s another photo of Alex and Sethi: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MECHINA AND GOTHMINSTER

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

(This little round-up is provided to you courtesy of NCS writer DGR.)

MECHINA

Chicago’s Mechina are now close to five months in from their unleashing their excellent release Empyrean. However, they’re not a band to just sit on their laurels and instead have been hard at work on quite a bit of new music. They’ve already discussed a follow-on trilogy of musical releases — which in itself is ambitious as hell — but the group have also been putting out the occasional oddball single/cover and have recently made a couple of them available for free download.

It’s done through a website called WeTransfer, which I’ve never heard of before, but it seems legit and it checked out on the two webrep style programs I use, and neither song has given me any crazy-ass computer sickness as of the thirty minutes ago that I downloaded these things. Plus; if anything does happen we know the band are based in the Chicago area and, really, how hard is it to find four or five guys within a mass of millions, right? Now, let’s discuss the songs.

First up is “Anicetus” – which is an electronica-augmented song that the band proclaims is a “dubstep/whatthehellyoucallit” track made for the hell of it. As someone who has been exposed to an oddly heavy amount of the genre I can say that yes, there are definite elements of it throughout the whole song, so there’s no denying its presence. However, the amount of noise, guitars, electronics, and orchestral elements combine to make something that is oddly compelling. Continue reading »

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE GHOST PHENOMENON AND “INFESTISSUMAM”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  34 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

When I intend to listen to an album with the thought of reviewing it, I usually avoid reading other reviews. I want to form my own impressions based solely on the music and pick my own words to describe it; this may explain why my reviews leave so much to be desired. However, I read several reviews of Ghost’s new album Infestissumam before hearing it, because I wasn’t thinking about reviewing it for this site. After all, the music is barely metal, if it’s metal at all. Also, it has actual singing in it.

The reviews I read weren’t in mainstream publications or on mainstream sites, though Infestissimum has been reviewed in plenty of those places. I was reading reviews on metal blogs. I couldn’t help but notice that even most of the positive reviews had a defensive or apologetic tone, a kind of “they’re good for what they do, as long as you’re not expecting X, Y, or Z”. And the negative reviews panned the album for not having enough X, Y, or Z — whatever the reviewer was demanding but couldn’t find in the music, such as heaviness or gripping riffs.

Some of the negative reviews came from people who seemed to really like Ghost’s first album, Opus Eponymous. This later puzzled me after I listened to Infestissimum, because it’s not like the band made some kind of radical course change without putting on the turn signal.  I don’t think it’s different enough from the first album to turn praise into a pan.

I began to have a sneaking suspicion that Ghost had become the victim of a combination of two things that don’t go over very well here in the underground: success and gimmickry. Continue reading »

CLEAN AND UNCLEAN: THE GREAT OLD ONES, ANTTI RAILIO, AND SHADE EMPIRE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 272013
 

I had already put together one daily round-up of new metal for this Saturday (here), but since doing that I found more items I want to share, because sharing is caring (I spit up in my mouth as I wrote that, so it didn’t turn out as funny as I’d hoped). Part of what’s in here involves clean singing; and no, we aren’t entirely bigoted on the subject despite the site’s name. However, I’m sandwiching the clean in between slices of the unclean, just so no one gets the idea that the exceptions have become the rule around here.

THE GREAT OLD ONES

The Great Old Ones are a French black metal band who released their debut album Al Azif last year via Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions. To commemorate the one-year anniversary of that album, The Great Old Ones decided to record a cover of a Björk song. Probably wouldn’t have been my pick for a celebratory commemorative, but what the fuck, I decided to check it out — and it’s outstanding.

The band have preserved the song’s melancholy melody through a mix of vibrating tremolo chords and intensified its emotional power and dramatic punch with wrenching black metal vocals, heavy bass, and well-timed drum blasting. In retrospect, I can see how the song’s lyrics would lend themselves to a black metal cover: “I’m a fountain of blood . . . I’m a path of cinders burning under your feet . . . You’re the intruder hand / I’m the branch that you break.” Continue reading »

THIS AND THAT: TERATISM, 7 H.TARGET, AND MONAHANS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Eye-Catchers, Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Apr 242013
 

Here are a few things I’ve been listening to recently. They’ve been bouncing around my head, insisting that I say something about them, and so I am. They have no connection to each other and one of them isn’t even metal at all. But for different reasons all three songs have sunk their claws into the mushy gray matter and won’t let go. Let me know what you think.

TERATISM

I latched on to this Minneapolis band because of the artwork you see above. It’s a Mark Riddick creation for the vinyl LP version of the band’s 2010 album Via Negativa (which was their fourth full-length), and it fuckin’ kills — one of my favorite pieces he’s ever done. The vinyl will be released at some point later this year by Behold Barbarity Records, and the album is available for streaming at the Teratism Bandcamp page. Unfortunately, you can’t download it there but CDs are available here.

But the song that’s been wrecking my head recently isn’t from that album (though the album is massively good). Instead, it’s one I found after the Riddick art drew me to the Teratism FB page. It’s called “Shadows Flee the Burning Sons of Light” and it will be included on a forthcoming vinyl 12″ EP named La Bas, which consists of four previously unreleased Teratism tracks (recorded in 2009) and a cover of “Come To the Sabbat” by Black Widow. And that EP also features this vicious Mark Riddick cover art: Continue reading »

VIDEO BONANZA (Pt 1): LEGEND AND DEATHCHAIN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 182013
 

Yesterday turned out to be a banner day for new music videos, and unfortunately I didn’t have time to write about all of the good ones I saw. So I’m making up for lost time by collecting them in two posts, this one being the first. Herewith, for your listening and viewing pleasure, are new videos from Legend (Iceland) and Deathchain (Finland).

LEGEND

I found out about this Icelandic band’s new video via a Facebook post by Sólstafir, who are apparently friends of the two men who make up Legend — Krummi Björgvinsson and Halldór A Björnsson. I confess that neither Legend nor those two gents were familiar to me, and the music isn’t metal, but the song and the video have hooked me right through the gills.

The song is “Benjamite Bloodline” and it’s from the band’s most recent album Fearless. The music is a building swarm of electronica that eventually unfolds into a thunderous beat, with vocals that are mainly clean but ultimately caustic. The strange video is as interesting to watch as the music is to hear — though I make no attempt to describe it. It’s next . . . Continue reading »

THE DEVIL’S BLOOD, ORCHID, AND UNCLE ACID

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 132013
 

I went hunting for new music this morning and found a trio of songs that just cried out to be bundled together. Crying makes me uncomfortable, so I relented. All three songs are exceptions to our rule around here. All three songs reach back into the 60’s and 70’s for their inspiration. None of them is a skull-cleaver or a face-melter, but they’ve nonetheless wormed their way into my head. Before I de-worm myself with something that’s more typical for this site, I’m sharing the experiences.

THE DEVIL’S BLOOD

On January 22 of this year, this occult Dutch group announced that they were disbanding, but would be releasing additional recordings before disappearing into the void from whence they came. The first of those is a full-length album entitled III: Tabula Rasa or Death and the Seven Pillars, which Metal Blade plans to release on June 11.

Selim “SL” Lemouchi has explained that all of the songs are demos recorded in his home recording studio and given only “a simple mix”. The first song from the album that debuted yesterday is “White Storm of Teeth”.  Continue reading »

IMMOLATION INDOCTRINATES, DAMNED CREED INHALES THE HATE, AND PAOLO GIRARDI DELIVERS THE EYE CANDY

 Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 082013
 

Continuing what has turned into a content-packed Monday, we’re packaging in this post features on the latest track premiere by Immolation, a new discovery from Greece (Damned Creed), and mysterious new artwork by Paolo Girardi.

IMMOLATION

No one with any sense really needs to be teased further about Immolation’s new album, because all sensible metalheads have already resolved to lay hands on it as soon as possible. But we’re getting teased again anyway.

Not long ago MetalSucks exclusively debuted yet another song from the forthcoming Kingdom of Conspiracy release — and it’s available for free download via the widget on their site. The song is a titanic bruiser powered by tremolo’d grinding, bullet-spitting drumfire, wraithlike soloing, and enough tempo shifts to keep you off balance while your head bangs merrily away. Continue reading »

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