NO CLEAN SINGING

CATTLE DECAPITATION: ALBUM TITLE, COVER ART, TRACK LIST, A NEW SONG, AND MORE

Mar 192012

Three years have passed since Cattle Decapitation released The Harvest Floor. Yesterday, a landslide of information about Cattle Decap’s next album — Monolith of Inhumanity — hit the band’s SMN News Official Message Board. Where to start?

Well, how about that album cover by Wes Benscoter. It connects to a concept unveiled in the album’s lyrics, or so we’re told. Presumably, more information about the concept will be coming, but for now there is this snippet of lyrics I saw on a recent Facebook status: “Through the rise of technology / We lost our humanity / Trashheap lobotomy / Self-imposed sodomy”

We also now have the album’s track list:

1. The Carbon Stampede
2. Dead Set on Suicide
3. A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat
4. Forced Gender
5. Gristle Licker
6. Projectile Ovulation
7. Do Not Resuscitate
8. Lifestalker
9. Your Disposal
10. The Monolith
11. Kingdom of Tyrants

I think my favorite title is “A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat”. Coincidentally, that’s also the first song from the album to become available for streaming — and of course you can hear it after the jump. But first, a word about guest appearances. Continue reading »

PROMETHEUS

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Mar 182012

Until today I didn’t know much about the forthcoming movie Prometheus. A lot of info has become available, but I wasn’t paying attention to it. I knew what I needed to know — that it was a sci-fi film and that Ridley Scott directed it. A sci-fi film made by the director of Alien and Blade Runner, and his first return to the sci-fi genre that launched his career in almost 30 years? Fuck yes, that’s a movie I was going to see, regardless of plot, actors, reviews.

Today I saw the first official trailer for Prometheus, thanks to a tip from Quigs. My reaction — the first two words that came to mind? “Holy shit.” It’s visually stunning, and the bits of story line that emerge are intriguing, to say the least. The trailer is also intense, and there’s a lot of screaming at the end. There was a lot of screaming when I saw Alien for the first time, too, most of it coming from me.

Having been sucked in this far, I decided to read more about the movie. It stars Noomi Rapace, (who was great in the Swedish original of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Michael Fassbender (who was great as Magneto in X-Men: First Class), Guy Pearce (who was great in Memento, L.A. Confidential, and everything else he’s done), Idris Elba (from The Wire), and Charlize Theron (who has been great in everything of hers I’ve seen, especially Monster and In the Valley of Elah).

So, lots of great actors. The plot also sounds interesting. Although originally conceived as a prequel to Alien, it has evolved into something more, though still set in the same universe as Alien. Continue reading »

HAPPY HANGOVER DAY!!

Phro's Posts, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 14 Responses »

Mar 182012

(Phro saves the day! Correctly guessing that your humble editor would roll out of bed this morning hung over and without anything to post at NCS, he wrote this and left it waiting in my e-mail in-box . . .)

How’s the hangovers, motherfuckers???

Islander seemed like he wasn’t expecting to be fully operational today, what with his liquid cephalic medicinal procedure expecting to go all night. (Although, inquiring minds would still like to know how a headless Glorious Leader from 2199 is able to both survive without a steady supply of monkey blood AND run the greatest, most amazingest, mindblowingly stupendous blog in the universe. The official Phro guess is anabolic steroids and coffee.)

Anyway, I thought I’d write up a quick list of videos I found this morning.

First, DEAtHtUNE (the holy-fuck-his-beard-is-more-awesome-than-ZZ-Top-in-a-headlock-by-a-70s-porn-star Iranian band featured before on NCS, such as here, has a new video. It is bassy as fuck. It’s like Jupiter just strolled over and sat down next to you and crushed you with it’s massive fucking gravity. If your testicles/ovaries don’t swell with excitement, you’re clearly dead and should see a doctor about that. But maybe listen to the song one more time before you go, just to make sure that you were listening properly. Continue reading »

HAPPY GREEN SKULL DAY

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Mar 172012

Man, I overdid it last night. An old friend is getting married today and so a lot of other old friends gathered together to celebrate the occasion by getting completely wrecked. Of course, I know that it’s possible to celebrate joyous events without getting all hammersmashed-face, but I know that as kind of an abstract intellectual concept instead of an actual experience.

And I’m sure that tonight it’s going to happen all over again, especially because the wedding is on St. Patrick’s Day. There’s a reason why green is the color of the day today, and the reason is that St. Patrick’s Day is a big green light for getting wrecked. It’s like coming to a four-way intersection at top speed with a green light ahead of you, except all the other lanes approaching the intersection also have green lights. Fun!

I decided that the only way I was going to survive the experience was by sleeping as much as possible last night after getting to bed about 3 a.m. Which I did. Which is why this post is so late and involves no music. If I don’t get something else done for NSC today, tomorrow is likely to be equally empty of meaningful content. Continue reading »

EVIL SHINE: “THE EVIL ONE”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Mar 162012

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut offering from a Russian band called Evil Shine.)

The Russians are currently producing some of the most interesting music in the metal landscape. The way the scene has exploded in recent years (and especially in recent months) has been quite astounding. I now have another excellent discovery from the land of the former Red Army: Evil Shine.

I recommended the video for the song “I Hate Your Kind” to Islander, and he included it in a post not too long ago. Evil Shine play a style of primal, weighty, beefy, groove metal with a very tribal characteristic to it. This stuff is an acquired taste, but my opinion after several listens to their debut The Evil One is that this is some intense, brutal, terrifying shit.

The opening instrumental simply called “Intro” is a haunting piece that has the oddity of being done using really shitty MIDI. And it works. It’s a very creepy, eerily foreboding piece that leads into the true opener “The Primal Hunger” excellently. In that song, the riffs and drums sound like they’re rising up from a swamp or a sewer full of liquefied human flesh. As it unfolds, the sound is that of a grotesque giant with a jackhammer for one fist and a sledgehammer for the other coming straight at you. Continue reading »

NE OBLIVISCARIS: UPDATE

Metal News 11 Responses »

Mar 162012

Normally, we don’t post a news alert simply because a band has added a new drummer to their line-up or releases a new press photo. But this is Ne Obliviscaris, and their new album has been on my personal “highly anticipated” list since I first found out it had been completed last October.

We originally featured this unsigned Melbourne, Australia band with the mouthful of a name way back in March 2010, focusing on a 2007 demo called The Aurora Veil. The new album is called Portal of I — a 7-track behemoth with a total run-time of more than 1 hour 11 minutes, and it appears from a press release we got this morning that the band is finally on the verge of providing an album release date, plus tour info.

Also, NeO have now found a permanent replacement for their former drummer, Dan Presland, who was involved in recording both the Aurora Veil demo and the forthcoming Portal Of I album. The new hitter is Nelson Barnes, who is also the drummer for Brisbane’s The Schoenberg Automaton — a very interesting band whose music we featured here last June.

Perhaps you still haven’t listened to the music of Ne Obliviscaris, despite the fact that we’ve streamed the first track to be released from Portal of I twice at NCS. Just in case, I’m gonna stream “And Plague Flowers the Kaleidoscope” a third time right after the jump, because pimping this band makes me happy. This song still floors me — it’s so unlike most other metal I hear. I wish I had more tracks to hear without having to wait any longer — but at least that day is finally drawing close.

By the way, the NeO line-up, as pictured above (from left to right) is: Benjamin Baret, Matt Klavins, Tim Charles, Xenoyr, Brendan ‘Cygnus’ Brown, and now Nelson Barnes. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ED WARBY (THE 11TH HOUR, HAIL OF BULLETS, GOREFEST)

Interviews 3 Responses »

Mar 162012

(Guest writer KevinP recently conducted an interview of Dutch multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/songwriter Ed Warby, who is a member of multiple active bands, including The 11th Hour, whose 2012 album Lacrima Mortis was reviewed by Kevin here.)

Everyone knows you from Gorefest and Hail of Bullets. Tell us how The 11th Hour came to be. What was your inspiration and how long did you have this planned (if at all) before it became a reality?

I met Rogga [Johansson] on the Global Domination forums and he asked me if I’d be interested in making some doom together. Somehow this mutated into me joining Demiurg instead, but I liked the idea and started writing on my own. First song I wrote was “One Last Smoke”, which was my take on the ultimate Candlemass type riff and I was quite pleased with the result so I continued, trying different moods and ideas until I had a complete album on my hands. In the meantime I’d seen Krux live for the first time and enjoyed it so much I became even more convinced I had to pursue my doom aspirations. At that point I asked Rogga if he was still interested in participating and the rest as they say is history.

Was there something you felt that you needed to express, that you were not able to do with Hail of Bullets (and your other projects)?

It’s taken a while to admit this to myself, but I guess me starting The 11th Hour had a lot to do with the writing/recording of the last Gorefest album. I wrote about 3/4 of the album, but for some reason this was not to be admitted in interviews and my role was so severely downplayed I got more and more frustrated. It’s not necessary to be praised in each interview or review, but I do believe in credit where credit’s due. So if anything, I wanted to prove to myself that I could in fact write, arrange and record an entire album on my own.

Musically, I wanted to further explore my melancholy side. I sneak a sad melody into a HoB song from time to time, but too much and the other guys will hit the brakes (and rightfully so, brutality and aggression should always be the main focus for the Bullets). In doom, I’m free to write a 9-minute song with elaborate melodic sections to counter the heavy riffage and I really enjoy taking these journeys, letting the song unfurl without any restrictions. Continue reading »

GOROD: “A PERFECT ABSOLUTION”

Album Reviews 22 Responses »

Mar 162012

(groverXIII reviews the new album by Gorod, which will be released by Listenable Records on March 23 in Europe and by Unique Leader on May 8 in North America.)

Holy fuck, I love Gorod.

This is not a new development, of course. I first became a fan back when Process Of A New Decline was released, which just happened to be around the time that I really started getting into technical death metal. I started with Necrophagist and Obscura’s Cosmogenesis, along with Cynic’s Traced In Air, but Process was the first time that tech-death really, truly clicked for me. It wasn’t an immediate thing, of course… it took several listens before the seemingly incomprehensible mass of sweeping and tapping began to make sense, and several more listens before I really started to understand the ridiculously complex song structures, but by then, I was well and truly hooked. Gorod did what I had previously thought impossible by making tech-death catchy.

Since then, I’ve searched for another tech-death band with that same knack for writing those complex, yet unbelievably catchy tunes, and while I have discovered a lot of great bands, none have managed to truly top Process. I imagine that this is somewhat akin to what junkies and serial killers go through, constantly and futilely chasing that initial high. Still, I have one advantage that they don’t have… Gorod could always release an album that manages to outdo themselves, even in my mind.

Is A Perfect Absolution that album? At this point, I’d have to say no. But that’s not to say that this is a bad album; far from it, in fact. A Perfect Absolution is, in my humble opinion, the best tech-death album of a year that’s been very, very good for tech-death. When you consider the fantastic new albums from bands like Spawn Of Possession, Psycroptic, Xenocide, Bloodshot Dawn, Gory Blister, and Innerty, as well as decent releases from the likes of Veil Of Maya, Beneath The Massacre, Ketha, Deformitas Pictura, and Slice The Cake, this is saying quite a bit. It’s not so much a negative statement regarding any of those releases, so much as it is a statement of just how fucking good A Perfect Absolution is. Continue reading »

THE INNER WORKINGS OF NO CLEAN SINGING

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Mar 152012

I’ve been peppered with requests from our vast legion of fanatic fans to provide details about what goes on behind the scenes at NO CLEAN SINGING, begging for insights into how we’re able to produce such consistently amazing content on a daily basis. So, in this post I’m going to tell you.

Okay, “peppered” may be a slight exaggeration. Actually, to be brutally honest, no one asked for this post. I just wasn’t able to listen to any new music in time to write about music this morning, and I usually try to listen to the music I write about (on average, I’ve listened to what I’m reviewing approximately 75% of the time). So I’m doing this instead.

In a nutshell, NCS runs with the precision of a fine Swiss watch — one that went down with The Titanic and has been lying in an ocean trench for 100 years. (And did you know that April 15 will be the 100th anniversary of the sinking of The Titanic?) We have a “staff” of regular writers (Andy Synn, BadWolf, and The MadIsraeli) who send in pieces on a schedule, the schedule being defined as whenever they feel like it. Usually, I don’t know what they’re doing (because I don’t “assign” reviews) or when they will send in a piece. Sometimes they tell me they’re working on a review of XYZ. Most of the time, an article just shows up in my e-mail.

Take yesterday, for example. Yesterday, I found out that Andy Synn is working on a review of Naglfar’s new album, Teras. How did I find out? I happened to see an exchange between Andy and one of his friends on Facebook. That was good timing, since I was only about 90% finished with my own review of Teras. I printed mine and used it for toilet paper. I think it reads better now, but I’ll probably use Andy’s anyway.

Last night I also happened to engage in a brief FB chat with TheMadIsraeli and found out that he was just about finished with a review of the new Ovid’s Withering EP. That was good, because I hadn’t written anything for our first post this morning. It showed up in my e-mail not long after — along with four other reviews. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OVID’S WITHERING – “THE CLOUD GATHERER”

Album Reviews 28 Responses »

Mar 152012

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut EP by Ovid’s Withering.)

Well Trollfiend, you got what you wanted.

Trollfiend asked me after a post of mine a long time ago (I don’t remember which one) if I ever thought Blackened-djent was possible or if I knew any existed. At the time, at least to my knowledge, none existed. That is until now.

Ovid’s Withering are exactly that: Black metal and djent combined to create one of the most epic aural experiences I’ve gone through. I honestly didn’t think it was fucking possible, people, and while this isn’t an entirely pure blackened djent experience (lots of tech death is present as well), a boundary I didn’t think breakable has officially been broken. This band is also quite relevant to my interests, and I assume all of us here at NCS as well — this band has 7 Horns 7 Eyes vocalist JJ “Shiv” Polachek doing his beastly savagery on the mic.

This is Ovid’s Withering’s debut EP, The Cloud Gatherer. Continue reading »

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