NO CLEAN SINGING

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Mar 062023

(Andy Synn has four excellent under the radar releases for you today)

Well, it’s that time again… time for me to harangue and browbeat you all for failing to keep up with all the great new releases that came out last month.

Of course, that’s not why I do these pieces at all. In fact, as much as I’d hope they provide a public service – cluing you in to some stuff that may have, understandably, flown underneath your radar(s) – there’s an argument to be made that I do them just as much for myself as for other people.

After all, I enjoy writing, and writing about new artists/albums I’ve discovered is a particular joy unto itself.

So here’s four releases from the last month (and a bit… I’ve stretched things a little this time around) for you to check out whenever you get the chance.

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): QWÄLEN — “SYVÄ HILJOISUUS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 2 Responses »

Mar 062023

Almost exactly two years ago we had the pleasure of premiering Unohdan Sinut, the debut album of the Finnish band Qwälen. As is our habit, we spilled a lot of words introducing it, dropping references along the way to such bands as Young and in the Way and Dödsrit, but also the likes of Darkthrone, Nifelheim, Bathory, and Terveet Kädet. We identified “speed and fury” as perhaps the record’s main hallmarks, but also underscored the gripping harmonies created by the feverish dual-guitar leads:

“They not only vibrantly channel a range of dark and disturbing emotions, they also burrow into the listener’s head with relentless penetrating force, their relative clarity piercing through the raw and ravaging tones of what surrounds them.”

It’s fair to say that Unohdan Sinut was a damn tough act to follow, but these black metal punks were undaunted. They’ve made a second album, Syvä Hiljaisuus, that’s just as fury-filled and emotionally powerful as the debut. Continue reading »

FEBRUARY GRINDCORE PARTY: ENDORPHINS LOST, HORRIBLE EARTH, TEETH MARKS

Album Reviews No Responses »

Mar 062023

Endorphins Lost

(DGR has surfaced from what sounds like some hellish recent weeks in his non-NCS life, and brought along with him some mean and explosive music, courtesy of the three bands whose recent releases he reviews below.)

The death and grind side of the heavy metal world is one that seems to be continually spinning no matter what people do to try to stop it. It’s become a machine that is always absorbing new bodies for energy and unleashing it in violent bursts that could make astronomers and physicists take note. The ferocity that is unleashed by such groups is often unmatched, and if they’re not moving in pure, bludgeoning force then it is a series of strikes that are happening so fast you don’t even notice the ground that has been razed alongside you.

The three gathered here come from different corners of the musical world as well as having some actual physical distance between them, with the one unifying theme among them being an unmatched fiery energy, and that they had releases hit in February.

In fact, the releases here get longer as you travel further down the list, but still manage to keep things around twenty-five minutes. February: Short month, short songs, short reviews – let’s party. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MEDENERA

Interviews 1 Response »

Mar 062023

(In this interesting new interview Comrade Aleks questioned the anonymous person behind the Italian atmospheric b lack metal band Medenera, whose most recent album was released last December.)

Five full-length albums for five years! Isn’t it a good score? Mysterious Italian one-man band Medenera produces its atmospheric black metal with a good working pace, and creates majestic melancholic realms built of both celestial ambient passages and quite grim mid-paced black metal.

Medenera is totally anonymous, and the albums’ concept is blurred, but we got in touch with the project’s founder and he told a lot about his sources of inspiration and the meanings behind this series of albums. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DIABLATION, SCHATTENFALL, KOSTNATĚNÍ

SHADES OF BLACK No Responses »

Mar 052023

Diablation

I’m roughly 1,900 miles away from my home. I made the trip last Thursday (an excruciating journey packed with delays), something I needed to do for my job. Since then I haven’t had much time to myself, night or day. My comrade Mr. Synn suggested I just take the weekend off from NCS. As he put it, “The world will keep spinning”.

I’m not so sure about that. What if the world is an incredibly detailed simulation running on the substrate of my mind? What if Mr. Synn is, as I have always suspected, a figment of my imagination? What if music has no objective existence unless someone other than its creator hears it?

I may have become too subsumed by a new sci-fi novel I’m reading, which I shouldn’t name because the idea of a simulation is one of its many surprises.

I did take yesterday off from NCS (actually not a lot of choice in that matter). I was very tempted to take today off too, but I do have a little time to myself before beginning the trip back to Seattle, and whatever airline- and weather-related fuck-ups will plague it. So I snagged just a few new songs to recommend, so you don’t think I had a stroke or a Sunday brunch in jail. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NEKUS — “KATABASIS”

Premieres No Responses »

Mar 032023

The Ancient Greek word katabasis referred to a journey into the underworld — the Hades of myth — but in time it has come to refer to travels into the realm of the dead in tales beyond the stories of Odysseus and Orpheus.

“Katabasis” is also the name of the song we’re premiering today from the debut album of the Italian/German band Nekus, and as song titles go, this one was a perfect choice — because the music is horrifying and hopeless, supernatural and suffocating.

It does seem to rudely usher us into an ugly, abominable place where only the dead may dwell, and suffering is endless. But as you’ll discover, the song is also a sonic cataclysm of immense destructive power. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OCTOBER NOIR

Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews No Responses »

Mar 032023

(We present today Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with Tom Noir, founder of the U.S. gothic doom band October Noir.)

It’s a sort of tricky question, but there are always “new” bands which are inspired by “old” ones. For good or for bad you can’t escape this, it’s a natural order. Can you imagine 165,195 unique bands in Metal-Archives? It’s just impossible. So I’m ok when I hear a band imitating the sound of a band I like. And don’t forget that there are really individual bands that are nearly impossible to follow or imitate.

I was shocked when I heard October Noir for the first time, as their incredible resemblance to the almighty (but dead) Type 0 Negative is something beyond my comprehension. Yet the band’s founder Tom Noir was able to do that, and first of all it’s in his vocals, though I must admit that I appreciate October Noir not only for the familiar vibes of colossal doom-riffs and gothic atmosphere but also for a refreshing feeling which is difficult to describe.

The band’s third album Fate, Wine, & Wisteria was released in 2021 but a new one is on its way, and anyway I had questions I wanted to ask Tom. Continue reading »

ENSLAVED – HEIMDAL

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Mar 022023

(Andy Synn casts his all-seeing eye over Enslaved‘s new album, out tomorrow via Nuclear Blast)

I almost didn’t write this review. After all, it’s not strictly necessary, is it?

Let’s face it, Enslaved have long-since reached the stage in their career where, no matter what they put out (and, let’s be honest, they do have a few duds in their back-catalogue, at least by their own high standards) the fans are going to buy it and the critics are going to fawn over it in a patently un-critical manner.

But, as has been pointed out to me, I haven’t failed to write about a new Enslaved release for years, so I might as well keep that streak alive with Heimdal, right?

But where to begin…

AN NCS PREMIERE: FORCEFED HORSEHEAD — “THE BLACK SUN”

Premieres No Responses »

Mar 022023

What is it about music which inflicts humongous levels of near-physical sonic punishment, coupled with moods of abject hopelessness or unchained rage, that generates an urgent kind of magnetism for metal listeners? Doom-drenched earth-shakers aren’t comforting, and at pitch-black levels of intensity they aren’t the kind of thing that leaves you humming a tune. So what is it?

We’re pondering these questions after repeatedly listening to the harrowing song we’re premiering today off a new album entitled Monoceros by the unforgettably named Norwegian band Forcefed Horsehead. Even for metalhead whose ears and minds have been roughed up by years of sonic abuse and thus become de-sensitized to crushers, “The Black Sun” is a special kind of ruination capable of leaving people slack-jawed. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PLAGUE BEARER — “SUMMONING APOCALYPTIC DEVASTATION”

Album Reviews, Premieres 4 Responses »

Mar 012023

The stylistic banner of Seattle’s Plague Bearer brands the band as Unholy Black Satanic War Metal. The striking cover art of their debut album is itself a devotional to demons, and the song titles also scream blasphemy at the top of their lungs. The band’s cloaked, hooded, and masked countenances on stage double-down on the ethos of Hell come to Earth. And of course the album’s title, Summoning Apocalyptic Devastation, is perhaps the most brazen foreshadowing of the ruin within.

Given all that, some people might already be expecting nothing more than the kind of malformed and potentially monotonous sonic abuse that’s the stock in trade of many units who sadistically attack listeners’ ears under the genre sign of Blackened Death Metal. But there you would be leaping to the wrong conclusion.

To be sure, Summoning Apocalyptic Devastation is an explosive and devastating experience, frequently poisonous, almost relentlessly bone-smashing, and as intrinsically evil as all the surface hallmarks would lead you to expect. But the songs also pack riveting riffs, mood-changing melodies more nuanced than you would guess, and the performance skill of veteran executioners.

And thus in those ways (and others) the album may surprise listeners (less of a surprise if you’ve heard any of the track premieres that have preceded the full stream we bring you today). Indeed, we think it’s likely that this is a record which will still be vividly remembered come list-making time at the end of this year. Continue reading »

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