NO CLEAN SINGING

A YEAR-END LIST FROM JESSE ZURETTI (THE BINARY CODE)

LISTMANIA 2013 6 Responses »

Dec 182013

(We asked guitarist and songwriter Jesse Zuretti of The Binary Code for thoughts about his favorite albums of the year, and he did us one better — providing not only two lists but also a streaming playlist of recommended songs from almost every album. The entire playlist can be found here. The recommended songs are identified in parentheses next to the album titles below, and we’ve included some of the streams and videos in the post as well.)

I decided that I’d do two separate lists: one metal, and one non-metal. I did this because I’ve read so many top 10’s this year on metal websites, and saw only a few folks step outside of the box. For me, these lists aren’t votes, they’re ways of recommending material to people. I want metal people to find something new from the metal list, and maybe even find something outside of that realm in my non-metal list. I feel viewers of No Clean Singing in particular are extremely diverse listeners, and deserve more than a list of albums relevant to the genre in which I spend time dabbling. That being said, if you’ve read anything from me before, know you’re in for some brief (LOL) reading! Hope you enjoy these albums, too!

SONG OF THE YEAR: Steven Wilson – “The Raven That Refused to Sing”

The album as a whole didn’t really captive me enough to make it the #1 spot. However, if a single song can represent a year’s worth of amazing music, I fully stand behind the title track, “The Raven That Refused to Sing”. The music video dictated so many emotions through the form of animated story that I CRIED. I’m a grizzly bear of a man on the outside, but I’m a human bag full of emotions on the inside. This song just ripped right through me. It’s absolutely beautiful in every way. The video not only does the song perfect justice, but in a day of contrived music videos, the video actually elevated the power and significance of the song. I truly hope I’m not alone in feeling so emotional when I saw the video, just so I can avoid being made fun of by my steel-hearted metal peers! Continue reading »

2013 — A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE DISAPPOINTING ALBUMS

LISTMANIA 2013 29 Responses »

Dec 182013

(So far this week, NCS writer Andy Synn has provided his lists of 2013’s “Great” and “Good” albums, and now he identifies seven that disappointed him.)

And now, in many ways, the big one. The one guaranteed to cause more controversy, flame-wars, and outright despair than both the others combined.

The thing to bear in mind is a) this is just my opinion, as a (so-called) critic, and as a major fan of metal music, and b) just because they’re disappointing doesn’t necessarily make them terrible. After all, we tend not to even bother with the bad albums here at NCS. It just means that something was missing – something significant enough to leave each of the albums here with a bitter aftertaste of what could, or should, have been.

This is probably the most negative we get here at the site, but I think, as the year draws to a close, it’s important to have at least one entry like this to try and establish some balance and some context for what we’ve been listening to over the past twelve months.

Now… prepare yourselves… I present to you – alphabetically – the seven albums which most disappointed me this year. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NOCTURNAL, EGO DEPTHS, FATES WARNING, UNIVERSE217

Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Dec 182013

Collected in this post are a handful of new songs (and three new videos) that I heard and saw last night. There’s a little bit of everything in here, culled from a lot of other things I found in my rambling through the interhole. Two of the new things are exceptions to our rule, and two involve female vocalists. Hope you like all of this diverse music as much as I did.

NOCTURNAL

Nocturnal (pictured above) are a German band who came to life around 2000 “out of the ashes of Bestial Desecration”, dedicated to churning out teutonic thrash in homage to bands such as Destruction and Sodom. Yesterday they released a new video for a song named “Rising Demons”, which will appear on the band’s forthcoming album Storming Evil — their first in almost four years. It will be released by High Roller Records on February 28, 2014.

The song is a hell of a lot of evil-sounding fun — with whirling dervish riffs, a straightforward but nonetheless compulsive drumbeat, and Tyrannizer’s blackened howling vocals, which sound like a wildcat with esophageal cancer. The DIY video is also fun — B-movie clips interspersed with band performance clips, all in B&W of course. So strap on your bullet belt and spiked gauntlets and check out this thrashing unholiness: Continue reading »

BANDCAMP FOR THE BROKE: BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTER “A”

Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Dec 182013

(In this post DGR follows up on another of his recent posts with one more collection of recommended new Bandcamp releases that are “pay what you want”.)

THE ANTIOCH SYNOPSIS

The Antioch Synopsis have been around for some time in Sacramento. They were a name I constantly heard and I really enjoyed their music, though I lacked the means to drag my ass out to the various local venues to actually see the guys play live. They were a tech-death-core band before that whole scene really exploded, and unfortunately they went on hiatus just as that ship sailed, and likewise right around the time when I had obtained the means to see them live. Thus, I’ve always had the songs they posted up on Reverbnation on my Ipod and a soft spot for them.

The members would go on to be in other great bands, too. Vocalist/Monster Monte Bernard would join Soma Ras, and if you haven’t guessed by now, I really fucking love Soma Ras. That never meant the band were officially done, of course, as they would constantly joke about how they were hiatus-core and post on Facebook that yes, something was in fact in the works. Then, more silence. Continue reading »

HIPSTER?

Mosh Pit 81 Responses »

Dec 172013

I’ve sure been seeing a lot of “hipster” the last few weeks, as year-end lists of metal have been rolling out and people have been commenting on them. There are certain albums, mainly Deafheaven’s Sunbather, that routinely get blasted with the “hipster” label. Earlier today we even got a “hipster” comment on one of the lists we posted at NCS — applied to Ghost BC’s Infestissumam.

“Hipster” is a word I almost never use, mainly because I’m not sure what it means. I do know that it’s a disparaging, belittling, derogatory label of some kind. As used in the metal community, maybe it’s supposed to mean “not true metal” or “not good metal”. But the sense I get is that it’s used most often to mean “metal that people who aren’t metal heads like” — and apparently, the more non-metalheads who like a metal album, the worse it must be.

I definitely get the sense that Deafheaven have been victimized by that latter situation. The album is showing up on all sorts of year-end lists at big entertainment web sites, often mixed together with music from other genres such as indie and hip-hop. For some people, that seems to be enough to brand Deafheaven’s music “hipster metal”. I suspect something similar has happened to Ghost BC (I even wrote about the phenomenon here). This bothers me. Continue reading »

A YEAR-END LIST BY JACOBO CORDOVA (MAJESTIC DOWNFALL, ZOMBIEFICATION)

LISTMANIA 2013 16 Responses »

Dec 172013

(We invited Jacobo Córdova, whose latest album under the name of Majestic Downfall – “Three” — is a doom/death highlight of 2013 and who is also a member of the mighty Zombiefication — to tell us about his favorite releases of 2013, and here’s what he had to say.)

After being offered to do a top 2013 list for NoCleanSinging.com, I decided to take the challenge since I am fond of this kind of nonsense. The criteria for my list has to do with releases that I truly invested time and dedication throughout the year and that I know well from the inside out. I get angry when people like/hate one release upon listening to it once and making an opinion. That is bullshit.

Ok, now to the list. The top 10 releases come with some words, and in the end you will find another list of great runner-ups.

Just one thing: These may not be the best releases of the year, they are just based on my opinion and experience. I may have missed a lot, but worry not, I will catch up eventually. And just for the Records, Watain’s The Wild Hunt is the record I heard the most this year, I wish it had not been that way. The only Soulless release I like is the Grave one! Continue reading »

2013 — A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GOOD ALBUMS

LISTMANIA 2013 18 Responses »

Dec 172013

(Here’s the second of Andy Synn’s five year-end lists. His list of the year’s “Great” albums can be found at this location. More lists coming in the days ahead…)

So here we are. List number 2. The “Good” albums. It’s a varied list. Not just in terms of a cross-section of the various metal sub-genres, but also in terms of just how good each album is/was.

There are some here that fell just shy of greatness. Some played solely to their own crowd – solid, safe, occasionally impressive – but a good listen nonetheless. There are some albums that went too far (too many songs, too many influences, too much in general…) and some that didn’t go far enough (lacking that one special spark that would really have put them over the top).

The thing to remember is that all these albums are good… maybe even edging on great… it’s just that in a year where the quality was so high (and it really was), they can’t do much more than graciously collect a silver medal this time around. Continue reading »

FORK TONGUE’S TOP 5 EP’S OF 2013

LISTMANIA 2013 14 Responses »

Dec 172013

(Just a few days ago we published Fork Tongue’s list of the year’s best demo’s, and now we bring you his list of the year’s best EP’s. More of his lists will be coming in the days ahead.)

I used to hate EP’s. My thought was always, “hey guys, just wait until you have enough material for a full length”, and that was that. I’ve softened on that over the last couple of years because I realized I was missing out on some good stuff. Case in point, 2013. If I hadn’t decided to separate EP’s from LP’s, a few of these would be candidates for my best album list.

1. Bölzer – Aura

Seemingly everybody knows about Bölzer already, and rightfully so. If you ever wanted a Death Metal band to border on the dissonance of Deathspell Omega or Blut aus Nord, here you go. These guys are poised for big things whenever they decide to drop an LP. Now, go get lost in “Entranced By The Wolfshook”.

CULT OF LUNA IS GOING TO DISAPPEAR INDEFINITELY

Metal News 5 Responses »

Dec 172013

After Sweden’s Cult of Luna released Eternal Kingdom in 2008, five years passed before they produced another album, but this year’s Vertikal has commanded a spot on a growing list of year-end lists. Now it appears that fans will be in for another extended hiatus before the band bring more new music… if they ever do again. This announcement appeared about an hour ago on the band’s Facebook page:

“The Beyond the redshift festival in London on may the 10th will be a very special show for Cult of Luna. It will mark the end of an era and after that we will slowly disappear before we reappear again in some form in some indefinite future.

Because of that Klas will join us on stage for the last time and we will play a whole lot of old songs which we haven’t played for years or ever.
We might ask for your help to choose songs. More on that later.”

GILEAD MEDIA UPDATE

Metal News 6 Responses »

Dec 172013

Before this morning I was already excited about something coming our way in 2014 from Gilead Media, that oh-so-tasteful little label run by Adam Bartlett in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I’m talking, of course, about the 2014 GILEAD FEST coming next July 18-20. I’m planning to go, in part because one of my favorite co-workers is actually a native of Oshkosh and seems interested in attending the show even though he’s not a metalhead (though he has an amazing array of other musical tastes, with that one glaring omission). I’ll remind you after the jump who is scheduled to play at that festival.

But the point of this post is to provide additional reasons to be excited, because today Adam provided a full rundown of the Gilead release schedule for 2014. And man, there are a lot of gems on the line-up. For example, on February 25, Gilead will be release Heathen, the fourth album from doom titans Thou. And on the same day, Gilead will be releasing a self-titled 12″ from Geryon, the bass-and-drum death metal project of Nick McMaster and Lev Weinstein (which I’ve already had the pleasure of hearing, and it’s great). You can see the cover art for both of those after the jump.

And there’s more. Here’s the rest of the Gilead release schedule following those two lead-offs for 2014, along with Adam Bartlett’s notes about each one: Continue reading »

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