NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SCALD

Aug 062024

(The comeback album of the Russian epic doom band Scald has been out for 10 days, and to help celebrate the event we’re publishing Comrade Aleks‘ interview with Scald bassist and lyricist Velingor, which occurred not long before the release.)

Scald was a unique and short-lived phenomenon on the Russian scene in the ’90s. The band gathered in Yaroslavl in 1993, but disbanded in 1997 after the tragic death of vocalist Agyl. Scald‘s first and only full-length album, Will of Gods Is a Great Power, was released posthumously on tapes, but it was only in the 2000s, after its release on CD, that the band began to get recognition and reach fans abroad. Their truly epic doom metal with Viking influences in the vein of Bathory sounded expressive, talented, and powerful.

Scald was revived in 2019 on sheer enthusiasm for a single performance at the German Hammer of Doom festival, when Chilean vocalist Felipe Plaza Kutzbach, who lives now in Sweden, volunteered to perform as Scald’s frontman. Felipe sings in two epic doom bands, Capilla Ardiente and Procession, and thrashes with Deströyer 666. He has a wealth of experience, gifted by the [heathen] gods.

With all the difficulties that exist today for international cooperation and adjusted for the covid period, the release of a new Scald album in itself is a real success. That new album, Ancient Doom Metal, picks up where Will of Gods Is a Great Power stopped years ago. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TYPHONIAN — “TOWARDS THE CHAMBER OF THE OMNIPRESENT MIND”

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Aug 052024

Shakespeare famously had one of his characters ask, “What’s in a name?”, suggesting that the naming of things is irrelevant. In the underground domains of metal where many of us spend our listening time, a band’s music is indeed vastly more important than the name they choose for themselves. And yet the name Typhonian is one that seizes attention, at least for some of us who are also drawn to the worlds of mythology — and monsters.

That name most prominently refers to the monstrous serpentine giant Typhon. One of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology, the hundred-headed winged creature sought to overthrow Zeus in a cataclysmic battle, but failed and was cast into deepest Tartarus, or in some accounts buried beneath Mount Etna where it subsequently caused devastating eruptions.

And so, choosing the name Typhonian inevitably sends signals (as you’ll see, so do the names chosen by the band members for themselves in their Typhonian union). But of course the music matters most, and it’s the music of the German band Typhonian that we turn to now. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews No Responses »

Aug 052024

(Andy Synn presents four albums from July which may have passed you by)

So apparently it’s August already? How the hell did that happen?!?

And spare me your scientific hocus-pocus about “the linear passage of time” and “the direction of entropy”… all I know is that it was just yesterday I was doing one of these “Things You May Have Missed” columns for June, and someone needs to answer for where all that time in between went.

Now, I know that there were some people who felt like July was a bit of an “off” month – both in terms of quantity and quality – but I’m here to tell you that those people are fools and not to be trusted.

Heck, I could have done an entire separate piece on “Black Metal You May Have Missed” (in fact, I did just that last week) and the number of artists/albums which ended up on the proverbial “cutting room floor” this month was enough to cause me almost physical pain.

Still, I think you’ll enjoy the four records I’ve selected for this month’s article, which cover a pretty decent spread of styles/genres, meaning there should be something for almost everyone.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OFFICIUM TRISTE

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Aug 052024

(Last week we had the privilege of premiering a powerfully moving song named “Anna’s Woe” from the tremendous new album by the Dutch band Officium Triste, and now we follow that with Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the band’s steadfast vocalist Pim Blankenstein, a discussion that includes insights into that song we premiered, among many other subjects.)

One of the oldest bands on the scene of Netherlands is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year with the release of a new album Hortus Venenum. Officium Triste have consistently and slowly continued to improve their art of death-doom since 1994, and it must be said that the band somehow manages to develop and grow without going beyond the genre’s borders.

Their sixth album The Death of Gaia (2019) turned out to be the best one in their discography, and now it seems that Hortus Venenum surpasses it predecessor. While Transcending Obscurity Records prepares different sorts of the album’s physical releases for September 6th, Hortus Venenum could be found online almost everywhere – an unfortunate sign of our times.

We discussed all of these things with the band’s original vocalist Pim Blankenstein. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SWAMPWORM, ESOCTRILIHUM, ZEIT DER DUNKELHEIT, NOEN HATER OSS, HORRENDA, VICIOUS BLADE

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Aug 042024

It’s been tough sledding to pick music for this Sunday’s column. Not because of moguls — there’s no snow outside here in the Pacific Northwest, other than in the black metal, where it’s always snowing or sleeting somewhere. No, the sledding has been tough for the usual reason — too damn many options and not enough time.

Here’s what I chose for today before being thrown into a drift, head down, ass up. I think they will keep you off-balance.

SWAMPWORM (Germany)

Based on their name you might think Swampworm play some kind of murky, rotten-to-the-core death metal, but on their new EP Architeuthis they instead lay into a blast-furnace discharge of dissonant black metal and ruinous blackened grindcore, but with a few variations along the way. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OPETH, OMINATION, ORANSSI PAZUZU, THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR, AGRYPNIE , MAUL, TRIBULATION

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Aug 032024

Opeth photo by Terhi Ylimäinen

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that I’m starting this Saturday’s roundup with Opeth‘s new song.

Okay, I see no hands. Well, almost none; I see my own because I’m a self-taught typist and therefore hunt and peck.

But I’ll try to be more surprising after we talk about Opeth.

OPETH (Sweden)

Based on the small dose of social media I’ve seen, Opeth‘s first single from their next album is proving to be divisive. (I can only stomach social media in small doses, like beets or eggplant). In one camp are people who are unhappy with the dominating return of Mikael Åkerfeldt‘s death growls for the first time since Watershed. In the other camp are those who’ve welcomed the return with open arms and gleeful grins. Can you guess which camp I’m in? Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: LILLE GRUBER

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Aug 022024

Images courtesy of Laura McCullagh and Slam Dank Productions

(We’re very pleased to present our contributor Vizzah Harri‘s interview of Lille Gruber from Defeated Sanity, with apologies to both of them for our delay in publishing it.)

Defeated Sanity are a jazz ensemble hiding in plain sight as a brutal tech-death band. At this writing they’re currently on their Final Impetus tour to bring to audiences far and wide one more experience of their 2020 opus, The Sanguinary Impetus. Their recent show in Cape Town, South Africa was reviewed here.

It’s certainly not easy to make time on a tour for pesky questions from a sometimes-contributor to a music blog, but Lille Gruber, drummer, songwriter, and founder of Defeated Sanity, took precious time out of his busy schedule to entertain my queries.

For those who don’t know or grew up under a rock like me, Lille Gruber started playing and growling from a really young age. Starting the band with his brother Jonas Gruber and their dad, the late Wolfgang Teske (R.I.P. 2010), it was like growing up with a literal Amadeus as a father.

With family names basically soothsaying where they’d end up seeing as the etymologies date back to people who lived in a hollow… or pit (Gruber), and to console/comfort (Teske); well, they’ve been comforting pit-dwellers since 1993 and aren’t we all the richer for it? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SHEMHAMFORASH — “HEIR OF EMPTINESS (LIVE)”

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Aug 022024

Even for songs that have been out in the world a while, well-made music videos can open doors that listeners haven’t entered before, to find something previously undiscovered that proves to be arresting. That happened to this writer upon viewing and listening to the live video we’re about to premiere, and it will happen to some of you as well (and for those who are already dedicated fans of this band, it will be a welcome gift).

The band in question, Shemhamforash from Guadalajara, Mexico, are making their first appearance at our site, proving that although we make strenuous efforts to cover a multitude of bands, we still inevitably overlook worthy contenders — and the one song featured in today’s video premiere is definitely worthy of attention (ours and yours). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MASSA/GRAF — “GLOBAL/GENOCIDE”

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Aug 022024

Maurice de Jong‘s latest project MASSA/GRAF has me thinking about Lon Chaney, “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. Widely regarded as one of American cinema’s most versatile and powerful actors, Chaney was (as portrayed here) “renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted, characters and for his groundbreaking artistry with makeup”.

De Jong doesn’t have Chaney‘s fame, but he has been a person of prolific musical guises, more than 40 of them according to Metal-Archives, perhaps best known for Gnaw Their Tongues and Cloak of Altering. And many of those guises, like Chaney‘s most famous ones in London After Midnight, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, have been dark, disturbing, even horrifying.

The article linked above includes something the great Ray Bradbury wrote about Chaney:

“He was someone who acted out our psyches. He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen. The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that’s grotesque, that the world will turn away from.”

That too resonates when listening to some of De Jong‘s musical manifestations. (Put aside the fact that all but one of Chaney‘s films were silent movies and that De Jong is a sonic artist.)

What guise has De Jong assumed in MASSA/GRAF and the project’s debut album The/Deholyfied? Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 173): RESPIRE

THE SYNN REPORT 1 Response »

Aug 022024

Recommended for fans of: Envy, Alcest, Mono

This edition of The Synn Report may be a few days late, but since I’ve been waiting a long time to write about this particular band – ever since I first stumbled across their fantastic third album, Black Line, in early 2021, in fact – what’s a few days more?

Blending influences from Post-Hardcore (Envy, Refused, Pg.99), Post-Rock (Mono, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor), and Post-Black Metal (Alcest, Deafheaven, Dawn Ray’d) – which collectively range even further afield to draw from Prog, Screamo, and Shoegaze – the group’s orchestral “post-everything” approach has been blurring genre boundaries for the last decade, with each successive album further showcasing both the breadth of the band’s creative vision and the depth of emotion they’re able to conjure from their instruments.

And with the recent release of their fourth full-length, Hiraeth, now seemed like the perfect time to finally make good on my promise to one day give them their due here at NCS.

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