NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS INTERVIEW: POHJOINEN

Jul 152015

(Our Russian friend Comrade Aleks has been a busy man, and we’ve got a string of new interviews from him that we’re posting from now to the end of this week — beginning with this conversation with Finland’s Pohjoinen.)

Pohjoinen means “North”, but this Finnish band doesn’t play black or death metal, as they follow the path of authentic doom. Pohjoinen are Kimmo (bass, vocals), R (drums), and Tumppi (guitars, vocals); this power-trio chooses an old school approach, preferring a groovy and heavy sound with melodic vocals and Finnish lyrics. I like bands who keep their national identity, so I was really glad to find Pohjoinen, and this telepathic interview with the band’s collective mind is a result of this discovery.

******

Hail mates! How are you there? First, Pohjoinen’s self-titled LP was released two months ago. How did you come to it? What was your road to this record?

Hail you, hail to all! We have been together for 2 years with this line-up, and the record has been slowly manifesting itself through that time. Our bass player Kimmo recorded it at our rehearsal place in the spring of last year, and he also did the mixing/mastering. Some songs were older than that — from a previous incarnation of the band. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: UNBREAKABLE HATRED — “RUINS”

Premieres 5 Responses »

Jul 152015

Unique Leader Records has a well-demonstrated taste for bands who join death metal ferocity to head-spinning complexity and technical flair, and this past spring they added another eye-opening group to their growing roster — Unbreakable Hatred from Quebec City. The band’s second album Ruins is now projected for release in August, and we’re about to give you a glimpse of the carnage within as we premiere the album’s title track.

Unbreakable Hatred is a power trio consisting of guitarist Philippe Drouin, his brother Dominic on drums, and vocalist/bassist Simon B. Lapointe. The band’s debut album Total Chaos was released in 2011, and they’ve drawn praise from an impressive collection of other musicians:

“Unbreakable Hatred is one of Canada’s premier death metal acts; this trio of power lays waste to the listeners’ ear drums on every level and then some!” – Terrance Hobbs, Suffocation

“Unbreakable Hatred blew us away each night with their energy and ripping songs; it was a total pleasure to have them on our tour and the best is most certainly to come – Ferocious!” — Jason Netherton, Misery Index

“Unbreakable Hatred from Quebec are definitly one of the new bands out there to be recognized! Once again proving that Quebec musicians are on top of their Game! ” — Flo Mounier, Cryptopsy

“Great musicians, brutally heavy and very strong live, definitely a band to watch out for.” — Bobby Koelble, Death

AN INTERVIEW WITH MOREAN — PART 2: NONEUCLID

Interviews 4 Responses »

Jul 152015

(Andy Synn had the chance to interview the Dutch artist Morean about the three bands in which he is currently involved — Dark Fortress, Noneuclid, and Alkaloid. We’ve divided the interview into three parts, which will appear on three successive days. Today’s focus is Noneuclid. Check out Part 1 here and Part 3 here.)

Moving on to talk about your work in Noneuclid, which also includes your Dark Fortress band-mates Seraph and V. Santura, along with Linus from Obscura/Alkaloid, and recently departed vocalist Bruce. For those unfamiliar with the band, can you give us some background on the group?

M: We started as a group of friends playing covers together once a year. I had just graduated from the conservatory and was looking for an outlet for my metal-related ideas, and we had way too much fun playing together, so after a while we decided to make Noneuclid a more permanent outfit. That was back in 2004. I set out to write the first album with just the wish in mind to have a few songs to play; little did we suspect they’d be perceived as being this unusual. To us, it was just metal to begin with, but then things went off on a pretty wild tangent with everything that ensued in the years after. Continue reading »

AUSTIN WEBER’S BEST OF 2015 SO FAR: PRIME CUTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND (PART 1)

Album Reviews, Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jul 152015

(In this multi-part post, Austin Weber brings us his recommendations for some of the best albums released during the first half of the year.)

We are gathered here today, to become willing devotees to the aural alchemism presented below in various forms. While the words per band write-up may be sparse due to a lack of time, the music speaks volumes in terms of creativity; and in terms of literal volume as well!

I figured now would be a good time to post about a bunch of killer releases I’ve failed to find time to write about. And not just because I found them to be decent or somewhat enjoyable, but because these are some of the best of this year that you within our beloved metal community need to know about. They range across such genres as tech-meth, R&B-infused grindcore, Nu-core wave of heavy 2 the core metal, Classical punk-bop, Blackened post-folk, SludgEDM, Southern Acoustic DJENT, and Rollercoaster deathpolka (a curious after-writing search led me to find out that someone has a band named deathpolka, bitching!).

Expect several more installments of this 2015 “best of” feature coming soon. I hope. Maybe?

Okazaki Fragments

First on today’s list of recommendations is Abandoned, the headspinning debut by the Canadian death machine known as Okazaki Fragments. This Calgary-based group’s moniker, in a nutshell, can be boiled down to the growth process of new DNA. As an analogy for what their music has in store, it’s a damn fitting name for the unique music they’ve created. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GURTHANG AND BEYOND LIFE — “MELODIES OF SORROW”

Premieres 1 Response »

Jul 142015

In this post we bring you the full streaming premiere of Melodies of Sorrow, a new split release by the Polish bands Gurthang and Beyond Life that is being released today by Denver-based Cimmerian Shade Recordings. Gurthang contributes three songs to the split, and four come from Beyond Life. Together, they create a dark and disorienting listening experience, filled with dread and despair — but it’s also fascinating.

GURTHANG

Gurthang has been a prolific project since its creation by vocalist/multi-instrumentalist A.Z.V. in 2010, with a number of short releases and four full-length albums to its credit, including this year’s appearance of the latest album, I Will Not Serve. The songs on Melodies of Sorrow were recorded by A.Z.V. in 2013. Continue reading »

ALDA: A PREMIERE OF “THE CLEARCUT” AND A REVIEW OF “PASSAGE”

Album Reviews, Premieres 13 Responses »

Jul 142015

More than four years have passed since Alda’s release of their last album Tahoma. For those (like me) who greatly admired that album, it has been difficult to be patient while waiting for something new. At last, Alda have completed a new album. The name is Passage, it will be released by the end of this month via Bindrune/Eihwaz Recordings, and it’s wonderful.

For those of you are as impatient as I’ve been, you can skip straight to the bottom of this post and listen to our premiere of the album’s first track, “The Clearcut“. For those whose patience hasn’t been completely exhausted, you can first read the following thoughts about the album as a whole — or perhaps listen and then read.

I suppose it has become prosaic to say that an album is a journey, but Passage really is one. The long songs flow into each other almost seamlessly, and although the individual tracks can be heard and appreciated on their own, moving through the entire album in a single sitting is to be caught up and carried away (and sometimes to be carried deep into your own mind, as the music fires your imagination). You get the sense that there are stories in these songs, though the vocals are sparse and often wordless, and the narrative is one that’s dramatic and powerful. Continue reading »

LEPERKAHN CHECKS IN: DEATHWHITE, BLEED THE PIGS, CULT LEADER

Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Jul 142015

(Our friend Leperkahn has been slaving away at college for, like, forever. But he has surfaced again with some musical recommendations.)

Hey friends. I truly can’t remember the last time I wrote something here. I feel a bit of shame about this, but you know what, there’s no time like the present, and now I’m breaking my silence. I’m gonna string together some short pieces on stuff you might want to check out based on my most recent download history. A good deal of it breaks our Golden Rule here at NCS, but frankly we’ve broken that rule so frequently in the past couple years that it’s really only become a guideline at best. We’ll start with a band I found just tonight.

Deathwhite

I had absolutely no idea these dudes existed prior to listening to a promo of their new EP Solitude Martyr (out August 14th according to their Bandcamp page) that Clawhammer PR sent over to me. I tend to look at a good deal of the promos that brush through my email inbox (*hint hint*), though obviously I haven’t done a great job of translating that to writing about them (looking to change that sense of lethargy that’s become such a comfortable crutch). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GODHUNTER AND DESTROYER OF LIGHT

Premieres 3 Responses »

Jul 142015

Endsville is the apt name for a forthcoming split by the Tuscon/Vancouver collective who call themselves Godhunter and Austin-based Destroyer of Light, with each band contributing a long EP’s worth of material. It will be released on July 24. We now have for you the premiere of two songs from the split, one by each band.

Your average highly paid therapist would devote years attempting to figure out what’s “wrong” with people who like this kind of music. It’s not food for the soul, it’s poison. It’s not shelter from the storm, it’s a hard shove into the deluge. Forget “life-affirming” — this is a rendition of all that’s wrong with life, except for the life-saving power of a titanic riff, and therein lies part of the answer. I don’t know what the rest of the answer is.

I do know this — a lot of life for a lot of people is no damned good, and to find music that both powerfully captures its ugliness and despair and yet somehow takes you away from all that at the same time, that’s a gift, and both these bands have it. You can move to these songs (you probably won’t have any choice), and you can lose yourself in them, too. Continue reading »

AN INTERVIEW WITH MOREAN — PART 1: DARK FORTRESS

Interviews 8 Responses »

Jul 142015

(Andy Synn had the chance to interview the Dutch artist Morean about the three bands in which he is currently involved — Dark Fortress, Noneuclid, and Alkaloid. We’ve divided the interview into three parts, which will appear on three successive days. Today’s focus is Dark Fortress. Check out the next two parts here and here.)

So, first of all, I just want to say thank you for agreeing to answer these questions for me/us. Both Venereal Dawn and Metatheosis were amongst my favourite albums from last year, and it’s looking very likely that The Malkuth Grimoire will end up in my top ten at the end of 2015 too.

Now, obviously I’m a big fan of all the bands you’re involved in, so this is probably going to be a pretty long and in-depth interview, but let’s start with a simple question… how the hell do you find the time for all of this?

Morean: Thanks for the compliments! How do I find time? Well – I don’t. I have to steal whatever time I put into one band, commission, or project from all the other bands and projects. It’s a problem almost everyone in all these bands has, and it’s getting worse. It’s also the reason why it takes years sometimes before a band is able to get into the studio or back on the road. Continue reading »

OLD WITCH AND KEEPER: A SPLIT

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Jul 142015

(Grant Skelton makes a quick pitch for the new split release by Old Witch and Keeper.)

There have been some amazing splits released of late. I’m still heavily imbibing the Altars Of Grief/Nachtterror Of Ash And Dying Light split that came out this past Friday. I recently discovered another split that should also be in your collection. Old Witch and Keeper will be releasing it this Wednesday, July 15, via Grimoire Cassette Cvlture/Cvlt Nation. The hideous, but completely appropriate, artwork was designed by Meghan MacRae at Cvlt Nation Design.

According to their Facebook page (here), Old Witch is the solo project of Stephen H. Heyerdahl. Heyerdahl could not have christened this project with a more fitting name. While listening to it, I felt certain that sweet Henrietta was going to erupt from my living room floor and swallow my soul. Good thing I always keep a boomstick within reach. Continue reading »

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