Gojira have produced another lyric video for a track from L’Enfant Sauvage. This time the song is “Liquid Fire” and the visual accompaniment is a montage of really excellent live performance photos.
The song is really excellent, too, including the lyrics. Not a bad way to end our posts for this work week. Of course, we will have some other kind of ear wreckage ready for tomorrow morning.
Video after the jump . . . . Continue reading »
In this post I’ve collected three new songs I heard earlier today that I wanted to recommend. They’re all quite different from each other, sharing only a common devotion to the darkness.
KRODA
Long-term NCS readers will know this Ukrainian band because I’ve written about them so often (their 2011 album Schwarzpfad was probably my favorite black metal album out of all the ones I heard last year, and I included a song-stream from the album on our list of the 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs). But we continue to pick up new readers at a steady clip, and the band’s new recording gives me an excuse to introduce them to our new followers.
As previously reported at this site, Kroda will be releasing a live album in the form of a combined CD and DVD under the title HelCarpathian Black Metal – Heil Ragnarok: Live Under Hexenhammer, which was recorded and filmed in Moscow. Today the band announced that mixing and mastering of the album is now complete and that it will be released as a digipack edition later this winter. They also released one of the live tracks for streaming.
It’s a cover of a song called “Noregsgard” by the Norwegian band Storm (which included Fenriz [Darkthrone] and Satyr [Satyricon]) from their 1995 Nordavind album. I believe the song, even as originally recorded by Storm, was a metallicized version of a folk tune, and Kroda’s performance, which includes both flute and clean vocals, definitely has a pagan/folk air. But it’s still pretty fuckin’ heavy. I like it a lot. Continue reading »
On the same day last week I came across both of these very good Romanian bands. The last time I came across a Romanian band that was new to me was in June (Void Forger), so to find two on the same day was like a message from some dark entity compelling me to write something. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.
ABIGAIL
I have a post by MaxR at Metal Bandcamp to thank for my discovery of Abigail. As you’ll have realized by now, this is not the Japanese black/thrash band named Abigail. This group is based in Bucharest, though they’ve been around as long as those Japanese stalwarts, with their first demo dating back to 1994.
Despite their longevity, they have yet to release a full album, instead producing demos and EPs — though they are now at work on a projected 3-CD + DVD album entitled Dark Days Turned Into Blue Nights. What I heard was the band’s most recent release, an October 2011 EP named It Is the Night I Fear, which is available for free on Bandcamp. A review of that EP is next . . . Continue reading »
I swear, I had a really cool round-up post planned for this afternoon, full of eye-catching news, cover art, and cutting edge music that you probably would have missed without me and that possibly could have changed your life. I was going to follow that with a discussion of the latest (and lamest) scientific study on the sounds that are most disturbing to the human brain and the inexplicable failure of the researchers to play some Cannibal Corpse to the test participants.
Unfortunately, I got busy at work and couldn’t do any of that. Instead, I only have time to show you the new video by Infant Annihilator for their song “Decapitation Fornication” from their forthcoming debut album The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution, projected for release in mid-December.
And for those of you who will want to punch us in the nuts after watching the video because we have such a juvenile or even subhuman sense of humor, I can only say “get in the fucking line!” (I blame TheMadIsraeli, who sent me the link to this insanity.) Continue reading »
We’re going off our usual beaten path of metallic extremity in this post, with two brand new videos from Primal Rock Rebellion and Death Grips. I thought both were worth watching, and so here they are. We’ll get back to our usual diet of gut rumbling music later today.
PRIMAL ROCK REBELLION
SikTh is no more (though a reunion could still happen), but SikTh’s Mikee Goodman is very much still alive and kicking. His two-man band Primal Rock Rebellion (formed with Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith) released a debut album earlier this year called Awoken Broken.
This morning I saw that PRR had released a new music video for a track from the album, “Tortured Tone”, and I decided to check it out. Goodman himself conceived, cast, and directed the clip, and it’s a visual feast. It includes a log cabins, woodland tranquility, seascape vistas, rainy cobble-stoned hills, Goodman and Smith performing in a huge bright field, a pretty girl, and a bit of creepy stop-motion animation.
As noted, the song isn’t the usual NCS fare, but it eventually pulls out some metal grit and heft, and it’s melodically memorable. Here you go: Continue reading »
The engineers at Scion have apparently figured out how to make time machines as well as cars. I know this because yesterday Scion A/V released video footage of a reunion show by Boston’s Revocation from the year 2055. The clip shows them performing “The Grip Tightens” from the band’s new EP Teratogenesis. The song seems to have stood the test of time, because all the geezers in the nursing home where Revocation crank up the song seem to be diggin’ it.
It’s really good to see that the guys have stayed together over the course of many decades, and that they can still cause women to throw their panties during shows. They’re still pretty spry, too, for a bunch of old fuckers. Sure, they need some oxygen supplementation and added dietary fiber, along with the occasional helping hand from the nursing staff, but fuck, they can still really bring the shred.
“The Grip Tightens” is a mind-blowing song. The video, directed by David Brodsky, is a really big smile, too — one of the year’s best. Don’t miss the cameo performance by guitarist Evan Duplessis from Sexcrement as Dr. PeePaw. Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »
I caved in to impulse again this morning. While browsing the interhole to see what was happening in the world of metal, I saw a Facebook post by Planks about a show they’re playing in Plauen, Germany on November 16 with two other German bands, Trainwreck and Lentic Waters. Event details can be found here. The show seems to be part of a two-day fest called Deaf Row, and I came across a flyer for the fest that I thought was cool enough to paste on the top of this post.
Hannover is on the other side of the world from where I live in Seattle, so it seems unlikely that I’ll be at that show, unless of course the Seattle tech geeks figure out how to get my fuckin’ teleporter working again. I’ve become a big fan of Planks but didn’t know anything about Trainwreck or Lentic Waters, so I thought, what the fuck, time to check out some new music!
PLANKS
I first heard the music of Planks over the most recent Labor Day weekend and wrote about them here. What I heard was a Bandcamp stream of Planks’ amazing new album, Funeral Mouth, which is being released on October 12 but can be downloaded via that Bandcamp link right now.
In compiling today’s post, I discovered that Planks also recorded a split with one of the other bands featured on that November 16 show, Lentic Waters. The split was released in June of this year on vinyl by Apocaplexy Records (which can be ordered here), but it turns out that Apopoplexy also made the split available for free download via a link on this page. Continue reading »
Here are a few items of interest I saw between yesterday and today that I thought were worth throwing in your general direction. Catch!
DAYLIGHT DIES
A Frail Becoming, the new album by North Carolina’s Daylight Dies, is being officially released today by Candlelight Records. It’s very, very good. I hope we will have a review soon, because the album deserves whatever we can do to help spread the word.
The latest song to be released for streaming is the album’s fourth track, “Dreaming of Breathing”, which is the subject of a music video directed by Ramon Boutviseth that debuted yesterday. It’s a beautifully filmed video, and the narrative portion suits the moody, dreamlike ambience of the music, while the band footage suits all the thundering that Daylight Dies do so well in their doom-influenced brand of melodic death metal.
Check it out next . . . Continue reading »
This is a milestone day for NO CLEAN SINGING. Today, in collaboration with GRIND TO DEATH, we’re launching the NCS Bandcamp page and releasing our first compilation of recorded music — The Only Good Tory — a FREE collection of 46 songs by 46 UK bands who are on the cutting edge of grind, powerviolence, harsh crust, and fastcore. It’s guaranteed to wreck heads.
The lion’s share of the credit for this blockbuster goes to our friend Alex Layzell of GRIND TO DEATH. It was he who conceived of this idea, contacted the bands, assembled the tracks, and arranged for the preparation of a killer artwork booklet prepared by the talented Kex Whelan — which includes separate artwork for each of the 46 tracks on this comp.
We’re making the comp available as a free download to support the bands — this comp is dedicated to them and their passion — and to thank the fans of honest music wherever they may live. But in the near future we’ll be offering the comp on limited-edition tape produced by DIY Noise as a prize for a competition among NCS readers. We haven’t yet thought up a contest for how to do this, but it will probably involve the submission of nude photos. Or not. We’re working on it. Continue reading »
Here’s another round-up of new musical discoveries from the last 24 hours. NCS writer DGR delivered the first two of these items to my in-box, for which I bow down in gratitude. NCS reader Austin S-K brought me the third one, for which I bow down in gratitude. I came up with the fourth one on my own, but I’m now unable to straighten up so you could bow down in gratitude to me. Not as limber as I used to be. I’ll be spending the rest of the day staring at the floor. And headbanging.
CAUSEMOS
Causemos are a Finnish band who yesterday released their debut album, Infinite Event, as a pay-what-you-want (or pay nothing) download on Bandcamp. (I suppose you might also call this an EP, since the songs only total about 25 minutes of music.) Causemos brand their music as “cosmic space metal”, which is not a bad description. I would elaborate on that description as follows:
Causemos weave together symphonic keyboards and technically demanding melodic death metal, with vocals that move seamlessly between brutish howling/growling and really nice soaring cleans that reminded me a bit of Dave Hunt’s clean ceiling-busters for Anaal Nathrakh. The music is intricate and vitally dynamic, ranging from bombastic hammering to astral streams of progressive ambience. The music has a grandiose and sometimes spacey quality, but not at the expense of headbanging rhythms or infectious melodies — of which there are many. Continue reading »