Nov 162023
 

(Andy Synn offers his humble thoughts on the first new Sadus album in seventeen years)

Some bands, as I’m sure you’re aware, are so seminal that fragments of their musical DNA still litter the genetic code of pretty much all their descendants, no matter how far removed.

For example, no matter how “extreme” or “avant-garde” or “genre non-conforming” you might be, there’s always going to be some Black Sabbath or Judas Priest or Motorhead in your music, in the same way that we all, deep-down, still have bits and pieces of our earliest ancestors swimming around in our primordial protoplasm.

But it’s not just the biggest and most notable (or notorious) names who leave their mark upon us. And chances are that if you’ve ever been a fan of the proggier side of Thrash or the more technical end of Death Metal then you’ve probably absorbed some Sadus into your system, even if you didn’t know it at the time.

And now, seventeen(!) years since we last heard from them – a time in which a whole generation of Metal fans may well have grown up having never even heard of them – Sadus have returned to retake their place in a Metal scene whose seeds they undoubtedly played at least some small part in sowing.

Continue reading »

Nov 152023
 

Roughly two years ago we premiered the debut album from the Swedish black metal band Hinsides (whose name means “Beyond” in English). We spilled a great volume of words about that album, beginning with these:

“The album’s name is Under Betlehems brinnande stjärna, and it is a confluence of surprises that create what might seem to be paradoxical results, harboring music that at first blush is so willfully abrasive it might repel rather than attract, but turns out to be exhilarating and unexpectedly enthralling — even magical.”

Now we’re very happy to spread the word that Hinsides is returning with a second full-length, ushered from an infernal realm into our own by Shadow Records and Regain Records. The name of this one is Hinsides h​ö​rs dj​ä​vulsklockans urklang, which can be rendered in our own mother tongue as “From beyond the ancient chime of the devil bell is heard,”, and what we have for you today is the debut of its title track. Continue reading »

Nov 152023
 

“Old school repulsive death metal from Oslo, Norway.” That’s how Horrifier themselves portray their music. Their label Personal Records drops references to the spirits of Repulsion and Autopsy as well as nods toward “the new wave of Norwegian deathrash” in the vein of Obliteration, Sepulcher, Inculter, and Condor.

Horrifier haven’t been around long, having come together only in 2022, and the members don’t look like they were alive when their major influences were laying down rotten foundations for death metal in the late ’80s.

But sometimes, and this is one of those times, something very good comes from people who aren’t trying to re-live their own distant youth but are right in the midst of it right now, and have found the right inspiration (along with bullet belts all ’round).

See for yourselves (or rather hear for yourselves) by lending an ear to Horrifier‘s “Deranged Sanity“. Continue reading »

Nov 152023
 

(What we have for you here is DGR‘s take on a new EP by the German band Sucking Leech, released in mid-October of this year and still ruining everything in its path.)

There’s a certain amount of filth to be expected from grind as a genre. For as much as we love the ultra-precise, teeth-shredding, and super-fast world wherein songs appear as musical flashpoints before exploding and then disappearing just as quickly, there is always a somewhat grosser side to that world. One wherein the slop of the music is part of the appeal and the plug-and-play aspect is taken quite literally, with recordings sounding like the band legitimately just plugged in their gear, only turned on the volume nob, and then proceeded to go to town for twelve or thirteen minutes bathed entirely in distortion and reverb.

It’s noisy and abrasive but that is also the point; you’re coming to it because the idea of the drums sounding like they’re falling out the back of a moving truck is enjoyable. The bands that comprise that world of grind aren’t just flinging their instruments around, and obviously the music can remain fairly conventional to the grind world, but it’s the barely contained and heavily constrained chaos that keeps things interesting.

It’s why Sucking Leech‘s Errordynamic EP in mid-October caught our eyes. Sounding like a cross-bred catastrophe of Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, and Pig Destroyer mid-fistfight, Sucking Leech don’t stray tremendously far from that chaotic and maddening world of grind, but for a four-piece manage to sound monstrous all the same. Continue reading »

Nov 142023
 

(Our old friend Austin Weber again returns to NCS, and this time he’s introducing our premiere of a new album by the technical/brutal death metal band Neurectomy.)

In the immortal words of Twin Peaks: “That gum you like is going to come back in style.”

Outside of the overwhelming and well-warranted love Archspire has garnered in the scene, technical brutal death metal that both leans into and focuses on extreme shredding, chaotic tempo shifts, and is just all-in on not giving a damn about being “listenable” has largely gone out of style.

And again, I know/love Archspire, and technically, Archspire is still sort of doing this, as is Origin, but overall this type of sound is sort of a now-lost sub-genre within technical brutal death metal. For a while there, it was a very active style thanks to Viraemia, Beneath The Massacre, Anomalous, Brain Drill, and countless others. Continue reading »

Nov 142023
 

Four years after their debut album Redistribution Of Flesh, Portland’s ingeniously named Rank and Vile will detonate a new album named Worship on November 17th, with the pin pulled by Modern Grievance Records.

It really is an explosive weapon, this album, one that discharges a blast front of violent deathgrind but also inflicts bunker-busting grooves and is equally well-calculated to stir up electrified pits of sweat-soaked humanity in the pit.

The album is also well-timed, because its high-octane fuel is politically charged rage and its method is punishment. It is, first and foremost, a musical catharsis, a weaponized reaction that (in words from the label’s PR materials) “takes shots at flabby politicians, hypocritical religious fanatics, and fence-sitting sycophants”. Theocrats, autocrats, and plutocrats may not get the justice they deserve in the outer world, but they sure as hell get it in the inner world of this record. Continue reading »

Nov 142023
 

(Andy Synn offers his two cents on the new album from Texan troubadours Hinayana)

Common consensus would have it that 2023 has been a great year for Death Metal.

And while my thoughts on that assertion are somewhat… complicated… I will say this – if you’re talking about the gloomier, doomier, and more moodily melodic side of Death Metal then you’re definitely right, as the last twelve months has seen a number of illustrious releases from the likes of Aetherian, Fires In The Distance, Foretoken, and more (with a few more to come) which have, when taken together, led to a low-key resurgence of the more epic and euphonic side of the spectrum.

And now we have the new album from Hinayana to add to that list.

Continue reading »

Nov 142023
 

(Not long ago Supreme Chaos Records released a new album by the part-British, part-German doom band Thronehammer, and shortly before that august day Comrade Aleks spoke with the band’s vocalist Kat Shevil Gillham. Today we present that discussion.)

Thronehammer is a doom metal band formed by guitarist Stuart West (Obelyskkh, Versus the Stillborn-Minded and so on) in 2012. Slowly he formed the full lineup, and one by one albums started to appear.

Usurper of the Oaken Throne (2019) and Incantation Rites (2021) were good ones, but the new full-length Kingslayer which was released on the 3rd of November by Supreme Chaos Records is another thing. I agree with the album’s official press-release, which says “The nine epic new movements on Thronehammer’s Kingslayer culminate into the band’s most versatile material to date, with more metal energy than ever fueling the album, with their riff savagery fully on display in every track”.

Thronehammer’s singer Kat Shevil Gillham shared a few thoughts about the new stuff and the situation around the band not long before the release. Continue reading »

Nov 132023
 

No Clean Singing has been a proud sponsor of Northwest Terror Fest since its inception in June 2017, not just helping to spread the word but adding the (mostly) able bodies and (mostly) addled minds of our staff to the production of the fest as it has happened on stage. And now we’re doing it again.

As previously announced, Northwest Terror Fest will again take over the Seattle underground with a three-day cavalcade of dark, dangerous, and diverse sounds on May 9th to May 11th, 2024. What hasn’t been previously announced, but has now been made public as of today, is who you’ll get to see on stage. Here’s the lineup: Continue reading »

Nov 132023
 

In case you missed Decibel Magazine‘s premiere of Abyssal Rift‘s song “The Scourge“, here’s a recap:

It’s every bit as frightening as the cover art above for this Ohio band’s debut album Extirpation Dirge. Hell, it’s even more frightening — both abyssal and extraterrestrial, abysmal and maddened in the sensations generated by the eerie reverberation of its swirling and swarming riffage, its strangely writhing leads, and the monstrous roars and ghastly screams welling up from catacomb depths.

But that’s not all. The song moves from hammering and scathing intensity into a wraithlike realm, where swaths of ambient eeriness surround glimmering and glittering notes and musing bass tones. Then the chords lurch like a behemoth, gargantuan and grim, heaving ahead as those horror-show vocals rise up once more and a guitar wails in agony. Continue reading »