AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VÖLVA — “DESIRES PROFANE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Nov 262024
 

In mid-October we premiered a riveting video for a song called “The Tower” by Sweden’s “avenging witches of black metal,” Völva. It was from Völva‘s debut album Desires Profane, which is set for co-release on November 28th by Fiadh Productions (for LP) and Grind to Death Records (for CD).

The album is described as “ten hymns to the lost souls of their persecuted sisters, incinerated upon the murderous bonfires of Christianity,” as “a scalding assault of vehement rage,” and as a pursuit of “themes of Satanic feminism both in a spiritual cosmic sense as well as using your free will, body and lust as vessels to sin for a higher purpose”.

And if that’s not clear enough, Völva reinforce their message and what fuels their music with these words:

Völva are intolerant to any behavior implying someone else taking any right to claim that their color of skin, heritage or geographical belonging entitles them to be superior to someone else. Needless to say, but as satanic feminists living in a society like ours, there’s no end of the hatred we feel against the male white supremacy. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INVERTED CROSS — “ETERNAL FLAMES OF HELL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 252024
 

On their debut album Eternal Flames of Hell the Barcelona band Inverted Cross wickedly uphold a lot of age-old metal traditions: the traditions of the five-pointed star, of bullet belts and gauntlets, of goat-headed demons and blasphemous words, and of course the inverted cross itself.

But more to the point, they uphold the traditions of venomous black thrashing speed metal that will get rattled heads hammering and heated blood rushing, proudly and violently following the ripped path of such bands as Destruction, Sodom, Kreator, Deathrow, and Violent Force.

Today you’ll get the full blast of their hellfire, as we premiere a complete stream of Eternal Flames of Hell in advance of its November 29 release by Helldprod Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTAR OV ASTERIA — “ÉNA”

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Nov 222024
 

If you’ve heard the first single released from Altar Ov Asteria‘s debut album you know these two German women (Satyra and Melpomene) aren’t cautiously feeling their way forward, haltingly trying to figure out who they are musically. They named that song “Kataklysm“, and a sonic cataclysm is what they made — a devastating, exhilarating, and wholly engulfing experience.

The rest of the album, entitled Éna, is equally self-assured, both in its music and in its conception. Altar Ov Asteria liken it to “a storybook of hellish Sodom”, imagining (as Dante and Homer did) “a world full of mysteries and realities woven into each other”, creating allegories of human dystopia through an intertwining of viscerally assaulting, immensely heavy black metal and unorthodox atmospherics.

What we have for you today is the premiere stream of Éna as a whole, all five songs, in advance of its release by the Dusktone label on November 29th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LACOLPA — “WHERE GOD LIVES”

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Nov 212024
 

(written by Islander)

Over the course of two previous albums the Italian band LaColpa have musically and lyrically elaborated their philosophy of pain, “deeply rooted in the human condition of eternal suffering,” through “different stratifications of sonic nightmares.”

I’ve quoted there from the introduction provided by Brucia Records to LaColpa‘s recently announced third album, In Absentia Lucis. The label also describes the album as “a pitch-black magma of suffering in music, combining Sludge, Doom and Dissonant Black Metal with some of the most painful soundscapes of improvisational Noise and Drone.” Regarding the new record’s thematic focus, they say:

After having explored themes like guilt, awareness of own mortality and the condition of pain which inevitably grips our existence, In Absentia Lucis closes the circle by bringing back the reflection on our own condition of impotence.

We are lost in the immense solitude of our Ego, masters of Nothing.
We are the Lords of Nothingness.
Lost in Our Vast Loneliness. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNALIVM — “CONQUERING THE MOST HIGH”

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Nov 202024
 

Infernalivm is a new name, but one you will soon remember. A satanic death metal weapon from France, their lineup includes members of such notable and notorious groups as Novae Militiae, Merrimack, Benighted, and Ritualization. That info alone is enough to make extremist listeners pay attention to Infernalivm‘s debut EP, Conquering the Most High, and the music ruthlessly seizes attention too.

Sentient Ruin Laboratories, the label that will release the EP on November 29th, has described its four songs as a “dark and violent abomination with an immensely evil and antihuman atmosphere” — “dark, sanguinary, and inescapable,” “absolute sonic brutality,” “an authentic horror of creation.”

As you’ll learn through our premiere of the EP’s title track, those aren’t overstatements. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BEYOND GRACE – WELCOME TO THE NEW DARK AGES, PART 2

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Nov 202024
 

(Andy Synn presents an exclusive track-by-track premiere of his band’s new EP)

Despite current appearances, I largely try and keep my work with Beyond Grace and my work here at NoCleanSinging separate.

But with everything that’s happened recently (just under two weeks ago my mum was rushed to hospital, and then into emergency surgery, where she came very close to dying… although, thankfully, she pulled through and is now recovering) I didn’t have the time (or the energy) to set up a preview stream for our new EP (out this Friday).

Our gracious leader Islander, however, was kind enough to step up and – entirely unprompted – offer to host an exclusive premiere for us (an offer which, of course, I immediately accepted), which I thought would also be a great opportunity to provide some background info on each track as well.

So, without further ado, I am proud to present our new EP, Welcome to the New Dark Ages, Part 2.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIRROR NEURON — “INTERIOR SEMIOTICS”

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Nov 192024
 

(written by Islander)

As a band name, Mirror Neuron is an intriguing choice, and so is the artwork on this Toronto duo’s spectacular debut album, Great Content.

A “mirror neuron” is an actual thing, present in the brains of humans, primate species, and birds. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge: “A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron ‘mirrors’ the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.” Its function has been the subject of much speculation, which you can read about via that link above.

As for the cover art, it’s a painting by Justyna Koziczak (used with her permission) called “Dante and Virgil in 4th circle of hell” (that’s the circle for the greedy).

But the intrigues don’t stop there. Consider the way the Mirror Neuron duo have characterized the music on their album: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LES CHANTS DU HASARD — “PARMI LES POUSSIÈRES”

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Nov 182024
 

Short-hand descriptions of Les Chants Du Hasard have included references to the project as a “French Blackened Orchestral/Operatic Ensemble” and to the music (even more succinctly) as “extreme opera”. Over the course of four albums, the most recent of which was released this past June, the project’s principal protagonist Hazard has found frequently eye-popping and unconventional methods of expressing extreme emotions such as anger, violence, darkness, and despair, with the goal of thoroughly submerging the listener in them.

Hazard has described the latest album, Livre Quart, in these words:

“I created LES CHANTS DU HASARD following a vision of a crawling and ugly opera, in which some light could be found, the same way that [French poet Charles] Baudelaire found beauty in ugliness. This idea has been with me on a daily basis since 2016, when I decided to give it a try and began composing Livre Premier. Livre Quart is the closest I’ve come to realizing this vision.”

As a reminder of what the album brings us, and hopefully to open new ears to its daunting phenomena, today we premiere a video for the record’s opening piece, “Parmi Les Poussières“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KILLING SPREE — “ALL THESE BELLS AND WHISTLES”

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Nov 182024
 

(written by Islander)

As a musical instrument the saxophone seems to live in a walled garden. Probably no other instrument is more uniquely associated with jazz. Other instruments used in jazz ensembles have regular roles in other musical genres, but the saxophone? Not so much.

And so when people hear a saxophone, it’s hard not to think of jazz, even when the performer isn’t doing jazz riffs or jazzy noodling. But of course a lot of the time that’s what the performer really is doing, even in a different musical setting, such as metal and rock, where some bands (especially the proggier ones) have brought in guest sax performers to add a little unconventional spice.

Of course a few bands in rock and metal have a saxophonist as a regular member of their lineup — but it’s a tiny percentage. And maybe that’s because of the “walled garden” effect: It’s hard not to think of jazz when you hear the instrument, and the number of ardent metal fans who also like jazz (and vice-versa) probably isn’t a huge contingent (mind you, this is a wild guess).

And that brings us to Killing Spree, a French drum-and-saxophone duo who’ve applied a battering ram to the confines of that walled garden. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: A DEAD POEM — “IN FORGOTTEN DIMENSIONS”

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Nov 152024
 

(written by Islander)

Some people are still alive who remember a time in the early ’90s (because they witnessed it) when the now well-defined genres of extreme metal weren’t so sharply separated, when there was a commingling of styles such as gothic doom, black metal, and melodeath. Others who weren’t contemporaneous witnesses have experienced those moments by listening to such records as Paradise Lost‘s Gothic, Katatonia‘s Dance of December Souls, or Rotting Christ‘s A Dead Poem.

It is no coincidence that the Brazilian duo of Marlon Combat and Carlos Misanthropic chose A Dead Poem as the name of their band, because their aim was to grasp and revive the intertwined aesthetics of doom and black metal manifested by records such as those.

Their first efforts in that direction were captured in their Absence of Life EP self-released last year (and then released in a limited CD edition early his year by Cold Art Industry Records). That caught the attention of the eclectic Personal Records, which is now primed to release A Dead Poem‘s debut album Abstract Existence on December 13th.

Some of the songs from the album have already surfaced (and opened lots of eyes and ears), and today we’re bringing you another one, a stunner of a song named “In Forgotten Dimensions“. Continue reading »

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