NO CLEAN SINGING

WE ALL DIE (LAUGHING): “THOUGHTSCANNING”

Feb 112014

(Leperkahn is back for the second day in a row, this time reviewing the debut album by We All Die (Laughing).)

I meant to review this debut release from Belgium’s We All Die (Laughing) a lot earlier (when it came out back in January, in fact), but the mind is a feeble thing, and only now, with the kind reminder of fellow reader Vonlughlio, do I remember that I meant to delve into this single-song EP (at least that’s how I think it’s being branded). As I’ve said many times in the past, damn me for forgetting to do this earlier, ‘cause I’ll be damned if anything not named The Satanist has this beat so far, and not much has a chance of surmounting it, though we have ten months left in the year.

This release is less of a song and more of a theatric production delivered by electric guitar and vocal menace, a metal opera of sorts. Though it starts with some My Dying Bride-esque doom, it comes to incorporate Machine Head’s more epic moments, Opeth-ian death/doom, a slowed-down taste of Marduk, Behemoth-style majesty, evocative Scott Kelly-sound-a-like vocals, and depressive suicidal black metal shrieks. It features not only a ridiculous variety of vocal timbres, but also such exotic instruments as a clarinet and a flute (pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve heard a clarinet in metal, other than those tech-death covers that one guy does on YouTube). I almost don’t want to say how it ends; that would feel like giving away the end of a great book, movie, or TV show. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 25

Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013 8 Responses »

Feb 102014

Welcome to Part 25 of our list of 2013′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the three songs I’m announcing today, click here.

It’s a Monday, the beginning of a new week, and time for me to make an important though painful decision: I am going to finish this list by Friday. Friday is the halfway point in the second month of the New Year, so it really seems like I ought to finish a 2013 year-end list by then. Plus, I’ve already forced myself to pick the remaining songs, and having done that, my habitual indecisiveness won’t get in the way of bringing the list to a close. As for today, here are three songs from 2013 I’m pretty high on.

RUSSIAN CIRCLES

Down to the last week, and only now am I coming to a purely instrumental track. The name is “Deficit” and it appears on Memorial by Chicago’s Russian Circles. To borrow from what I’ve previously written about the song: For anyone who still thinks instrumental “post rock” doesn’t pack enough visceral kick to shake your skeleton from skull to tarsus, listen to “Deficit”, because it’s a heavy beast. It sets a doomy tone with a moving wall of guitar noise and a hypnotic drumbeat at the outset. The intensity builds from there, and beginning at the 3:00 mark it’s fuckin’ headbang city all the way forward (accompanied by a memorable chiming melody). Continue reading »

CORPSESSED: “ABYSMAL THRESHOLDS”

Album Reviews 8 Responses »

Feb 102014

(Leperkahn returns to our site with a review of the new album by Finland’s Corpsessed.)

Maybe it’s the weather outside. San Diego has delved into the depths of the mild autumn it calls winter – we’ve even gotten a bit of rain the past couple of days — but for the first time in quite a while, I’ve been seriously hungering for some absolutely cavernous death metal, the kind of stuff that sounds like it was recorded in a Lovecraftian studio at The Mountains Of Madness. Yet, I couldn’t find or think of anything that fit the bill on my already-overstuffed iPod. Luckily, I was thrust forcibly at nudged toward the debut album of Finland’s Corpsessed by a Facebook friend of mine (and possible NCS reader).

Corpsessed traffic in dank, putrid atmosphere, with riffs just barely able to peek out from beyond the pale. Once you hit play, you may notice that the vocals and guitars often blur into a wall of sound, an unstoppable freight train bowling you over. Though they go for some stop-and start grooves a few times, such as at the ending of “Transcend Beyond Human”, the band by and large keep the heavy atmosphere omnipresent, never letting the Lovecraftian images their music conjures leave your headspace. Continue reading »

AN NCS EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: TELLUSIAN – “THE COLLYER BROTHERS”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Feb 102014

(In this post, Austin Weber brings us an exclusive song premiere and provides the following introduction to the music of Tellusian from Malmö, Sweden.)

While Crowpath have been broken up for several years now, a new outfit (new to most people) called Tellusian has sprung from their demise. Including in their ranks both Crowpath’s vocalist Henrik Ivarsson and drummer Erik Hall, Tellusian have been slowly teasing out their curious and amorphous nature in short EPs. Now they are gearing up to release Collision, their debut full-length. After talking with them, they graciously agreed that an NCS song premiere would be cool, and they chose “The Collyer Brothers”.

The song is a journey that, once it unfolds, reveals an oddball progressive nature nestled inside a ravenous core. Expanding freely from a recurring central riff segment, the song dives into technically complex sludge with death and black metal shards, and sneaks in a luminious instrumental reflection toward the end. “The Collyer Brother” lurches and grinds in perfect yin/yang layering. The monstrous growls, shrieks, and roars of Henrik Ivarson serve to blanket the song with a palpable sense of disgust. Caught up in the whirlwind are carefully balanced hypnotic leads and a warm, delicious bass presence prone to following its own path, all fused to a backbone of pummeling, stop-start drumming hell-bent on destruction. Continue reading »

MONDAY MASSACRE: WOCCON, BURIAL HORDES, MORBO, BENIGHTED

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Feb 102014

Happy putrid Monday to one and all. I have a nice little slaughtering playlist for you. All the songs are new, all of them are from forthcoming albums, all of them are very good.

WOCCON

This first item is such a pleasant surprise. It comes from an Athens, Georgia, melodic death metal band named Woccon, whose 2013 release The Wither Fields I enjoyed immensely. Those of you who have dutifully waded through my ongoing list of 2013’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs” will remember their name, because I included a song from that album (“Our Ashes”) on the list near the end of January (here). Over the weekend I discovered, thanks to a post at DECIBEL’s site, that Woccon will have a debut album named Solace In Decay coming our way this spring.

DECIBEL premiered one of the new songs, a track entitled “Giving Up the Ghost”. It’s something of a departure from the sounds I remember from The Wither Fields — less overtly doom-oriented and more progressively inclined — yet still quite impressive. It begins with a cosmic introduction and ends with a piano melody, and in between you’ll find a contrasting blend of spiraling, reverberant guitar melodies and heavy, blasting thunder. The dark, melodic doom of the band’s previous work is not gone altogether, but the song is a spreading of wings by a group whose talents should take them far. Continue reading »

LORELEI: “LORE OF LIES”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Feb 102014

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album by North Carolina’s Lorelei.)

Symphonic deathcore at this point really seems like the new direction for the style. While, no doubt, there have been symphonic deathcore bands before, the best of the bunch of the new blood is tending to sway toward a more symphonic or ambient direction (Aegaeon, Ovid’s Withering) and they’ve produced some killer releases in the process.

I’ve been fucking drooling over the wait for Lorelei’s debut Lore of Lies. I loved the band’s music from the very minute when I first I heard it, after they released their first two recorded songs, “Godfather Death” and “The Dunwich Horror”, and have awaited this album eagerly. Guitarist Aaron Pace is someone I’ve been in contact with for a while, since before they put up anything. I had to occasionally check in with the usual harassment about the whereabouts of the album itself. For me, it felt like it was taking forever.

Simply put, Lorelei should be noted as one of the bright new faces of deathcore. The music is like a jackhammer to your spine; it’s majestic and blistering at once, with no show of mercy. What really explains Lorelei’s success, though, is that they realize the strengths, and also the weaknesses, of their style. Continue reading »

EMPEROR 2014

Metal News 20 Responses »

Feb 092014

Emperor, who are reuniting to play at Wacken 2014, posted the above photo on their official Facebook page yesterday. I just saw it.

The photo was taken by Bjørn Tore Moen. It was accompanied by these words:

“Emperor – In the Nightside Eclipse 2014.
Faust – Ihsahn – Samoth”

Let the rampant speculation begin. And if you happen to actually know what it means, please clue us in. And please don’t tell me that it’s just the 20th anniversary of the album and nothing more. That’s no fun.

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 24

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013 3 Responses »

Feb 092014

We present Part 24 of our list of 2013′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the three songs I’m announcing today, click here.

I’ve grouped the following trio of songs for two reasons, despite the fact that they span different metal genres: First, they share a certain predatory vocal viciousness. Second, they all feature at key moments a kind of very cool swirling sound that I assume is produced by guitar finger-tapping (or maybe keyboards in the last song) — though I’m not a musician, so what do I know?

VERMINOUS

The first song in this collection is a rarity: It comes from an album by this Swedish band that we never mentioned in any of our regular features during 2013, much less reviewed. Professor D. Grover the XIIIth named the album (The Unholy Communion) to his NCS list of the year’s Top 40 albums, and the album also appeared on several year-end lists posted by our readers. But I didn’t get around to exploring it until early 2014. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ENTARTUNG, NIGHTFELL, TORTORUM

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 3 Responses »

Feb 092014

I’ve collected in this post two new songs and one new album, all of which I discovered yesterday. As the post title suggests, two of the bands are solidly in the black metal camp and the third, sandwiched between them in this feature, is “blackened” — although their music is a striking amalgam of styles. All three are doing some very exciting things with their music.

ENTARTUNG

As is true of all three bands in this post, Germany’s Entartung ambushed me yesterday. Before then, I hadn’t heard of them. Their debut album Krypteia appeared in 2012 and their second, entitled Peccata Mortalia, is due for release by the World Terror Committee (W.T.C. Productions) on March 8. Two days ago DECIBEL premiered the album’s first advance track, “Blasphemaverit in Spiritum Sanctum”.

The strength of the song lies principally in the powerful tremolo-picked melodies that heave in the music like ocean swells, and in the shifts between the bleak, frigid atmospheres they create and the black, rocking rhythms and other transitions that segment this long song. It’s easy to become immersed in the wintry tale Entartung are spinning. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 23

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013 32 Responses »

Feb 082014

Welcome to Part 23 of our list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the three songs I’m announcing today, click here.

Today’s three songs have something in common. Although the bands don’t all fit neatly together under precisely the same genre heading, to varying degrees the music falls in a place where doom, melodic death metal, and a melancholy aching intersect.

ENSHINE

This Swedish/French collective put out their debut album Origin in 2013, and DGR reviewed it for us here. In an effort to capture its sense of devastating beauty, he wrote this:

“I know I am going to like a disc like this if it takes me to a certain place I have set aside in my head, one of empty spaces, snow falling from the sky, long-since devastated cities. Places that you just know were beautiful long ago, and the sense of fragility that these vacant places emanates makes them beautiful now…. Origin takes us to that snow-filled, cold, and desolate place where we sometimes long to be and lets us sit and watch the world move as it speaks to us.”

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