NO CLEAN SINGING

LISTMANIA

Dec 172010

Be sure to check out our two new posts today (below this one). Here, we have an announcement and an invitation.

The end of the year draws nigh, and with it comes lists. Many lists, everywhere you turn. Lists of the best of what 2010 has offered us. Last year, when this site was just an ugly, smelly baby a few days old, we wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were the year’s best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

My original collaborators and I don’t do a year-end “best albums” list for NCS. It’s just too damned much work. We listened to a mountain-sized pile of new music this year, we liked a helluva lot of it, and trying to decide which 10 or 15 or even 20 albums were the best we heard would be a bunch of effort we’d rather devote to coming up with new posts for this site. Plus, the music we like is so varied that trying to compare this apple to that orange and decide which one tastes better is a very confusing enterprise.

But mainly, we’re just too fucking lazy.

Fortunately, we have some regular contributors who have more energy, and we’ll be publishing their year-end lists beginning next week. We’ll also have our own list of the extreme metal songs from 2010 that we thought were the most infectious. We did that last year, but this year’s list will be even more ambitious.

But we ain’t stopping there. If YOU have made your own mental list of the best metal albums you heard this year, we want to see it. Because we’re fucking nosy like that. (details about this invitation are after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: WE’RE FINNISHED

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Dec 172010

Finland Tribute Week started on a lark, and then took on a life of its own. One week of Finnish metal turned into two weeks, and it could easily continue for many more days. But all good things must come to an end. Among other things, this good year for metal is coming to an end, and you know what that means: Year-end lists. We have some for you, beginning on Monday.

Looking back on Finland Tribute Week: Finland has produced a rich variety of metal, and we’ve done our weak-minded best to provide a sense of that. We’ve covered an array of melodic death metal, funeral doom, black metal, humppa metal, folk/pagan metal, battle metal, cello metal, monster metal, and more. Undoubtedly, we will have fucked up in the eyes of many of you by neglecting bands we should have written about. That’s to be expected: “Disappointing” is our middle name (one of many).

We’ve been scratching our pointy heads about what to do in this final post — our last chance before this series ends to highlight Finnish metal bands. We’ve been holding on to one well-known band that’s a favorite of your three NCS co-founders — Swallow the Sun. So,we’ll lead with that. Then we’ll move on to another band we didn’t know about before starting this series, but that many of you have recommended to us: Fall of the Leafe.

And then we’ll finn-ish off this series by doing what we’ve tried to do consistently since the beginning of NCS — tell you about bands you may never have heard of that hit our sweet spot, including promising bands just getting their start. The ones we’ve picked, somewhat randomly, for this wrap-up are Depressed Mode, Nation Despair, and -1 World. Lots of music to cover. Therefore, we will have few words (yeah, we know that will come as a shock). We will let the music speak for itself — after the jump. Continue reading »

CHRISTMAS CHEER FROM SEPTIC FLESH (AND LOTS OF ART FROM SETH SIRO ANTON)

Metal News 18 Responses »

Dec 162010

What? You thought we’d let you forget? Perish the thought. Yes, the new Septic Flesh single that we told you was on the way is now out and available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon MP3.

This time of year, various metal artists release songs to commemorate “the holiday season”, but not many release one like this. Odds are, you won’t be hearing “Vampire From Nazareth” mixed in with the carols at the mall. Or mixed in with carols anywhere else.

It starts with a brief symphonic overture and a soprano vocal and then the song kicks into gear. It’s bombastic, and dark, and furious, and melodic. As was true on the band’s last album, Communion, Septic Flesh employs a full orchestra to add symphonic elements, without losing the intensity of its blackened death-metal assault. It makes us even more hungry for the new album scheduled for arrival on April 18, 2011 (one day later in the U.S.).

By the way, in case you don’t know, Seth Siro Anton, who’s the bassist and vocalist for Septic Flesh, is also quite a talented artist. Not only did he create that eye-catching artwork for the “Vampire” single up above, he has created album covers and merch art for many, many other bands you’ve heard of, and what he does never fails to be visually arresting.

As you know, album art is a big deal to us at NCS — an aspect of metal music we hope never dies out despite the dominance of download culture. Periodically, we devote our blog space to featuring metal album art from artists whose work we admire. Today seemed like a good day to do that for the work of Mr. Anton. So, get an eyeful after the jump, and for even more examples, visit his MySpace page. And just in case Septic Flesh is new to you, we’ve added one of the songs from Communion just before the artwork. Continue reading »

FUCKING DEATH METAL: NOX AND DISPARAGED

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 37 Responses »

Dec 162010

Oh, the things I do as a result of my borderline OCD affliction. Earlier this morning, I posted the next-to-last feature in our Finland Metal Week tribute, and for the sake of being complete, we focused that post on Apocalyptica, Nightwish, and Lordi. Why did we do that? Because they’re globally popular (massively so), they’re sort of metal, and they’re from Finland.

But really, what were we thinking? This site is called NO CLEAN SINGING. Early on, we defined our main focus as extreme metal of the kind that’s fast, brutal, cathartic. Sure, we don’t limit ourselves to the core NCS musical style — as witnessed by lots of the bands we’ve featured in our Finland Tribute Week posts. But at the same time, we don’t want to give people the wrong impression. As far as music goes, most of the time, this is not a nice place to visit, and we’ve never let “popularity” define the music we feature.

We got a reminder of just how far around the bend we’ve gone from this comment yesterday by one of our long-time, bloody-minded readers, Aaron: “Jesus christ this week has been a fucking long one. I haven’t liked a single band you’ve talked about. Nope, not even Children of Bodom.” Man, that was a wake-up call — one we’re answering.

So while we’re featuring Apocalyptica, Nightwish, and Lordi today — for the sake of obsessive completeness — we need to give ourselves, and maybe some of you, a couple of shots of acid, with a paint-remover chaser. Y’know, just to cleanse the palatte.

Just a couple of quick shots to scour out the inside of our craniums (and yours) and make the blood run in crimson rivulets from our ears and allow us to rage at the skies. Just a couple of songs from the likes of NOX and Disparaged. (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: APOCALYPTICA, NIGHTWISH, AND LORDI

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 32 Responses »

Dec 162010

We’re down to our last two posts in this Finland Tribute “Week” series. Today, for the sake of completeness, we’re betraying the title and thematic focus of this site. Of the three bands we’re writing about today, only one — Apocalyptica — is a band whose music is on our personal playlists, and none of them fits our definition of extreme. But in terms of global appeal, they’re certainly among the most popular quasi-metal acts to come out of Finland in the last decade. So, we’re paying respect to them through this post. While gritting our teeth. For the sake of completeness.

APOCALYPTICA

Apocalyptica started in 1993 when four classically trained cellists at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki started playing Metallica songs on their cellos. They released a debut album in 1996 (Plays Metallica by Four Cellos), consisting entirely of Metallica covers. Their second album, Inquisition Symphony (1998) included more Metallica covers, plus songs by Faith No More, Sepultura, and Pantera. As fun as it was to hear metal songs covered by cellists, many people (including us) thought this would be a one-and-done novelty act.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. The third album (Cult, 2000) included mainly original songs, and the fourth one (Reflections, 2003) was nothing but original tunes and included drums along with the cellos (with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo providing the drum tracks). Guest vocalists began to appear on the band’s albums, which led to even greater heights of sky-rocketing popularity. Now, with nine albums in their discography (including a couple of “best of” releases), the band has sold over three million records worldwide and has played somewhere in the vicinity of 1,000 concerts in 50 countries. Some novelty act.

We’ve seen Apocalyptica in concert twice, and their shows are massively entertaining. The live productions are slick, but these dudes work their butts off on stage, and the fun they have while playing is irresistibly infectious. And yes, a lot of their music legitimately qualifies as metal, despite the hard-rock feel of most of those songs with guest vocalists. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THIS WILL SELL BIG IN THE RED STATES

Metal News 7 Responses »

Dec 152010

That eye-catching cover up there is for a new digital single that Greek symphonic black metal band Septic Flesh will be releasing on Friday. The single is called “The Vampire From Nazareth”. I wonder who that refers to?

Septic Flesh’s new album, as yet unnamed, will hit the stores on April 18, 2011 (one day later in the U.S.) in various editions. It will include orchestral elements provided by the Filmharmonic Orchestra of Prague, and it was produced by none other than Pain/Hypocrisy mainman Peter Tägtgren (who’s done similar duties for the likes of Amon Amarth, Marduk, Therion, Children of Bodom, Celtic Frost, and Immortal).

The last album from Septic Flesh, 2008’s Communion, was just all kinds of awesome. We’ll be very interested to hear this new single. Don’t worry — we’ll probably remind you again on Friday.

THE MAN-EATING TREE: A NEW SONG

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Dec 152010

We’re not doing a Finland Tribute Week post today because we’re working on the final two posts in the series for tomorrow and Friday. We tried to bribe your patience with a THAT’S METAL! post. Can’t hurt to sweeten the bribe, though. So here’s news about a new song from The Man-Eating Tree.

The Man-Eating Tree are from Finland, so we do have that connection to our ongoing tribute. They feature former Sentenced drummer Vesa Ranta plus current or former members of Poisonblack, Reflexion, and Embraze. We first listened to their music for a MISCELLANY post we did back in August (here), and liked what we heard, even though their brand of atmospheric, cleanly sung metal isn’t what we usually consume. When we started the Finland tribute series, we found out that a lot of you really like this band.

So, you might be interested to know that Century Media is making available a new song from the band available for free download. It’s called “Vultures”, and it post-dates the music recorded for the band’s September 2010 debut, Vines. If you want to get it, go here. But be forewarned — you have to share a link on Facebook or Twitter to get the download, i.e., help Century Media publicize the band. The download link will be active until December 31.

If you’re not crazy about the terms of exchange for that download, just wait a few hours, and someone will surely put the track up on YouTube. In the meantime, all you tree-like man-eaters out there might like the video we’ve got after the jump. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 23)

That's Metal -- But It's Not Music 4 Responses »

Dec 152010

We haven’t run one of these THAT’S METAL! posts since Thanksgiving, what with our fixation on all things Finnish since then, and we thought it was time once again to check in with the world as it exists outside our metallic island. (Finland Tribute “Week” isn’t done. We’re just taking a short, one-day break while we work on the wrap-up to that series — one more post tomorrow and the final installment on Friday.)

Some of today’s items we saw a while ago and squirreled away for future use and some we just discovered. But they all made us say, “Fuck — that’s metal!”, even though they’re not music. Well, a couple of them do involve music, but it’s not the music that makes them metal.

Because we haven’t done one of these posts in weeks, we’ve got quite a lot of goodies in the grab bag — a trifecta of stories which prove that cars are fun for people of all ages; an eye-popping video that vividly reminds us, “yes, it does snow in Minneapolis in the wintertime”; and an unusual medley of tunes from The Wizard of Oz.

But first, we have a story about the perils of French kissing. All this, plus our typically tasteless commentary, after the jump . . . Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: SENTENCED, STONE, AND OMNIUM GATHERUM

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 15 Responses »

Dec 142010

We’ve learned a thing or two about Finnish metal in the course of writing this series. For example, we learned about two home-grown bands who were especially influential in the progression of metal in Finland, even though they are no longer active: Sentenced and Stone. Those are two of the bands we’re focusing on today. (In other words, it’s time for all Finnish metal nerds to geek out.) The third is a somewhat more recent player in the scene that your NCS co-authors really, really like: Omnium Gatherum. (We are not geeks — at least not all the time.)

SENTENCED

Sentenced released their debut album in 1991. In the decade and a half, or thereabouts, that followed, the band produced seven more albums before announcing in 2005 that The Funeral Album would be their last. They played their final show on October 1, 2005, in Oulu, and the concert was filmed and later released on DVD under the title Buried Alive.

Guitarist and founding member Miika Tenkula died less than three years later, his premature death brought on by a congenital heart condition. The surviving members of Sentenced have continued their careers in other bands, including Poisonblack, KYPCK, and The Man-Eating Tree.

Particularly in their earlier years, Sentenced played an important role in the creation of melodic death metal, paving the way for bands like Children of Bodom by conjoining death-metal aggression with irresistible melodic (and often melancholy) passages. And yet, many people would say (and have said) that their 1995 album Amok is the band’s crowning achievement, and it’s debatable whether “melodic death metal” is a fitting label for it.

(more after the jump . . .)

NCS INTERVIEW: SKELETONWITCH

Interviews 7 Responses »

Dec 132010

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to our latest Finland Tribute Week post (below this one), today we also have another contribution from our Midwestern correspondent BadWolf — this time, a most entertaining interview with guitarist Scott Hedrick from a most awesome band, Skeletonwitch.]

The following interview with Ohio thrashers Skeletonwitch was conducted on November 20, 2010 at Frankie’s Inner City in Toledo, Ohio by BadWolf.

S-My name is Scott Hedrick; I play guitar in Skeletonwitch.

BW-Rhythm or lead?

S-Both. We trade off and on.

BW-I love twin lead guitars.

S-I don’t think there’s any reason to have one lead or one rhythm player. We [Nate Garnette and I] have different styles of rhythm and of soloing, so I think it makes it more diverse—and we can do harmonized leads too.

BW-The old-school thing, the Iron Maiden thing.

S-I love it. Some of my favorite guitarists are Tipton and Downing from Judas Priest, the Iron Maiden players, Sharmann and Denner from Mercyful Fate. My favorite players are teams of players, so it makes sense that we would do the same thing.

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