A LABOR DAY QUINTET: NEW VIDEOS FROM THE DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, HAIL OF BULLETS, BODYFARM, DEMONIC RESURRECTION, AND DEAD TROOPER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 022013
 

Because of The Great Seattle NCS Confab, coupled with a bit of day-job grind, I largely missed happenings in the world of metal over the last 10 days. I made an effort to go back and find news and new music worth recommending from that stretch of lost time, and felt overwhelmed. I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of catching up and have decided to start fresh — with this round-up of five new videos that debuted this morning.

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT

Fans of Devin Townsend are aware that September 30 will bring the release of a new DVD/CD entitled The Retinal Circus which captures the stunning three-hour show of the same name that took place in October 2012 at London’s Roundhouse venue (reviewed by our own Andy Synn here). The show featured a full choir, a theatrical cast, and enough visual and sonic bombast to mimic the blitz in WWII.

We previously featured the first publicly released clip from the DVD — the show-stopping performance of “Grace”. Today, DT premiered a second clip, for the song “War” from his third solo album Infinity. Watch and listen next. Continue reading »

DEATH METAL TO DESPISE BOB FILNER TO

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 022013
 

(We take our holidays damned seriously here at NCS, so when the calendar says Labor Day, then by god we’re going to fuckin’ LABOR! — beginning with this second guest post by Leperkahn, who introduces us to three bands from San Diego: Imbalanced, Memory, and Ruinist.)

After a good first experience writing and commenting here at No Clean Singing, I’ve decided to give it a go at another post. Seeing as I am now back from Dublin – sweating bullets in sunny San Diego – I thought I might do a round-up of a few San Diego-area bands. Coincidentally, they all sway toward the death-metal end of the spectrum. And, death metal being the antithesis of the outdated morals employed by the scumbag that is Bob Filner, I figure you could use it as a soundtrack while you beat the living shite out of a punching bag with Filner’s Joker-esque smile pasted on it

Imbalanced

I first saw Imbalanced when they opened for San Diego’s best metal export, Cattle Decapitation, earlier this year. So far they have only one EP to their name, Wet & Wreakless. Until recently, they were a two-piece of guitarist/vocalist “Dirty” Ben Cockerham and drummer “Terrible” Tim Bennett, yet my last-minute research indicated that they have added bassist “John Zombie” (evidently Rob’s long-lost cousin). Cliché stage names aside, these guys make some truly blistering technical death metal

After a brief and frankly pointless intro of various vomiting sound effects, the band get down to business with “Skin Deep” (YouTube-able below), with its breackneck pace and scathingly melodic riffs bringing about a bit of Arsis. The Arsis comparison also extends to the ferocious and blindingly fast drumming of Tim Bennett. Continue reading »

INQUISITION, IHSAHN, AND MAN MUST DIE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Aug 282013
 

I haven’t been keeping my eyes peeled for metal news since last week because I’ve been too busy hob-nobbing with my fellow NCS scribes in Seattle. I did take a few quick minutes this morning to glance around and found the following three items that I thought were interesting.

INQUISITION

At the end of July we reported the welcome news that black metal powerhouse Inquisition had revealed the name of their next album (Obscure Verses for the Multiverse) and announced its release dates via Season of Mist — October 29 in North America and October 25 elsewhere. Today brought more information about the album, beginning with the cover art above, which is quite fetching.

We have also been treated to a teaser of music from the album. The video clip that I’ve included beyond the jump includes short snippets from 9 tracks. Except for the snippet of the last track, which features a harsh roar, you’ll learn that Dagon has not changed his vocal style, which continues to sound like a bullfrog being strangled with barbed wire. Continue reading »

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY COMPS FOR GRIND AND DOOM FREAKS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 222013
 

This week brought us the debut of two new compilations that are definitely worth looking at hard, because they go really fuckin’ hard. One is for a worthy cause and one is free.

GRINDING FOR A CURE – VOL. 3

“Grinding for a Cure” is a project that started small back in mid-January and quickly exploded into one of the best on-going comp projects in recent memory. The mission of the organizers (Dorian Rainwater of Noisear and many other bands, now including Excruciating Terror, Christine Coz, and Chris Messina of Swamp Gas) is to raise money to fund research into a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Volume 1 (featured at NCS here) contained 100 tracks, Volume 2 (featured here) matched that total, and the bands participating in both those installments included a bunch of eye-catching names.

The new Volume 3 has just gone “live” with the first 8 tracks, though it’s also going to have 100 by the time it’s finished. This time, the music is being uploaded to Bandcamp as the songs become available so people can hear the music as the comp grows.

Those first 8 tracks are really good. They includes songs by Phobia, Dim Mak, Inhabitants, Scars of Deceit, Gooze, Horse’s Silhouette, and Human Trade. But I want to make special mention of the first song — “Look At the World” — because it’s by Excruciating Terror. Continue reading »

FUCK THIS BIRD BITCH, DRINK THIS BLEACH: NEW DEATH GRIPS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 222013
 

“Birds” is the name of a new Death Grips jam that came out of nowhere this morning. It’s a free download. If you click this link, the download will start immediately:

DOWNLOAD

If you’re the cautious type, you may want to hear it before you download. You can do that after the jump.

If you wonder why this metal blog has been on the now-crowded Death Grips train since early days, it’s because we drank this bleach. It goes big.

I GOT TOMORROW COMING
I GOT GOT I GOT
I GOT TOMORROW COMING

I GOT TOMORROW COMING
I GOT GOT I GOT
I GOT TOMORROW COMING
IN

BIRDS

FUCK YOU Continue reading »

YOUR BRAIN, IN A BLENDER: BATILLUS, LECHEROUS NOCTURNE, CLERIC, AND AQUILUS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Aug 222013
 

As usual, I have a few things for you. As usual, the selection consists of new things I found yesterday. As usual, the music is diverse (and possibly also different, diverse, divergent, distinct, dissimilar, and disparate, though I’m still not sure I grasp the distinctions among these words). They do have one thing in common: they’ll put your brain in a blender and tune the setting to purée.

BATILLUS

In February I reviewed an album named Concrete Sustain by Batillus. I characterized it as “a 2013 must-listen for fans of doom, especially those who might want to do more than stand in place and nod dreamily at the floor.” When I wrote that line, I had in mind a couple of songs on the album, chiefly “Concrete”, which I tried to describe as “black industrial funk, the dancebeat at the end of the world.” I’ve probably had better days at the keyboard, but that’s what popped into my head.

Yesterday, Invisible Oranges premiered a video for “Concrete”. I can now describe the song as “the soundtrack to that creepy video named ‘Concrete'”. The video risks dominating the music, it’s so weirdly magnetic. But the music and the imagery definitely go hand-in-hand. A lot of people deserve credit for it, but I’ll name three: director Gretchen Heinel, editor Matthew Silver, and SFX specialist Jacqueline Valega. Prepare to be weirded out (and puréed). Continue reading »

NEW CHTHONIC VIDEO: “SET FIRE TO THE ISLAND”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 212013
 

Chthonic’s 2013 album Bú-Tik, garnered significant praise from our own Andy Synn when he reviewed the album in June, calling it the band’s “greatest attempt so far at speaking the universal, world language, of metal”. Yet with all of the band’s drawing together of diverse musical and cultural strands, he gave the track “Set Fire To The Island” as an example of “pure Chthonic majesty”, describing it as “a venomous mix of symphonic darkness and calculated wrath.”

Today the band released their official music video for that same song, the fourth video released so far from Bú-Tik. Unlike the three previous videos (all of which we’ve featured here), this one is a live performance, filmed at last year’s Mass Battle concert in Taiwan. According to bassist Doris Yeh (you see, I did have a reason for putting that photo up there!):

“This is the live video we shot when we first played the song. It’s the most exciting song to play off the entire album! It has now become a ‘tradition’ for the fans in Taiwan to come to our show with ghost money, they throw in the air to show respect and release all kinds of their emotions. When I see the ghost money thrown in the air, sometimes the scenery before my eyes seems like a dream.”

Watch the video after the jump. You’ll be glad you did. And if “ghost money” is a new term for you, as it was for me, you might try this. Continue reading »

NEW THINGS FROM SKÁLMÖLD, ANION, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, AND NOCTURNAL GRAVES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 212013
 

In this post I’ve collected three new videos and one new song on which you can feast your eyes and ears. Actually, although I can imagine eyes feasting — because I’ve seen hungry eyes before — ears just look like ears. But they will feast nonetheless.

SKÁLMÖLD

After you have dined upon the following video from Iceland’s Skálmöld, and assuming you enjoy the taste of it, I strongly recommend you read this December 2012 NCS interview of the band’s lyricist and bass-player Snæbjörn Ragnarssonin conducted in Iceland by our very special traveling correspondent Gemma Alexander. There you will learn, among other things, about the complex rules of traditional Icelandic poetry that Snæbjörn follows in his lyrics, the stories from Norse legend that became the foundation for the band’s latest album Börn Loka (“Loki’s Children”), and the use of parallel fifths in the choral arrangements for the last part of the song “Gleipnir”.

I mention “Gleipnir” because that’s the song which is the subject of Skálmöld’s new video. You might be interested in knowing that in Norse legend “Gleipnir” was the name of the magical binding fashioned by dwarves to hold the monstrous wolf Fenrir in captivity — until the events of Ragnarök, when Fenrir breaks free and destroys Odin. Or so says The Font of All Human Knowledge. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM WOLFHEART, CASTEVET, VULTURE INDUSTRIES, AND VATTNET VISKAR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Aug 202013
 

As you may have surmised if you read today’s first post, I was immersed in live metal from about 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon until late last night. But before the immersion began, I found some new things while stumbling through the interhole yesterday that I thought were worth some attention, and here they be:

WOLFHEART

Way back in January, we reported the bombshell news that Tuomas Saukkonen had decided to shut down all of his previous musical projects — Before The Dawn, Black Sun Aeon, Routasielu, Dawn Of Solace, and Final Harvest — and start a completely new one under the name Wolfheart. At the same time, he released a teaser of new Wolfheart music. And yesterday he released another one, along with info about the new Wolfheart album, including the ethereal cover art by Heino Brandt (above).

The album’s name is Winterborn and it includes 9 tracks, except that if you pre-order the album now you’ll get a download code for two bonus tracks that will accompany the CD when it ships. The release date is October 11.  Continue reading »

CLEAN SINGING: NEW THINGS FROM IN SOLITUDE AND END OF GREEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 192013
 

It’s usually one of my NCS comrades who decides to confuse the shit out of new readers by posting music that includes clean singing. I figured it was my turn.

IN SOLITUDE

There are two things in this post, both of which I’m digging. The first is the just-released title track to Sister, the third album by Sweden’s In Solitude. It’s scheduled for release by Metal Blade in North America on October 1 (and a few days earlier in Europe) and is already available for order here.

The song has a central riff that’s a classic heavy metal mind-controller, the kind that burrows in and makes a comfy home in your cranium. The occult-ish melody is infectious as hell, “Hornper” Åhman’s soaring vocals are mighty appealing, there’s a sweet wah-wah solo, and the galloping rhythm is unstoppable. Despite my usual preference in vocal stylings, this song has got me hooked. Here it is (and don’t forget that this band is touring NorthAm with Watain and Tribulation): Continue reading »

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