WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

 Uncategorized  15 Responses »
Jul 042015
 

 

You may have noticed that over the last day and a half it has been difficult to connect to our site. You have probably been getting messages that tell you there has been an error establishing a database connection. Sometimes, with persistence, you can get through, and sometimes you can’t. The reason this is happening is… well… fuck if I know!!!

Your humble editor has spent significant amounts of time with our web host’s tech support people, who have given conflicting and inconsistent explanations and no useful advice about how to correct the problem. At one point they thought the issue was caused by the fact that our dedicated web server was running an out-of-date version of the MySQL database software. They upgraded that… and it didn’t help.

Then they informed me that we have been experiencing frequent spikes in the load on the server that it is unable to handle. Initially they had no explanation for that, but later told me that it appears we’re being deluged with spam comments. Our spam filter prevents them from appearing in the Comment sections, but they’re still incapacitating our server — at least that’s the best guess I was offered by those tech support people. Continue reading »

THE SLUDGELORD: A NEW COMPILATION IS BEING ASSEMBLED (AND SUBMISSIONS ARE WELCOME)

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jul 042015
 

 

(We’re happy to provide our guest Grant Skelton with a platform to help spread the word about a new compilation currently being assembled by the fine folks at The Sludgelord blog.)

One of No Clean Singing’s neighboring blogs has an open call for music submissions for a new Bandcamp compilation due in the fall.

The Sludgelord is a metal blog based in the UK. It was created in 2011 by editor Steve Howe. The Sludgelord primarily focuses on doom, stoner, sludge, and post-metal. However, it is not at all uncommon for them to cover black, ambient/experimental, death metal, or grindcore. The Sludgelord is currently accepting submissions from bands (signed and unsigned) for its new compilation.

Previous Sludgelord compilations (see below) have featured Primitive Man, Conan, Bevar Sea, Thorr-Axe (who premiered their album at NCS back in January), and Barabbas (recently interviewed by Comrade Aleks). Continue reading »

NO MORE EXCUSES

 Mosh Pit  20 Responses »
Jul 032015
 


artwork by Sam Nelson

(Andy Synn wrote this opinion piece about the tendency of some people to make excuses for mediocre or terrible bands in the face of criticism. We gave up making excuses for Andy long ago.)

A wise man once said:

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

A similarly wise (and far more handsome) man also once said:

“Excuses are like assholes… I don’t want to hear yours, and it’s not special.”

Ok, so maybe that second one is slightly less well known, but still… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLASPHEMIC CRUELTY — “ICONS OF REVOLT”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 032015
 

 

On July 20, Hells Headbangers will release Crucible of the Infernum, a new EP by Florida’s Blasphemic Cruelty. It’s the first new music from the band since their debut album Devil’s Mayhem, released by the Osmose label seven years ago — and we’ve got a taste of the carnage it delivers through our official premiere of the track “Icons of Revolt“.

Blasphemic Cruelty is led by former Angelcorpse hitman Gene Palubicki (Perdition Temple) on guitars, and he’s joined by vocalist/bassist Alex Blume (Ares Kingdom) and drummer Gina Ambrosio, who also had Angelcorpse ties. Together, this trio have concocted three original songs plus a cover of Sodom’s “The Crippler”. Continue reading »

SOUTH AFRICA’S WILDERNESSKING ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 032015
 


photo by Eckardt Kasselman

The remarkable Wildernessking from Cape Town, South Africa, have today announced that their eagerly awaited second album, Mystical Future, will be released in November 2015 by Germany’s Sick Man Getting Sick Records, whose roster of releases has included works by Alda and Sun Worship, among many others.

Three years have passed since Wildernessking burst upon the global metal scene with their critically praised debut album The Writing of Gods In the Sand. The band have not been idle since then, releasing two well-received EPs – …And the Night Swept Us Away (2012) and The Devil Within (2014) – as well as tracks for split releases in 2014 and early 2015. But based on some advance listening we’ve been lucky to experience, Mystical Future represents their most accomplished and powerful music yet.

More cohesive, more dynamic in its scope, and more personal in its lyrical focus, the album represents a significant step ahead for a band who have already made a big impact in a short space of time. Continue reading »

KOSSUTH: “MICTLAN”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new EP by Indiana-based Kossuth.)

The last time I wrote about Kossuth here at NCS, it was when I helped premiere “Plains Of The Soaring Dagger” before the release of the full EP on which it resides. Now that Mictlan has been released, it’s high time that you check it out, and find out why it’s important that you do so. Okay, so maybe that’s a bit presumptuous of me to say, but it’s hard not to get hyperbolic when we’re talking about technical death metal as good as this.

For those who missed my prior post, the band has several current/former members of Dawn Of Dementia in their ranks, which is reason alone to check it out. While a sonic comparison to the technical-meets-melodic stylings of Dawn Of Dementia can easily be made, beyond the current/former members’ connection, Kossuth have more of a progressive mindset to their songwriting on Mictlan than the first Dawn Of Dementia EP had. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALUSTRIUM — “SLACKJAW”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

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We’re about to premiere a song by a Philadelphia band named Alustrium from their new album A Tunnel To Eden. I have a sneaking suspicion they knew what they’d accomplished when they picked “Slackjaw” as the name for the song. I think they also knew what they were doing when they released an instrumental play-through video for the song about one week ago — you know, as proof that they didn’t record the song at the speed of normal humans and then run it through CERN’s large hadron particle accelerator outside of Geneva.

If you haven’t picked up on the clues yet, this thing is faster than an SR-71 and it did indeed leave me slack-jawed. I think I popped a few blood vessels in my right eye while listening to it, and there was a lot of drool left on my shirt, too.

Now, I realize that there are people out there who are unimpressed by pyrotechnical displays of physical dexterity in metal. They demand something more from a song. I confess that I’m one of those people who get off on the pyrotechnics, even when the song is just a chaotic mass of notes and beats. Maybe it’s because, as a child, I was in a car that was picked up by a tornado (true story). On the other hand, when that’s all there is, even I don’t tend to listen to a song more than once. But “Slackjaw” isn’t in that category. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND AN INTERVIEW): FIN’AMOR — “FORBIDDING MOURNING”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

 

Fin’amor are a New York City band founded in 2008, and their debut album Forbidding Mourning is set for release on July 7. In this post you will find the premiere of a full stream of Forbidding Mourning along with an interesting interview of the band’s guitarist Julian Chuzhik that sheds light on the band’s history as well as the musical and lyrical ideas reflected in this new album.

Fin’amor’s members come from a variety of musical backgrounds, and the seven songs on Forbidding Mourning reveal a rich tapestry of interwoven styles. As Julian Chuzhik explains in the accompanying interview:

“I think it would be fair to say that we play doom-influenced death, just as much as it’s fair to say that we play doom-influenced ’90s pop or goth or classical; I think all the opinions could be valid. We don’t want to tell someone that you can’t like our music because we only cater to doomers or the death metal crowd or whoever. We all have very different musical backgrounds, but find common ground in the music that we make. In the end, I guess all that matters for us is that we write mostly down-tempo riffs.”

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MERCY BROWN — “NEWS COMPLAINT”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

 

Mercy Brown is a new name to our site, but only because I’m late to the party — about three months late, in fact: The band’s self-titled debut album was released in mid-March of this year. It took the video we’re premiering today to turn me on to some music I’m damned glad I finally discovered. And sometimes that’s the best reason for post-release videos — to expose laggards like me to something they might otherwise miss completely. Another reason happens to be validated by this video, too: It’s as much fun to watch as it is to hear.

For those like me who are discovering the band for the first time, don’t be fooled by their name. It might make you think you’re in for some retro soul or funk music, but you’ll make a better guess if you happen to know about the bizarre “Mercy Brown vampire incident“, in which a young woman’s supposedly undead corpse was exhumed in Exeter, Rhode Island, in 1892 in order to remove her heart and burn it.

As far as I know, the four people in Mercy Brown are not vampires, and their fellow citizens in Spokane, Washington, haven’t yet come for them in the dead of night with pitchforks and torches. Let’s hope it stays that way. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SKEPTICISM, CATTLE DECAPITATION, REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER, TOMBSTALKER, INFESTUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

 

I haven’t compiled one of these round-ups in three days, and so of course I’m now awash in news, new music, and new videos that I think are worth your time — too much to stuff into one post. Rather than become paralyzed with indecision about what to foist upon you now and what to save for later, I drew names out of a hat. Here’s what emerged…

SKEPTICISM

Thanks to a tip from Grant Skelton, I saw yesterday’s announcement that Finland’s venerable and venerated Skepticism have a new album named Ordeal set for release by Svart Records on September 18. For me, the band’s performance at this year’s Maryland Deathfest was one of the event’s true high points, so I could hardly be more thrilled about this news — especially since seven long years have passed since the band’s last full-length.

And to add even more intrigue, the band recorded the new album live before an audience on January 24th at Klubi in Turku, Finland, and captured the performance on film. Continue reading »

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