Apr 292024
 

Monokrator is the third album by the UK band The Bleeding, and their best yet. Released last summer by Redefining Darkness Records, it garnered heaping helpings of praise across the metalsphere, including from our own Andy Synn. In his review, he wrote that the album “bursts out of the speakers with the frenetic riffs and frenzied blastbeats of ‘Chemical Lobotomy’ and then proceeds to kick ass and take names like the bastard child of The Crown, Cannibal Corpse, and Goatwhore“.

He further acclaimed it as a record that succeeds in “marrying thrashy, galloping rhythms with streams of strangulating tremolo riffage and passages of lurching Death Metal heaviness, all topped off with some seriously sharp, snarling vocal hooks” — “the sort of record – lean, mean, and taking no prisoners – that may well put The Bleeding on the global metallic map where they belong.”

As a reminder of what a kick-ass album Monokrator truly is, or as an introduction to people who might have overlooked it, what we have for you today is the premiere of an official video for that song that launches the album in such exhilarating fashion — “Chemical Lobotomy“. Continue reading »

Apr 292024
 

Consider the name chosen by the Salvadoran band Satanic Priest. Then consider the name they chose for their forthcoming debut album: …Of Blasphemies and Lust, which fittingly will be released by a UK label named Vicious Witch. Then add to that the album’s cover art, and the fact that their brand of music is a flame-throwing, turbocharged amalgam of black thrash and speed metal.

All these signs point to an unpretentious old-school devotion to all things 666 and an equal devotion to alcohol-fueled, pedal-to-the-metal sonic barbarity geared toward giving listeners an adrenaline rush. What you might not guess so far, but what you’ll figure out when you listen to the song we’re premiering today with a lyric video, is that Satanic Priest are also fiendishly good songwriters. Continue reading »

Apr 292024
 

(Daniel Barkasi has brought us a fantastic interview with Enrico Schettino from the Italian death metal powerhouse Hideous Divinity, whose newest album, reviewed at NCS here, is out now on Century Media Records.)

Some have been calling recent times a sort of death metal renaissance. It’s true that an enormous amount of quality releases from bands old and new have been laying waste to our eager ears in the last few trips around the calendar. Hell, the sheer volume of new bands churning out innovative metal of the deathly variety alone has been inspiring. Death metal’s future is indeed strong. Ever leading the charge of the upper echelon is Rome’s Hideous Divinity.

Ever since their first foray Obeisance Rising in 2012, the band hasn’t slowed down a whole lot, dropping four albums that have continuously set high standards for both themselves and their peers. On to album number five, we have Unextinct, which stands out as their most ambitious, from a band who haven’t quite sat still record to record. It’s a massive album that goes straight for the throat, all while displaying multiple layers of intricate craftsmanship that adds significantly to the whole.

We got the opportunity to have a chat with lead vocalist Enrico Schettino on a myriad of subjects. From the obvious regarding all aspects of Unextinct, the absolutely wild “Against the Sovereignty of Mankind” throat cam video, what’s next (including a hint of an upcoming tour), and an odd question to attempt a practical joke on their incredibly cool manager Tito. We hope you enjoy – and pick up the damn album! Continue reading »

Apr 292024
 

(Andy Synn invites you all to get crushed by the new album from Belgian brutalists Storm Upon the Masses)

Did you know that, according to leading medical professionals, just 30-40 minutes of brutality a day can lead to drastic improvements in your physical fitness, me(n)tal health, and even your sex life?

It’s true!

So, if you were put off by Aborted‘s slight turn towards the ‘core end of the spectrum (I wasn’t, but I know some of you were), or felt that the new Hour of Penance needed a bit more bite and are looking for something to fill the void then the new album from Storm Upon the Masses should be just what the doctor ordered.

Continue reading »

Apr 282024
 

Once again I had enough free time this weekend to make today’s collection from the black spheres a large one. I picked two recently released albums, preceded by one new video and songs from three more full-lengths that are on the way.

As you’ll discover, there’s considerable variation in the music today, but there is a through-line as I perceive it, a pervasive eeriness, a feeling that we’ve left this world and are communing with dangerous, daunting, and deceptive entities in the chilling and incendiary realms they call home.

INCONCESSUS LUX LUCIS (UK)

A painfully long seven years have staggered by since the last album from Inconcessus Lux Lucis, so long that the news of a new album was startling, but a very welcome development for sure.

The new album, Temples Colliding In Fire, is one of three set for release on June 7th that I, Voidhanger Records announced in one fell swoop last week (I wrote about another one, the debut of Thanatotherion, yesterday). And along with the announcement, I, Voidhanger published the album’s title track. Continue reading »

Apr 272024
 

In considering what to do for this weekly roundup of new songs and videos I felt like a rabbit surrounded by wolves at every point on the compass rose, scrambling and darting this way and that. Too many wolves, not enough space to escape. Wild-eyed, here’s what I decided to do.

CAINITES (Italy)

The cover art for Cainites‘ new album is a very good clue to the music in the album’s first single, “Darkness Awaits“. The feverish riffing, which rings and swarms, is an evil, hungering manifestation, and you can feel its famished heart beating in the drumwork as it snarls and gasps.

But the song is a shapeshifter. The music mysteriously soars and haunted singing (haunted, but still sinister) comes around the corner, and around another corner the music rings like chimes and the creature sings again, forlorn. More changes come, with fast-throbbing guitars and beleaguered doom-ish chords. Continue reading »

Apr 262024
 

We’re about to premiere a complete debut album of modern death metal from the Italian band Olamot, one that’s brutish and bludgeoning but also a whirligig for the head and fuel for nightmares.

We’ll explain in more detail what we mean by that, but let’s begin by quoting some of the background information furnished in the press materials offered on behalf of the Lethal Scissor label, which will release the album on April 29th:

OLAMOT started in 2021 from the minds of Daniele Boccali (FICTIO SOLEMNIS) and Edoardo Casini (XENOFACTION, DESOURCE), eager to create a musical concept which develops a story lyrically and conceptually ideated by Edoardo Casini. Continue reading »

Apr 262024
 

(Two weeks ago Prophecy Productions released a new album-length song from the German horror metal poets The Vision Bleak, their first new music in 8 years, and below you’ll find DGR‘s attempt to make a review of it.)

The halls of NoCleanSinging are no stranger to groups with a large amount of time passing between releases. Upon awakening from a deep slumber, the halls of this site are many times the first thing that the slowly-awakening-back-to-consciousness groups see. We’ve premiered bands that’ve had decade-plus times of inactivity to their names while members ventured elsewhere, explored with other bands, or even enjoyed the more mundane side of things by maintaining a stable day job.

The resurrected’s first few hesitant steps can be flat-footed and precariously balanced but it has happened enough that it’s a familiar sound by the NoCleanSinging doorstep. That’s why we’re familiar with how a project like The Vision Bleak could’ve entered a near-eight-year hibernation following the release of a pretty goddamned good album in the form of 2016’s The Unknown and how after all this time the project could return to us with something equally as crazy sounding, a forty-one minute single song known as Weird Tales. Continue reading »

Apr 262024
 

(As we have for a long stretch of years, we again included in our 2023 Listmania series an eclectic year-end list of records selected by Seb Painchaud from the Montréal band Tumbleweed Dealer. You can see it here. But turns out the list was incomplete… and so it continues today with a dozen more recommendations.)

Here we are yet again. Some of these I missed, some of these I kept off the AOTY list for brevity, and honestly one of these I just kinda forgot to put on when I wrote up the list.

Let’s keep this short I’ve got a teams meeting in 8 minutes. Continue reading »

Apr 252024
 

The Ohio-based duo Nobody made their advent last year with a pair of EPs (Fading Into Obscurity and Lifeless and Still), and have now recorded a debut album named Despair is Where My Thoughts Swim, which will be released on May 17th by End My Life Records/Tragedy Productions. For the album, the founders Troll and Ulver are joined by new vocalist Void.

You may see the genre labels of “post-black metal” or “post/depressive black metal” affixed to Nobody‘s music, which might be as good a way as any of trying to summarize versatile songs that really don’t fit neatly into any boxes and that draw inspiration from a host of sources, including sources outside of metal altogether.

But it might be better to just forget about labels, because the ones above might prove to be as misleading as they are predictive once you begin listening to the album. Even the terrible sadness and sense of regret and abandonment that the song titles and lyrics convey isn’t the sum total of the moods, and so even the “depressive” label isn’t a complete portrait.

To help you understand this, we’re premiering a lyric video for one of the album’s new songs, “Perpetual Torment“. Continue reading »