NO CLEAN SINGING

SHORT BUT SWEET: EXPANDER — “EXPANDER”

Nov 202015

Last weekend I came across an EP named Laws of Power that was digitally released in July by a band named Expander from Austin, Texas. It seized me by the throat so fast and so firmly that I spilled some words about it on Monday of this week (here), while noting that it would be released on tape by Caligari Records. Little did I know at the time that I would be ending the week as I began it — with more music from Expander.

It turns out that this past summer the editors at Metal Sucks selected Expander to be one of 10 unsigned bands who would be given the chance to record new music at Converse Rubber Tracks — Converse’s free recording studio — in either Brooklyn, NY, with producer Will Putney (The Acacia Strain, Suicide Silence, Exhumed), or in Boston, MA, with producer Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, Torche). Expander did their thing with Kurt Ballou, and while Metal Sucks earlier premiered one of the two songs they recorded with him, the band have just today released both tracks via Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LYCUS, FÓRN, VREDEHAMMER, SKÁLMÖLD, TURIA, DAVID BOWIE

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 16 Responses »

Nov 202015

I came across a ton of new music yesterday that lit me up, too much to cram into a single post. So I made some hard choices, and selected this grouping from six artists with an eye toward creating a diverse listening experience. The last item, of course, isn’t metal — except it kind of is. You’ll see. If I have time I might be able stitch together some more new songs for later today, and if not, tomorrow (because tomorrow is the glorious sixth anniversary of our site’s birth).

LYCUS

January 15 is the date set by Relapse Records for the release of the new album Chasm by Oakland’s Lycus. As you can see, it features cover art by Paolo Girardi. The band’s last album, 2013’s Tempest, was fantastic, and I’ve been curious to see what Lycus would do next.

The new record consists of four long songs, and one of them, “Solar Chamber”, debuted yesterday. Drummer Trevor DeSchryver described its concept this way: Continue reading »

SANZU: “HEAVY OVER THE HOME”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Nov 202015

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by Australia’s Sanzu.)

Stepping out of the shadow of your influences can be a tricky thing. Particularly when one of your major influences happens to have a fairly distinct and instantly recognisable sound of their own. Trying to put a fresh spin on things, to stamp it with your own identity whilst also maintaining a sense of continuity with your own vision of how you want things to sound… that’s hard.

One option, of course, is to simply say “fuck it” and just leave it all behind. You can see this in the host of ex-Deathcore and ex-Djent bands who, some by accident but many by design, quickly ended up straying pretty far from their roots, with their development and attempt to establish their own particular idiom pushing them outside the boundaries of their home-genre and leading them further and further away from their initial influences.

Of course… there’s another way. One that, like the method I’ve just described, comes with its own fair share of risks, but also offers up some tantalising rewards. And that’s to seize the sound of your influences with both hands, to grip it, and hold it, and crush it in your grasp and bellow “this is mine now”.

I’ll let you guess which one Sanzu have gone for on Heavy Over The Home. Continue reading »

A REQUEST FOR YOUR “MOST INFECTIOUS SONG” CANDIDATES

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 58 Responses »

Nov 192015

It’s that time of year again, when we start preparing for the frenzy of year-end Listmania. For those of you new to the frenzy, our Listmania extravaganza comes in four parts. First, we re-print assorted lists of the year’s best albums, leeched from other big web sites and magazines. Second, we will collect our readers’ lists of the 2015 albums and shorter releases they enjoyed the most. Third, we post the year-end lists of our own staff and assorted guest writers. And fourth, I’ll roll out my list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

And that last list is the subject of this request for help (we’ll be inviting you to give us your lists of the year’s best albums as we get closer to the actual end of the year — so start thinking about that).

In case you’ve become an NCS reader since this time last year, here’s what this Most Infectious Song list is about: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FUNGOID STREAM (SIMON O.)

Interviews 1 Response »

Nov 192015

(Comrade Aleks brings us another interview, this time with Simon O. of the Argentinian funeral doom band Fungoid Stream.)

So what do we have here today? Another Italian doom outfit? Wrong answer! Fungoid Stream is a funeral doom duo from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Joseph C. and Simon O. are dedicated researchers of Howard Phillip Lovecraft nightmares and each of their three albums are based on his writings. Also it’s known that Simon O. has his solo project Qhwertt – an experimental funeral thing with a conception built around Clark Ashton Smith stories.

Indeed, the third Fungoid Stream work Prehuman Shapes was released a year ago (once more with the help of Furias Records), but something scratching and whispering in my dreams has made me think about Fungoid Stream more often than I’d like to. It seems that Simon O. was waiting for my answers because he answered even faster than I could expect. It is strange… Well, probably just a coincidence… Anyway, I need to thank Eduardo of Furias Records for organizing this interview. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MAMMOTH STORM, ENNUI, EYE OF SOLITUDE, MOONBOW, WEEDPECKER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 15 Responses »

Nov 192015

(Grant Skelton steps forward for round-up duty with this collection of mostly new music from five bands.)

MAMMOTH STORM

Mammoth Storm are a three-piece from Saffle, Sweden. They released a demo in 2013. Less than a year later, Mammoth Storm followed that demo with a self-released EP called Rite Of Ascension. Their debut album Fornjot (named for an ancient Norse giant) was released earlier this month on Napalm Records.

Mammoths and Norse giants are fitting imagery for the kind of riffs this band writes. Enormous, loud, and destructive. They recently completed a tour with their labelmates Ahab and High Fighter. If you’re into either of those bands, then Mammoth Storm definitely have something for you. Below are the lyric video to the title track “Fornjot,” as well as a Soundcloud stream of “Augurs Echo.” Find Fornjot on Amazon and iTunes. The album also includes “Ancient Apocalypse,” a bonus track re-recorded from their 2013 demo. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE CANYON OBSERVER — “FVCK”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Nov 192015

FVCK is the title of the debut album by Slovenia’s The Canyon Observer, and it will fuck you up. It’s almost unremittingly intense — as heavy as a pile of corpses, as hallucinatory as a drug-induced nightmare, chaotic, deranged, and powerfully disorienting. It’s also spellbinding, a descent into a subterranean demolition zone that proves to be as hypnotic as it is harrowing.

Three of the album’s four songs are long ones, ranging from roughly nine minutes to almost 15, and the first three tracks flow into each other, further deepening the immersive effect of the music. Making your way straight through the album is an emotionally exhausting experience, but there’s really no other good way to do it. Each of the songs are devastating enough standing by themselves, but it’s the combined, layering effect of all of them together that makes this album such a towering monument of derangement and catastrophe. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015 BEGINS: DECIBEL MAGAZINE’S TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 2015

LISTMANIA 2015 50 Responses »

Nov 192015

Every year our Listmania series of posts includes not only lists of the year’s best releases as compiled by our staff, invited guests, and our esteemed readers, but also lists assembled by what we call “big platform” web sites and selected print magazines. Today we feature the first of the 2015 lists we’ve seen from that category of web sites and print zines — and fittingly, it comes from the best metal magazine on the planet, DECIBEL.

The list appears in the January edition of DECIBEL, which features Lamb of God on the cover and is beginning to arrive in the mailboxes of subscribers now. My copy is taking its sweet time making it to my mailbox up here in the far northwest corner of the U.S., but a friend on the East Coast sent me pics of the list, which is why I’m able to bring you this post. I know I’m stealing some of DECIBEL’s thunder, because they haven’t posted the list online themselves. But I’ve been doing this thunder-stealing for six years now, and it’s too late to stop. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): AT THE GATES, SECRETS OF THE MOON, CHTHE’ILIST, OBSCURA

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Nov 192015

photo by Ester Segarra

Today we have a two-part round-up of (mostly) new music for you. I put together this selection of new things I spotted over the last 24 hours. A bit later today we’ll bring you another compilation, assembled by Grant Skelton. Here we go:

AT THE GATES

“The Night Eternal” is one of my favorite tracks on At the Gates’ latest album At War With Reality. Honestly, it’s probably my favorite track on the album. So I was excited that the band released an official video for the song a couple of days ago, and even more excited when I realized that the video consisted of an animation by Romanian graphic artist and musician Costin Chioreanu. And it truly is a wonderful creation. Costin wrote this about the video: Continue reading »

ANNIHILIST — “VOL. 1”

Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers 5 Responses »

Nov 192015

(Andy Synn reviews the debut EP of Australia’s Annihilist.)

Never underestimate the value of good album art. After all, first impressions DO count.

For every cheesy cgi monstrosity, for every uninspired and multi-hued “cosmic” abortion, for every generic “war is bad” post-apocalypse or totally brutal “I’ve never been consensually touched by a woman” guts-n-gore album cover, there’s something far more interesting and eye-catching out there, something that stands out from the pack and practically yells “check this out!”

Such is the case with Australian metallurgists Annihilist and their debut EP Vol. 1. Continue reading »

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