HIGH SPIRITS: “ANOTHER NIGHT”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  8 Responses »
Sep 082011
 

(NCS writer BadWolf reviews the new album from Chicago’s High Spirits, one of the many projects of Chris Black (aka Dawnbringer).)

As I sit here, there’s a million things I should be listening to: brushing up on my beardo/nerdo metal in preparation for SUCKFEST ’11, putting together my Norwegian Hardcore playlist for Invisible Oranges, and brushing up on my Enslaved for their upcoming tour with Alcest and Ghost, not to mention the loads of promo records clogging my inbox.

None of those has factored in for the past 6 days thanks to Another Night, the debut record by Chicago’s High Spirits. This piece of self-released, Neo-Traditional metal awesomeness has possessed my iPod harder than Pazuzu possessed Linda fuckin Blair.

“The power of ‘Core compels you, the power of ‘Core compels you.” I scream at the little glowing screen… and then I listen to “Full Power” one more time. 45 repeats in 6 days. I need help. Islander—this is my vote for catchiest song of the year.

Don’t let that fool you into thinking this is a one-song record. Hell no. Another Night is a 40-minute nostalgia trip that delivers. No concepts, no conceits, no bullshit. Just good times and hard rocking.

Then again, that shouldn’t come as a surprise—High Spirits is (in studio) a one-man project of Chicago metal royalty Chris Black. This man is an absolute beast. He writes lyrics for Nachtmystium when he’s not writing every instrument for High Spirits and another little project called Dawnbringer. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ENOCHIAN THEORY – “EVOLUTION: CREATIO EX NIHILO”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

(Andy Synn takes us into the weekend with his review of the first album from the UK’s Enochian Theory.)

Hello again ladies and gents, here’s another taste of something a little different that barely comes under the site’s remit, yet I feel will appeal to the more expressive and open-minded of you all the same.

Enochian Theory are a UK prog band of expansive ambition and mesmerising melody where majestic cleans rule the roost and growled vocals are definitely the exception, rather than the rule. Very much art for art’s sake, the enigmatic complexity of each song’s serpentine structuring is offset by the soaring, infectiously melodic vocals of frontman Ben Harris-Hayes, whose emotive delivery and harmonious, scintillating lyrical expositions contribute to making the album that rarest of things, both an immediate pleasure and a long-term investment of impressive quality and intriguing depth. The candid, at times even painfully raw, nature of the singing gives the whole expansive, captivating affair a recognisably human element which serves as an anchor point no matter how convoluted or complex the music may become.

When absorbed in the album itself, I actually struggled to compare it directly to any external influence, so distinctive is its sound, although links can be drawn, very favourably, to fellow British prog luminaries Anathema and Porcupine Tree, along with the solo works of PT’s own Steven Wilson. Yet of greatest interest to the readers of this site will be the sonic connections to the emotionally complex solo work of Devin Townsend, the raging ambience of latter-day Isis, and the mind-bending instrumental excursions more commonly attributed to Tool. Yet Enochian Theory themselves are very much a singular entity, these comparisons barely scratching the surface of what the three-piece actual sound like in full-flight.   (more after the jump .. . .) Continue reading »

VIRUS: “THE AGENT THAT SHAPES THE DESERT”

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 222011
 

A Facebook friend of mine, a talented metal guitarist and songwriter with eclectic musical tastes (The Binary Code’s Jesse Zuretti), posted a comment last night about a song from a Norwegian band called Virus that caught my eye. He wrote: “Check this band out if you like David Bowie, Black Metal, East of the Wall, and GROOVE. Some of the best lyrics I’ve read in years.” Really now, how could I resist?

The song that was the subject of that FB post is the title track to the band’s 2011 album (their third), The Agent That Shapes the Desert. The band itself is largely the brainchild of a guitarist and vocalist named Carl-Michael Eide (“Czral”), who at times past has been a part of bands such as Ulver, Satyricon, Ved Buens Ende, and Nattefrost, with collaboration from a very talented drummer named Einar Sjursø (“Einz”), and on this album, a terrific bassist who calls himself Bjeima.

Since listening to the song (plus a couple of others), I’ve done some reading and seen descriptions that refer to desert-rock and Voivod, but I’m not sure what desert rock is and the Voivod comparison is certainly an imperfect one. I prefer Jesse’s description, though personally I’d substitute David Byrne of The Talking Heads for David Bowie. And yes, the odd, sometimes campy-sounding clean vocals do take some getting used to, but the music is fascinating. It’s definitely avant-garde, with segments of jazz-style bass and drum instrumentals and other-worldly guitars that have to be heard to be believed. But yes again, it does include some massively irresistible grooves.

It’s also heavy enough to qualify as metal in my book, and I’m categorizing it as an Exception to the Rule around here, not because of the clean vocals but despite them (though I confess they’re growing on me). And finally, I also agree with Jesse that the lyrics are way cool. In fact, after the jump I’ve set them out right after the song. Check this out. You won’t hear anything else like it today, or possibly for the rest of the year. That may or may not be a compliment. You decide. Continue reading »

TEXTURES PREMIERES A NEW SONG: IS IT ROCK? IS IT METAL? IS IT BOTH?

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 182011
 

On August 3, Dutch metal band Textures released the first song from their new album (“Singularity”), which we declared to be fucking good pancake. Now the band have premiered yet another new song called “Reaching Home”. Like the first one, it comes from the forthcoming Dualism album.

I have mixed feelings about this song. On the one hand, the instrumental part of the song is cool, anchored by the complex Meshuggah-connected rhythms that are a large part of Textures’ signature sound. And you won’t be surprised to hear that the song has an infectious melody, too, because that’s also a big part of this band’s style.

On the other hand, there are no harsh vocals in the song at all, and there’s not much of a metal edge to it either. As drummer Stef Broks candidly told REVOLVER magazine, it “sounds like a direct assault to the rock charts,” and may remind people of Tool, Depeche Mode, and U2. Perhaps that’s why the song is premiering on the REVOLVER web site (cuz, seriously, REVOLVER hasn’t been metal in a long time).

On the third hand, as Brok also said, it may also remind people of Devin Townsend, and I get that connection, too. There’s a dreamy ambience to the song that is appealing, and the appeal may grow if I listen to it more. If you’d like to listen, GO HERE (I can’t yet embed the song).

Dualism will come out on September 23 in Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, and on September 27 in North America.

TREPANNING LIVES: ICS VORTEX AND MALEFICE

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 302011
 

While other metal blogs were posting about the release of new songs by Dream Theater and Trivium yesterday, I was listening to new songs released the same day by ICS Vortex and Malefice. Is there something wrong with me? Perhaps I need to be trepanned.

Speaking of trephination, I’m always trying to think of new analogies for skull-coring metal, and this one just came to me out of the blue. Amazing that I’ve never thought of it before, actually. I read about a shipboard trephination in one of Patrick O’Brian‘s stupendous novels (I forget which one), and it’s one of those scenes that you don’t forget. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge:

Trepanning, also known as trephination, trephining or making a burr hole, is a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull, exposing the dura mater [the outermost layer of the brain membrane] in order to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases.

Perfect analogy, eh? I certainly don’t think of trepanning on those extraordinarily rare occasions when I listen to Trivium or Dream Theater. But the new tracks from ICS Vortex and Malefice? Fucking skull-coring! (more after the jump . . . including the songs) Continue reading »

VISITOR

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Jun 152011
 

(Israel Flanders reviews the new album from a band called Visitor (UK), and has arranged for some free downloads to boot. This is one of those Exceptions to the Rule embodied in the name of this site)

I think sometimes the number one ingredient to individuality is how a band combine things that already have been done — how they select and distribute existing elements within the music and piece them together into a cohesive product — instead of straining to be wholly original.  Visitor is a band who have definitely succeeded with this formula, and I hope this review will get them some much-deserved exposure, I really do.

Visitor have a rather unique combination of sounds working in their favor.  I’d describe it as a mix of the groove metal stylings of Machine Head, mid-period Napalm Death (think Inside The Torn Apart), and All That Remains.  I don’t know how these guys make this mix of sounds work, but they make it work superbly, in a recognizable way.  I would know Visitor immediately if I heard them, I can say that for certain; they have established their individuality.

The band has just recently put out their latest effort, titled The Need To Believe, and it kicks ass.  I mean, it really kicks ass.  The energy on the record is fantastic, and the music itself is well-written.  The production is a bit rough, yes, but it’s refreshingly rough.  Adding to the feel of Visitor, which is rather hard to describe in the first place, they generate a street vibe (in the same essential way as Machine Head did on their first album), but they’re bringing that vibe into a modern context. What they do doesn’t sound out of place in the present. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say it’s perfectly relevant and needed in the music of more bands here in the second decade of the 2000s. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

KLONE YOURSELF

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
May 172011
 

Too infrequently, we write about music that we pick out for listening based solely on the album cover art, not knowing anything about the music itself. Last July we did that for an album called Black Days by a French band called Klone. To crib from what we wrote about the album back then:

Well, it’s not my usual cuppa tea, which tends toward the more skull-pulping leaves grown on the jagged crags of Tartarus. For one thing, there’s a lot of more-or-less clean singing. . . . But, unexpectedly, I’m really diggin Klone. At a very high level (like, from space), the music straddles a line between the darker side of progressive metal and Chevelle-style hard rock. The instrumentalists are sharp and technically impressive, and even when his vocals are clean, Yann Ligner has an invigorating edge to his voice. The songs cover a wide range, from crosses between doom and prog, to melodic headbanging anthems, to dark dreams of hypnotic ambiance.

Today, we have some news to report about Klone: First, they’ve released a brand new two-part single called The Eye of the Needle that’s available for free download — and it’s absolutely worth hearing. Second, we came across a recent official video for one of the songs from Black Days, and it’s absolutely worth seeing. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

CLEAN SINGING: 40 WATT SUN AND ARKAN

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  9 Responses »
May 032011
 

This site is called NO CLEAN SINGING for a reason. It’s not just a gimmick. We really do prefer our metal with harsh vocals. In part, that’s because the music of bands who feature unclean vocals tends to be extreme in other ways we like, too. But we’re not completely dogmatic about the “no clean singing” thing — we do like some metal that mixes clean and unclean vocals (see Andy Synn’s review of Scar Symmetry’s latest album yesterday, for example), and on even more rare occasions, we enjoy metal that includes nothing but clean singing. We call that kind of music “Exceptions to the Rule”.

Today, we want to write briefly about two recent albums that fall into that category of exceptions — the debut album from UK doom lords 40 Watt Sun and the unusual (and amazing) second album from a French band called Arkan. We’ll get back to our usual, nasty fare in our next post.

40 WATT SUN

We don’t claim to be experts in the genre of traditional doom metal. We try to provide variety in the music we cover at NCS, but doom is a category that we just don’t listen to very much, and as a result we’re fairly ignorant on the subject. In fact, we’re so ignorant that we knew nothing about this band and listened to a promo copy of their new album without any idea of what the music would sound like. If we’d known more about it in advance, we probably would have skipped over it. Ignorance can sometimes be a good thing, because we’re damned glad we discovered this band’s debut, The Inside Room. (more after the jump, including tracks to hear . . .) Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: INSOMNIUM

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Dec 082010
 

Insomnium, like Children of Bodom, is another one of those bands that just can’t be omitted in a feature on Finnish metal — at least not any feature we’re in charge of writing. They draw together strands of melodic death metal, progressive metal, and doom, and weave them into music that’s heavy, epic, beautiful, and sometimes haunting. When people talk about a distinctively Finnish brand of melodic metal, this band, along with Amorphis, are likely the first two bands they’re thinking of.

Insomnium have given us four studio albums to date, with another one due for release next year — their first after signing in August with Century Media (home of other Finnish ass-kickers like Finntroll and Turisas).

We liked Insomnium’s last album, 2009’s Across the Dark, but our favorite remains Above the Weeping World.  That album was our introduction to Insomnium, and it’s still the Insomnium music we go back to, over and again. It’s weighted more heavily on the melodeath side of the scales than Across the Dark, with more un-clean singing, and that may explain our personal preference for it.

After the jump, we’ve got  Insomnium music and videos for your entertainment — including a special single that the band released in September, featuring guest vocals by Dark Tranquillity‘s Mikael Stanne. Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: GHOST BRIGADE

 Exceptions to the Rule  7 Responses »
Dec 032010
 

Contrary to widely held belief, it is not true that 100% of metal emanating from Finland is awesome. The actual statistic is 95%. We’ve speculated before that this is because of something in the water supply over there that mutates 3 out of every 4 fetuses in the womb into riff-meisters. Or maybe it’s Finland’s proximity to Estonia.

Seriously, the whole damned country has only got a population of 5.4 million souls — a little smaller than the population of Wisconsin. How many awesome metal bands are from Wisconsin? No offense to Wisconsin, but we’re having trouble thinking of even one. Now, how many awesome metal bands are from Finland? The actual count is 2 gazillion. It’s true.

No, seriously — it’s statistically demonstrable (as shown here) that Finland has more metal bands per capita than any other country on Earth — and a high percentage of them are good.

So, it should be no surprise that we write about Finnish metal bands a lot here at NCS. This year, we’ve written long or short reviews of music by Kalmah, Kivimetsän Druidi, The Jasser Arafats, Cyphosis, Cavus, Apocalyptica, Blastanus, Sole Remedy, Sotajumala, Survivors Zero, Man-Eating Tree, Gloria Morti, Amberian Dawn, Radiance, Amorphis, and Before the Dawn, and probably some others we missed in our searches.

But we’re not finn-ished writing about Finns. We’re doing a little impromptu series on Finnish metal. We’re calling it Finland Tribute Week, though we’ve gotten so many intriguing suggestions about Finnish metal bands from our commentators since we announced this series that we may have to re-name it Finland Tribute Month. It started two days ago with a post about Amorphis, and that a-morphed into a post yesterday about Before the Dawn. And today, we’ve got Ghost Brigade.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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