NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE WEIR — “NO FATE”

Oct 012015

Following their 2013 debut album Yesterday’s Graves, Calgary’s The Weir will soon be releasing their second full-length, Calmness of Resolve. It’s a four-track album (of over 40 minutes in length), and today we give you the chance to hear one of the new songs, a crusher named “No Fate”

In one sense, the song is like the photograph chosen for the album’s cover. There are aspects of beauty in it; it draws you in; but it’s also desolate and bleak — and the song begins to cast a long shadow right from the start with slow, groaning riffs, methodical tumbling drums, and a prolonged shriek of feedback. You’re at the start of a slow-motion train wreck, though you may not realize it yet. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: VULTURE INDUSTRIES — “BLOOD ON THE TRAIL”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 3 Responses »

Oct 012015

Although I never managed to write a complete review of Vulture Industries’ fantastic 2013 album The Tower, I did write about every one of the three songs that premiered before the album’s release and chose the title track for our site’s list of 2013’s “Most Infectious” Songs, so that counts for something. The album is a strange and wondrous creation that sounds like nothing else I heard the year of its release — or since then either — and so I’m delighted that we have the chance to help premiere a new video for yet another song from the album: “Blood On the Trail“.

Apart from the fact that the song kicks large quantities of ass, the video was made by one of our favorite visual creators, Costin Chioreanu (who leads a damned good band himself [Bloodway]). Here’s what Vulture Industries had to say about the high-energy video: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TAMÁS KÁTAI (THY CATAFALQUE)

Interviews 2 Responses »

Oct 012015

Sgùrr is the name of the new album by Thy Catafalque, the remarkable solo project of Hungarian musician Tamás Kátai. As an ardent fan of the band, it was one of my most eagerly anticipated albums of this year, and now that I’ve heard it, it is one of my favorites of the year as well.

I was fortunate to hear the album well in advance of its October 16 release by Season of Mist, and even more fortunate to receive a copy of the beautiful digibook version of the album to look at as I listened. And to add still more good fortune, we were given the opportunity to premiere a song from the album named “Jura” — which you can explore here, along with my perhaps over-long review of the album and my photos of the digibook.

After I had spent significant time with the music on Sgùrr, I was left with many questions about it. I prevailed upon Tamás Kátai to satisfy my curiosity in the following interview conducted over the internet. Of course, the music speaks for itself (eloquently and powerfully), but the following discussion provides insights about Sgùrr from Tamás that I think will enhance listeners’ appreciation of this newest of his creations (and I’ve included two songs from the album at the end for those who haven’t yet discovered them). Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 63: STELLAR MASTER ELITE

THE SYNN REPORT 11 Responses »

Oct 012015

(In this 63rd edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy reviews the discography to date of Germany’s Stellar Master Elite — including their just-released third album, Eternalism.)

Recommended for fans of: Thorns, Satyricon, Aborym

The Synn Report isn’t just about covering bands retrospectively you know? In fact, frequently I’ll stumble across a band for the very first time and just feel compelled to write about them immediately (see Parts 57 and 60 for recent examples).

German grim-meisters Stellar Master Elite are another example of a band whose name has been floating around the various circles in which I wander for a while, but who – with their upcoming third album (which is being released today) – I’ve only just gotten round to checking out.

Their sound, though instantly memorable, is actually slightly hard to properly categorise. Certainly there’s a significant Blackened backbone to the band, but this is overlain with a Doomy, occult glamour and a shining skin of cyber-industrial synth work… so it should be no surprise to discover that the band named themselves after a song by legendary (if not exactly prolific) Industrial Black Metal forerunners Thorns… though it must also be said that the Germans are less chaotically aggressive overall, but far more ominously bleak in their approach!

So if you’re looking to get your grim, inhuman groove on, then you’ve definitely come to the right place! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIST OF NIHIL — “THE LAST WOUND OF GAIA”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Oct 012015

Last year the Greek band Mist of Nihil released their debut EP Buried Laments, which my comrade DGR greeted with open arms in his review: “The group are like crashing waves on the side of a rocky cliff and can bring on that drowning feeling that you’re looking for when you come to the doom genre.” Now the band are on the verge of releasing their debut album A Faint Aurora, with the kind of attention-grabbing cover art that will make it very difficult to overlook. The music is going to make its mark, too — as you’re about to discover through our premiere of the album’s final track, “The Last Wound of Gaia“.

This long song joins together passages of shimmering, ephemeral beauty, blood-pumping riffs and pulsating lead-guitar melodies, cavernous full-throated growls — and of course an aura of aching melancholy. Sombre, heavy chords that drag like chains across a killing floor link arms with high, clear, cascading guitar arpeggios that shine with changing light against a backdrop of darkness, very much like the auroras of the album’s title. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABIGAIL WILLIAMS — “LOST COMMUNION”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Sep 302015

When our writer Andy Synn recently reviewed Abigail Williams’ new album The Accuser, he described the further evolution of the band’s sound from their last album Becoming as “inverting the moody introspection of its predecessor into a dark and brooding nihilism, creating in the process a distorted reflection and a dark inversion of their former sound that still shares many of the same traits and elements, but twists them into harsher, more dissonant shapes.”

Today we have the privilege of premiering for you another song from The Accuser. Andy described this new one, “Lost Communion“, as music “with a rolling swagger to it, shot through with a series of esoteric, piercing lead melodies that thread their way in and out of the blasting, grooving, melee, climaxing in the unexpectedly massive hooks of the song’s mid-section, with some frankly huge vocals and booming riffs offering a big payoff to the song’s rapid-fire build-up.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VASTUM, HAVUKRUUNU, NAÐRA, DIRTY SHIRT

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Sep 302015

Once again I find myself awash in new songs that I’ve discovered since the end of last week, but without enough time to write about all of them. To avoid a paralyzing indecisiveness about which ones to select for this round-up, I taped a list of them to the wall, threw my head against the edge of a table to cause a bleeding scalp wound, spun around in circles like a dervish, and then checked the list to see which names had been hit with blood spray. I’m probably going to work on a different selection method in the future.

VASTUM

Two days ago we got a preview of the new album by Vastum courtesy of a premiere at DECIBEL. This is the band’s third album, bearing the title Hole Below, and I’m very, very eager to hear all of it — especially after listening to “Sodomitic Malevolence”.

Holy mother of calamities, is this song creepy and crushing — it sounds like a torture chamber engulfed in an earthquake. During a hurricane. While an eclipse is blotting out the sun. And when the song eventually begins to really roll, the riffs will snap your neck — and there’s a guitar solo that will sear the skin off your face. Continue reading »

PAINT IT BLACK: DELUGE / HORNA / REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER

Album Reviews 14 Responses »

Sep 302015

(Andy Synn presents a trio of album reviews.)

Now I’m sure you all know by now just how much I love Black Metal, in all its many and varied forms. Whether it’s the grime-soaked grooves of Horned Almighty… the blast-furnace assault of 1349… the harrowing sonic rituals of Enthroned… the grim grandeur of Secrets of the Moon… the riff-packed assault of Nidingr… the mesmerising madness of Dødsengel… the ambient anguish of Leviathan… whether it’s “Old School”, “Second Wave”, “Progressive”, “Post”… to me the very essence of the style is its simple refusal to be restricted or limited by the expectations and pressures of others, and the insistence of those who perform under the black banner on doing things their own way, no matter the consequences.

Of course there are stylistic elements that these bands all share– for all its growth and constant opposition between progressive and regressive forces, Black Metal IS still a distinct (though wide-ranging) genre – and yet there are still bands who seem, on the surface of things, to utilise most of the right sonic elements, but whom I still struggle to really think of as “Black Metal” all the same. Continue reading »

WORLD WAR II (PART II)

Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Sep 302015

(This is Part II of a multi-part article prepared by our Russian friend Comrade Aleks. Part I is here.)

This is the second part of an article describing events that took place on the Eastern Front of World War II through the eyes of few extreme metal bands. This part is written with the musical help of Heaven Shall Burn, Marduk, Jucifer, Hell’s Domain, Vergeltung, and Tank; also here you will find exclusive comments from Darknation, Tales of Darknord, and Caducity… and some historical explanations from Wikipedia, of course, as such huge text would be pretty difficult for me to write and it could eat much more time. Continue reading »

THE WICKED LIBRARY — A CALL FOR MUSICAL SCORES

Metal News 2 Responses »

Sep 292015

(We bring you a message from Grant Skelton….)

After our recent Litany Of Literary Lunacy roundup, Dan Foytik of The Wicked Library podcast reached out to us. Foytik is looking to work with musicians who want to create original compositions for inclusion in future episodes of The Wicked Library.

In his own words, Fotyik said:

Wicked Library exists primarily as a promotion tool and community for writers, artists (and hopefully) musicians to find new fans and get their work heard.We currently have just over 22,000 monthly listeners worldwide, so if you know any musicians that might be interested in some pretty easy scoring work (which they retain the rights to by the way), I’d be happy to talk to them.

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