NO CLEAN SINGING

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 »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: ESCARNIUM — “GODLESS SHRINE OF DECAY”

Album Reviews, Premieres 12 Responses »

Nov 182015

Earlier this year the Brazilian death metal band Escarnium signed a North American deal with Redefining Darkness Records, looking ahead to the release of their next album. To pave the way for that, Redefining Darkness is releasing Godless Shrine of Decay, a compilation that includes selected cuts (all of them remastered) from the band’s previous releases as well as one new song, and we’ve got a full stream of this godless shrine for you today. It seems only fair to issue a warning in advance: Prepare for a ravaging onslaught of hellish old school death metal.

The album hits the ground running (“marauding” would actually be a better word) with “Radioactive Doom” from the band’s 2014 single Genocide Ritual and then moves to “Human Waste”, the previously unreleased track that’s included on the album. From there you get the title track from that 2014 single, seven decimating cuts from the band’s 2012 debut album Excruciating Existence, five tracks from the 2011 EP Rex Verminorum, and the title song from their first demo, 2009’s Covered In Decadence. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DOWNFALL OF NUR (ANTONIO SANNA)

Interviews 4 Responses »

Nov 182015

(Argentinian journalist Matías Gallardo rejoins us with this interview of Antonio Sanna, the man behind Downfall of Nur, whose fine debut album Umbras de Barbagia was released earlier this year.)

The year is coming to an end and the black metal scene has many things to toast to. One of them is the appearance of Downfall of Nur, the one man band from an Italian-Argentinian multi-instrumentalist named Antonio Sanna. Hailing originally from the land of Sardinia, Italy, Antonio moved to Argentina as a kid, and now at only 19 years old he has become one of the more interesting faces in the genre. Mixing the raw and classic sound of Scandinavian black metal whilst identifying himself with the Cascadian sound of masters like Wolves in the Throne Room and the folk influence of giants Agalloch, he released Umbras de Barbagia, one of the most exciting debuts of the year. In this interview, Antonio talks about the beginnings of the band and how much his indivisible emotional link with his homeland remains as the key influence in his music.

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Before Downfall of Nur you played in projects like Dreon, Drowned in November, Funeralopolis, and Philosophie des Toren. What can you tell me about them and how different were they from DON?

They were all experimental projects, stages where I was interested in a musical style/genre and in recording something associated with it. Funeralopolis was the previous name of Philosophie des Toren, and then I changed it. I can´t remember why, it was a long time ago, anyway. None of them were serious projects. The project that may have been a bit more serious was Drowned in November. I’ve learned a lot thanks to the recording process of those projects, but they never had any other purpose than to experiment. DON was created with the idea of making a serious project, and beyond an experiment in sound and composition, although keeping some parameters. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEXHYMN — “REFLECTION OF REVELATIONS”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Nov 182015

This isn’t quite a complete premiere, because the song you’re about to hear has been available on Bandcamp for a couple of weeks. But the lyric video for it that you’re about to see is brand new, and the song is so damned explosive that it dropped my jaw the first time I heard it, so we’re stoked to help spread the word about it.

Allow me to elaborate on the jaw-dropping thing. I had no idea what was coming the first time I heard the song. Hadn’t bothered to read anything about Denver’s Nexhymn before pushing “play” on the video. Sometimes that’s the best way to go — it’s like unwrapping a present, except in this case it’s more like the present exploded as soon as I touched it.

I’m tempted to say nothing about the music, so you can get the same incendiary surprise that I got — but I can’t resist. You can always just skip past my words and get the music going straight away (be sure to crank the volume all the way up) Continue reading »

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