NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2023 – POSTSCRIPT

 Metal News  3 Responses »
May 292023
 

I made a post here on Saturday to remind NCS visitors that we had shut down for the weekend due to three of us working on the fifth edition of Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. In that post I included photos from some of the bands whose sets I was able to catch, at least partially, on the fest’s first two days. I thought, to round things off, I would include photos I took on the third and final day in this fest (because of running around and occasionally getting of my feet, I wasn’t able to see the whole lineup).

But before getting to that, I’ll share something I wrote on my personal FB page yesterday, after all of us volunteers had finished loading our backlines and other supplies out of the festival venues and returning them to storage until the next time, and after many of us had then converged again for some weary celebration and melancholy good-byes: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFIN MULCH — “FALL OF GAIA”

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May 292023
 

I discovered the news about the debut album of Coffin Mulch in an unusual way, before receiving any press release or other promotional material about it. I was listening to another band’s new song on YouTube, and after it finished YouTube served up a new Coffin Mulch song, the first single off that debut album. I almost never pay attention when YouTube does this, but instead hunt down the next song on my listening list. But this time I decided to see what “Into the Blood” was all about — mainly because of the fantastically bizarre cover art in the clip — and received further confirmation that sometimes poor impulse control is a good thing.

As I wrote here at the time, the gritty whir of the chainsaw riffage in “Into the Blood” hooked me immediately, as did the song’s opening rhythmic thump. The vocalist’s high rabid howls, the livid snap of the snare, and the heavy slug of the bass added to the song’s marauding appeal. When the pace slows, it becomes a gruesome slog-and-stomp, though the throat-ruining vocals sound even more unhinged. And speaking of unhinged, when the band start to cavort and chug again, there’s a brief burst of soloing that’s exactly that.

By coincidence, it wasn’t too much longer before we were asked to host the next song premiere from this new Coffin Mulch album (Spectral Intercession). Having heard “Into the Blood“, it took me about a nanosecond to say Yes! Sometimes the stars line up very nicely, don’t they? Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ORPHEUS OMEGA — “PORTRAITS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 292023
 

(In the following review DGR catches up with the latest release by the Australian band Orpheus Omega, an EP that surfaced last month.)

Even though we’ve often dwelled within the realms of the dark and heavy – our site background having been a giant pile of skulls for over a decade now – we’re not above and beyond traipsing into the ligher side of metal from time to time. We’ve featured a-plenty of clean singing over the years, usually when used effectively and not just as ‘product’ to provide a radio-worth chorus, and yes, there are a few of us in this burnt-out shell of a building that like them some good ol’ fashioned melodeath keyboard cheese.

When a band buys wholly into that sort of bullshit, it’s difficult to not cheer along, and Australia’s Orpheus Omega have proudly flown that flag for some years now, fully ensconced in the ‘no, this is what we make’ mentality with full admiration for the era of early-aughts melodeath when the synth work became especially prominent and was a constant traveling companion of whomever decided to kick out the next guitar solo.

Orpheus Omega are just that sort of band, and while their 2019 album Wear Your Sins didn’t quite gel with us as well as we would’ve liked, 2015’s Partum Vita Mortem was a near-perfectly constructed one of those sorts of albums, with plenty of glory-flag waving and power-choruses to turn any listener into a massive dork. Obviously, time doesn’t stand still for anyone and the group have evolved since then but thas one of a handful of things that made the April release of their new EP Portraits interesting. Continue reading »

WEEKEND UPDATE: NORTHWEST TERROR FEST

 Metal News  4 Responses »
May 272023
 

Northwest Terror Fest is about to begin its third and final day/night in Seattle today. As I mentioned last Monday, No Clean Singing is a principal sponsor of the fest, and DGR, Andy Synn, and myself (islander) have all been working the event on-site since the final preparations began at the venues on Wednesday.

So, no roundup of new songs and videos at NCS today, and no Shades of Black tomorrow.

I should mention that the first two days of the festival were fantastic. I can’t claim to be objective, but I caught bits and pieces of most of the bands who played, and they all kicked ass. So did the festival and venue staffs and crew. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VIRULENT GENESIS — “INTRODUCTION TO MISRULE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 262023
 

(Not long ago DGR stumbled across the debut EP of Wyoming-based Virulent Genesis, which was released earlier this month, and it struck a nerve, leading to the review you’ll find below.)

Wyoming’s Virulent Genesis arriveD to us by way of AN internet spelunking trip, part of a collection of ‘oh, that looks interesting’ captured in the great maw that is the review backlog. We could wish to provide a much better origin story, like them crashing into our burnt-out shell of an office by way of meteor, or somehow them fixing the goddamned elevator and finding their way into the lobby, but that isn’t the case.

Sometimes, the stars align just right and you get a wild hair to write about an upstart death metal group based out of Wyoming. That’s the case here with Virulent Genesis‘ first release Introduction To Misrule. Continue reading »

TEITAN – IN OCULUS ABYSS

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May 252023
 

(Come join Andy Synn as he gazes deep into the oculus abyss, set for release tomorrow)

Ever since I first heard Teitan‘s excellent 2021 EP, Vákuum (which you can read a little more about here), I’ve been looking forward to hearing what they would come up with next.

And while it seems like it’s been a long time coming – even though it’s really not – I can attest that the wait was more than worth it.

Continue reading »

TERRANOCT: “ICON OF RUIN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 252023
 

(Terranoct is a death metal metal band based out of Akron, Ohio, and what you’ll find below is DGR‘s review of their debut album, which is out now.)

Traveling with Ohio’s Terranoct through their first full length release Icon Of Ruin is an interesting journey, as it comprises not only new material that the band have written for the album but also collects the singles that the group have put out since becoming their current form in 2016.

The songs – mostly released in 2021 ’til now, save for one in 2017 and minus one Decapitated cover – add to an incredibly dense album that weighs out to about an hour and three minutes. Terranoct’s Icon Of Ruin has a lot of ideas swirling within it and seemingly leaves nothing behind, and with that, not only tells the tale of the band as a whole but also feels like a series of snapshots throughout an entire death metal scene, as influences grow and wane, ideas enter and leave, and a band themselves mature and mutate into the form they are now. Continue reading »

PRONOSTIC: “CHAOTIC UPHEAVAL”

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May 252023
 

(Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to our site with the following enthusiastic review of the second album by Montreal-based Pronostic, which was released in mid-May.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. The fretless bass holds an impressive position in the history of death metal, especially as it pertains to death metal’s more technical sub-branch. Present at the subgenre’s inception thanks to legends like Steve DiGiorgio and Sean Malone, the fretless bass has become especially popular with the current popularity of tech death, thanks to modern practitioners like Dominic “Forest” LaPointe, JP Thesseling, Linus Klausenitzer, and Hugo Doyon-Karout. LaPointe probably set the high water mark for absolute fretless mastery on the most recent First Fragment album, a performance that may never be surpassed.

If this seems like an odd way to start off a review, I say all of this because Pronostic‘s new bassist, Xavier Sperdouklis (also of the excellent Killitorous) has definitely added himself to the conversation on this new Pronostic record Chaotic Upheaval. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NIBIRU — “ANAMORPHOSIS”

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May 242023
 

The last time we premiered music by the Italian band Nibiru we began by observing that their music “is nearly unclassifiable”, a conclusion bolstered by the fact that their albums had elicited genre descriptions along the lines of “Ritual Psychedelic Sludge” or “Blackened Sludge & Drone”. Their list of musical influences was even more difficult to imagine being integrated into anything that made sense, and their literary and other extra-musical influences were equally varied.

On that previous occasion we premiered only an excerpt from a very long song that was one of four on their sixth album, Panspermia, though we also attempted to preview what else happened in the song as a whole. Today we’re premiering a long song in its entirety, but this time the song is also the album — a single composition, nearly an hour long, named Anamorphosis. It will be released on May 26th by Argonauta Records. It’s no easier to sum up, especially in genre terms, than anything else Nibiru have done Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIGSGRAV — “AN EVERFLOWING VESSEL”

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May 242023
 

(In the article below Todd Manning introduces our premiere of a song from a new album by the band Krigsgrav, which will be released next month through Wise Blood Records.)

We may be entering the summer here in the States, but there’s a bitter chill in the air thanks to the latest from Texas-based black metal outfit Krigsgrav. Fires in the Fall, available June 23rd courtesy of the excellent Wise Blood Records, picks up where 2021’s The Sundering left off as Krigsgrav continue to perfect their particular brand of melodic black metal.

“An Everflowing Vessel” kicks off with a masterful melody, possessing an epic grandeur, but it is also unquestionably heavy when paired with the drums. The main vocal line, once introduced, is scathing, but soon clean vocals arrive in the background to reinforce the song’s scale. At first glance, the sound sits somewhere between Dissection and Wolfheart, but ultimately it is difficult to pigeonhole Krigsgrav. Continue reading »

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