SHORT BUT SWEET: WARFORGED — “ESSENCE OF THE LAND”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 082014
 

(Earlier this month TheMadIsraeli briefly raved about a Chicago band named Warforged after seeing their video for part of a new EP. Now he reviews the whole thing — still raving.)

Warforged will be the face of American neo-tech death.  Count on it.  If you have become a fan of the heavily blackened and post-y direction of bands like Fallujah, Warforged are an example of the absolute pinnacle of that stylistic hook.  Essence of the Land isn’t a mere EP, or a mere first glimpse, it’s a powerhouse mission statement.

The EP is a sixteen-minute suite of next-level proggy tech precision that looks to boggle the mind and shatter the bones.  This is a perfect song and an absolute haymaker of a way to introduce yourself to the metal audience.  So many things here are so right: The weird intersection between neo-classical and outright alien angular tendencies, the exceptional caliber of riffing and interplay between guitarists Paul Alculessi and Richard Stancato, the scathing vocal assault of Adrian Perez’s transitions from blood-vomit gutturals to blackened last-breath gnashes, it’s all so fucking good. Continue reading »

A YEAR-END LIST FROM KUNAL CHOKSI

 LISTMANIA 2013  4 Responses »
Jan 082014
 

(We still have a few more Best of 2013 lists, including this one from our guest Kunal Choksi, owner/editor of the Transcending Obscurity webzine and India’s Transcending Obscurity record label.)

This list is different from others in some ways. I didn’t feel obliged to throw light on or check out the so-called “big” releases — which I did, however, but didn’t succumb to unnecessary hype. As I hope is evident, I’m focusing on releases that are outstanding in a way, mostly where originality or at least innovativeness is involved. Most of the releases mentioned are a mix of styles, which is what it takes these days, and I’m perfectly fine with it. Grindcore is neglected more often than not, but on this list are a couple of underground gems, to say the least, released in the last year, a great one for music.

Annorkoth (Russia) – The Last Days (Black Metal)

Yes, this is more of the atmospheric kind, reaching out, creating a vast landscape and sweeping melodies. But then there are few with the kind of vision and scope this band has, and successfully portrays. This is just beautiful, infusing breathtaking melodies into fast, melancholic, and atmospheric music. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SÓLSTAFIR, SHINING, SHITFUCKER — AND WILDERNESSKING

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 082014
 

I noticed a lot of new things yesterday. A few of them are collected in this post — an alliterative line-up of new videos and/or songs from Sólstafir (Iceland), Shining (Norway), and Shitfucker (Detroit), plus some welcome news from Wildernessking (South Africa).

SÓLSTAFIR

Yesterday, I spied not one, but three new things from one of our site’s favorite bands, Iceland’s Sólstafir. The first is a new song that appears on a forthcoming 7″ split with another Icelandic band named Legend.  For this split, each of the bands has covered a song by the other. In Sólstafir’s case, the song is Legend’s “Runaway Train”, the original of which you can find here.

I was hooked from the first compulsive drumbeats and darting guitar notes. From there, Addi Tryggvason adds his gritty vocals to what becomes a dark, urgent, hard-rocking take on the original, enhanced by keyboards and an unexpected chant in the mid-section. Damned catchy. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “AT THE PLATEAUS OF LENG” BY ROGGA JOHANSSON’S MEGASCAVENGER

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 082014
 

Rogga Johansson is a one man army. He has been a fixture or a session musician in so many bands that it’s easier to just send you to the list at Metal Archives rather than try to name them all here (even though that list is probably incomplete). One of his more recent projects is named Megascavenger, and today we’re high as kites over the chance to premiere the title track from the new Megascavenger album, At the Plateaus of Leng.

Rogga Johansson is also a death metal riff machine. Riffs roll out of his mind and fingers like weapons from an assembly line — black, oiled, loaded, and ready to spew destruction. At the Plateaus of Leng is packed with them. Although Johansson is also one of death metal’s most distinctive (and horrifying) vocalists, he has lined up a ridiculous collective of guests to vomit hate on this new album. This is a “who’s who” list so eye-popping that we will provide it in full:

1. “At The Plateaus Of Leng” (Vocals by DAVE INGRAM of Bolt Thrower/Benediction)

2. “The Festered Earth” (Vocals by KAM LEE of Massacre)

3. “And Then The Death Sets In” (Vocals by AAD KLOOSTERWAARD of Sinister)

4. “The Mucus Man” (Vocals by MARTIN VAN DRUNEN of Asphyx/Hail of Bullets)

5. “Like Comets Burn The Ether “(Vocals by DAVE ROTTEN of Avulsed) Continue reading »

NAMI: “THE ETERNAL LIGHT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Jan 082014
 

(In this post DGR gets around to reviewing a 2013 album that appeared on his year-end list of best metal.)

For those of you who suffered through my gigantic list of music that I enjoyed in 2013 (which btw, was trimmed down!), you may have spotted, out of nowhere, a disc by a band hailing from Andorra called Nami. I made reference to the fact that by the time the list was read, I would have already been well on my way to reviewing the group’s latest release, The Eternal Light Of The Unconscious Mind, which came out on November 4, 2013. So, welcome to what will likely become something of a recurring bit here on NoCleanSinging called, “DGR attempts frantically to review and talk about a whole bunch of discs that came out last year”.

My discovery of Nami actually dates back to the last few days of the previous site I wrote for. My editor GroverXIII reviewed the group’s debut disc Fragile Alignments and really sang the praises of it – which in my mind was an almost immediate tip to check this band out. He was right. Fragile Alignments had its issues, but the disc was really ambitious for a band just starting out and it held some heavy promise of what this group might do in the future.

Fast forward to 2013 and I see the name again, this time attached to a new album entitled The Eternal Light Of The Unconscious Mind. Having not yet heard it, all I could think was that while Fragile Alignments was an ambitious album in terms of its ethos, lyrics, and what the band were trying to do with the progressive death metal sound, it sure had a mouthful of a name. However, I immediately dove into the disc. Were it not for the fact that I spent much of the back half of the year swearing up and down that I wasn’t going to forget about all the fantastic music that hit in the early part of 2013, Eternal Light Of The Unconscious Mind would’ve ranked super-high on the list — because it is an album that has enveloped me as a listener every time I have given it the chance to do so. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 1

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  19 Responses »
Jan 072014
 

At long last, we begin our list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. This is the fourth year I’ve compiled such a thing. With each year, the list has grown longer — last year I made myself stop only after the list had mushroomed to 56 tracks. I don’t know how long the 2013 list will be, because I’m still working on it. But I know what the first 3 songs will be, and if you continue reading you will know, too.

I will continue posting a pair of songs more or less daily until reaching the unknown end. The songs are unranked and appear in no particular order, because ordering them would be too difficult. If you’re wondering what this list is all about, go HERE.

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

“Heaven Shall Burn are what you get when you force Earth Crisis and Bolt Thrower to conceive a child, and then have that child raised by At The Gates and Carcass, while supplementing their intellectual development with a steady diet of Kant, Marx, and Baudrillard.” That’s what Andy Synn wrote when he reviewed this long-running German band’s 2013 album, Veto, and it does make a kind of demented sense. Continue reading »

NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS FROM 14 BANDS: PART 2

 Interviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 072014
 

(Our Russian correspondent Comrade Aleks put 3 year-end questions to 14 bands, many of whom may be new names to NCS readers. In this 3-part post, he shares their answers and their music. Today, the featured bands are Halter, Montezuma’s Revenge, Psilocybe Larvae, Station Dysthymia, and Stoned Jesus. Find Part 1 here.)

This publication is the last thing I could do before I fell into drunken slumber after horrible celebration of the New Year then coming, and now here. Men from a few euphonious bands of Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia were asked three similar questions, and soon, answers were given. What did I ask them to share with our readers in these gloomy winter days? Oh, I guess here they are…

1. What is the band’s latest news? And what are your plans for 2014?

2. For what events do you remember 2013? Events from the world of music, political stuff, personal stuff, or even that bad weather – that damned winter without snow?

3. And the last one – what would you like to wish for our readers and your listeners?

Here we go again, to spread the Word of Doom, Death, and Damnation (as well as Goodness and Virtue). Happy New Year! Continue reading »

A DEFENSE OF BLACK SABBATH’S “13”

 Album Reviews  13 Responses »
Jan 072014
 

(Guest writer marious has delivered unto us this review and defense of an album with an unlucky title by a band named Black Sabbath. I know I’ve heard that name somewhere…)

Hey all, this post is something of a defense of Black Sabbath’s 13. So, batten down the hatches, because I’m going to rant about some clean singing old guy metal for a little bit. I personally think this album is pretty incredible and a lot of people seem to be refusing to give it a fair chance due to some really negative hype online and their own preconceptions. If you have given the album a full listen or two and still don’t like it, I doubt I will persuade you. I’m not going to appeal to a sense of nostalgia or what not to bring the faithful back to the fold. This is for those people who have yet to hear it, or have only listened to one or two tunes at a glance. So, here goes.

One of the most common complaints I hear is that Ozzy can’t really sing anymore and that the processing on his voice is simply a method of making his singing passable. Honestly, Ozzy was never that great of a singer. His vocal patterns were always relatively simple in Sabbath and his range is not all that wide, but he’ll always be the voice people associate the most with Black Sabbath. However, if you listen to his vocal patterns on 13, they are pretty different from the classic Ozzy-era Sabbath stuff. Generally, he would sing along directly with the rhythm, but he has broken into some more interesting patterns on 13. I’ve heard a bunch of the new tracks live via the interwebs, and while it does sound like his voice is getting a bit strained, it is pretty much the same as it’s always been to me. The vocal processing on 13 doesn’t sound bad or out of place to me, especially since Sabbath had been using effects on Ozzy’s voice well before he was “too old to sing”. Check out Planet Caravan from Paranoid for a bit of evidence. Continue reading »

AN UPDATE AND A ROUND-UP (WITH ORIGIN, DIOCLETIAN, HOWLS OF EBB, AND DRUID LORD)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 072014
 

Your humble editor is behind (or is A behind, depending on who you talk to). Behind on reviews, behind on news and new song premieres, behind on the vaunted list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, and behind in posting things that our staff and guests have written for publication. There are many reasons for this tardiness, but I’d rather not dwell on them. Instead, let’s look ahead to the future.

As far as NCS is concerned, we do have a few late-breaking year-end lists to post. Honestly, I’m somewhat amazed that these lists continue to draw as much interest as they have, given how many we’ve posted during this year’s LISTMANIA extravaganza, but even our most recent ones have attracted strong interest. So, we’re not calling a halt to them just yet. And just as that series is finally winding down, another one will begin: Finally, I’m going to start rolling out the Most Infectious Songs list later today, with the first three picks.

I also expect to resume our usual features now that the holiday season is over, beginning with the following round-up of news and new music. And we begin with…

ORIGIN

Two and a half years have passed since Origin released Entity, and yesterday brought the welcome news that the band are about to begin recording their next album, which will be entitled Omnipresent. Continue reading »

ANNIVERSARY REVIEWS BY WILLIAM SMITH: THE CLASS OF 2004

 LISTMANIA 2013  2 Responses »
Jan 072014
 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  William Smith is the vocalist for a Long Island band named Artificial Brain who we’ve written about repeatedly — and who have been signed by Profound Lore for the release of their debut album Labyrinth Constellation on Feb 18 [details here]. He also writes a very entertaining blog named Vitos Squid Stop and Death Metal Museum. For the third year in a row, as part of our annual LISTMANIA series, he has given us a 2-part list of “anniversary” albums — five albums recorded 10 years and 20 years earlier, respectively. This is the second part, discussing death metal gems that appeared in 2004. You can find Part 1 (class of 1994) here.

CLASS OF 2004 (10 year anniversary)

Fermento – (Spain) “Insignia” (Voliac Rock Productions)

A bombastic and unrelenting album whose production could be described as “clunky” and “overdriven”, this fairly obscure diehard brutolitarian entity could be the truth for those underground warriors who seek Death Metal salvation.  Sounding like the missing link between Obscura-era Gorguts, Incantation, and Internal Suffering, with a testosterone-charged war obsession, this is arguably the most intensely butch recording I own. Continue reading »

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