HEAD-EXPLODING TOUR NEWS: “CONQUERORS OF THE WORLD 2012” — AND HEAD-EXPLODING PIG DESTROYER NEWS

 Metal News  15 Responses »
Jul 102012
 

Oh my fucking dog. Take a close look at that tour poster above. Upon returning from my birthday Blog Break, I found a message from BadWolf with a link to this beautiful thing, and I nearly peed myself with excitement.

Okay, to be brutally honest, which is the only kind of honest we know how to be at NCS, I did pee myself, though it’s possible that’s the result of general diminution in bladder control that comes with advancing age and an “I can’t be bothered” attitude about going to the bathroom when the first tingling urges appear. Some people would say that I ought to quit fucking around and start manufacturing the NCS-branded adult diapers I’ve written about before, with the “Massive Wall of Penis” logo in the front and the Blastanus logo in the rear, and then start wearing them myself. But for me, I think a little urine stank improves my personal aroma.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the Conquerors of the World 2012 Tour. It’s a North American tour and it features these bands:

Septic Flesh
Krisiun
Melechesh
Ex Deo
Inquisition

As for the tour schedule, it’s still developing, but it starts in October, and after the jump you can see the initial list of 13 dates. Also . . .  PIG DESTROYER! Continue reading »

FUCK A DUCK!

 Album Reviews, Phro's Posts, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jul 102012
 

(Our Blog Break is now over, and what better way to get things back to (ab)normal here at NCS than with a review by Phro of the debut EP by a Finnish “duckgrind” band — Artists Are Idiots. The album is entitled The Subduck Scum Shall Fall.)

 

Islander sent me this band to check out. I pretty much blew every load I had just based on the name and then dry-came until my balls were bloody. I can’t guarantee you’ll like their music, but only because I can’t guarantee that you’re not a brain-dead jackal.

 

The cell is dark. It smells of feathers and feces. Naziduck shit has a particularly revolting aroma to it, and they know it. Which is why they always, inevitably, shit on their prisoners during interrogation. They want you to stink of their shit to remind you exactly who you belong to.

But I’m still shit free. I wonder for how long.

In the background, I hear the oddly jovial sound of a brass band taking up their instruments. It’s confusingly cheerful. But who knows if Naziducks can smile? They don’t even have fucking lips. That thought reminds me of the Anti-Naziduck commercials they show before each film at the old dime cinema. It’s always the same. An image of regular ducks flapping about a farm yard at first dashing between cow hooves and mindless chickens. Then, without warning, the next morning the farmer awakes to find the chickens have all be killed in the night, along with the cow, and the ducks are digging mass graves. The farmer turns to run to get his shotgun, but it’s too late. The drakes set upon him, tearing his clothes off, taking turns shoving their long, twirling, rapid-fire erections into his brain via his nasal cavity. “Naziducks: Are They In YOUR Barnyard?” the commercial demands before the movie starts. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: AUTOLATRY – “OF THE LAND”

 Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Jul 092012
 

(Note: this review will be today’s only NCS post, because of Blog Break.)

Autolatry is a black metal band from eastern Connecticut whose music is devoted to stories about the New England wilderness and New England history. In late 2010, they released a debut album entitled The Hill, which I haven’t heard. And then in February of this year they released the subject of this review, an EP called Of the Land. Both releases can be downloaded on Bandcamp (here) with a “name your price” option.

Given the lyrical themes of Autolatry’s music, the title of this most recent EP, the names of the four songs it includes, and even the cover art, you might assume that Autolatry is some kind of New England version of Agalloch — but for the most part you would be wrong. Though you might pick out a bit of Agalloch influence here and there, the four songs on Of the Land turn out to be a surprising mix of styles, with no two songs quite alike.

The opener, “Mountain”, leaps forward immediately with maniacal drumming and a rapidly moving blast-front of ripping guitar chords. Sulfurous vocals howl malignantly and a trilling lead guitar spins a melody through the maelstrom. There’s a hard-driving, instrumental-only scorcher of a finish to the song that will get your head nodding, too.

“Oak” sets the hook from the start, with dense, chiming guitars and a super-catchy bass line. In addition to a cascading tide of tremolo melody, the song includes a relatively subdued melodic interlude that features a duet of acoustic and electric guitar with a Spanish flair (or at least that’s what jumped to my mind). Overall, it’s a rolling, rocking track that’s infectious as hell. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM DEPHOSPHORUS, GREAT FALLS, AND AEGAEON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 082012
 

If the name Dephosphorus rings a bell, it may be because Phro recently reviewed this Greek band’s April 2012 split with Wake (here). Yesterday, thanks to a tip from NCS kvrmvdgeon KevinP, I found out that the band have finished recording a debut album called Night Sky Transform, the cover to which you can see above.

The album will be released soon on heavy vinyl by the underground German distro 7 Degrees Records. Two songs from the album are now streaming on the Dephosphorus Bandcamp page (here) — “Cold Omen” and “Uncharted”.

But that’s not all.  In June, Dephosphorus participated in a 7″ split with a Seattle band named Great Falls, which is being distributed by a vinyl subscription club called Hell Comes Home. For people like me who are turntable-deprived (yeah, I still haven’t bought one), both bands’ tracks are also streamable and downloadable at the Hell Comes Home Bandcamp page (here).

After the jump, I’ll offer a few words about the music and play the songs for you. Also after the jump: a brand new song from Aegaeon from their forthcoming EP, Being. Continue reading »

BLOG BREAK

 Uncategorized  44 Responses »
Jul 082012
 

Just a heads up to the NCS faithful that things are going to be quieter than usual around our metallic island today and tomorrow. Today is my birthday (please hold your applause), and to celebrate that glorious event Ms. Islander and I are leaving early this morning for the four-hour drive to Kalaloch on the Pacific coast of Washington, about 35 miles south of Forks (yes, that Forks — where the Twilight movies were filmed). It will be my first visit to Washington’s Pacific coast (which is proof that I don’t get out much). We’ll be driving back Monday night.

The park service cabin where we’re staying has no TV, no phones, and most importantly . . . no internet access. That means no blogging for yours truly, no ability to respond to comments on our posts, no ability to receive or answer e-mails. I’m already experiencing withdrawal symptoms and we haven’t even left yet.

I have a couple of posts in the works. If I can get them finished soon, I’ll schedule one to appear today and one to appear on Monday, so we don’t break our streak of adding at least one post per day on every day since NCS debuted in November 2009. But those two posts are all we’ll have here until Tuesday.

Since I’m thinking about milestones today, here are some statistics from Google Analytics about NO CLEAN SINGING: Since we started NCS, we’ve had 450,640 unique visitors to the site from 201 different countries and territories and a total of 1,328,203 page views. 43% of the total visits to our site have come from people in the U.S., with the rest of our top 10 locations (in order) being the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Finland, Sweden, France, The Netherlands, and Italy. Over the last 30 days, we’ve had 37,656 unique visitors and 100,222 page views. Continue reading »

SATURDAY SINGLES FROM MORBUS CHRON AND ERIMHA

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 072012
 

In this post are two new tracks I came across at different times this week that I thought were worth sharing, and now is as good a time as any.

MORBUS CHRON

I never got around to reviewing this Swedish band’s 2011 debut album, Sleepers In the Rift, but I sure as hell did enjoy it. It was a real throw-back, as in throwing all the way back to Autopsy’s first couple of albums. It had a genuine air of authenticity, and the songs were really varied and just a whole helluva lot of fun to hear.

In March of this year, Century Media announced they had signed Morbus Chron, with plans to release a second full-length in 2013. To tide fans over until then, Morbus Chron recorded a three-song EP — A Saunter Through the Shroud — that Century Media will be releasing in limited numbers on July 23 as a 10″ vinyl. The cover art is above. For now, it appears the EP can only be obtained by pre-order from the European site for CM Distro here.

Earlier this week, the German Rockhard magazine web site (here) premiered a song from the EP called “Channeling the Numinous”. It begins with an attention-grabbing drum roll and a blast of chainsaw grinding and then it falls off a cliff into a pit of slowly boiling gore, spiced with death-prog guitar leads, ghastly mid-range vocals, and a head-whipping solo. Awesome song. Give it a spin after the jump.

Continue reading »

SATURDAY MORNING IS FRIDAY NIGHT, EXCEPT WITH MORE VOMIT AND LIGHT

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jul 072012
 

I apologize to all of our faithful readers. I usually put our first-of-the-day posts to bed the night before, so that I can sleep like a disgusting sloth with mouth open and drool oozing like alien slime while people in some time zones even earlier than mine read what I wrote the night before.

BUT, tonight there’s a catch to those best-laid plans: I’m too fucked up to write much on this Friday night, but I still intend to sleep like someone in cryosleep a century from now on their way to Alpha Centauri.

Which means I just have a few quick pieces of metal, some news that involves free music, and very few other words. And with luck, my wife won’t wake up in the night and decide the time has finally come to string me up by my ankles and bathe in my gore, and I’ll be able to correspond with you again on the morrow. And if there are no more posts on Saturday besides this one, you’ll know my luck ran out.

AUROCH

Not long ago we featured the dark, eye-catching artwork for the new album by Vancouver’s Auroch. Today (or from the perspective of you as you read this, yesterday), they or their label chose to premier a track on Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, which as far as I can tell didn’t even give them their own unique post, instead including their track in a player that begins with Testament. Who am I to question such decisions? Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 25: THUS DEFILED

 THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Jul 062012
 

(Andy Synn finishes his unofficial UK week of reviews with this latest installment of THE SYNN REPORT, focusing on the UK’s Thus Defiled.)

Recommended for fans of: Dissection, Immortal, Absu

Black as night, black as pitch, blacker than the foulest witch… That truly sums up the ethos of Thus Defiled, an arcane amalgamation of death metal filth and black metal fury.

Formed back in 1992 and with four albums to their name – the most recent of which was released back in 2007 – the group have been largely inactive in recent years, which is a shame, as the world needs more of the musical magick that is unleashed when the members of Thus Defiled come together.

From their beginnings as a raw, death-influenced black metal act, with a slightly lo-fi, but still pretty clear sound, they evolved over time – as all things must – into a darker, more occult proposition, ditching the corpse-paint and gaining some solid thrash and death metal influences in the process. They incorporated these influences into a framework of archly heretical black metal without losing their carefully crafted sense of identity, mastering their art and forcing sound to serve their purpose, rather than to define it. Continue reading »

THINGS I SAW AND HEARD TODAY: RAGNAROK, BOARGAZM, AND SOUTHWICKED

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jul 062012
 

I saw and heard these things today. Don’t worry. I’m omitting the vivid sensory experiences of my bathroom breaks.

RAGNAROK

I saw Ragnarok’s official video for the title track to their 2010 album Collectors of the King. It made an impression mainly because of the music, because I stupidly didn’t hear this album when it was released, or since then. It’s familiar Norwegian black metal, with classic clawing vocals, the muffled blasting of drums and barely audible bass rumbles, and riffs masquerading as dense hornet swarms. This song is a thrashing assault, full of vehemence and vitriol, but it includes cool black ‘n’ roll breaks that will snap your neck and a trilling melody that’s awfully damned catchy.

Shockingly, the well-made video depicts a kind of satanic black mass, with lots of glowing candles, the inverted cross at the altar, and blood glistening wetly on the shadowed face of the “priest”. And what was the girl in the white slip thinking? You just know this isn’t going to end well for her . . . Continue reading »

VAURA: “SELENELION”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  5 Responses »
Jul 062012
 

Here’s how this happened:

In a MISCELLANY post earlier this week I wrote about a NY band named Røsenkøpf (who, btw, I am still really digging). As I usually do, I messaged the band and their label (Wierd Records) about the post, y’know, in order to improve the chances that it would be read by at least two people. I got a nice note back from Pieter at Wierd Records. He suggested that I might also like another Wierd release by a band named Vaura, who he said included members of Dysrhythmia, Gorguts, Kayo Dot, Blacklist, and more, and he kindly shared a download link.

So, I’m a big fan of Dysrhythmia and Gorguts and have been intrigued by the few songs I’ve heard by Kayo Dot, so I downloaded Vaura’s February 2012 debut album, Selenelion, having no more idea about the music than the brief description Pieter provided — an “interesting collision of black metal and ultra dark post punk”.  (I later realized that Vaura had received quite a bit of attention when Selenelion was originally released, and I had overlooked it because . . . well, I’ll explain why later.)

Yesterday I went to the gym. For me, this is not a frequent or regular occurrence, but over the last six or nine months I seem to have acquired a jelly roll around my mid-section, like some alien spawn that burrowed into my navel while I was sleeping off last Thanksgiving’s feed and has been reproducing inside me ever since. Because that tire around my belly that makes me turn away from the mirror in disgust can’t really be me, can it? So I’ve resolved to try and beat that fucker into submission with some brutal iron-pumping.

I like to go to the gym at an hour when the only other gymnasts there are old people trying to loosen up their arthritic limbs in a futile effort to stave off the Grim Reaper, instead of hot chicks who would laugh at me, or worse still, ignore me. But, I still need music when I brutally pump iron, so I won’t hear myself gasping and whimpering like an abused dog. I decided to load up my iPod Shuffle with the Vaura, figuring that if the band included anyone connected with Dysrhythmia and Gorguts, it would give me a good injection of adrenaline, which I would need in order to achieve three repetitions instead of two on the bench press and bust out five sit-up’s instead of four.

Man, did I get a surprise. Continue reading »

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