Reviews Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

CATTLE DECAPITATION, ABORTED, FROZEN SOUL, TRIBAL GAZE — NOV. 25, 2025 — THE ORPHEUM, TAMPA, FL

Dec 042025

(Our contributor Daniel Barkasi was lucky enough to catch the Tampa stop of Cattle Decapitation’s still-ongoing No Fear For Tomorrow North American Tour, with support from Aborted, Frozen Soul, and Tribal Gaze, and he sent us the following enthusiastic report, accompanied by terrific photos made by Brittany Barkasi @Turn off the Thunder.)

To say that we’re supporters of Cattle Decapitation could be the understatement of the day. Having followed this band ever since hearing Homovore 25 years ago – how is it that long – it’s been a constant evolution for the death/grinders with the ironic name. For these ears, The Harvest Floor displayed a bit that was really on to something special, which was fully realized with Monolith of Inhumanity, at this point not being solely a grindcore act, but a homogenization of the best elements of that style smashed together with roaring, energetic death metal.

From there, the band has been on a steady trajectory of phenomenal records, whose subject matter has also gotten bleaker in their vision of the human condition. Each album since the aforementioned Monolith has given added flavor to their already signature sound, with 2019’s Death Atlas being a personal standout – a well-assembled record that digests best as a whole, whilst being more poignant than the band could have imagined, considering what was about to happen with the dreaded COVID times.

With this tour, the band are playing Death Atlas in full, so if we couldn’t have already been more excited for another romp through the slaughterhouse, anticipation was at a fever pitch. Bringing along a notably weighty trio of Aborted, Frozen Soul, and Tribal Gaze along for the ride, an unabashedly crushing of an evening was set. Continue reading »

DAMNATION FESTIVAL 2025: A REPORT

Concert Reviews No Responses »

Dec 032025

(With this feature we welcome a new Seattle-based NCS contributor who goes by the moniker KAOS_Agent. What he has provided in his debut is an extensive report on the recently completed 20th anniversary installment of Damnation Fest in the UK, as well as lots of his photos from the event.)

“If you go, you might as well go big.”

I could not imagine a better way to put the mentality of this year’s Damnation Festival, celebrating its twentieth year of existence and fourth year of bringing the best of black, sludge, death, and post-metal to the Bowler’s Exhibition Center in Manchester, UK. This was my first time attending Damnation, following a few bucket list items of volunteering at Roadburn last year, as well as attending Ascension festival in Iceland, where I serendipitously met an unexpected amount of folks from the Seattle metal community, including the lovely proprietor of this site.

What impressed me about Damnation this year was its ability to maintain a small festival vibe while at the same time acknowledging their own success and gradual expansion. Organizer Gavin McInally and the extended team have gone through great lengths to create a roster that brought back long-standing repeat favorites along with emergent acts that tiptoe the line of underground appeal. And as far as a milestone year, Damnation has ensured the local scene was well-represented, with a coincidental 20 bands being based in the UK and Ireland. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RAUMORDNUNG — “STEWARDS OF EON”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Dec 032025

(written by Islander)

The German metal band Eremit has followed an unusual path. Beginning with their 2018 debut album Carrier of Weight, they have narrated an unfolding fantasy tale set in a universe created by the band’s mastermind Moritz Fabian. That tale has continued over the course of two more monumental albums and a pair of EPs. Fabian has also been writing the story in book-length “Pamphlets,” with each musical release providing multi-faceted soundtracks to various chapters of the evolving saga. Moreover, the artwork accompanying the records and other merchandise has all been equally integral to the narrative.

The album that we’re premiering in full today in advance of its December 5 release by four labels is an even more ambitious undertaking designed by Moritz Fabian. The name of this project is Raumordnung, and the project’s debut album Stewards of Eon is also a multi-media narrative that’s set in the same universe as Eremit’s albums and described as “a dismal, heart-breaking story,” but represented as a science fiction concept.

How ambitious is it? The Raumordnung collective includes the work of 20 artists of different crafts, among them a wide variety of musicians, as well as authors, photographers, visual artists, illustrators, models, and costume designers. The album is being released along with a graphic novel that provides insight into the album’s narrative.

And the music itself brings together elements of war metal, power electronics, dark ambient, psy trance, and even opera, drawing influence from such disparate acts as Lingua Ignota, Full of Hell, Tsutomu Nihei, Chelsea Wolfe, Caldon Glover, and Antichrist Siege Machine.

On paper, those genre references wouldn’t seem to work together very well — but remarkably they do, in mind-bending ways. Continue reading »

MATALOBOS: “PHANTASMAGORIA: HEXED LANDS”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Dec 032025

(This is DGR’s review of the third album by the Mexican band Matalobos, released by Concreto Records in February of this year.)

We cannot be the heavy metal spelunkers we imagine ourselves to be if we do not drive ourselves insane chasing after album after album. The result, admittedly, is a segment of blindspots so large that it often seems like we’re using a laser pointer to illuminate an underwater cave. We have one fine dot of light that we manage to cover and everything outside of there either doesn’t exist or is well within “here be dragons” territory.

It just doesn’t seem right, especially when we have a giant content dragnet absorbing potential releases throughout the year and now it seems as if by virtue of being caught in said net, we are driven to discuss something about said capture. That does however also afford us some tremendous opportunities to discover bands we would’t have otherwise crossed paths with, and if we are to live up to our imagined heavy metal Indiana Jones persona then this is something that is an exciting prospect every time.

Mexico’s Matalobos is one such group, a band who captured our eye by way of not just the album art of their third album, suggesting a pulpy goth adventure with tons of leather-draped swagger, but also by title alone. It’s not too often one is going to pass on the opportunity to at least try to listen to something with a title as grandiose as Phantasmagoria: Hexed Lands.

Otherwise, as metal fans, what the hell are we even doing here? Continue reading »

MARTRÖÐ – DRAUMSÝNIR ELDSINS

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Dec 032025

(Andy Synn sneaks in one last review just under the wire before drawing a line under the year)

With this being my last review prior to next week’s take-over of the site for my annual round-up of “A Year In Review(s)”, I knew it had to be something special.

And what better than the long-gestating, and highly-anticipated, debut album from a band – or, to be more precise, a duo – who seem set to take their place as the tip of the spear in the ever-expanding, and ever-abrasive, sphere of “dissonant” Black Metal.

So, please, allow me to present Draumsýnir eldsins… a vision of fire that will soon burn itself into your brain.

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, NOVEMBER 2025

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Dec 022025

(Here’s Gonzo’s latest monthly collection of reviews, this time focusing on three albums released during November 2025.)

Historically, November has a distinct way of fucking up my yearly Listmania plans, and this year is probably no different. It hardly makes sense to even start the hilariously brain-melting exercise of compiling my yearly list before December 1 anymore, because some band will be inevitably lurking just out of sight until the sun starts setting before 5 p.m. every day, waiting to skull-fuck my carefully concocted assemblage of heavy hierarchy into oblivion.

How does this always happen? Am I asleep for 11 of 12 months of the year? Is everything a joke? Well, yes, but that’s another topic entirely. It’s a good thing heavy music even exists at all, otherwise I’d probably intentionally maroon myself on some remote island and hunt billionaires with a crudely assembled spear.

Right. I think we got off topic here. My day job is rapidly approaching “let’s revisit this after the holidays” territory, leaving me with more time to scream into these hallowed pages about death metal. At least two of the records I included this month have a nonzero chance of showing up in the vaunted list of lists next month, and we’ll get to that rotten task soon enough. For now, allow me to regale you with three albums that are all but guaranteed to leave an impression on unsuspecting family members if played loud enough at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SOREWOUND — “ESPANTO”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Dec 022025

(written by Islander)

Like almost all genres of metal, sludge has evolved and branched in numerous directions since origins that saw hardcore bands slowing down and delving into doom. These days, calling a band’s music “sludge metal” is still useful in some measure, but still leaves a lot un-said because the musical variations within that broad genre have become so wide-ranging.

Which brings us to Sorewound, a Costa Rican band that seems bent on turning back the clock by a couple of decades. Their music, as represented in their debut EP Espanto, is by some current measures primitive and “stripped down,” ugly and corrosive, punk-influenced and capable of creating grisly harmonies that might be abysmal in one minute and feral the next — but always seem horrifying.

Here’s how Sorewound’s label, Cursed Monk Records, introduces the EP: Continue reading »

WRETCHED: “DECAY”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Dec 022025

(Below we present DGR’s review of the long-awaited fifth full-length by North Carolina’s Wretched, released on October 17th by Metal Blade Records.)

I’ve thought a lot about legacy and what I admire in a band when they decide to return after an extended period of silence. It may just be that this year has been a prime fruiting ground for such bands to find their way back into the eternal heavy metal fray, but the thought has danced on the edges of the intellectual periphery for a while now.

When the subject of what a band has left behind and what they are returning to comes back again – which has proven to be the worst mental dam in the history of man, as I’ve been waiting for thoughts to congeal into something resembling cogent writing – it is mostly couched in the ideals of expectation and what their fans may want from them. This is where the intellectual breeding ground has run wild.

The one overriding thought I’ve come back to is I admire many of the approaches available to a band returning to music after an extended hiatus, though part of that may just be that I’m a barely evolved chimp who is just happy to have his favorite band logos appearing on tour posters again, and among those are exceedingly difficult choices that lie in either the chase of where the group left off last – picking up a baton long covered in dust and left roadside – or the return, but as something different and unexpected, which is where I have found myself standing with North Carolina’s newly resurrected as a four-piece Wretched and their new album Decay. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews No Responses »

Dec 022025

(Andy Synn is hoping to cover as many in as possible before “List Week”… so here’s four you may not have checked out)

As the last edition of “Things You May Have Missed” before my epic, week-long round-up of “the year in Metal”, this particular article has a fair bit of pressure on its shoulders, and deciding who to feature wasn’t easy.

Suffice it to say, however, that I’ve done my best to once again cover the spread as well as I can, which this time means a late-in-the-year highlight from the Hardcore scene, an absoutely killer Death Metal debut, some gloriously riff-happy Blackened Stoner Metal from Canada, and a slab of deathly Slovakian Tech/Prog extremity from a band who have, from my perspective at least, flown under the radar for far too long!

So, withour further ado, let’s get to it. After all, time is running out…

SHADES OF BLACK: UMBRÍO, MOON WISDOM, ULTIMA NECAT

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Nov 302025

Valerius de Saedeleer (Belgian, 1867–1941) – “A Winter Landscape”, 1931

(written by Islander)

That painting up there popped into one of my news feeds today. I saw it on my phone this morning as I was sitting outside having a cup of joe and a few smokes before daybreak, with the outside temperature at 37°F. With about 17 hours to go at this point before December begins, that all seemed like fitting synchronicity.

Where I live in the Pacific Northwest we’re well into what everyone here calls The Big Dark. No snow (that rarely happens), but the days are short and usually beset by wet gloom even when the sun is (allegedly) above the horizon. Perfect days for chilly and gloomy music, but also good days for music that lights fires. What I’ve picked for this column today manifests in both those ways.

Of course, December brings more than The Big Dark in the earth’s northern latitudes. It will also bring a rising tide of year-end lists. Tomorrow we’ll be re-posting one from another site much larger than ours, and also asking our visitors to share their own. And then one week from tomorrow we’ll begin rolling out the lists of our own writers, beginning with Andy Synn’s usual weeklong takeover. (Actually, it will probably begin this coming Friday, if Andy does what he usually does and shares his list of the year’s best EPs in advance of his main list week.) Continue reading »

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