TODAY’S ROUND-UP: NEW THINGS FROM AHAB, NACHTBLUT, STAM1NA, AND NE OBLIVISCARIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
May 022012
 

Here is a typically random round-up of interesting items that cleverly captivated my eager eyes during my ludicrously limited last break from the jacked-up job that plentifully puts bread on my tilted table, unlike this NCS job, which only feeds my spirit. And the pleasurable purveyors of entertainment in this post are: Ahab (Germany), Nachtblut (Germany), Stam1na (Finland), and Ne Obliviscaris (Australia).

AHAB

NCS writer TheMadIsraeli turned me on to this German doom band at some point last winter. Doom is still a taste I am slowly acquiring, and I can’t say that I’m yet able to consume it in large quantities at a single sitting. However, at the right time and if properly prepared, I do find it tasty. And though I haven’t explored the discography of Ahab in depth, I’m interested in their new album, The Giant.

The band have used their music to explore dark literature with a nautical theme. The Call of the Wretched Sea (2006) was devoted to Melville’s novel Moby Dick, and The Divinity of Oceans (2009) was a soundtrack to the 1820 sinking of the whaling vessel The Essex, an event that partly inspired Moby Dick and was also the subject of a great more recent book, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. It appears The Giant will follow at least a somewhat similar nautical path. Continue reading »

NEW GOROD VIDEO NOW STREAMING: “THE AXE OF GOD”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Apr 302012
 

May 8 is the official North American release date for the fantastic new album by Gorod, A Perfect Absolution. Our man groverXIII reviewed that album for NCS here, calling it “the best tech-death album of a year that’s been very, very good for tech-death.”

And because groverXIII is a full-service blogger, he also promptly alerted us to the fact that about an hour ago Gorod released an official video for “The Axe of God”, a song that features Michael Keene of The Faceless on the song’s second guitar solo.

The video is basically performance footage shot from different angles. The song comes close to epitomizing what makes Gorod special in the world of tech death: As grover noted in his review, they have a knack for writing and performing songs that are both amazingly intricate and amazingly catchy, with memorable melodies. Check out “The Axe of God” after the jump. Continue reading »

THE STRANDED: “ILL WILL FUTURE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 302012
 

(DGR unveils for us a new song by The Stranded off their debut album Survivalism Boulevard, which will be released on July 2.)

Holy crap, I thought I was going to have children before The Stranded finally released their first sample of material. Now all I have to look forward to enjoying for the first time, alongside my by-then high school aged son, is Gojira’s Sea Shepherd EP.

Today the guys in The Stranded (well, late last night, but I’ve bitched plenty about my various night shifts) put up a notification that they had uploaded their first official release off their upcoming disc to soundcloud.  It’s been a long time coming, and if you haven’t exactly been paying the most attention to the ramblings that I submit to this site, this is likely your first chance to hear The Stranded.

Prior to this, you could’ve heard some of the Disarmonia Mundi + Friends (skateboarder Elliot Sloan and keyboardist Alessio NeroArgento) as they covered different Studio Ghibli movie theme songs on the latest Imaginary Flying Machines disc. Of course, as I said in my review there, the material on that disc likely wasn’t going to be representative of what The Stranded would eventually sound like. Hell, their current logo barely signals that either — it looks like it fell off the front of a deathcore disc. Continue reading »

WHITECHAPEL: NEW ALBUM DETAILS, TOUR INFO, AND A NEW SINGLE – “HATE CREATION”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  23 Responses »
Apr 302012
 

Growth. That’s one thing we metal elitists like to see in a band’s evolution. Tennessee’s Whitechapel is definitely growing, and I don’t just mean in popularity. Today, Metal Blade unveiled the cover to Whitechapel’s new album (above), which is self-titled, as well as the track list. They also began streaming a new song from the album called “Hate Creation”.

I saw Whitechapel on their first U.S. tour, when they were an unknown bunch of deathcore upstarts. They had staying power. They amassed a big following and they helped spawn a wave of imitators. Some of those early deathcore progenitors have gotten stuck in a rut. Others have moved on in different directions, perhaps most prominently Job For A Cowboy, who have evolved into a solid death metal band. “Hate Creation” is evidence that Whitechapel is following a similar path.

I certainly wouldn’t claim that Whitechapel has completely left behind the defining tropes of deathcore, but “Hate Creation” is definitely another step along the road toward death metal mecca, and it’s one of the best songs they’ve yet created.

It hits like a phalanx of artillery in full bombardment mode, with explosive blasts that sound like they might be announcing breakdowns, except the pacing doesn’t really drop. The dynamics of the song are enhanced by stuttering, slightly off-kilter rhythms, speed and increased complexity in the riffing, and variations in the intensity of the onslaught, plus there’s a muted melody that I think will catch the song in people’s heads. And Phil Bozeman’s vocals are suitably violent and raw.

Give the song a shot after the jump, and past that we’ll give you more details about the album and about the band’s forthcoming tour. Continue reading »

MOVING PICTURES: KRISIUN AND ELITIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 302012
 

In this post, I have a few videos to start off your school-week, work-week, looking-for-work-week, or completely-fucking-off-week with a bout of headbanging. Because nothing sweetens up schooling, working, fruitlessly job-hunting, or fucking off like headbanging, am I right?  Yes, I am right.

Brazil’s Krisiun is currently finishing up a U.S. tour with Sepultura and Death Angel (the remaining dates are here). On April 15, they played Englewood, Colorado, and Superskum filmed a big chunk of the set. After the jump, I’ve embedded three of the song performances: “The Will To Potency”, “Ravager”, and “Combustion Inferno”. The video and sound quality are very good, and the music is pure spinal trauma.

In February I reviewed the 2011 album by Portland’s Elitist, Fear In A Handful of Dust. Among other words, I penned this immortal line: “Heavy fuzz, slamming or massively groaning chords, beefy bass, tremolo needling, and psychedelic swarming: these are among the implements of a wrecking machine that’s utterly heartless and wholly engulfing.” Today the band uploaded a video of their performance in Portland on April 28. The video includes two songs, “Tower of Meth” and “A Howling Wind”.

The video was filmed by Nick Gattman, and he did a helluva job. The band played this set on the floor of the venue, with no breathing room between them and the tightly packed crowd, and the camera viewpoint makes you feel like you’re right there in the middle of it. I love it when a band play on the floor, though I don’t get to see that happen much. Doesn’t take much for a vocalist to be consumed by a mosh pit, as happens in this video. It also exposes the band to loving caresses from audience members, which also seems to be happening in this video. But there’s no love in the music . . . it’s a mix of doomed, corrosive sludge and rancid death-grind blasting. Much fun to watch . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

THE AMENTA: AN UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 302012
 

I’m a big fan of Australia’s The Amenta. So how I missed this news is mystifying, but better late than never: They will be digitally releasing a new EP called Chokehold sometime in May via Listenable Records. It will include two new songs —  the title track, “Chokehold”, and a cover of “Christ Bait Rising” by Godflesh. The band reports that both songs were recorded and produced “with a modern take on GODFLESH’S influential Street Cleaner album’s sound and aesthetic.”

The EP will also feature two live tracks taken from the bands 2011 V01D Australian Tour, as well as a remix of the track “V01D” from their last album.

As you can see, the cover art for the EP is done, and therein lies a tale. Apparently, the band tried to set up an ad on Facebook to publicize the EP, and Facebook rejected the ad because the cover art was considered “too extreme”. I guess Facebook has drastically different standards for advertising than it does for what people can put in their profiles and photo albums.

I like the picture of vocalist Cain Cressall up there — nice and metal — but it’s really not very extreme. No intestines are hanging out, no human organs are being consumed, no veins have been opened. Go figure.

I’m not positive how this EP relates to the band’s next album. In March they announced the new album’s title — Flesh is Heir — and a track list, and at that time they were finishing up the recording work. Doesn’t look like the new songs on the EP will be on the album. Of course, I’d be happier than a pig in shit to get an EP AND an album from these guys in 2012.

Two more pieces of news, including a new video, are after the jump . . . Continue reading »

TEARING FLESH FROM BONE: NEW SHIT FROM MITOCHONDRION AND DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 292012
 

It’s only a coincidence. My rational mind knows that. But the still-superstitious part of me worries that there’s a chance, maybe only a 1% chance, that the appearance on the same afternoon of new videos of Mitochondrion and Dragged Into Sunlight is a sign that Cthulhu is commanding me across the dimensional membrane to write this post. And if there’s even a 1% chance of waking up tomorrow with all my orifices gorged with tentacles greedily sucking out my nutrients, I think I’m gonna play it safe.

Besides, I love these two bands. Or maybe I fear them. Maybe I love my fear. They both create apocalyptic atmospheres  – dark, anti-human, scourging.

Mitochondrion plays ritualistic war metal. In one of my previous posts about them this year (here), they were looking ahead to a show with the powerful Antediluvian on April 28 — last night — in Vancouver. Turns out they played a new song at that show, a song called “Insummation”, being played in public for the first time. There’s a video of it after the jump. The visual quality is decent, but the audio quality isn’t great. Still, it captures the brutalizing insanity of the song.

Dragged Into Sunlight played a show last night, too — at the SWR Metalfest in Barroselas, Portugal. The line-up for that festival was amazing, headlined by Immortal. Two videos have surfaced of the DIS performance. The sound quality is better than the Mitochondrion vid. Looks like DIS is still playing mostly with their backs turned  to the audience. The music is still ear-wrecking and flesh-rending. Continue reading »

UTMU’S VISIT TO MOJO 13

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 292012
 

(Welcome NCS reader/commenter/suggester-of-great music, Utmu, with his first guest post at this site.)

Hello everyone, this is my first full-article contribution to NO CLEAN SINGING—that’s right, after submitting a good number of bands and news articles to Islander and posting comments for quite some time, I’ve decided to get off my ass and really contribute something substantial to the site. So, to get on with what this post is about . . .

I recently went to the Wilmington, Delaware date of the excellent Occupation Domination 2012 Tour at Mojo 13 headlined by the mighty Origin and supported by a killer lineup, including the likes of Cattle Decapitation, Decrepit Birth, Aborted, Rings of Saturn, Battlecross, and Face of Ruin. As much as I may like or love some of those bands, I don’t plan on talking about them in this article. Instead, I’m going to give you information on some relatively local and generally unknown bands who played before Face of Ruin and the other aforementioned groups. You can find all of the bands’ Facebook pages at the bottom of the article.

MARCH TO VICTORY

What we have here is a magnificent melodic death act from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These guys have been tearing up the local and East Coast music scenes since 1998, releasing a handful of material, including one demo, two EP’s, and a full-length called Frostburg 666, the first metallic assault of theirs to be released by a label, Born of Chaos Records. I also plan on reviewing Frostburg for you all at some point.

March to Victory started out as a straight-up black metal band and progressed into what I would say has become a melodic death metal group based on the change of style from Frostburg 666 and previous songs to the new single “Your End”.  In fact, since they have a “new” vocalist, Ron Evens (who, by the way is a really cool dude), they’re now harnessing a growl instead of a rasp, so in my opinion they’ve taken a big step into Amon Amarth territory with this new song. You can stream “Your End” exclusively on Vampirefreaks.com, where you can also stream two other tracks that are on the EP’s as well as a fifth track called “Pure Fucking Hatred”, which is from a 1998 demo, and what seems to be an early version of a song off the full-length called “Funeral Blizzard Beast”. Continue reading »

FRESH HELL ON EARTH: DIOCLETIAN AND PTAHIL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 282012
 

The reason why it’s so easy for human beings to imagine the horrors of a supernatural place called Hell is because we do such a bang-up job of creating it right here on Earth. When it comes to destroying minds and brutalizing bodies, our own species’ sordid history provides a textbook of how to do it up right. At least when metal bands paint pictures of Hell with their music, no people or animals are harmed in the process. Usually. Unless you count self-abuse.

Two of the bands I’ve gotten into lately do an especially effective job of creating musical Hell, and yesterday both of them released videos of themselves recording new releases. I looked closely, and I didn’t see any humans or animals being maimed or killed in the studios. But the music is sure as fuck killing me. I want these records yesterday.

DIOCLETIAN

Thanks to comments from NCS readers, I’ve been developing a lust for war metal. New Zealand’s Diocletian is one of the bands whose music I’ve been getting into (see our March 2012 feature about them here). Earlier this month, they dropped a Facebook post about their plans to release a compilation album to be titled Annihilation Rituals, which will include their first four rituals: an untitled 2005 demo, the Decimator EP (2007), their part of the Chaos Rising split (2008), and the Sect of Swords EP (2008). That should be worth grabbing. The release date hasn’t been announced.

We previously reported that Diocletian has also recorded music for a 7″ vinyl (European Anniilation) that will be distributed on their European tour this May. One of the two new tracks for that 7″ (“Antichrist Hammerfist”) is up on SoundCloud, and yesterday the band released a video of themselves recording the other one — “Deathstrike Overkill”. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (Part 3): NILE, MUTILATION RITES, PSYCHOPATHIC TERROR, KATAKLYSM, MEANS END, AND BLACKLODGE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Apr 272012
 

As explained previously, I’ve been catching up on what I missed in the metal world over the last couple of weeks while being otherwise occupied. So much happens every day that I can’t include everything I’ve discovered, but I’ve been trying to feature a mix of news and stylistically divergent new music that might have escaped your attention as well as my own. This is the final installment.

Some of what’s in here is VERY recent. And yes, this is long . . . but just treat it like six posts in one. Just pretend that it dribbled out all day long, like posts on some other metal sites that don’t want to tax their readers’ attention spans. Or you could set your alarm to go off once an hour and come read another piece of this as if it had just appeared. Or I could just shut up and get on with it.

NILE

Actually, I suspect this didn’t escape many people’s attention, because it’s Nile, after all. Thanks to Metal Sucks and TheMadIsraeli, I found out yesterday that Nile has now released the cover art for their next album (above), At the Gate of Sethu, which Nuclear Blast plans to release in Europe on June 29 and in the U.S. on July 3. The artwork is by Seth Siro Anton of Septic Flesh.

The central figure looked familiar, and after a bit of  research at The Font of All Human Knowledge, I confirmed that it’s the Egyptian god Thoth, which The Font describes as a god who, in the later history of ancient Egypt, “became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes,the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead.” Continue reading »

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