HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US: NCS TURNS THREE

 Birthday Posts, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  103 Responses »
Nov 212012
 

NO CLEAN SINGING is three years old today. We opened the doors on November 21, 2009, and we’ve posted something (or several somethings) every damned day since then. Of course, the fact that we’re still here after three years doesn’t mean we’re worth a shit, only that we haven’t given up.

Whether this birthday is a cause for celebration or for mourning, depending on your perspective, it does seem like a good time to do three things: Explain who we are (because we seem to have accumulated a lot of new readers in the last year); take note of some accomplishments; and offer a few words of thanks.

WHO WE ARE

On birthdays it’s always nice to reflect upon your origins. This blog began as a protest against the kind of clean singing that was infiltrating metalcore music at the time (what temporarily happened to Bury Your Dead three years ago was the specific provocative incident). My two co-founders and I weren’t dead set against all metal with clean vocals — we announced from the beginning that there would be Exceptions to the Rule — we just found that the kind of extreme music we preferred usually didn’t include them.

Since then, we’ve expanded our horizons to include a much greater variety of metal, with more clean singing in the mix, though I’ve hung on to the site’s original name despite (or maybe because of) how confusing it may be to newcomers. My original co-founders fell by the wayside long ago, ultimately to be replaced by a cadre of regular writers and many irregular ones. Actually, to be brutally honest, we’re all pretty irregular. So’s the music. So, it’s a good fit. Continue reading »

POWERLESS, PART 3: NIGHTFALL, PINKISH BLACK, AND SAILLE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Nov 202012
 

For most of yesterday and last night, the NCS headquarters was running on generator power and brutally cut off from the internet due to a DSL failure produced by one of our lovely Puget Sound winter storms. At some point while yours truly was sleeping the sleep of the just, the internet connection came back on, and I spent a few hours this morning catching up on what I missed in the world of metal.

Turns out I missed a lot. This is the third of three posts in which I’m collecting the best of what I missed while the NCS HQ was cast into outer darkness yesterday. I’m running through the music in alphabetical order. Featured in this Part 3 are Nightfall, Saille, and Pinkish Black.

NIGHTFALL

Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants, the 2010 album from this long-running Greek band (now with an international cast), was my introduction to their music. It was a hell of an introduction: I became an immediate fan. Nightfall have now recorded the follow-up to that album, with the title Cassiopeia. The new one is due for release by Metal Blade on January 18, 2013, and pre-orders are being taken here. Yesterday brought the premiere of a lyric video for the album’s first single, “Oberon and Titania”. Continue reading »

POWERLESS, PART 2: BOSSK, CHAOS INCEPTION, AND DECADES OF DESPAIR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 202012
 

For most of yesterday and last night, the NCS headquarters was running on generator power and brutally cut off from the internet due to a DSL failure produced by one of our lovely Puget Sound winter storms. At some point while yours truly was sleeping the sleep of the just, the internet connection came back on, and I spent a few hours this morning catching up on what I missed in the world of metal.

Turns out I missed a lot. This is the second of three posts in which I’m collecting the best of what I missed while the NCS HQ was cast into outer darkness yesterday. I’m running through the music in alphabetical order. Featured in this Part 2 are Bossk, Chaos Inception, and Decades of Despair.

BOSSK

Bossk are a band from Kent in the UK whose name rings bells, but whose music was an undiscovered country to me until this morning. It appears that after releasing a couple of EPs, a DVD, and a split, the band called it quits in 2008 or 2009. However, Bossk revived earlier this year and have recorded a new single named “Pick Up Artist” that debuted in September and is still available for free download here.

I found out about the song earlier today and liked it immediately. It begins with pounding drums and sludgy chords and breaks into an up-tempo, post-metal bone-breaker with caustic vocals, lots of low-end punch, and swirling guitar leads. Past the half-way point, the hammering power abruptly stops and the song turns into an almost dreamlike flow of chiming notes and hypnotic rhythms. Damn cool music. Continue reading »

POWERLESS, PART 1: CONVERGE, ACRANIA, ACRIMONIOUS, AND AMENDFOIL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Nov 202012
 

I stayed home from work yesterday. I picked a bad day to do that. Yesterday afternoon we lost power on our island due to a really nasty day-long storm that raged through the Puget Sound area. We got the generator going, but the DSL service in our area went down at the same time the power did, and it didn’t come back before I went to bed. This morning, the power and the DSL were both back.

The experience vividly demonstrated how obsessive I’ve become about this fucking blog. Being disconnected from the internet for about 12 hours prevented me from keeping up with what was happening in the world of metal. I experienced feelings of anxiety and intense frustration. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

It got so bad that I drove in the darkness  through the driving wind and rain to the ferry terminal, where the power was on and an internet connection was available. I sat there for about 30 minutes, getting this morning’s first post ready to appear automatically and doing a bit of web surfing, and then decided I shouldn’t leave my wife alone in our powerless house any longer and went home. Fucking sick, that’s what I am. I need help of some kind.

This morning I spent hours catching up on what I missed while the net connection was down. I found dozens of interesting-looking things. Even after winnowing out the ones that turned out to be less interesting than they first appeared to be, I still have more shit to share than would manageably fit in one post, so I’m dividing them into three posts, of which this is the first. I’m going to cover the new music and videos in alphabetical order.

But before diving in, here’s one piece of breaking news: Year-end listmania is almost upon us, and it begins with DECIBEL magazine selecting All We Love We Leave Behind by Converge as its Album of the Year. Here’s the proof, as it appeared on the Converge Facebook page: Continue reading »

MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN METAL: EXTREME NOISE TERROR AND FIRING BLANKS

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 192012
 

(This guest post was written by an Australian writer who calls himself Hoss.)

The other week, while researching for an article on John Peel and grindcore, I came across a nice little moment in metal history. When I first read about it, I thought it was just about one of the coolest things ever. I’m going to share it with you now.

In 1992 British art-electro-hip-hop-kinda-thing band The KLF were invited to perform their hit “3AM Eternal” live at the Brit Awards. The KLF are perhaps best known for being justified, ancient, driving an ice cream van, and, most importantly, being endorsed by Tammy Wynette. Ever the pranksters, they invited Ipswich grinders Extreme Noise Terror to perform in their stead.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking – ‘getting a metal band to perform a pop song!? THAT’S HIL-AR-IOUS!’. But you must remember that in 1992 this irony-laden chestnut was not yet old, and still might have caused at least a few bemused smirks. Part of the joke also included firing machine guns filled with blanks into the crowd (rad) and dumping a dead sheep at the afterparty.

Sounds awesome right? I mean, this photo of The KLF head guy Bill Drummond certainly makes it look that way: Continue reading »

NEW LIVE GOJIRA TRACKS: “LOVE” AND “TOXIC GARBAGE ISLAND”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 172012
 

Photo credit: Romain Dronne

Those French titans of metal in Gojira are coming back to North America early next year to tour with The Devin Townsend Project and The Atlas Moth. I bought advance VIP tickets for the January 20 show at Seattle’s Studio Seven as fast as I could. One of the perks of doing that was the promise that I would get a download of two live recordings now and another one closer to the start of the North American tour.

Yesterday the download link arrived in my in-box. The two songs included in the download were “Love” and “Toxic Garbage Island”. They were recorded during Gojira’s performance at at the Studio at Webster Hall in New York City on August 14, 2012. They’re crushing, and too good to keep to myself. So, after the jump I’m going to stream both of them for you.

Also after the jump, in case you missed it, is a video of the band performing “Explosia” from the new album L’Enfant Sauvage at the same Webster Hall show.  To get the North American tour schedule, check out this previous post about the tour.

Enjoy. Continue reading »

IS THIS NEW STUFF FROM ANTESTOR, AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED, AND FINSTERFORST ANY GOOD?

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Nov 172012
 

Went out on the town last night with a bunch of good people to celebrate a friend’s 30th birthday. Had a blast, and got blasted. Today I feel like a demolition crew is excavating my fuckin’ head with dynamite. Honestly, listening to any kind of intense music right now isn’t an appealing idea. If there’s going to be any music in my near-future, it will be something like Hammock, a band Phro introduced me to. I’m guessing he must have been really hungover when he did that.

But even though I can’t bring myself to add any musical dynamite to the blasting that’s already going on in my cranium, I do want to contribute something to the blog today. So here’s how this will work:  I saw three items this morning that I’m guessing are really good, but I can’t bring myself to listen to them. So do me a favor, will you?  Leave a comment and let me know if my guesses are right or wrong.

ANTESTOR

This is a coincidence. Just yesterday we posted the milestone 30th edition of Andy Synn’s SYNN REPORT, the subject of which was the discography of Norway’s Antestor. We also reported that Antestor had recorded a new album entitled Omen — their first one in seven years — and that it’s scheduled for release on November 30, and that it uses a painting by NCS favorite Zdzisław Beksiński for the album cover. And here’s the coincidence: Today the band started streaming a track from the new album called “Unchained”. Continue reading »

FOR THE LOVE OF INSTRUMETAL!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 172012
 

(Guest writer Tyler Lowery has bestowed upon us another article, and this one is about instrumental metal.)

 One of the biggest issues I had when I was first getting into extreme metal was the overbearing vocals in the music of many bands who were the front runners. The growling that my untrained ear misinterpreted as garbled cacophony kept me away from bands such as Necrophagist, Behemoth, and Napalm Death. From these bands I have now built a decent-reaching empire of extreme metal bands who I now thoroughly enjoy. However, it took me far too long to become accustomed to them as their vocal presentations distracted me from the excellence of their music as a whole.

As I began the perilous quest toward the seedy underbelly of the metal genres, I made my way through less than appealing bands who were  heavy but not crushingly so. These days were tedious and often without reward. Eventually tiring of the hit-or-miss tomfoolery, I started dipping my toes in the vast waters of Death Metal.

To cope with the harsh vocals that consistently harshed (hardy har har) my buzz, I found bands who employed clean vocals, as a diversion from the constant battery of screeching and growling. Bands like Opeth and Between the Buried and Me helped create the groundwork for an appreciation of the extreme, but even still the music was sometimes overshadowed by the vocals. That being said, the next logical step was to remove vocals altogether, right? Continue reading »

THE ABCs OF THINGS I MISSED IN 2012

 Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  25 Responses »
Nov 162012
 

(Guest contributor Kaptain Carbon is getting a head start on year-end listmania with a most amusing review of albums he missed earlier in the year. Despite the fact that I laughed out loud on numerous occasions, I haven’t forgotten that the Kaptain owes me a Russian Nesting Doll. Some things you don’t forget.)

Well, I am now a guest in another person’s house. I should take my shoes off and pretend I eat with my pants on. No Clean Singing put out a call for entries and usually I would be hosting board game night in my basement over at Tape Wyrm but now I am here. What a lovely house you have. I really love your collection of Russian Nesting Dolls. Oh dear, I think this one may be broken. I’ll set it down right here.

2012 is almost done and we will soon all be judged before the great cosmic eye. Before our fate is weighed on the gilded scales at an altar of ivory and blood, we all have to go through our end of the year lists. Yes, before the inevitable reckoning, where December is consumed in an omnipresence hellfire, we have to make our top 10s of 2012. Now, we all know it will probably go to the new Marilyn Manson record, but there is also the matter of the stacks of records which now make a castle on your coffee table. Look at this mess. Look at all of this stuff you said you were going to listen to but never did. You are a horrible human. I found this Abigail Williams record in the vegetable crisper.

I recently went through my library and pulled out all of the 2012 records I meant to review but never got around to doing so because I am a terrible metal-hating human being who secretly loves everything which you hate. I just want to make sure I did not miss anything, so I am going to go through this pile of laundry and rifle through its contents before throwing it back on the ground. Sure, things will still be messy, but there was production involved.

It is time to revisit the forgotten, at least by me, and the never-heard of 2012. Sure, No Clean Singing is giving me a wonderful opportunity to share some of my work with you, but let’s be honest, I woke up late and I am doing my homework while running to class. Thank you No Clean Singing for this opportunity and fuck you, you motherfucking stupid cocksucking alarm WHERE ARE MY KEYS? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEATH, BEYOND CREATION, WELICORUSS, AND BEASTWARS

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Nov 152012
 

In this post are four new things I saw and heard today.  I saw and heard other things today, such as the sight of the Sun (which is worth reporting, given that it’s November in Seattle) and the explosive sound of my own voice when I put weight on my fucked-up ankle the wrong way. That was about as close as I’ve ever come to thinking I could do vocals for a black metal band.

Well, as painful as it is for me to say this, “enough about me”. Here are new videos from Beyond Creation (Canada), Welicoruss (Russia), and Beastwars (New Zealand). The Welicoruss and Beastwars songs are also brand new and will appear on forthcoming albums. But first . . . the debut of a remastered song from . . .

DEATH

As you may know, Relapse Records has been re-issuing remastered editions of albums by Death. The latest is the band’s 1990 record, Spiritual Healing. This is a two-disc release, with the first one featuring a complete remaster of the original album and the second one including 16 previously unreleased rehearsal recordings, outtakes, and studio instrumentals. If you spring for the limited edition digipack, you’ll also get a third CD of a never-before-released live set recorded in 1990. And if you download the album from iTunes, you’ll get 5 previously unreleased pre-Human rehearsal tracks that aren’t included on either of the CD versions.

Well, enough with the free advertising. The reason I’m writing about Death today is that today Guitar World premiered one of the remastered tracks from Spiritual Healing: “Altering the Future”. You can hear that after the jump, along with the remastered version of “Living Monstrosity”, which appeared earlier. Continue reading »

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