NO CLEAN SINGING

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 60: BURDEN

Jul 222015

(Andy Synn delivers the 60th edition of The Synn Report, reviewing the discography to date of Philadelphia’s Burden.)

Recommended for fans of: Ahab, October Tide, Celtic Frost

This was not the column I was supposed to be writing this month. Only an hour ago I was discussing with my NCS compatriots which of two particular bands to choose to focus on with this month’s edition of The Synn Report.

Yet the best-laid plans of mice and men so often go astray… particularly when you stumble upon an artist so good you just have to write about them. And that’s exactly what happened in this case.

Gloomy progressive Doomsayers Burden hail from the darkest depths of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, to be exact) and have, so far, produced two full-length albums and two stand-alone singles of dense, introverted Doom and groaning, cavernous Death Metal, each time employing subtle progressive touches and splashes of captivating melody to maintain a sense of bleak vitality and cleverly shift the dynamic of their lengthy compositions.

Granted, this sort of music often takes a real investment of patience and time from the listener, but when it’s this good it’s definitely worth it. In fact their most recent album, last year’s Without, is probably one of the most under-appreciated and under-rated gems I’ve heard in a long while! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BREEDING FILTH — “PRONOUNCED CANCER”

Premieres 3 Responses »

Jul 222015

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new song by Breeding Filth from Lafayette, Indiana.)

Back in March, I helped premiere the first single from Breeding Filth, a Lafayette, Indiana-based technical brutal death metal act. For those who didn’t catch my post before, the band includes members of fellow Indiana tech-death wunderkinds Dawn of Dementia, which should tip you off to the talent and quality involved with their music.

While the band has yet to set a release date for their debut album, Perverse Devolution, they’ve tentatively stated to me that it will be dropping toward the end of the year. To ease the burden of this long wait, we at NCS are proud to show you another song off their record called “Pronounced Cancer”.

If you like your death metal frantic yet full of finesse, then consider “Pronounced Cancer” a metastasizing treat, aurally akin to being helplessly dropped into a fucking war zone. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CARCINOMA — “CARCINOMA”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Jul 212015

I’ve been devoting almost all of my posts today to a series of short releases that I discovered since the end of last week. This is the fifth and final one.

CARINOMA

Carcinoma are based in Plymouth, England. I found out about them through a Facebook recommendation by Pyrrhon, who played with Carcinoma on the last show of Pyrrhon’s recently completed European tour.

Last weekend the band released via Bandcamp a two-song, self-titled single. The two songs are named “Rectify” and “Inner Tyrants Become External Parasites”. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: SENTIENCE — “SPLINTER THE CROSS”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 212015

I’m devoting almost all of my posts today to five short releases that I discovered since last week, all of them very strong, and this is the fourth of those.

SENTIENCE

I discovered New Jersey’s Sentience in April of last year thanks to a tip from Patrick Bruss (Crypticus), who knows a thing or two about old school death metal, coupled with these words from the legendary Dan Swäno, who knows a thing or two about the subject himself:

“One of the best SweDeath projects I have come across in the last 20 years”.

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE AND A REVIEW: ARPHAEL — “GUIDED BY LIGHT”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Jul 212015

(In this post we present TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by the Ukrainian one-man band Arphael, along with a full-album stream.)

For me, this album represents a whole new evolutionary step for death metal. It would be hard to argue that Arphael’s music is nothing more than death metal, but it’s obviously the driving force behind his music. I feel like he sought to create something truly extreme and overwhelming in every sense, and he has already accomplished that goal.

I did a small write-up about the music not long ago, with a brief recommendation of his only album at that time, Ambigram, an album that threw more at me than I had any clue what to do with. Guided by Light is Arphael’s sophomore album, and it represents a dramatic step up in every way from his first album. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ALTARAGE — “MMXV”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Jul 212015

I’m devoting almost all of my posts today to a series of short releases that I discovered since the end of last week, and this is the third one of those.

ALTARAGE

Altarage are a Spanish death metal band whose debut 7″ EP, MMXV, will be released by Iron Bonehead on September 4 (and a tape release is coming from Sol y Nieve/ Sentient Ruin Records). The two songs on MMXV are “Altars” and “Vortex Pyramid”. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ACERO LETAL — “VELOZ INVENCIBLE / DURO METAL”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Jul 212015

I’m devoting almost all of my posts today to a series of five short releases I discovered since last week, and this is the second of those.

ACERO LETAL

Acero Letal (“lethal steel”) are from Chile, which seems to be a hotbed of speed metal and thrash — and I do mean hot. The band released a demo in 2008, and in February of this year the most excellent Witches Brew released a two-song single from the band on black vinyl, with a download available on Bandcamp. The two tracks on the single are “Veloz Invencible” and “Duro Metal“.

Fairly late in my metal life, I’ve discovered a lust for old-school speed metal — maybe because I wasn’t listening to it when it had its genesis in the ’80s — and these two songs feed that hunger quite nicely, while bringing in other elements of “classic heavy metal”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: AYE-AYE

Interviews 2 Responses »

Jul 212015

(We have Comrade Aleks to thank for yet another interesting interview, this time with the vocalist/bassist for Scotland’s Aye-aye.)

Cool name, cool art-work, and a bunch of cool songs – what else do you need? Aye-aye are a band from Glasgow, Scotland. I like Scotland, I like animals, I like good doom, so that’s another exciting prize with which I was rewarded after another session of researches in Metal-Archives.

How many bands do you know who have the same name as a weird-looking lemur from Madagaskar?! I bet that this one is first of this kind for most of us! Prepare to get your foot tapping or your head nodding, Iain “Spawn” (vocals, bass) is here right after his nightshift. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AENAON AND VIRUS OF KOCH

Premieres 9 Responses »

Jul 212015

We present to you in this post a special dual premiere, the two new songs by the Greek black metal bands Aenaon and Virus of Koch that will appear on their new 7″ vinyl split, scheduled for release on September 7, 2015, via III-Damnation Productions, with artwork by Alexander Leybovich. Below you will find a few words about each song — “Ultima Momentum” from Aenaon and “Voro: Forma Mentis” by Virus of Koch — plus the music streams.

The split will be released in 50 copies of black/white haze vinyl (available for pre-order here) and 200 copies in black vinyl (available here). In a word, it’s fantastic.

AENAON: “ULTIMA MOMENTUM”

The new song from Aenaon follows their brilliant 2014 album Extance, which made many of our year-end lists and was also the source of a track (“Grau Diva”) that we named to our list of last year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HUMAN BODIES — “DEMO MMXV”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 212015

Today I’ve prepared brief reviews of five short releases that I discovered since the end of last week. All five of them are very strong, and all but one are available on Bandcamp. This is the first.

HUMAN BODIES

I first came across Boston’s Human Bodies in May of 2014 and foamed at the mouth (here) about their eviscerating 2013 demo and a subsequent single named Scapegoat. And then last October I foamed at the mouth some more about their No Life demo, which included “Scapegoat” (here). And now I’m about to slobber some more. Continue reading »

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