QUICK HITS: THE SPIRIT, BORN TO MURDER THE WORLD, CHTHE’ILIST

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 162018
 

 

I’m still grateful to my friend Andy, whose Waxing Lyrical series continues to relieve my compulsion to come up with something new to post here on Saturdays. And as you can see, I’m still not completely free of the compulsion. I’ve also now abandoned the goal of this week-long series of Quick Hits as a vehicle for catching up on new music from the last two weeks. For the third day in a row, I’ve again been diverted by late-breaking releases: Everything collected here appeared yesterday or the day before.

THE SPIRIT

Last fall Germany’s The Spirit self-released an enormously impressive debut album entitled Sounds From the Vortex. In April, Nuclear Blast announced that they had signed the band, and yesterday revealed that they would be re-issuing Sounds From the Vortex on August 10th in CD, LP, and digital editions (with new cover art). To celebrate the occasion, Nuclear Blast released a lyric video for an album track named “The Clouds of Damnation“, which happens to be my favorite track from that record. And so, although many of you are no doubt familiar with the music through that previous self-release, I wanted to start today’s round-up with that new video. Continue reading »

WHY ARE WE HERE?

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jun 152018
 

 

(Andy Synn offered the following thoughts about his conception of our mission here, plus recommendations of three new albums.)

Why are we here? That’s the big question which has been playing on my mind for a while now.

Not in the philosophical or religious sense though, more the very concrete, very real question of why are WE, the people who make up NoCleanSinging, actually here? What is our purpose? What are we trying to achieve? Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: PALE, FÓRN, DEFEATED SANITY

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 152018
 

 

Once again, my plan for this week-long series has failed. Rather than catching up on new music from the last two weeks, I’ve instead been diverted by late-breaking releases. Moreover, rather than two new songs by only two bands, this collection includes music from three groups, beginning with a complete EP.

PALE

I discovered this EP yesterday thanks to a recommendation from occasional NCS contributor Conchobar, about a half hour before seeing a Bandcamp alert for the EP from Pest Productions in our e-mail. Conchobar characterized it as “very ‘post-black’ but in a very non-cliched way”. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: FUNERAL MIST, BLACK HOWLING

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 142018
 

 

As promised earlier, I’m trying to make up for failing to post one of these Quick Hit features yesterday by posting two today. On the other hand, this second of today’s small round=ups isn’t really accomplishing the goal of catching up on music from the past couple of weeks that I wanted to recommend — because late-breaking developments have intervened.

FUNERAL MIST

In last Sunday’s SHADES OF BLACK column I trumpeted the news that Funeral Mist had sprung a surprise by announcing that a new album would be released on June 15th, more than nine years after the last one. I doubted that any music would become available for streaming until the album’s release, given the short time between the revelation of the news and the album’s release, and that proved to be true. But there was one further surprise: The album was released a day earlier than scheduled. In other words, it’s out now. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: DEVOURING STAR, CEMETERY LUST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 142018
 

 

As explained previously, I’ve been trying to catch up on a lot of new songs that appeared over the last couple of weeks when I wasn’t able to write about due to an assortment of distractions from my NCS duties. In lieu of the usual longer SEEN AND HEARD round-ups, I’ve been posting shorter two-track collections, with the goal of doing them on a daily basis. Yesterday I missed the mark because I had three premieres to write. To make up for that, I’ll post two of these Quick Hits installments today.

DEVOURING STAR

On June 1, Bardo Methodology published an interview with the man behind Finland’s Devouring Star, which began as a solo project but now includes a drummer — who is an eye-popping talent in his own right, as you will hear.

Like almost every interview I’ve encountered through Bardo Methodology, this one is very interesting and informative on subjects that go well beyond the composition and performance of extreme music. Accompanying the interview was the exclusive premiere of a track from Devouring Star’s new album, The Arteries of Heresy, and as of yesterday the song has become available for direct streaming on Bandcamp, which reminded me that I hadn’t yet mentioned the song here. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WITH THE END IN MIND — “ANGUISH SYMMETRY”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 132018
 

 

On July 6th Temple of Tortruous Records will provide a vinyl and digital release of the debut album by the one-man project With The End In Mind, from Olympia, Washington. The nearly hour-long album consists of five tracks, all but one of which (the title track) are of substantial length, the songs united by their creator’s reverence for the manifold forms of life around us and a torment born from the threat of humankind’s ever-escalating destructive tendencies.

“Anguish Symmetry” is the album’s second track, one that reaches nearly 14 minutes in length. Over its changing course it proves to be a dynamic and mood-changing experience, blending black metal and post-metal (as well as other ingredients) in ways that give the song vibrant emotional force and enthralling power. Agony and rapture are manifest in the sounds, as are sensations of sorrowing introspection and otherworldly grandeur. It has the ability to drive you inward and to take you out of yourself and into realms that don’t seem quite real. Continue reading »

DEATHSTORM: “THE UNFATHOMABLE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 132018
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the recently released new album by the Polish death metal band Deathstorm.)

Let’s be honest about something, shall we? For all that we might claim to love music which is progressive and challenging and which seeks to push the envelope, sometimes we just need to hear something which grabs us by the balls through the virtue of its sheer, unapologetic heaviness alone.

Sometimes, we need a Deathstorm. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: DEATHCODE SOCIETY, KORPIKLAANI

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 112018
 

 

A whole three days in a row I’ve now managed to follow through with the plan of posting small two-track collections of new music I want to recommend. I’m finding this much easier to do than the larger SEEN AND HEARD collections I usually succeed in posting only once a week — first, because I don’t agonize as much over the choices, knowing that I can make some more from my list the very next day; and second, because it takes less time to scribble words about two songs rather than five or six.

Maybe this little project is less daunting and more inviting to readers as well since it’s not such a big wall of music to confront? Just a guess.

DEATHCODE SOCIETY

I was wondering what had happened to this French symphonic black metal band. Actually, I wasn’t. I don’t really lie awake at night going through a mental list of bands who haven’t released any new music for a few years. More accurately, it dawned on me when I saw news about a new album that almost three years have passed since Deathcode Society released their fine debut full-length Eschatonizer (which you should definitely check out HERE if you haven’t already). Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: DRAGHKAR AND SCULPTURE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 102018
 

 

As explained yesterday, I’m trying to catch up on a lot of new songs that have appeared over the last couple of weeks that I wasn’t able to write about due to an assortment of distractions from my NCS duties. In lieu of the usual longer SEEN AND HEARD round-ups, I’m attempting to post shorter “playlists” on a daily basis for the next week or so. Shortening the collections to two songs per post may increase the odds that I’ll actually follow through on the idea. Getting completely caught up is, of course, an impossibility, in part because the coming days will undoubtedly bring even more new things I’d like to recommend.

DRAGHKAR

The first song I’ve chosen for today is “Swallowed By the Dark“, the first track revealed from The Endless Howling Abyss, which is a new EP by the death-worshipping L.A. trio Draghkar. It’s set for release on July 27 and comes on the heels of a 2017 demo and a split released by Blood Harvest this past April with the Indiana group Desekryptor. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: CROCELL AND NYLITHIA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 092018
 

 

I feel like a broken record in writing this sentence, but will say again that my list of new songs that have appeared just in the last two weeks, and seem worth checking out, is enormous — more than 50 tracks long at this point. The paucity of SEEN AND HEARD posts over that period, due to the paucity of time I’ve been able to devote to NCS as a result of other distractions, means that the list has grown at a much faster rate than I’ve been able to whittle it down through listening and writing.

So, I came up with an idea for making headway against the tide: Rather than compiling “playlists” of four or five songs (or more) as is usual for the SEEN AND HEARD column, I’m going to spend at least the next week creating much shorter collections, under a new title, limited myself to only two tracks per post. This is the first of those. I hope to do this on a daily basis, but may fail.

CROCELL

Honestly, I’m not sure what happened here. Many of the scribblers at NCS, including me, have been devout fans of Crocell. And yet they came out with their fifth album in March (Relics) and until today we’ve said nothing about it. Having completely overlooked it, I haven’t even heard the record. But this new lyric video will cause me to remedy that glaring omission pretty damned quick. Continue reading »

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