NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEINOUS EXSANGUINATION — “VILE ROTTING MASS”

Aug 142024

Take a moment to reflect upon all you’ve done wrong in your life, or at least all you did wrong yesterday: The careless, stupid decisions. The petty jealousies. The pointless cruelties. The opportunities not seized, and the forgiveness not given. Think about all that, and maybe you’ll understand, as you bleed out, how well you deserve the merciless beating you’re about to suffer at the hands of Heinous Exsanguination.

This Los Angeles band clearly picked their name in an attempt to sum up the intent behind the music they decided to make — not just bloodletting, but odious and abominable bloodletting, both blistering and brutalizing.

And even if you don’t carefully ponder the meaning of their name, take a look at the artwork up there, which adorns their debut EP The Stench of Decaying Flesh, and you’ll get the message, a message not just reinforced by the EP’s title but also by the name of the EP track we’re premiering today: “Vile Rotting Mess“. Continue reading »

TOLMINATOR REPORT: DAY 3

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Aug 142024

(Today we share with you Didrik Mešiček‘s report on the third day of the star-studded Tolminator festival in his home country of Slovenia, which ran this year in late July. It’s again accompanied by excellent photos, including another large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography. For the reports on Day One and Day Two, go here and here.)

They say all things come with their consequences. And that must be why I woke up with a fever on day three. Not exactly how you want to start the second half of the festival, but ah well. Time waits for no man and after consuming an obscene amount of cocaine (for legal reasons, I want to make clear that this is a joke) I felt normal enough to continue and start the day early for once as Patroness was opening at 11:50AM.

Tolminator does try and sort of make the days thematic by subgenres and so Friday had a bit of a stoner/doom vibe and the Belgians fit somewhat into that larger bracket. The band has only one released album, Fatum, from 2022, and therefore limited material but the vocalist is utterly deranged. For some reason his pants had one of the pantlegs cut off, he poured a bottle of ice tea on his head, and showcased a generally nihilistic approach to the entire show. At least you can’t say we weren’t entertained. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FÖHN — “A DAY AFTER”

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Aug 132024

(written by Islander)

A few weeks ago the Greek band Föhn released a video for “Bereft,” the first advance track from their debut album Condescending, which will be released on August 23rd by Hypaethral Records in North America and These Hands Melt in Europe. I paid attention to it after seeing the album described as “avant-garde funeral doom” and realizing that the song included performances by two saxophonists. I then urgently wrote 330 words about it, just the one song.

Granted, “Bereft” is more than 13 minutes long, but even 330 words probably still didn’t do it justice.

When I spilled all those words I didn’t know we would be asked to host the premiere of a second song from Condescending, but that happened, and so I’m afraid you’re in for a lot more words. But mainly what you’re in for is yet another profoundly powerful piece of music, this one named “A Day After“. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME VIII: SUMMER BLUES & BLACK METAL

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Aug 132024

(Below you’ll find Daniel Barkasi‘s reviews of 8 albums released in July that he enthusiastically recommends to you.)

As summer continues its dreadful humidity-laden romp, I’m reminded of a bit from Robin Williams’ (RIP legend) Live on Broadway standup special where he talked about climate change. More specifically, “It’s beyond Global Warming at this point – it is cooking!” Just over 22 years ago, and he got it like only Robin could. Seriously, watch that entire special if you want to writhe in pain from laughter. Some of the references may be dated to some younger than dirt, but man it’s a good time from one of the funniest people to ever live.

Going from my “If I go outside, I’ll be peeling sweat-ridden clothes off like a layer of Saran Wrap” Florida life, a subject that’s been bugging the crap out of me is generative AI. More specifically, it’s application of generating album artwork – and we use the term artwork in this case very loosely. It’s not artwork at all, but a prompt-drive monstrosity that almost always looks like cheap junk. Continue reading »

TOLMINATOR REPORT: DAY 2

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Aug 132024

(Today we share with you Didrik Mešiček‘s report on the second day of the star-studded Tolminator festival in his home country of Slovenia, which ran this year in late July. It’s again accompanied by excellent photos, including a large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography. For the report on Day One, go here.)

Hi, hello, we’re back, it’s day two of Tolminator and I’m here again to waffle about some bands I’ve seen. Thursday didn’t start at the stage, however, because we decided to go for a swim instead, as Soča was absolutely begging people to go in with its beautiful greenness and its cold… coldness.

The little storms and showers have by now finally completely fucked off and it was well above 30 degrees Celsius for the rest of the festival (the water stays at about 15 degrees) which means you really need to have a dip here and there if you like living. The river’s level fluctuates a bit and this year it was rather low which also meant the current was very slow and people would constantly lazily float by on all sorts of floaties ranging from pink unicorns, tanks, massive ducks, and so forth. Continue reading »

ZNOUS: “ZNOUSLAND 4”

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Aug 122024

(Our Vietnam-based writer Vizzah Harri prepared the following highly entertaining review of the latest album by the Tunisian band Znous, released in early June of this year.)

And now for something completely different. No, I’m not referring to the Flying Circus, the music and the band is anything but unserious. Znous hail from Al Rudayyif, Gafsa in Tunisia and were covered by Andy Synn back in 2021 as “socio-political Punk-Metal firebrands” not to miss.

DUHKHA – A PLACE YOU CAN’T COME BACK FROM

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Aug 122024

(Andy Synn says that listening to the new Duhkha album is an experience you can’t come back from)

While a lot has been written about the various Death Metal bands incorporating more and more stripped-back, straight-to-the-throat Hardcore dynamics over recent years (some more successfully than others, I might add) much less has been written about bands going the other way.

Which is a shame, because the last few years alone have seen the likes of END, Incendiary, Bridge Burner, End Reign, Underneath and Umbra Vitae (whose latest I still haven’t gotten around to reviewing) all stepping up to demonstrate that the lines between the likes of Earth Crisis and Entombed, Overcast and Obituary, Cro-Mags and Cannibal Corpse, have always been blurrier than the “scene police” pretend.

And now we’ve got Duhkha, whose absolutely devastating debut album, A Place You Can’t Come Back From is here to put one more humongously heavy nail in that particular coffin.

AN NCS PREMIERE: PNEUMA HAGION — “AEON”

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Aug 122024

Not long ago we published our Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Ryan Wilson, who is the musical equivalent of a perpetual motion machine and one of the two men behind the Texas-based death metal band Pneuma Hagion. The entire interview is well worth reading, but I found his comments about the Lovecraftian influence in Pneuma Hagion the most illuminating, especially in the context of the band’s new album From Beyond:

“I’ve been a huge fan of Lovecraft’s stories for most of my life. The key thing about Lovecraft is the sublime horror that he evokes; it’s a horror that can’t be seen, can’t be touched, and really can’t even be easily imagined. I love this; something that is beyond comprehension, but just graspable enough to be terrifying….

“Our minds have the power to create much more sinister and frightening ideas and images than anything the physical world can actually produce. The idea of extradimensional entities invading people’s minds is a huge theme in the stories of Lovecraft, and I enjoy trying to evoke similar feelings via the medium of music…. [M]usic is a great platform for the sublime, where the art lies in sound and not in visual cues so that your mind gets to handle all of the relevant imagery.”

Those thoughts resonate powerfully when listening to From Beyond, an album that truly does conjure terrible images of the listener’s own making, no two of them alike just as no two of us are completely alike. Everlasting Spew Records, which will release the new album on August 30th, fleshes out its thematic sources: Continue reading »

TOLMINATOR REPORT: DAY 1

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Aug 122024

(In mid-June we published a preview by our Slovenian comrade Didrik Mešiček of the star-studded Tolminator festival in his home country that was then set to kick off in late July. When it did kick off, Didrik was there, and below you will find his report on the first day. It’s accompanied by excellent photos, including a large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography.)

Summer brings with it many things – the heat, the impending dread of the next storm and how much damage it’ll do, but most of all it brings the joys of summer, and amongst those what’s better than metal festivals?

Slovenia’s metal scene reputation has taken a bit of a hit lately as you’ll know if you’ve ever heard or read the unfortunate word “Metaldays” but that beast has been fully slain and buried in what has brought nothing but relief to most people. Upon its grave, a new hope has grown, a young and green tree by the name of Tolminator, now in its second year after a generally impressive debut in 2023.

The festival brings a unique location as it’s based on the confluence of two Alpine rivers while presenting a fairly solid extreme metal lineup and what has become a proverbially pleasant atmosphere ever since some 20 years ago when metal festivals first arose in the area. Much like last year, I was once again allowed to pretend to be a real journalist at the festival and this is why you now get to – naturally to your extreme satisfaction – read a bit about what happened at Tolminator 2024. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ISOLERT, DRAGSHOLM, SERVANT, FIRTAN

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Aug 112024

(written by Islander)

Sadly, this week’s collection of the blacker arts will be brief, not just smaller than yesterday’s Tyrannosaur-sized collection but smaller than the weekly average for this column. I’ve got to get out of the house with my spouse and join up with some other hooligans this morning for day-drinking and ping-ponging words (yes, even people just a stone’s throw from assisted-living age can act like hooligans).

So that’s all the intro I’ve got. I better get to it or this will be even shorter that projected.

ISOLERT (Greece)

I spilled a lot of words about the “devastating magnificence” of this Greek band’s last album, 2020’s World In Ruins — words such as “soaring”, “sweeping”, “near-celestial”, “blazing”, and “tumultuous”, but also “crushing”, “stately”, “dolorous”, and “sublime”. It created ruinous maelstroms but also reached epic heights of glory. Continue reading »

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