MUSIC FROM THE BLISTERING EDGE: FALLUJAH, EATEN, OMNIHILITY

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jun 192014
 

I’ve collected here new music from three bands. As suggested by the title of this post, the songs have something in common, though they are different in other respects: They all include certain instrumental elements that are very, very fast. Your hair may be singed. The skin on your face may bubble like a broiled fetus. You may void your bowels. I myself only experienced the last of these effects, but I thought it best to provide a complete set of warnings.

FALLUJAH

Damn, but I surely do love that album cover, don’t you? It’s a collaborative effort between Polish artist Tomasz Alen Kopera, whose work I’ve featured about a dozen times in the daily art posts on our Facebook page, and the band’s vocalist, Alex Hofmann. The album’s name is The Flesh Prevails and it’s due for release by Unique Leader on July 22.

What I heard yesterday was a new song named “Carved From Stone”. It’s an interesting song. Certain instrumental tracks are moving at about 1,000 mph. The kick drums eject shells at the rate of am M134 minigun, and the riffs whip like hurricane winds and pummel like a jackhammer. On the other hand, Mr. Hofmann growls his lyrics as if patiently telling a bedtime story, presumably to a brood of orcs. And the lead guitar carefully unspools an eerie atmospheric melody like a coil of razor wire. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: ALLEGAEON — “OUR COSMIC CASKET”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 182014
 

I haven’t yet listened to all of Allegaeon’s new album (Elements of the Infinite), but my comrade TheMadIsraeli has. He says it’s their best album yet. I’m not going to contradict him without hearing it, especially because the three songs I’ve heard so far tend to substantiate his claim. Those three are “1.618” (streaming here), “Threshold of Perception” (streaming here), and the one that debuted today in video form — “Our Cosmic Casket”.

The video for “Our Cosmic Casket” is Part 2 of a story that began in the video for “1.618”. There will allegedly be two more parts coming our way. Whereas “1.618” brought us the highly amusing Wheel of Sub-Genres, “Our Cosmic Casket” bring us the event horizon of a black hole approaching Earth, with the song’s instrumental pyrotechnics delivering the kind of adrenaline flow you’d get in the final minutes before the atmosphere got sucked into a wormhole, assuming you didn’t decided to beer up for the final cataclysm. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DECEPTIONIST — “THE BEGINNING”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jun 182014
 

(DGR reviews the new release by Deceptionist from Rome, Italy.)

Deceptionist are a band I discovered via the Hideous Divinity Facebook page a few weeks back. Hideous Divinity are one of the bands that grew off of the Hour Of Penance tree, and their vocalist Enrico H Di Lorenzo was posting about how he had provided guest vocals on Deceptionist’s song “Through The Veil” on their new EP.

Deceptionist are a new band hailing from Rome and consisting of Andrea Di Traglia on vocals (usually in a middle- to low-range growl), Antonio Poletti on guitars, and drummer Claudio Testini, who is frightening behind the kit and whose name must now be added to the ever-growing ranks of Italian blast masters. Di Lorenzo described them as being a tech-death band with a light electronic element, using them in an industrial form to add to their overall sound. He also mentioned that this new EP, their first, bears the name of The Beginning (Promo CD 2014) and that it was available at “name your own price” on Bandcamp.

To ballpark a comparison band, Deceptionist veer into the spectrum of tech-death that Spawn Of Possession seem to inhabit by themselves. Instead of going for the intensely low-end, humongous sound with all of the whirs and whistles on top of it, Deceptionist go with the knife-sharp, machine-typed-out and mathematically precise playing that Spawn dish out in spades. This means that their promo EP should be very familiar to fans of the latter group, because Deceptionist’s promo sounds like a swarm of angry insects being delivered into your eardrums via a tech-death funnel. Continue reading »

ARCHNESS: ARCHSPIRE AND ARCH ENEMY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 182014
 

Here are some arch-ie things I spotted this morning.

ARCHSPIRE

Spencer Prewett is the drummer for Canada’s Archspire, whose new album The Lucid Collective we reviewed here in April. On a superficial level, he appears to be human — two arms, two legs, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, realistic looking skin and hair. But appearances can be deceiving, because based on the video I’m about to show you he is clearly a Cyberdyne Systems model T-1000 cyborg. Fortunately, John Connor can rest easy because Spencer Prewett was sent from the future only to destroy drum kits.

In this drum play through, the song you’ll hear is the new album’s first track, “Lucid Collective Somnambulation”. I dropped my jaw and the damned thing bounced somewhere I didn’t see because my eyes were glued to this video. You watch it while I go look for my damned jaw.

(thanks to DGR for linking me to this. He prefaced the link in his message with this:

“WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLOOD OF KINGU, HATE, CULT OF FIRE, TERROR OATH, CEMETERY FOG, YORBLIND

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Jun 182014
 

I never got around to posting a second round-up yesterday, as I had planned, so I’m loading up this one not only with what I had intended to feature yesterday but also with some other items I discovered last night. Yeah, that makes this a really long post, but what else have you got to do?

As you’ll see, I’m indulging my taste for blackness, death, and deathly blackness, though for those of you less interested in slaughter and depravity, you can skip to the more melodious song at the end. There’s actually a bit of clean singing in that last one.

BLOOD OF KINGU

Earlier this month I reported that Ukrainian black metal band Blood of Kingu (started by Roman Sayenko of Drudkh) would be releasing their third album via Season of Mist on September 2 in North America (and August 29 everywhere else). The title is Dark Star on the Right Horn of the Crescent Moon. Yesterday, thanks to my friend Vonlughlio, I learned that Terrorizer has now premiered the first advance track from the album, “Enshrined in the Nethermost Lairs Beneath the Oceans”.

The song wastes no time unleashing a torrent of blasting drums and rippling tremolo runs that carry a seductive melody behind gargantuan vocal proclamations. An aura of infernal darkness radiates from the music in waves, but man, it’s also highly infectious. You’ll need to go HERE to listen. Blood of Kingu have a Facebook page at this location. Continue reading »

BLACK PUNK: A SPLIT BY KRIEG AND RAMLORD

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 172014
 

If you google the phrase “black punk” you’ll discover a music genre known as Afro-punk, as well as a band named Death — not Chuck Schuldiner’s ground-breaking group, but a “proto-punk” band from Detroit formed in the early 70’s by three brothers, who happen to be the subject of a recent critically acclaimed movie. What you won’t find is any reference to the forthcoming split release by Krieg and Ramlord — at least not yet.

I’ve been listening to this four-song split once a day for the past week (while gazing fondly at its killer cover art), and my first impressions haven’t changed: At its core, this a fusion of black metal and punk. It would be tempting to file it away under the heading of “blackened crust” along with bands such as Young and In the Way and Martyrdöd, but to these ears the music on this split is an even more primal union of black metal and punk, and its primal appeal is strong.

KRIEG

Krieg has been kicking out releases since the mid-90s, with a steady flow of splits and EP’s to go along with six albums. This split with Ramlord is one of two scheduled for release this summer, the other being a split with Wolvhammer that I’ll also be reviewing very soon. For this release Krieg contributes one original song and a cover. Continue reading »

FALL OF THE ALBATROSS: “ENORMOUS CLOUD”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 172014
 

(Austin Weber reviews the debut album by Fall of the Albatross, which had its full streaming premiere yesterday.)

Fall Of The Albatross are pretty much the second coming of the style of music played by defunct experimental mathcore fusionists Lye By Mistake, although Fall Of The Albatross amazingly draw from an even wider palette of sounds than the aforementioned eclectic group, and they do so quite expertly. While the band previously had a vocalist, they decided to soldier on sans vocals after losing him, leading to their current instrumental incarnation and the self-recording of their full-length debut now before us — Enormous Cloud.

Enormous Cloud is a lot of things at a lot of different times. But to try and break it down into its elements, you could say that they smash together lots of wild tapping, heavy-as-hell moments of pure Dillinger rage, split-second grind bursts, just the right amount of post-rock builds, some grooves, and polyrhythmic chugging that’s always paired with different combinations of riff/leads/sweeps/tapping and is never overdone. Meanwhile some of their rhythms and melodies certainly remind of math-rock at times, while their forays into jazz, Latin, funk, blues, and fusion slide in and out of this ever-changing mass.

Jarring though some of the transitions are, the songs all manage to have a unique identity, flow, and structure. This is very progressive and dense instrumental metal indeed. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AVULSED — “HORRIFIED BY REPULSION”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jun 172014
 

The Spanish death metal band Avulsed have been slaughtering souls and raping ears for more than two decades, and the passage of time seems to have had no effect on the strength and immediacy of their powers — their latest album, 2013’s Ritual Zombi, is a classic undead crusher (and as you can see, it’s adorned by deliciously grotesque artwork).

Part of what makes Ritual Zombi such a potent album is the sound of Dave Rotten’s voice. To steal the words from one appreciative review, “his decrepit, rumbling, nihilistic growls remain an immense feature here…. [He] gurgles like a human sewer spewing forth flesh-eating plasma”. But although his vocal presence strides the album’s landscape like a titanic golem, the record is also loaded with grisly riffs and suppurating guitar leads that have a way of getting stuck in your head.

Speaking of grisly old-school riffs and morbid melodies, we’re pleased to bring you the premiere of Avulsed’s lyric video for “Horrified By Repulsion” from Ritual Zombi. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AUROCH, MOURNFUL CONGREGATION, ZOMBIEFICATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jun 172014
 

Lots and lots of excellent new metal has begun streaming on the web over the last 24 hours — too much for me to gather together in a single post. But I’m going to make a start with this round-up of flesh-eating goodness, beginning with news of two full-album streams.

AUROCH

Taman Shud, the forthcoming new album by Vancouver’s Auroch, is already garnering a slew of highly favorable reviews. It will get one more as soon as I can kick myself in the ass hard enough to translate my own feelings into feeble words.

But in the meantime, you can hear the entire album for yourselves, because yesterday Profound Lore launched a full stream on YouTube — and I’ve embedded it after the jump. The album will be released on June 24 and can be pre-ordered here or purchased in digital form at Bandcamp. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISKORD — “LETHARGIC REGRESSION”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Jun 162014
 

(Austin Weber wrote the following introduction to our premiere of a new song by Norway’s Diskord.)

To metalheads, Norway is synonymous with black metal and all things grim and frostbitten. What metalheads don’t usually associate with Norway is death metal. So in that respect, the Oslo, Norway trio Diskord are a bit of an oddity, geographically speaking — and even more so when you consider that their brand of death metal calls to mind a largely American and old-school-influenced approach.

Hot on the heels of their 2012 disasterpiece, Dystopics, comes an appropriately titled new EP from the group: Oscillations. We at No Clean Singing are excited to bring you the first unholy taste of this upcoming effort with the premiere of “Lethargic Regression”.

“Lethargic Regression” is a schizophrenic entity, one that bounces uncomfortably between disorienting dissonant waves and split-second tempo shifts. The maddening assault hits like a calculated blend of Demilich on a bender with Atheist, Gorguts, and Immolation in tow, all the while frequently pulling you down toward the grave with Autopsy-esque lurches and pestilential pit-stops. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries