AN NCS PREMIERE: RANĂ — “LÄUTERN”

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May 112023
 

In the last month of 2021 the German band Rană made their recording debut with an EP named Armament co-released by Vita Detestabilis Records and Fiadh Productions. Nearly a half-hour long (you could call it an album without a lot of argument), that four-song release delivered both a musical and an emotional wrecking ball. Using corrosive riffs, ringing leads, bone-bruising percussion, and scalding howls, Rană veered from moods of ruinous, doom-drenched hopelessness and furious belligerence to sensations of agonizing despair, heartbreaking melancholy, and defiant resilience.

To do that Rană mainly harnessed elements of black metal, crust-punk, and hints of post-metal in strikingly dynamic fashion, but also stepped well outside those influences with the hauntingly beautiful reverence of the song “Pyres” in its clean-sung opening phase (before it becomes a conflagration), and the lonely, grief-stricken instrumental prelude of “Im Joch” (before the onrushing storm of rebellion at the gates).

The band also made very clear that melodies which would stir the soul, often in sweeping fashion, were just as important in their songwriting as crushing power and the ignition of adrenaline-fueled wildfires.

Now Rană are  following Armament with their 40-minute album Richtfeuer, which will see release on June 16th via Breath Sun Bone Blood. Armament left expectations high. Richtfeuer abundantly fulfills them. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GATEWAY — “SACRIFICIAL BLOOD OATH IN THE TEMPLE OF K’ZADU”

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May 112023
 

In glancing at our extensive previous commentary going back to 2015 on the music of Gateway, the most commonly occurring words have been variants on “titanic”, “obliterating”, “pestilential”, “skull-cleaving”, “abysmal”, “mauling”, “blood-congealing”, and “ghastly”. The phrase “appalling and abominable” popped up as well. There was also this pungent passage from our review of the band’s 2018 EP Boundless Torture, which still rings true:

Within the more heartless and slaughtering corners of the extreme metal underground there has been a decades-long competition to reach the deepest, coldest caverns of devastation and despair, and to weaponize the horrors found within the crushing pressures of those abyssal chasms. The Belgian one-man death/doom band Gateway has been one of the more dedicated and successful combatants in that race to the bottom.

But hey, as nightmarish as Gateway‘s music has been, it still gets its massive meat-hooks in the head. We even named the 12 1/2 minute title track from Gateway‘s 2021 EP Flesh Reborn to our list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It does take a special kind of talent to scare the shit out of listeners yet leave them compelled to continue listening again and again.

And now we have new Gateway nightmares to indulge, thanks to the album Galgendood that Transcending Obscurity Records will release on July 5th. The label promises “a catastrophe of biblical proportions”. We would expect nothing less. Continue reading »

HALIPHRON: “PREY”

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May 112023
 

(We present DGR‘s extensive review of the debut album by the Dutch band Haliphron, a big album that was released at the end of March by Listenable Records.)

Prey – the first full-length release from the Netherlands-dwelling group Haliphron all the way back in March- caught eyes for a few reasons. One of the main ones being the artwork attached to said release since – if our site background hasn’t tipped you off yet – we do enjoy us some skulls round these here parts. But there were a few others that managed to align the planets just right that, so even one of us keyboard mashers managed to take notice.

One of the other reasons was that solo artist/guitar wizard/former Aborted member Mendel did some work on this release, and the other, which is just as somewhat out in the weeds that only those of us who find amusement in pattern matching and statistics will enjoy, is that the God Dethroned circle seems to continually spread ever further.

In addition to that band’s guitarist popping up in Ghost Of Mirach last year, it will interest some to know that their current drummer also happens to sit behind the kit for the aforementioned symphonic black metal shenanigans of Haliphron.

Like we said, it’s certainly a whole lot of weight to throw behind a debut album and definitely a lot of stuff that NoCleanSinging afficianados are going to take notice of. If nothing else, it is certianly a testament to the various internet music holes that we love to fall down around this corner of the net. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THORN — “HYPOGEAN CRYPT”

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May 102023
 

Let’s begin with a slice of history: Phoenix-based Thorn (the solo wrecking machine of Brennen Westermeyer) made its advent in 2020 with an EP entitled The Encompassing Nothing, which (in our words) revealed itself “as a musical monstrosity dedicated to the creation of cavernous, ominous, and dreadful death metal”. Thorn followed that auspicious debut by joining forces with Toronto’s Fumes for a fearsome split release in January 2021. We hosted the premiere of songs from that split, summing up Thorn’s contributions as “an amalgam of crushing brutality, freakish mayhem, and eerie supernatural frightfulness”.

After that we helped spread the word about Thorn‘s 2021 debut album Crawling Worship by premiering the song “Drowned Serpents”, which we described as “a jolting, neck-bending experience” shrouded in “an atmosphere of horror”.

Thorn followed that with another split and then another album, named Yawning Depths, and we touched on that one too, describing its advance track “Cavernous Shrines“ as “a ravishing combination of sensations”: “It will bludgeon you senseless, but also creates an atmosphere of otherworldly mystery and poisonous fascination. It’s discordant and grinding, cruel and even hideous, but mercurial and mesmerizing”.

Since then Thorn has continued to write its own history at a rapid clip, releasing two splits last year and now preparing to present yet another album, its first one on the Transcending Obscurity label. This one bears the portentous title Evergloom, and today we’ve got a sign of what it holds in store via our premiere of the song “Hypogean Crypt“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VORTEX — “THE WALLS”

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May 102023
 

When the Canadian collective Vortex begin work on a new album their songwriting approach differs from that of most extreme metal bands. They begin with a story, crafting chapters in a narrative that then become the basis for the songs. The music takes shape based on the feeling of the tale, and because of that the musical ingredients shift with the story. In the case of Vortex and their newest album The Future Remains In Oblivion, those ingredients draw upon death metal and black metal, with helpings of orchestration, and are both scathing and richly melodic.

Like the band’s last two albums, The Asylum (2016) and Lighthouse (2018), their new one is thus a concept record, a continuous lyrical and musical narrative. Today we present one of those musical chapters in advance of the album’s release on June 9th. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ANTI-RITUAL / KEZIAH / OCULAR TRAUMA

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May 102023
 

(Andy Synn has had a busy year so far, and has largely taken this week off to recharge, but couldn’t resist the urge to write about these three EPs while he recovers)

To my great shame I haven’t written about many short-form releases so far this year.

Why? Well, long story short… which is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling… I just haven’t had time.

Ironically, however, it’s this very lack of time which leads me to write about these three EPs today!

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRIDFAILURE / INTERSTITIA — “POPULATION COMPLIANCE ATTAINED THROUGH THE DISSEMINATION OF A PSYCHOTROPIC AGENT”

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May 092023
 

Once upon a time, before sound came to movies, pianists and organists (or phonograph recordings) would perform soundtracks for audiences in darkened venues, calculated to capture the changing moods of the silent footage or (as written here) simply to distract the viewers from the early unnaturalness of the larger-than-life two-dimensional medium and “absorb the shock” of it.

Those days are long gone of course, though (to quote the same source) “music eventually became so indispensable a part of the film experience that not even the advent of mechanically produced sound could silence it.” Witness the fact that almost no movies over the last century have been presented without a synchronized recorded soundtrack.

What you’re about to witness in this premiere is something like a throwback to the time of silent movies, even if it is a step forward into a dystopian future — though silent-movie audiences would have been horrified to see and hear this short film. The imagery is reality turned inside-out, and the music provides no real comfort, no “shock absorbers” despite its viscerally compulsive movements, but instead an ultimate reinforcement of fear. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETHEREAL VOID — “THE VOICELESS”

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May 092023
 

Aggressive music (for want of a better term) seems to rush forward, not just because time is moving forward as the music plays out but because the music itself seems violently to surge at the listener. In the case of extreme metal there’s a reason why we say (ad nauseum) that a band has “assaulted” us or has been “unleashed”. It’s because the music sounds like we’re the target of an attack.

In the case of Ethereal Void song we’re premiering today, the attack is particularly vicious, and it sounds like they have an imminent deadline for finishing us off — no time to waste, no chance for escape. And yet the music also moves… sideways… as if diverting us from the danger, or even seducing us into its embrace. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OAK

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May 092023
 

Photo by Catarina Rocha

(In February of this year Season of Mist released a mournful maelstrom of an album by the Portuguese atmospheric death/doom band Oak, and in the following interview Comrade Aleks discussed the accomplishment with Oak drummer Pedro Soares.)

Oak is a Portuguese duet founded in 2018 by drummer Pedro Soares and singing guitarist Guillermo Enriquez. The duet quickly recorded an impressive debut full-length Lone, with the four tracks included in the album sounding at the junction of atmospheric death-doom and funeral doom metal. The name of their new album, Disintegrate, corresponds to the name of the only, forty-five-minute, composition, which oddly enough was represented by two singles – four- and seven-minute excerpts — posted a couple of months before the release.

A one-track doom album is nothing new in itself, but Disintegrate is a brave and ingenious piece, and we made an attempt to dissect it together with Pedro. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THÖRNE — “THOSE GOLDEN RULES”

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May 082023
 

In late January of this year the Portuguese blackened hardcore band Thörne followed up their 2019 debut EP Octagon with an immensely powerful three-track single named Those Golden Rules. Unfolding across 9 stunning minutes, the band used the single to explore “the untold truths of one’s past — the trauma caused by reckless parenting, the toll it carves in one’s behavior and social capabilities, and the resulting depression during adulthood”.

The single was originally released digitally, but in late April it received a cassette tape release through Black Lava Records. What we have for you today is a beautifully filmed video for a live performance of all three tracks that appeared on the new single. Continue reading »

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