NO CLEAN SINGING

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL 2014 TO INCLUDE SIKTH AND AEROSMITH

Dec 162013

Are you like me? Do you shake your head in quasi-disbelief when you see the ordering of band names on posters for hybrid rock/metal festivals like the one above, which provides the latest line-up updates for the 2014 edition of the UK’s DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL? Way up at the top, you see that the headliners include the octogenarians in Aerosmith — and then only down below, almost buried in the fine print, you see the name SikTh.

I mean, considering that SikTh were an influential band who have been defunct for more than five years, the fact that they have reunited seems like the kind of news that deserves a little more prominence, such as perhaps placement on the same line as… uh… Fall Out Boy? Okay, maybe that’s asking for too much. How about SikTh on the same line as Jake E Lee’s Red Dragon Cartel? And no, I have no fucking idea what Jake E Lee’s Red Dragon Cartel is, though if they include actual red dragons, I’d be interested in seeing them.

In other news, it appears Linkin Park will be performing Hybrid Theory at DOWNLOAD. I might pay to see that, if only for nostalgia reasons, as long as Linkin Park promise not to play anything they’ve recorded since 2003.

Also, it appears the festival will also include Battlecross, Dillinger Escape Plan, Dying Fetus, In Flames (appearing on the same line as those red dragons and a rhino that needs to be fed), Thy Art Is Murder, and The Black Dahlia Murder (who just barely made the poster before they ran out of room). Not too shabby. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: EARTH CONTROL — “DEAD WRESTLER”

Dec 162013

(DGR reviews the latest EP by Earth Control from Tacoma, Washington — the band formerly known as Owen Hart.)

When I reviewed Ovid’s Withering’s recent release Scryers Of The Ibis a few days back, I mentioned that there were some discs that I could not in good conscience let the year end without discussing in some form, if only to explain why they may be appearing on certain year-end lists from seemingly out of nowhere. Earth Control’s Dead Wrestler EP is not one of those discs. Instead, it is something of an old touching of bases for me — in part because I had just recently rediscovered them after curiosity got the best of me and I wondered what happened to the group Owen Hart, only to discover that they had received a cease and desist order from the WWE/Hart Family (which, let’s be real, was probably the only way this was fated to go) and the band had to change their name.

They chose the name Earth Control, after the title of the CD Owen Hart had put out earlier — but by that point I had long since lost the thread with this Tacoma, WA based grind band. I discovered the Earth Control disc in part due to another writer at one of the sites I was at. She described them as sounding like Converge (of whom she was a huge fan, and thus a huge fan of the Earth Control disc) and she was partly right. Owen Hart (now Earth Control, in case you’re losing track) have a very chaotic sound, reminiscent of how Converge sound sometimes — 70% noise/30% music, buried in all the reverb, feedback, and static that they could produce and just hammering away at their instruments. Owen Hart do the same thing, but they sound like Converge if Converge were to throw their instruments off the side of a building and record the impact.

Thus, when I found out they had taken the name Earth Control and in the summer of this year released an EP entitled Dead Wrestler… — at least I think they released it this summer — I had to check it out, if only to reconnect with the band who had given me the songs, “Fuck Morrisey, Fuck The Smiths, Fuck The Cure” and “Welcome to Worthless Piece Of Shit-ville Population: You”. Continue reading »

FORK TONGUE’S BEST DEMOS OF 2013

LISTMANIA 2013 17 Responses »

Dec 152013

(We continue with our year-end Listmania series by presenting this list by NCS reader Fork Tongue.)

One part of music I love is wading through bullshit to find treasure. Whether it be digging through used CD’s and vinyl bins or sampling shit online, nothing quite matches that feeling of finding a bargain or finding the band you can attach yourself to as the guy who discovered them among your peers. Yea, I’m that guy.

In 2013 I found quite a few bands from whom I’ll be patiently awaiting more material. Now, I know this is “No Clean Singing”, but I’ve included a couple awesome clean singing demos in here. Let’s get to it. In no particular order…

Kêres – The Wanderer’s Path Demo XX

This is their third demo (according to Metal Archives) and I’m not sure how they haven’t landed something with one of the underground Black Metal labels like Fallen Empire. Regardless, I’m hoping past and future material becomes more readily available soon because Kêres are on par with any other good Black Metal band out there. Continue reading »

KATZENJAMMER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 18 Responses »

Dec 142013

Bear with me — there’s some metal at the end of this.

This post is about two things that happened to me yesterday as a result of my day job. The first thing happened during a work-related lunch I had with someone we do business with. I was meeting with him for only the second time. At some point, making small talk, I told him that the place where I work was having its annual office holiday party last night at a restaurant and bar named Radiator Whiskey. It features one whole wall of nothing but the brown stuff — bourbon, rye, and scotch — all of which I like. After I told him that, he said, “I hope you don’t have major katzenjammer on Saturday morning”.

He pronounced “katzenjammer” in the German way (something like “kah-tsahn-yah-ma”), instead of the way a monolingual American like me would say it. After I asked him to spell the word, I realized I’d heard it before, oddly enough because somewhere I came across a stray bit of trivia that stuck in my head, about an old comic strip called The Katzenjammer Kids (I’ll come back to that). But I didn’t know what the word meant, so I asked him. Here’s what The Font of All Human Knowledge says about the word, which is pretty close to what the guy told me at lunch: Continue reading »

UNDER THE CHURCH: “BURNING”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Dec 132013

You know that time when you thought it would be a good idea to hitch a ride on a moving freight train because you like the power of big fuckin’ trains and you thought it would be a fine rush and you ran alongside as fast as you could, your head filled with the roar of the wheels on the tracks, and you made the big leap, thinking you had a good hold, but were instead pulled under the train and had your spine crushed in a dozen places and your head severed at the neck and then your head bounced beneath the wheels of the tank car carrying ethanol which was next in line and your skull was just hard enough to cause the tank car to jump the rails and explode like the Hiroshima weapon, leveling acres of surrounding civilization and incinerating your remains into such a fine ash that it was immediately blown away by the windstorm caused by the conflagration, leaving not even enough for your loved ones to put in a funerary urn? You remember that?

Well, that’s sort of what “Burning” sounds like, “Burning” being the new song by Sweden’s Under the Church, which will appear on their forthcoming EP and is now available for download on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “PROFANE” BY THE CONJURATION

Premieres 2 Responses »

Dec 132013

(NCS contributor Austin Weber introduces our exclusive premiere of yet another advance track from the forthcoming album by The Conjuration.)

As I mentioned rather recently when talking about The Conjuration here at NCS, they have a new album entitled Surreal on the horizon. While I have been informed it may be a couple months before it’s released, sole band member Corey Jason wanted to give us a bad case of aural AIDS caused by metal in the form of a new track entitled “Profane”. If anyone else suffers a similar reaction, please let me know so we can swap pics!

As far as The Conjuration tracks go, this one is a bit more straightforward, yet it still gives off the same mentally deranged vibe I’ve grown to love in the band’s music. While largely an aggressive death metal number, the early slight instrumental pause builds up the tension wonderfully— especially when coupled with the unsettling raspy howl that creepily appears for a few seconds hiding under the music around the 1:32 mark. Continue reading »

A YEAR-END LIST FROM CHRIS GRIGG (WOE)

LISTMANIA 2013 10 Responses »

Dec 132013

photo by Charnelle Stöhrer

(We’re pleased to bring you a year-end list of favorite releases from Chris Grigg, a man of many talents and the founder-vocalist-guitarist of Philly black metal band WOE, whose 2013 album Withdrawal is one of the year’s highlights.)

Carcass – Surgical Steel

I can’t stand Heartwork, no matter how hard I try, so I had no good expectations for their return album. Do you ever expect to hate something, or maybe even WANT to hate something, and then feel a sense of excitement when you’re wrong? It reminds me that the world is not always predictable and that even old dogs can learn the best fucking tricks they might ever perform. This album is unrelenting in its union of intense, memorable riffs and brutality. Sacrilege though it may be, I find it hard to argue that this is anything but the best work of their career. Continue reading »

FIVE THINGS LAYMEN WHO DON’T GET EXTREME METAL SAY ABOUT IT

Mosh Pit 38 Responses »

Dec 132013

(Here’s another guest post from Dane Prokofiev, who writes everywhere and has his own blog at Zetalambmary. It’s a year-end list of a different kind. As always, Comments are encouraged — maybe you’d like to add to this list?)

People who listen to and enjoy extreme metal have met these people before – be it in the form of perplexed roommates at university dorms or the curious and inquisitive stranger on the train who happens to see you listening to Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation on your iPhone and feels compelled to ask you about your strange taste in music. Listed below are five things people who are not into extreme metal often say about a form of underground music that never ceases to confound their expectations of what can be considered good.

1. “Why do the vocalists scream? It’s so pointless – you can’t even make out the lyrics like that!”

I find myself repeating variations of this line ad nauseam to laymen who like to be able to figure out what the lyrics are just by hearing music: “You’re not meant to make out the lyrics; the voice here is just treated as another musical instrument.” Just as certain Classical music composers made certain orchestral sections play dissonant chords on purpose at certain parts of a piece of music (or even throughout) to create an aggressive feel or disturbing mood, harsh vocals often serve this purpose as well in extreme metal. Continue reading »

A YEAR-END LIST BY AARON EDGE (LUMBAR)

LISTMANIA 2013 4 Responses »

Dec 132013

(We are most happy to bring you a list of favorite 2013 albums by Aaron Edge of Lumbar — whose own 2013 album, The First and Last Days of Unwelcome, is one of my favorites.)

I am most honored to be asked by No Clean Singing to share with you my favorite sonic gems of 2013. It must be said, though, that my year has been the most turbulent in my history as a human being. I am quite out of the loop on perhaps most of the killer new releases… so many swam by, uncaught in my small, old, holed net. That said, the following bands got snatched by my tinnitus-plagued head holes, were hauled in, and gave a truly fantastic bloody birth to perfect gifts. We, as listeners, should thank the giant universe that we are so blessed to have them (in no order):

Purist – Purist

Sea of Bones – The Earth Wants Us Dead

Continue reading »

READ THIS PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

Metal News 9 Responses »

Dec 122013

The Monolith Deathcult, with whom all loyal NCS readers are amply familiar because we talk about them so much our lips are chapped, are offering a limited-edition box set that isn’t really a box set because it has no box, but does contain these items: Tetragrammaton (2013) 2-LP in 180 grams clear vinyl in gatefold design; Trivmvirate (2008) 2-LP in 180 grams clear vinyl in gatefold design; Obliteration of the Despised Promo (2002 – sold out!) LP in 180 grams clear vinyl; a heavy duty carrying bag for carrying items that need carrying; and a limited “crest” design T-shirt.

But lest you think we’ve become shills for band mercy, the real reason I’m posting about this isn’t the merch (though I’m sure TMDC would appreciate your buying all this shit here), it’s the TMDC product announcement. It’s good. It’s funny. So I thought I’d share it. Because I can:

Hand-pressed in a sweat shop by forced child labour. Purchasing this item ensures that one community in an emerging economy will live in a pit of toxic sludge and abject poverty for at least 15 years. Made from 100% unrecycled material from unrenewable sources. Only slighly lethal to aquatic mammals. Do not use as a toy. Observe proper safety instructions when handling. Keep out of reach of children. Use only in a well-ventilated area. Exposure to this box-but-hey-it’s-not-a-box-box set may cause joint pain, nausea, head-ache, or shortness of breath. You may also experience muscle aches, rapid heartbeat, and ringing in the cars. If you feel faint, call your doctor. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries