NO CLEAN SINGING

MECHINA: “PROGENITOR”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 5 Responses »

Feb 022016

(DGR weighs in on the new album by Chicago’s Mechina, as you knew he would.)

The January 1st album release has become a comedic undertone to my writing as of late. It’s never one that I have advanced warning for, nor is it one that I am ever truly adequately prepared for. Instead, it just serves as a reminder of the relentless march of time and the constant – and reassuring – pressures of being a writer for this site. It’s strange, but I have found comfort in this sense, the idea that I am already late and that I have fucked up.

Without that pressure, life seems aimless, and so, as it has been for the past handful of years, I have Mechina to thank for the fact that I am once again dragging ass on a review. The sun has risen in the east and set in the west, the sky is still blue, and all is right with the world – because as I take longer and longer to write out this review out, each moment means that I am later than I was before. Always the hare in Alice In Wonderland, and in that way continuing exactly how I felt last year and the year before.

It’s that consistency that one needs as a reminder that while the year has ticked up one notch, things haven’t really changed and the world is a mess. God forbid any actual events happen. This ladies and gentlemen, is how I start my year. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 68: SEVEN SISTERS OF SLEEP

Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT 3 Responses »

Feb 012016

photo by Forrest Locke

(For this 68th edition of The Synn Report, Andy takes as his subject the discography of SoCal’s Seven Sisters of Sleep — including their brand new album due for release by Relapse on February 5.)

Recommended for fans of: Eyehategod, Acid Bath, Soilent Green

After traversing the parched, sun-beaten wastelands of Texas in last month’s edition of The Synn Report, this time we’re travelling West to the city of angels, Los Angeles, to catch up with inveterate noise-mongers Seven Sisters of Sleep.

For those unfamiliar with the band, here’s a warning. This is some nasty, unrepentantly nihilistic stuff, straddling the blood-crusted nexus point between filthy Sludge, groaning Doom, buzzing Drone, seething Hardcore, and grim Old School Death Metal… with more than a few splashes of venomous Grind thrown in for good measure. Suffice it to say, this is definitely not music for the faint of heart.

By the same token though, it never feels like the band have just mashed-up all these sounds into one big, messy Extreme Metal sundae. Rather their sound comes across like a distillation of each of these styles down to their shared essence, filtered and refined to produce pure Extreme Metal moonshine, that’s just as likely to make you bang your head and scream your guts out as it is to make you go blind… and scream your guts out.

Though the band have a fair few splits and EPs to their name, I’ve elected to stick just to the full-length albums for this edition of The Synn Report, in particular their about-to-be-released third album Ezekiel’s Hags. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: WITCH OF THE WASTE — “I BET YOU’RE WONDERING WHAT I’M DOING WITH THIS HERE GAS CAN”

Premieres 1 Response »

Feb 012016

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a video from Vancouver, BC’s Witch of the Waste.)

After covering the latest Witch Of The Waste here at NCS last year, and then also placing it on my year-end list, I’d hope most of our audience is already aware of these brilliant Canadian noisemongerers by now. But if you aren’t, we are exclusively premiering a video for the closing song off last year’s fantastic EP, Made Of Teeth. So if you missed both of my prior posts about these guys, now is the time to tune in and turn it up loud.

To briefly summarize my initial assessment of Made Of Teeth, I’ll quote from my 2015 write-up on it here at NCS: “Like a modern spin on the chaotic metallic hardcore wave of old, Witch Of The Waste come across similar to phenomenal acts such as Burnt By The Sun, Dillinger, As The Sun Sets, and Ed Gein. Neither completely a metal or hardcore record, Made of Teeth straddles the line in a spazzy way that’s always interesting and unique. In addition Made Out Of Teeth also injects some grim and smashing black metal elements into their brand of sonic life-ending napalm.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TORMENTIUM — “FALLEN (IN DEFIANCE)”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Feb 012016

Tormentium have been poisoning the Pacific Northwest for more than a decade, cascading Cascadia with their own preternatural darkness through a sequence of demos, splits with Infernus and Cult of Unholy Shadows, an EP (Cursed Beyond Flesh), and live assaults. On March 25, Exile Music(k) will bring us the band’s debut album Bound To the Depths, and today we bring you the premiere of a song from the album named “Fallen (In Defiance)“.

The band have explained that Bound To The Depths “is a large body of work with a loose subjective theme: where the ‘depths’ represents something different in each piece… your inner demons, desires, convictions, and damnations. The lyrics are mainly story-like narratives, reflecting these themes through characters, and ultimately reflecting metaphorically through the listener. The album as a whole flows like a story as well, guiding the listener through the aether of darkness to events of rage, insanity, and sacrifice.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ENTROPIA — “UFONAUT”

Album Reviews, Premieres 6 Responses »

Feb 012016

In the last days of the last year I came across a new song named “Mandala” from a new album by Poland’s Entropia. As I wrote at the time, it’s heavy, high-energy music that defies easy genre classification, with pneumatic grooves, twisted riffs, otherworldly guitar arpeggios, and quirky electronica capable of pushing you past your comparatively drab surroundings and into this band’s inventive vision. And as you’re about to find out, the same could be said of the entire mind-bending album.

The name of the record is Ufonaut. It follows the band’s 2013 debut album Vesper, and it will be released by Arachnophobia Records on February 15. It’s a cocktail of adrenaline, paving tar, and mescaline, consumed in an asylum — and it’s a completely electrifying concoction from the first gulp to the last. Continue reading »

FUATH: “I”

Album Reviews 9 Responses »

Feb 012016

(We welcome Jay Lawrence to the pages of our putrid blog. He is a self-described long-time metal nerd from Philadelphia with a specific penchant for black metal. He likes both cats and dogs, couldn’t care less about the Eagles or Phillies, and doesn’t want to hear about your experiences with cheesesteaks. He shares with us his review of the wonderful new album by Scotland’s Fuath.)

Look at that cover artwork. Could anything be more fitting for a winter release?

I suppose I’ll begin by telling you what you’ll all be able to find out when this band and album eventually get added to Metal Archives: Fuath is a Scots Gaelic word meaning hatred, which is an interesting choice in my opinion, but more on that later. Fuath is also the latest endeavor from the Scotsman Andy Marshall, well-known previously within our community for his work with Saor, formerly Àrsaidh, — direct, if far more mature descendants of Andy’s early project, Askival, and all of those projects being black metal of an epic, Celtic folk-influenced nature. This is not true of Fuath, which certainly explains an entirely new brand being created under which to release this album. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LVTHN, DRAMA, PERDITION WINDS, IMPERCEPTUM, MERV’, VIOLET COLD, TRAUTONIST

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 8 Responses »

Jan 312016

This is a rather super-sized edition of Shades of Black, collecting new and recently discovered music in a blackened vein. But believe me, this could have been much bigger still, because I’m sitting on a ton of other releases I’d like to include. I’ll put them in the fridge so they don’t spoil and defrost them later (though of course they’ll never completely de-frost).

LVTHN

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of this Belgian band’s previous releases, and have managed to write about most of them (collected behind this link). And before I get to a brand new LVTHN song, I’ll mention that the band have recently made their 2014 compilation release The Grand Uncreation available for “name your price” download on Bandcamp (here). Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 17)

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 7 Responses »

Jan 312016

I’m still trying to catch-up on the rollout of this annual list since I didn’t get even a single new entry up last week. So, in addition to the three songs I added yesterday, I’m adding four today — all of them black metal, and all of them very good songs in addition to being highly memorable. The other songs on the list so far can be accessed through this link.

KAMPFAR

It’s hard to name many bands who are 20 years into their lifespan and still putting out music of the quality that Norway’s Kampfar are releasing. As Andy Synn wrote about last year’s Kampfar full-length (here):

“Much like its predecessors, Profan blends massive, cutting-edge riffage and raucous, almost punkish, energy with a sense of dark majesty and grandeur that’s both firmly rooted in the ancestral traditions of Black Metal, yet not utterly beholden to them. And, much like its predecessors, it continues to set an almost ludicrously high bar for those who follow after.”

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (HIMSA, DAATH)

Uncategorized 7 Responses »

Jan 312016

We missed out on a Rearview Mirror post last Sunday, so I thought I’d double-up for this Sunday’s edition. As usual, we’re looking back at metal from past years, and in this case providing a bit of music from two bands that no longer exist (though one of them still officially seems to be “on hold”). The careers of both bands overlapped, and both were favorites of mine while they lasted.

HIMSA

Himsa were founded in Seattle in 1998, taking as their name a Sanskrit word that means “harm” or “violence”. In June 2008 they announced their demise, and in August 2008 they played their last show. In between the beginning and the end, the band released four albums and two EPs on such labels as Revelation Records, Prosthetic Records, and Century Media. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16)

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 2 Responses »

Jan 302016

I hang my head in shame. I let a whole ‘nuther week go by without posting anything new in this 2015 year-end series, and here we are already near at the end of January. I obviously got some catchin’ up to do.

I could call this “The DGR Installment” in the series, because all three of the following songs were recommended by him when I started compiling this list. They are also favorites of mine, and I thought they would make good companion pieces for each other, too. Time to griiiiind….

NAPALM DEATH

Apex Predator-Easy Meat hit almost exactly one year ago, and DGR reviewed the album the next month, beginning with a mythic story that had an anti-climactic finish as a shamanic figure uttered after a convulsive trance: “Napalm Death are an important band”. And then he came full circle at the end of that review: Continue reading »

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