NO CLEAN SINGING

I, VOIDHANGER RECORDS: ÆVANGELIST, TEMPESTUOUS FALL, AND MORE!

Nov 252012

(Our friend Utmu hath delivered this guest post, introducing us to a some great bands who share the same label.)

Hello all! I’m Utmu and I’m back with my second article for NCS this year—I’m on a roll! Anyway I was on From the Dust Returned recently and I came across Ævangelist; intrigued by the artwork and the band’s name, I decided to look into them. I also saw reviews for the bands Nar Mattaru and The Wakedead Gathering and I came to find out that they are all on the same label, I, Voidhanger Records.

The first part of I, Voidhanger’s manifesto reads, “Born in 2008 as an independent division of the Italian metal label AeternitasTenebrarumMusicaeFundamentum (ATMF), I, Voidhanger Records tolerates musical categorizations, but doesn’t like any kind of boundaries.” It goes on to say in the second part, “We are interested in black metal, death metal, avant-garde metal, progressive metal, doom metal, heavy rock, psychedelia, 70’s dark sounds, dark ambient and drone music, as long as they are the result of an obscure, unique, and uncompromising artistic vision.” That’s pretty accurate when comparing that to the bands they’ve signed. Continue reading »

SATURDAY WITH SONNE ADAM, PTAHIL, AND ALPTHRAUM

Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Nov 242012

As I write this, it’s a Saturday morning in the vicinity of Seattle, where the rain gods are taking a breath before going to work again. Actual rays of sunshine are illuminating the water drops that hang from every living thing in the forest around where I live, and the earth looks like a saturated sponge that can’t hold any more. I might take a walk later, before the sky starts peeing again. But for now, I’m just listening . . .

. . . and what I’ve been hearing are new tunes from Sonne Adam (Israel), Ptahil (U.S.), and Alpthraum (Canada).

SONNE ADAM

Israel’s Sonne Adam have recently loosed two bestial releases. The first is a vinyl EP entitled Doctrines of Dark Devotion, the magnificent cover of which is staring you in the face at the top of this post. That one was released by Imperium Productions.

The second release is Messengers Of Desolate Ways, a CD compilation from Century Media containing all the tracks on that new EP plus all the music from two previous vinyl-only EPs, Armed With Hammers and The Sun Is Dead, and three previously unreleased songs.

Recently, Sonne Adam began streaming “The Day I Chose to Rot”, which appears on both of the new releases. The song is fucking immense, a shattering mid-paced crusher of blackened death metal might. It brings down a dank, heavy shroud of doom, shot through with indigo melody and made all the more disturbing by truly horrific vocals. It sucks souls into the abyss and consumes them with grisly relish. Continue reading »

THE ASCENDANT: “THE SPIRITUAL DEATH”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Nov 242012

Five years ago, former Excessum bandmates Daniel “Contagion” Abrahamsson and Lars Broddesson (Marduk) joined forces with vocalist K.W. (Ad Hominem) to record a two-song EP, with Daniel on bass and Lars on drums and both of them laying down guitar tracks. They chose The Ascendant as the name of their band. The songs were never released.

Fast-forward to 2012, and Daemon Worship Productions reaches an agreement with The Ascendant to release the two songs as an EP on vinyl and CD under the name The Spiritual Death, with accompanying artwork by Grindwerkz. Why it took five years for the songs to emerge is a mystery, especially because they are so damned good.

On one level, the music simply rips hell. The guitars blaze with infernal fire, jabbing, tearing, and grinding in a whirr of tremolo fury. The jet-fueled drum performance hits like high-caliber weaponry on full auto. Big, booming bass chords surface and come down like anvil blows. And K.W.’s mid-range vocals howl like an ice storm.

On another level, the music reaches near-epic levels of grandeur, with memorable, dramatic guitar melodies rising on wings through the shrapnel clouds. Continue reading »

AQUILUS: “GRISEUS”

Album Reviews 21 Responses »

Nov 232012

Aquilus is the one-man project of an Australian wizard named Horace “Waldorf” Rosenqvist, and Griseus is his one-hour, twenty-minute masterpiece — at least until he creates the next masterpiece.

I first learned of this album in April through a message from an NCS reader who calls himself FistForFun. And then I got another message from him in May, and another in August, and another in October. Though they grew increasingly strident, the content was essentially the same: Pull your head out of your ass and listen to this damn record! (I kid, FistForFun was more polite than that.)

It only took me seven months, but I’ve finally done that. There is a reason why the slow loris is the official mascot of NCS. Having now heard Griseus, I can understand FistForFun’s enthusiasm.

I think it’s fair to say that Griseus is unlike anything else we’ve ever reviewed at this site. It’s also unlike anything else I can remember ever hearing that could conceivably be classified as metal. The metal elements are scattered in the music — harsh vocals that are sometimes of the shrieking black metal variety and sometimes deep and howling; big booming riffs, heavy chugs, jabbing distorted chords; bouts of double-bass percussion; even a shrill electric guitar solo (in “Latent Thistle”).

But these elements appear infrequently, and even the harsh vocals are balanced by clean vocal harmonies and the sounds of choirs. Yet the vocals themselves are really only accents in what is primarily an instrumental album of neoclassical, folk-influenced orchestral music — one that’s endlessly interesting. Continue reading »

OBOLUS: “LAMENT”

Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Nov 232012

Lament, grievance, hatred, reflection, desolation. Those could be the five steps of reaction to a wrenching loss or to a wrong inflicted, the steps of an emotional processing that doesn’t end well. Those are also the titles, in order, of the songs on Lament, the remarkable 2012 EP by San Francisco’s Obolus.

The songs flow together, like a five-part suite, creating an immersive atmosphere that’s both beautiful and harrowing in its intensity. The sound of rain begins each song except the one called “Hatred”, and as the music slowly fades at the EP’s end, it rains again. Clouds hang heavy overhead throughout. Storm fronts move through and lash the listener, with brief moments of respite from the deluge before the next front begins its assault.

The first song (“Lament”) is a relatively short instrumental-only piece, comparatively subdued, with no drums to provide an undercurrent of power. The music is slow and sad, consisting principally of a layered acoustic and electric guitar melody.

The following track, “Grievance”, at first continues the mood, slowly building in volume and intensity until a surge of feedback breaks the repeating melody and the song explodes in an attack of blasting drums and a wall of distorted guitar noise. A harrowing, incoherent shrieking can be heard (as it can on “Hatred” and “Desolation”), but just barely, because it’s an almost indiscernible part of the dense background shroud of battering percussion and guitar distortion. A tremolo melody rolls through the haze in repeating waves, enhancing the song’s emotional intensity. Continue reading »

WHILE WAITING TO GORGE: AUTHOR & PUNISHER, NILE, and CHURCH OF DISGUST

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Nov 222012

Happy Tryptophan Coma Day to one and all. I’ve been sitting here at my computer all morning with my gut rumbling and my mouth salivating as my wife and assorted other female culinary magicians perform wondrous works in our kitchen. Eventually, a horde of gluttons will descend on the feast and the gorging will begin. I hope this happens soon, before the flood of gastric juices triggered by all the aromas eats a hole through my esophagus.

While resisting the urge to barge through the kitchen like a rabid wolverine and start stuffing my gullet with both hands, I’ve been listening to a few random selections of new metal that I thought I’d share with you. The offerings come from Author & Punisher, Nile, and Church of Disgust.

AUTHOR & PUNISHER

If you don’t know about Author & Punisher (the nom de guerre of one Tristan Shone), I suggest you read this post by BadWolf, which was my introduction to this dude’s amazing music. Wholly apart from the way the hellish music sounds, it’s noteworthy because much of it is made on machines that Shone designs himself and then performs. One of the devices he created is something called the Mute Mask, and he employs it in a new song called “Magnetik” that debuted about a week ago. Continue reading »

ANCIENT ASCENDANT: “INTO THE DARK”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Nov 222012

(We got pretty excited when we saw the news in August that the UK’s Ancient Ascendant were planning to release a new EP. Now, Andy Synn gives it the once over in this review.)

Ok, so I’ve had this one on the back-burner for a while now it seems. What have I been doing that’s more important? Fuck you. That’s what.

Anyway, I’ve been busy.

But that has given me the chance to give this EP a thorough listen several times over, and really appreciate every second of the music contained therein.

Into The Dark sees the band making a transition away from the sound they established on their first two releases (The Heathen Throne and The Grim Awakening) but managing to do so in a way that feels utterly natural and fresh – expanding their early death metal palette, rather than abandoning it.

The thrashier stylings of The Grim Awakening have been drastically pared back to make room for a more cutting, blackened approach, replacing thrashing vigour with blackened vitriol, while maintaining the monstrous death metal heart of the band. The songs now have more of a cut and thrust to them, slashing and slicing with psychotic precision, where before they were, at times, simply content with a more bludgeoning form of sonic brutality. Continue reading »

DARK FORTRESS / SATURNIAN / ETHEREAL — LIVE AT THE VIC INN, DERBY — NOV. 16, 2012

Concert Reviews No Responses »

Nov 222012

(Andy Synn was both performer and spectator at the November 16 show in Derby, England, headlined by Dark Fortress and he provides both this concert review and video clips of each band’s performance.)

So the boys in Bloodguard and I were lucky enough to score an opening slot for one of my all-time favourite black metal bands, Germany’s own Dark Fortress. Needless to say we rocked the place mightily, but I also thought I’d take the opportunity to review the show, and get some video footage of each band for you all. I am a river to my people.

Ethereal

Up first were Liverpool-based black metal monsters Ethereal. Performing as a four piece, due to a last minute problem with their line-up, the group shot through an all too brief, but absolutely blistering set of raucous, blood-curdling black metal. Blasting through an array of material drawn from their two EPs, Hell’s Divine Existence and Revelation Beast, the group hit hard with a sound that was neither overly primitive nor excessively polished, but utterly raw and ravenous in equal measure. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: AN INVITATION

Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012 64 Responses »

Nov 222012

At least in my crazy country, Thanksgiving is a pivotal day in the year. Today, people who are lucky eat too much in the company of friends and/or family. Tomorrow, people begin spending money they don’t have on presents people don’t need. And today also begins the countdown to the end of the year. From now ’til then, people take stock of the year and begin making lists of the best and worst that the year has brought us.

In the world of metal, that means lists of the best albums (and sometimes the worst). Back in 2009, when this site was just an ugly, smelly baby a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were the year’s best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. It’s just too damned much work, and I’m allergic to work. Fortunately, we have some other regular contributors who have more energy, and we’ll be publishing their year-end lists in December. We’ll also be publishing the year-end lists that major metal publications and “big platform” web sites are compiling; we started doing that yesterday with DECIBEL magazine’s list of 2012’s Top 40 Albums.

We’re also inviting some other folks to give us their lists in the form of guest posts for this site. And we’ll also have our annual list of the extreme metal songs we thought were the most infectious of the year. Soon, I’ll post an invitation for your song suggestions.

But we ain’t stopping there. If YOU have made your own list of the best metal albums you heard this year, we want to see it. Because we’re fucking nosy like that. (details about this invitation are after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL! – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC: THE MOST METAL METAL

That's Metal -- But It's Not Music 17 Responses »

Nov 212012

(Here we have a guest post by NCS reader/commenter Old Man Windbreaker.)

Come, join One to gaze at the red hot glow of… uh… never mind. “Hot blonde blacksmith lady pounding hot metal” is all that needs to be said.

Old Man Windbreaker greets you over the worldwide web, in the manner that you imagine yourself being greeted over the worldwide web by a stranger (or Ziltoid). Greetings.

One recently found Oneself fascinated with the thought of metals – metallic chemical elements, that is. After all, if anything is metal, a metal surely is. With this in mind, One attempted to examine what it means to Oneself when One describes something as metal. One found that anything One considers metal deals with themes of death, destruction and darkness; or at least induces thoughts of such. So, one should simply examine history for the metal most closely associated with death. For reference (and annoyance) here is a picture of the periodic table of chemical elements.

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