FINNTROLL: “HÄXBRYGD”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 032013
 

On most days at this site I try to pull together a round-up of new music, album art, and/or news that most interested me over the preceding 24 hours. It’s usually in the range of 3-5 items, packaged together in one long post. Today, just for the hell of it, I’m trying something different, something more like what certain other metal sites do — spreading what interested me over the course of the whole day, one item at a time.

A renowned tribe of Finnish trolls have emerged from their underground lairs for another round of pillaging and plundering, spreading their wicked humor and destructiveness like the plague. In other words, Finntroll’s new album Blodsvept is out now, everywhere (on Century Media).

This morning Finntroll premiered an official video for one of the new songs,”Häxbrygd”, which apparently means “witch broth” or “witch stew”. The song goes straight to our list of candidates for 2013’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Music to jump to, music to bounce to, music to fornicate to. A little bit of accordion, a little bit of brass, a whole lotta nasty.

And the video? A feast for the eyes, the trolls decked out in their finery with pointy ears a-flapping, tricking out their own special ride. Ready, set, GO . . . Continue reading »

A HELLISH OUTCAST FORGES AHEAD WITH HELLISH OUTCAST

 Metal News  1 Response »
Apr 032013
 

While the band drama surrounding Norway’s Keep of Kalessin continues to unfold, Sunday brought cheerier news from the camp of another NCS favorite, Hellish Outcast.

The background: As our wandering metalhead Andy Synn reported from Oslo just as the news was breaking, and discussed at greater length in his own subsequent post about Opening Day at the Inferno Festival, Keep of Kalessin have disclosed that their talented frontman Thebon is out, and their founder, songwriter, and guitarist Obsidian Claw has taken his place behind the mic.

At first KoK reported, with tongue in cheek, that Thebon had disappeared into the wilds of South Africa with his girlfriend, leaving the band no choice but to record their next album without him.

Thebon then surfaced with a somewhat peeved rejoinder. As these things go, KoK then responded with a lengthy, less tongue-in-cheek explanation for Thebon’s ouster. The recriminations will probably continue, because that’s the way band drama works.

But I don’t really enjoy reading about band drama. I much prefer reading about the other news that’s the subject of this post. While Thebon’s days with KoK may be over, he’s still a fixture in Hellish Outcast, and Hellish Outcast will soon be entering the studio to record a new album, tentatively entitled Stay of Execution. Continue reading »

INFERNO FESTIVAL – OPENING DAY

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Apr 022013
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn has returned from Oslo’s Inferno Festival and brings us a multi-part report of what he saw and heard, beginning with this post. More will follow in the days to come.)

So here’s how Inferno Festival works… though the event itself is a three-day affair situated at Rockefeller/John Dee, there’s an opening day on the Wednesday featuring an array of bands performing at a series of different venues around the city.

For the first time this year I was officially accredited as “Press” for the event, meaning I was invited to the Opening Party at the Rockefeller lounge, which kicked things off just before the various bars and clubs started the evening’s festivities. I have to say that I definitely appreciated the free beer (a rather bitter, but ultimately rather nice, Norwegian brown ale called Nøgne Ø) and free food on offer, as well as the opportunity to mingle with other attendees (hello to Liz and Lewis, if you’re reading this) and stalk various band members.

The party itself also had a couple of presentations explaining and extolling the history of Inferno and its connections with the Oslo metal scene and with the Indian metal scene with which it has steadily been building a relationship. Continue reading »

HACKTIVIST: “ELEVATE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Apr 022013
 

Just minutes ago, UK-based Hacktivist released a new song named “Elevate” for free download, with an accompanying video. I am posting this news and the video in part because I like the song and video and in part because I always enjoy the comments we provoke when we write about Hacktivist.

Hacktivist do have their supporters around these parts, but like the Marines logo says, they are the few, though they are proud. As for everyone else, you’ll just have to suck it up and soldier on (and leave your comments).

Hacktivist haven’t yet turned into a black metal band. It’s still rap + djent. I have no ability to judge the quality of the rhymes (I listen to very little rap), but at least they’re still going on about something serious, and those rhythms still get my head bobbing.

To download the track for free, go HERE. To watch and listen, just follow along after the jump. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CHTHONIC, AMORPHIS, REPTILIAN DEATH, WASTED LAND, AND REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Apr 022013
 

I didn’t have time to compile a daily round-up yesterday, so there’s a lot of shit to cram into this one. I’ll try to keep words to a minimum and let the music, the videos, and the imagery speak for themselves.

ITEM ONE: CHTHONIC

2011’s Takasago Army marked the time when I finally got into Taiwan’s Chthonic. It was interesting and multi-textured, in addition to kicking large amounts of ass. So I’m now quite interested in their next album, Bú-Tik, which will be released by Spinefarm this summer. Today, the sexy cover art was revealed. Apparently, nearly 100 people volunteered to be the model for it.

The album cover is eye-catching for sure, though it doesn’t exactly suggest that the new album will be devoted to history and tradition. Yet in this new interview the band’s eye-catching bassist Doris Yeh suggests that it will. I’m up for it. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: PESTILENCE – AN INTRODUCTION

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Apr 022013
 

pes·ti·lence  (pst-lns)
n.
1. A usually fatal epidemic disease, especially bubonic plague.
2. A pernicious, evil influence or agent.

(Not long ago TheMadIsraeli concluded a reassessment of the discography of Kataklysm that he termed “Higher Criticism”. Now he’s ready to embark on yet another journey, as explained in this introduction.)

Pestilence are a band who have the odd distinction of being influential, innovative, under-recognized, and controversial all at the same time.  One of the pioneers of progressive death metal along with the likes of Death, Atheist, and Cynic, Pestilence have been subjected to massive scrutiny due to mastermind Patrick Mameli’s inability to commit to a sound, as well as the fact that in some cases those different sounds have had absolutely nothing to do with each other.  Mameli’s style of angular and melodic juxtaposition within his riffage is the one thing that has defined Pestilence for as long as they have existed, and is perhaps the only consistent factor from album to album. Continue reading »

APRIL FOOLERY? OR IS IT TIME TO MOVE THIS SEA LION UP TO MESHUGGAH?

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Apr 022013
 

Late yesterday I got an e-mail from an NCS reader whose initials are MV, pointing me to an article that appeared yesterday on The Verve web site. According to the article, researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz successfully trained a sea lion named Ronan to bob its head in time to music.

The article said that this achievement was published in The Journal of Comparative Psychology and called it “a study that may change our understanding of how rhythm is acquired.” It reported that Ronan is “the first non-human mammal that can keep a beat”.

The article also included a YouTube video of Ronan bobbing her head to the beat of . . . gulp . . . The Backstreet Boys. It stated that once Ronan had been trained to keep the beat to one song, she was able to easily do the same thing to different beats in other songs.

This seemed like something worth featuring here at NCS, but I was cautious. Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and I’d already gotten burned once by completely falling for Full Metal Attorney’s post about recording a Mercyful Fate cover album. So I decided to roll up my sleeves and do some actual in-depth research. Continue reading »

BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR: EMPYRIOS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 012013
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli introduces us to a new discovery from Italy.)

Here at No Clean Singing, while the name is definitely partially tongue in cheek, it actually is partially serious.  We like our metal pure, undiluted, and free from the corruption of things not carnage-inducing.  However, some exceptions to the rule are simply too good to ignore.

Empyrios are a band from Italy that not many are aware of.  Italy in recent years has really been earning a reputation based on death metal exports such as Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour of Penance, and Hideous Divinity.  Empyrios, I imagine, are not as well-known because they are not death metal, but rather play an aggressive style of proggy groove metal that really channels the spirits of Nevermore and Symphony X, among others, with tastefully incorporated influences that are rather alien in the midst of sounds you might hear from the likes of Meshuggah or Fear Factory.

I suppose, to define it further, they play a combination of groove metal, power metal, industrial metal, and thrash, with heavy syncopation in the groove aspect.  No one sounds like these guys, even if the influences are obvious and familiar. Continue reading »

NICKELBACK IN THE METAL ARCHIVES? SAY IT AIN’T SO!!!

 IQ Subtraction  17 Responses »
Apr 012013
 

Oh what a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was congratulating Encyclopaedia Metallum – The Metal Archives on the addition of the 90,000th band to their remarkable band database (and celebrating the music of that band — Senobyte). And then today, thanks once again to a tip from Happy Metal Guy, I learned that Nickelback have now been added to that same database.

Yes, Nickelback. The band that all true metalheads love to club like a baby harp seal stranded on an ice floe. They are now polluting Metal Archives, right here, big as life and twice as smelly. And don’t think the moderators of Metal Archives didn’t know what they were doing. This explanation appeared last night on MA’s Facebook page:

After a long and harsh process, M-A has decided to add Nickelback to its database. Once our Canadian moderators brought up their early releases, and our German mods agreed in unison, we were forced to reconsider them. Indeed, their first album Curb is totally metal and influenced by Soundgarden and Alice in Chains who are both on the site.

We felt like explaining ourselves and we’re truly sorry to all their fans for this mistake, they DESERVED their spot on the Archives. Continue reading »

TEMPLE: “ON THE STEPS OF THE TEMPLE”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Apr 012013
 

My comrades and I at this site write very infrequently about instrumental metal. It’s equally rare for us to reach back in time and review an album that we overlooked when first released; we tend to stay focused on albums that loom ahead on the horizon rather than those which are growing more distant in the rearview mirror. I begin with those observations as a way of emphasizing what a strong impression On the Steps of the Temple has made on me.

It’s an instrumental album and it was released nearly eight months ago by a duo from Phoenix, Arizona, who call themselves Temple. I heard it for the first time yesterday after receiving an e-mail from the band that included words of praise from a healthy list of other sites.

I generally don’t like being the last guy to the party, but I started in on the music anyway, and when I finished listening I did something I can’t remember ever doing before with an instrumental release: I returned immediately to the beginning and listened to the album again, straight through, all 53 minutes of it.

Roughly two hours out of my Sunday, plus the time it took me to peck out the words to this piece, while many other more pressing things were scrabbling for attention. All that time, and every minute well worth it. Continue reading »

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