SEEN AND HEARD: SERPENTES, GOLEM OF GORE, CRUST, ANZV, CAGED BASTARD, SKUGGOR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 042025
 

(written by Islander)

I keep an electronic calendar and a paper calendar of premieres I agree to run for NCS. Belt and suspenders, as people use to say before suspenders went the way of the Dodo. But sometimes my pants fall down anyway, like when the plans of a band or label change and I’m being distracted by something else when I see that and then forget to change either calendar.

That’s what happened today. I had an album premiere on the calendar, but when I went hunting for the “assets” for the premiere I saw the e-mail chain where a schedule change had happened. So I found myself with time I didn’t expect to have today, and decided to make this roundup of new songs and videos as a bit of a head-start on the weekend roundups. My selection strategy was to pick the newest things I saw that I liked this morning. Hope you enjoy what I chose.

(In case you’re wondering, I do have assistants in my NCS work, but mainly they delete things I’ve written and introduce typos by walking across the keyboard. They’re less useful in keeping my pants up.) Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, MARCH 2025

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 042025
 


Forlorn

(Our Denver-based writer Gonzo is back with another monthly roundup of reviews and recommendations. Today’s varied collection includes four albums released in March and one from February.)

Well well, here we are again with a new month, and I’m writing this exactly a week later than I wanted to. Refused are officially fucking dead – at least, to everyone who saw them Tuesday night here in Denver – and I’m still getting my voice back after that show. “CAN I SCREAM” indeed.

It’s been quite the active week for heavy music around the Rockies. By the time this gets on our site, I’ll have likely already seen Meshuggah tear another hole in the space-time continuum, and I always look forward to that. I’m glad I managed to get this column out the door, though, as I’m headed to Roadburn in a couple of weeks for a much-needed break. Leaving the country, even if temporarily, seems to be the right move for now. There’s chaos and stupidity around every corner in the US, and I can only live in violent opposition to fascism for so long.

Since I don’t have high hopes for getting an April edition of this column out into the world, it’ll give you more time to dive into these 5 albums for March. You won’t be sorry. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERHEERER — “URGEWALT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 032025
 

(written by Islander)

The title of Verheerer‘s new album (their third) is Urgewalt. Like many German words, it probably doesn’t have a precise English translation, but based on our own searches it could be rendered as “elemental force” — “a sense of raw, untamed, and powerful force, often associated with nature or something fundamental.”

In the context of the album, that force is the absolute will of humanity to destroy, to the point of self-destruction. The album’s even more specific context is the horror of World War I, as described in this press preview of the record (which will be released on April 4th by Vendetta Records):

The new album was composed and written with this basic idea in mind and with the First World War, which revealed a new level of cruelty and dehumanization and at the same time shaped our world like no other conflict to this day, the canvas was also found on which Verheerer paint their very own pictures. Of the loss of humanity in an industrial machine of destruction, of seduction and the mechanisms of power that make the incomprehensible possible in the first place.

And thus the album’s cover art (by Misanthropic-Art) is a fitting one — the remains of creatures who irresistibly fought and died, horns locked together and unable to escape. It’s a representation of the truth “that every supposed victory in this bloody game must be paid for all the more dearly.” Continue reading »

CORPUS OFFAL: “CORPUS OFFAL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 032025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile has a lot of ghastly and glowing things to say about the debut album from Texas-based Corpus Offal, which erupted in a spray of 20 Buck Spin‘s intestines on March 21st.)

I would say, in general and on average, I am more of a black metal fan than a death metal fan, looking back at both my listening habits over the years and the end-year lists (not yet here on No Clean Singing, so take this as a warning come December). Scientifically speaking, it’s a 65.212 to 34.788 ratio, but who’s counting. Anyway, admittedly, this year has been so far very tempting in that matter, threatening to turn the scales towards a more even split in said preferences.

Reason for this is, first and foremost, this gloriously twisted 2025 being already stacked full of fantastic death metal and we’re only three months in. Smoking hot, fermenting, rotting mounds of body parts stretching as far as the eye can see, what’s not to love? This is not just the onset of putrefaction, it is a full-blown bloom of abnormal flesh.

Poetically appropriate then, that we are visited today by the entity of Corpus Offal which rises from the corpse of another great American death metal band, namely Cerebral Rot, which dissolved last year after releasing two monster albums a couple of years back. Continue reading »

ZOLTAR REVIEW ROUNDUP: FRIGHTFUL, HUMANITY DELETE, STASS, PROCREATION, SUMMONING DEATH

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 032025
 

(Today our contributor Zoltar brings us reviews of five recently released or reissued OSDM albums, and you’ll find them all below.)

FRIGHTFUL – WHAT LIES AHEAD

Being smart doesn’t hurt does it? Especially in this highly competitive world… So kudos to Gdansk’s Frightful for realizing soon enough that the grind/death direction they were initially stirring their band to could well be a dead end, at least based on their lacklustre 2018 EP Cannibalistic Rites. Their second full-length What Lies Ahead takes what made their debut album Spectral Creator so great back in 2021 and just runs with it at full speed. At its very core, their music is pure death/thrash mayhem with that kind of inimitable sense of urgency, somewhere in between Schizophrenia-era Sepultura and mid-period Sodom. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CHAINS — “SUBJUGATE THE UNKNOWN TO THE YOKE OF REASON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 022025
 

(written by Islander)

The Brazilian musician A. Enrique (aka Henry or H.) has fired his varied musical creations into the world through a number of cannons — among them, Astral Lore, Woe Bearer, Gateways, and Cavern, and if you click those links you’ll see that we’ve written about most of them. And now he adds one more to the battery.

The newest project is named Chains, in which H. is the lyricist and performs all instruments, joined by vocalist Thomas Prunet (also a participant in Astral Lore and Woe Bearer). As for why H. created a new project when he already had so many others, it’s because the music differs from that of his other endeavors. As he explains, “It’s a mix Sludge/Post-Black Metal, heavily influenced mainly by Andavald and Amenra, but turned out to sound quite different…”

Chains has recorded a debut album entitled Subjugate the Unknown to the Yoke of Reason that will be released by Primitive Archive on April 4th, but we’re giving you the chance to hear it today. Of course we have some thoughts to share with you about what you’ll hear, but to begin we have some insights about the album’s themes from H.: Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: PRAVITAS / TELEPATHY / TIBERIUS

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 022025
 

(Andy Synn presents three more varied examples of shining British steel)

So here’s the thing… I almost didn’t manage to get this column written and published this week.

Not, I need to state, due to any issues with my motivation or time management, but because a particular album that I’d eagerly been looking forward to turned out to be incredibly mediocre and overhyped (here’s a tip: if you’re going to try and sell something as a progressive piece of cross-genre pollination it’s probably a good idea to not just deliver a bunch of interchangeable Nu-Metalcore tracks that quickly go in one ear and out the other) leaving me with a gaping whole in my usual three album format.

Thankfully it turned out Leeds-based Tech-Death types Pravitas also just put out their debut album, and so have ended up slotting into this article quite nicely, not only saving the day but also giving me another promising new band to talk about.

Speaking of which…

Continue reading »

TÓMARÚM: “BEYOND OBSIDIAN EUPHORIA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 022025
 

(We present Daniel Barkasi‘s review of a new album by Tómarúm, which will be released on April 4th via Prosthetic Records.)

When it comes to the more progressive side of music, no matter the amalgamation, the albums that take one on a journey are the ones that tend to stick in yours truly’s brain. Case in point: Atlanta’s Tómarúm burst onto the scene in 2022 with a mammoth slab of progressive black metal via Ash in Realms of Stone Icons that seemingly came out of nowhere. Sure, their 2020 EP Wounds Ever Expanding showed plenty of promise, but we didn’t predict a debut full-length so mature, potent, and expertly crafted.

Since then, guitarists/vocalists Kyle Walburn and Brandon Iacovella started a fascinating death/doom project in Lunar Chamber, and have been getting Tómarúm out there on the road with regularity. We managed to catch them once, and it was a memorable, hair-raising experience of intensity and technical precision.

Inevitably, the time for album number two has arrived, and with that brings the usual contemplation – can they build off of their massive debut and knock it out of the park again, or will growing pains become evident? A task especially difficult for a band who displayed such nuance and veteran-level songwriting prowess on Ash in Realms of Stone Icons. Additionally, the band officially became a five-piece within the last few years, and as a result, we have what is the band’s first written material in that formation outside of just Walburn and Iacovella, who previously were the sole craftsmen of Tómarúm. Continue reading »

DEAFHEAVEN: “LONELY PEOPLE WITH POWER”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 012025
 

(The following is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by San Francisco’s Deafheaven, released on March 28th through Roadrunner Records.)

Six albums into their career, these guys are not out to win over any new fans. Yet this might catch the ears of casual listeners who got lured in by the hype surrounding 2013’s Sunbather, which found these guys the talk of hipsters at craft breweries everywhere.

The band seemed to not give a shit about critical acclaim, and rather than try to double down on the post-rock formula that made Sunbather successful, they have ventured into darker corners and toyed with varied blends of shoe-gaze, black metal, and even thrashing screamo. This new album finds the band striking a perfect balance among these stark contrasts, and creating an album that is in some ways more experimental than Sunbather but also darker and angrier. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 012025
 

(Andy Synn presents part 1 – part 2 coming next week – of his regularly scheduled catch-up column)

Last month was so goddamn busy – both in terms of my own personal/professional/musical life and the sheer amount of albums being released – that I’m actually being forced (well, “forced”) to do not one but two “Things You May Have Missed” articles to catch up on everything that I/we missed during February.

Not that I mind too much – honestly, my biggest concern is falling behind on March’s releases while we’re still looking back at February – since although so far I’ve found 2025 to have gotten off to a pretty slow start (there’s been a lot of releases, sure, but only a handful that have really blown me away) I’m pretty sure that at least some of these records are going to find their way onto a few end of year lists.

So, without further ado, let’s enjoy the first of this month’s two-part round-up,

Continue reading »

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