NO CLEAN SINGING

A PREVIEW (JUST IN CASE YOU THINK WE’RE FUCKING OFF)

Dec 202011

Most people are starting to take a break from their usual daily grind this time of year. School is out for most studious types, working stiffs are about to get some days off, and those who are independently wealthy are continuing to do independently wealthy things, but more so. But not your friends at NO CLEAN SINGING. We are not — I repeat, not — fucking off. There will be no breaks, no dead days, no holiday filler at NCS.

To the contrary, we’re drowning in good content at the moment. Here’s a taste of what’s to come between now and the end of the year:

We will have more year-in-review posts, including more best-album lists from musicians you’ve heard of and guest posts from our more avid readers, plus BadWolf’s Best of 2011 list (in two parts) and a continuation of TheMadIsraeli’s reviews (or re-reviews) of the best albums he heard in 2011.

We will have some interesting interviews, including one tomorrow of the mastermind behind that Swedish band who coined That Word, which I’m trying not to over-use becauth it doeth thomething funny to my mouth, and a BadWolf interview coming your way on Thursday of the driving force behind a band whose recent release has been popping up on a shit-ton of Year’s Best lists.

Andy Synn has promised us a special SYNN REPORT to close out 2011 plus (with luck) two more album reviews. We’ll have some opinion pieces that we expect will provoke discussion. We’ll continue to report on new music we find interesting. And beginning next week, I’ll start rolling out my list of 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

And last but not least, we will have an exclusive song premiere that we’re very excited about. In fact, we will be unveiling that particular piece of psychopathic viciousness tomorrow. So, stay tuned. Like your creepy uncle who shows up uninvited for holiday dinners, we’re not going anywhere.

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC (NEKROMANTHEON, KRODA, AND INTERVALS)

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Dec 202011

Here are a few things I saw and heard last night and this morning that I thought were worth your time.

Of course, I don’t know exactly what you do with your time, or how valuable your time is, or what potentially horrible consequences might result if you spent time listening to this music instead of doing what you would be doing if you weren’t listening to this music. So, I guess you could say I’m being presumptuous. I prefer to believe that I’m enriching your miserable lives with the beauty and joy of good metal, compared to which most things are drab and stultifying, including your lives.

ITEM ONE: NEKROMANTHEON

This item came my way from KevinP, who believes that I do not need erectile dysfunction drugs because I pop wood over almost every metal band on the planet. He sent me a link about a band named Nekromantheon. The fact that I like their music in no way validates his own opinion about it, because my own standards are so low. Perhaps sending me links such as this is KevinP’s subtle way of trying to raise my standards. If so, that’s a mission doomed to failure. I like what I like, and if you don’t like it, fuck you. (I’m not talking about YOU when I say that; I’m referring to that one person who stopped reading NCS because he thought my standards were too low. Of course, there’s only one such person, ever, or ever will be.)

Nekromantheon is from Norway and the style of their music is a certain kind of thrash. But it’s not let’s-get-drunk-and-fuck thrash. It’s more like let’s-find-innocent-children-and-sacrifice-them-to-Cthulhu thrash. Continue reading »

THE 2011 TOP 10 of VAN666 (ARCHITECTURE OF AGGRESSION)

Listmania 4 Responses »

Dec 202011

(Architecture of Aggression is a South African band who’ve been creating massive, bone-grinding, head-spinning, technically inventive, progressive death metal for more than 16 years (check out this post if they’re a name you don’t recognize). I asked one of the band’s co-founders, Van Zyl Alberts (aka Van666) to contribute to our year-end series of posts on 2011’s best metal, and here’s his list of recommendations.)

1. Pestilence – Doctrine

Brilliant, epic, powerful, technical, and catchy, with great crushing riffs, and jazzy bass lines and guitar solos. A modern Classic. Like a slow cancer that consumes your body, Pestilence reminds everybody that playing as fast as humanly possible, which is the modern trend, doesn’t necessarily make you more heavy. For fans of Old School Death Metal. Continue reading »

KENNETH PARKER (ARKHUM) AND IZEDIS (ENBILULUGUGAL) DISCUSS THE MYSTERIES OF THE GOATSERPENT

Interviews 7 Responses »

Dec 202011

EDITOR’S FORWARD: Beloved readers, allow me to make a few introductions. Kenneth Parker is the vocalist for Arkhum, a Portland-based metal band we’ve written about frequently (most recently, here). Izedis is the vocalist and bass player for Enbililigugal, a self-described apokalyptic black noise band from the nether regions of California with “an insane vision of Frostfucked Black Metal Goatsodomy.” His bandmates are known as KumSlinger and Alcoholonomicon. Recently, Kenneth Parker interviewed Izedis for NCS, because, to be brutally honest, I was too fucken scared to do it myself.

Kenneth: It’s been quite a length of time since the release of your full-length, Noizemongers for GoatSerpent. Any plans, immedidate or otherwise, to unleash a second album?

Izedis: When the GoatSerpent commands, there is a feeling in which you get where you spontainiously combust in orgasmic fecaltude. The Full Length is called “The Day After” and in which it shows the destruction of this thing in the world called human beings, there is a sense of calm in the deaths. This is why there are many ways to interperate this blank expression of cunt noise. To tell you the truth, there is nothing that can be done to passify the trends from within the scenes of the mules known as consumers, so we just give it to the public the way they see it, no sense of hope. After this, the full length has no name but is in the works with Alcoholonomicon. KumSlinger made “The Day After” into a. And within this the senses will tell you to pull away and take the high road with The GoatSerpent. Run for the mountains now. Continue reading »

DYSCARNATE

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Dec 192011

I decided I couldn’t leave that last post sitting at the top of this page for the next 15 hours until we start tomorrow’s postings. Someone might get the wrong idea about what this blog is all about or, worse yet, about my sexual prowess. Someone might come away with the impression that I need ED drugs. Ha ha! That would be, like, a total misimpression, 180 degrees off course, really wrong-headed, and just a dumb idea. Wrong. And dumb.

But still, I decided to put something up here for overnight, and what I picked was a song called “A Drone In the Hive” by a three-piece UK death metal band called Dyscarnate. Their second album, And So It Came To Pass, will be released on Feb 27 by Siege of Amida Records, and this song is from that album. It debuted on their Facebook page.

The album art is very cool. It’s by Valnoir Mortasonge of Metastazis, who has done covers for the likes of The Black Dahlia Murder, Morbid Angel, and Watain. The band recorded the album with Chris Fielding at Foel Studio in Wales, and it was mixed and mastered by Jacob Hansen (Aborted, Xerath) in Denmark.

So after the jump, check out the song and let us know what you think. Continue reading »

ROD SOFTNESS ELIMINATION AWAITS!

IQ Subtraction 15 Responses »

Dec 192011

FINALLY! After those dozens of e-mails I’ve received from Africans offering me ridiculous sums of money, fully loaded bags of gold dust, pre-funded ATM cards, and other forms of wealth in return for my personal details, I’m now starting to get e-mails from new friends offering other benefits. It’s about fucking time, because not one of those other motherfuckers has yet sent me a dime, despite the fact that I’ve replied to them quickly and sincerely and given them all the personal info they requested.

Here’s an intriguing message I got over the weekend from a helpful guy named Fritz Fish. I thought it would be good because of the alliterative name. When I replied to his message, I decided to just interlineate my responses in his message and send it back.

From: Fritz Fish
Subject: Overcome rod’s softness
Date: December 18, 2011 1:46:18 AM PST
To: Islander <islander@nocleansinging.com>

– There is no reason to feel depressed if you, like so many other men today, have hit the rough spot of your sexual life when you cannot seem to be performing as well as you used to do. Your agitation and frustration are easily understood, and still you should know that with the modern development of worldwide pharmacological industries it is but natural that there is bound to be a solution for your own needs when it comes down to solving your erectile dysfunction problems.

Dude, thanks so much for your interest in NO CLEAN SINGING and in the state of my mental and penile health. You’re like some kind of fucken mind-reader! How did you know I’d hit a rough spot in my sexual life? I’ve been so agitated and frustrated lately that I can hardly hit the bowl when I take a piss. I’m like painting the goddamned floor and walls all around the shitter with my piss. But I tell you what, I’m already getting rigid just knowing about the modern development of worldwide pharmacological industries and their solutions for my own needs.

NOCTEM: THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2011

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Dec 192011

(As we continue to barrel ahead toward the end of 2011, we continue our Listmania series, looking back on the year’s best metal. In this post, we have two lists of favorite albums from members of Spain’s Noctem — lead guitarist Exo and vocalist Beleth. Noctem is one of our favorites here at NCS — check out Andy Synn’s review of their fantastic 2011 album here and his interview of Beleth here, and you can watch their new music video for “The Arrival of the False Gods” in this post.)

EXO

1-Obscura – Omnivium

Really liked their previous album, but this one blew my mind, really complex and original at the same time.

2-Decapitated – Carnival Is Forever

These Polish guys still impress me. This album sounds more modern and includes some kind of hardcore influences. The result of a brutal procreation between old Decapitated and Meshuggah. Continue reading »

AMORPHIS DEATHMATCH – Rules and Round One

Album Reviews 19 Responses »

Dec 192011

(We now haz our own version of MMA: Trollfiend and Amorphis going head-to-head in a cage match from which only one will walk away. Ladies and germs, place your bets!)

There’s been a lot of talk around the NCS chambers lately about whether or not an artist has the right to radically change everything about their music (they do) and whether or not we as fans should support them or heap massive amounts of hatred and ridicule upon them (we should – ideally, both). This kind of talk inevitably leads (in my tiny, pea-sized Trollbrain) to the band Amorphis.

I fucking loved Amorphis when they first came on the scene way back in 1992 (that’s 19 years for those of you keeping track) with their wacky, zany, combination of folk-scented melodeath. In that nearly two decades they have released 2 demos, 3 EPs, 10 studio albums, 11 singles, 11 videos, 3 compilation albums and a DVD. But somewhere around the third album the love affair ended, and I felt betrayed and abused because they went off in a completely different direction than I was expecting. They grew and changed and went through a dozen lineups and did some weird jazz fusion thing and lost their growled vocals and kind of came back halfway and then… I don’t know. All I do know is that I was left at the prom in my robin’s-egg-blue silk tux holding a bouquet of wilted roses and a used condom while they roared off in their Trans Am and never called me again.

But I’m starting to think that maybe I didn’t give them a fair shake. In my defense, this was right around the time I was getting into black metal, so their artistic meanderings were that much more jarring in contrast. And several NCS contributors have lately made me question my rigid stance on just how much the artists owe to their audience. So there is really only one solution, which is how I solve all major and minor conflicts in my daily life: gladiatorial bloodsport.

That’s right. I, Trollfiend, will go head-to head with Amorphis’ complete studio discography in a bloody, no holds (or holes) barred, teeth-and-nails combat that will only end when one of us is lying bleeding on the sand frantically trying to stuff our intestines back into a gaping gut-wound. Continue reading »

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 13 Responses »

Dec 192011

There’s now extensive evidence that hundreds of millions of years ago, all of Earth’s continents were joined together in one “super-continent” that scientists call Pangaea. Over immense periods of time, Pangaea divided into two smaller super-continents called Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Those giant land masses eventually divided into the continents we see today, and they have been drifting apart ever since, through the operation of plate tectonics.

Less than hundreds of millions of years ago, I listened to a shit-ton of melodic metalcore. In fact, it made up a significant majority of the metal I used to crank up on a daily basis. It was like a big land-mass of music where I lived. Over time, I’ve steadily drifted away from it, to the point where I almost never listen to it at all. I’ve moved away from it, or it moved away from me, and there’s now an ocean between us. The genre became saturated, but in my case, the main explanation is that my tastes changed.

It’s not enough to say that melodic metalcore stagnated, though it has. I now listen to genres of metal that haven’t changed much more than metalcore has changed over the same period of time, or even longer (old-school death metal anyone?). My tastes have simply moved in the direction of more extreme music.

One of the melodic metalcore bands whose albums I used to eagerly consume as they came out was Germany’s Caliban. They’ve been putting out albums since 1999, and they still are. The latest (their 8th) is called I Am Nemesis, and it’s scheduled for a North American release by Century Media on Feb. 28, 2012. This morning, the band released an official music video for the first single, “Memorial”. For Caliban, time has stood still. Continue reading »

THE TOP 10 LIST OF TAMÁS KÁTAI (THY CATAFALQUE)

Listmania 11 Responses »

Dec 192011

(Tamás Kátai is the man behind a Hungarian band called Thy Catafalque, whose fifth album Rengeteg is one of my favorite recordings of the year, for reasons I’ll be explaining in a forthcoming review. Also, a song from that album will appear soon on our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. So of course, as part of our Listmania series, I asked Tamás to contribute his list of the year’s best albums — and here we have it.)

10. Baaba Kulka – Baaba Kulka

A Polish band with early Iron Maiden covers up to Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son album. Why it’s interesting and worthy of note is that they handle the task with exceptional freedom and taste. My faves are the trip-hopish “Aces High” and the beautifully low-key “Flight Of Icarus”. True Warriors Of Heavy Metal keep out!

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