NO CLEAN SINGING

THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN: “ESCAPING ETERNITY”

Feb 172022

(We give you DGR‘s extensive review of a new album by The Devils of Loudun from the U.S. Pacific Northwest. It was released last Friday by The Artisan Era.)

This is stating the obvious but the first full-length from Seattle, Washington’s keyboard-heavy tech-death crew The Devils Of Loudun feels like it has been a long time coming. The group landed on my personal radar in the mid-2010s around the time of their year-over-year EP releases in 2015 and 2016, and yet since then its been quite the wait for their album Escaping Eternity – out now via The Artisan Era.

Escaping Eternity puts the band in an interesting position. Their brand of neo-classical tech-death shred has become a specialty of their current record label and as a result has them standing side by side with quite a few cohorts. Like releases by many of their label-mates, Escaping Eternity is also a thickly packed album; with nearly seven years between releases The Devils Of Loudun have used what seems to be all of that time creating music – resulting in a ten-song release that pushes close to an hour’s worth of songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WRETCHED TONGUES — “MORTALITY”

Premieres No Responses »

Feb 172022

Gaze upon Caelan Stokkermans‘ cover art for the debut album by Wretched Tongues and contemplate the agony of those naked figures in the clutches of their fiendish tormentors. It captures some of the visions spawned by the music, but not all. To do that, the imagery would need to include the discharge of massed machine-guns, the detonation of bunker-busting bombs, the madness of frantic, blood-lusting violence, and the wailing of lost souls.

You’ll understand this when you listen to “Mortality“, the latest single by these U.S. deathcore heavyweights from their album Ulter Praefinitum, and that’s an opportunity we bring you today through our premiere of the song in advance of the March 18 album release by Vicious Instinct Records. Continue reading »

HATH – ALL THAT WAS PROMISED

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Feb 172022

(The highly-anticipated new album from Hath is scheduled for release on 04 March via Willowtip, and Andy Synn has the inside scoop on what you can expect from this rollercoaster of a record)

Hath‘s first album, Of Rot and Ruin, was one of the most hyped albums of 2019, to the extent that (if memory serves) a number of people were extremely keen to label it a “masterpiece” before they’d even heard it.

As much as I enjoyed the record, however, I couldn’t help noticing that much of the music was heavily indebted – a little too heavily indebted, if I’m going to be totally honest – to some of its more obvious influences and inspirations, especially the varied and viscous works of beloved UK Prog-Death duo Slugdge, something which most other reviews seemed to either massively downplay or totally disregard for fear of rocking the boat.

But despite the fact that I was, shall we say, somewhat more critical than most (though still, overall, pretty positive) about their debut, the band still actively reached out to us here at NCS asking if we’d be willing to give their new album a listen and share our honest opinion about it, whatever that might be.

Now, if nothing else, this tells me one of two things about Hath. Either they’re extremely confident about All That Was Promised… or they’re simply gluttons for punishment.

Let’s find out which, shall we?

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SKEPTICISM

Interviews 4 Responses »

Feb 172022

(Comrade Aleks has brought us his interview with Eero Pöyry from the Finnish funeral-doom lords Skepticism.)

Skepticism has been a funeral-style standard for 30 years. Founded in Riihimäki, Kanta-Häme, in 1991, the band personifies an integral element of the funeral doom scene, its sound essential, its image flawless. And I see no problem regarding the relatively short Skepticism discography. Their latest album Companion (released by Svart Records in September 2021) is the sixth full-length in their list, but look – I have a feeling that they are always here.

The band’s presence is constant. You know what to expect from them, yes, and it… soothes. Each of their albums is like a part of a journey through a forest: You can walk this or another path listening to different albums, but “the forest” is the same and yet different. But I don’t see a reason to further waste our time with metaphors. Here’s the interview we started with Eero Pöyry (keyboards), let’s say, some time ago. It took some time to complete it, but it’s now a good, actual thing. Here we meet in shadow of (our pale) Companion. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CHALK HANDS — “LES JOURS PASSENT ET NE ME RESSEMBLENT PAS”

Premieres No Responses »

Feb 162022

To help introduce their new album Don’t Think About Death the UK band Chalk Hands have put a big spotlight on the album’s first single, a song named “Les Jours Passent Et Ne Me Ressemblent Pas”. Five days ago they revealed the song through a fascinating animated video made by one of the band’s members (Tommy). And today we’re premiering another video for the same song, but this time it’s a film of a live performance.

The song is in French because that’s the native tongue of lyricist, vocalist, and guitarist Antoine. He tells us that he chose to write this one in French because it allowed him to express himself “in a more honest and unaltered fashion”, which was important because the inspiration was such a personal one for him.

The inspiration is signified by the song’s title. He explains: “The title comes from a French idiom which means something like ‘the days go by and aren’t alike’ (somewhat equivalent to the saying ‘tomorrow is another day’) but I’ve twisted a word to say ‘days go by and I don’t recognise myself’”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RUTTENSKALLE — “DEAD MAN”

Premieres 1 Response »

Feb 162022

Sometimes it’s abundantly obvious when a musician has made music primarily for himself, to indulge a personal passion for a particular kind of already well-established music and to test how well he can embrace and extend such venerable and venerated traditions. In such circumstances innovation isn’t the objective. Faithful worship comes first. But when it works, a personal endeavor like that can also reward listeners.

In a nutshell, that’s what Portuguese musician Paulo Soares did on Skin ’em Alive, the debut album of his solo project Ruttenskalle, which was released last October by Gruesome Records. The object of his affection and energies was old-school Swedish death metal in the vein of Dismember, Entombed, Carnage, Grave, and Unleashed.

The depths of his devotion are revealed in the album’s ghastly cover art, in the Swedish name of the band (which means “rotten skull”), in the abundant lyrical references to guts, gore, and macabre deaths, and of course in the sound of the music itself. And yes indeed, for ardent fans of this venerable genre, it brings rewards — one of which is the song “Dead Man” that’s featured in the music video we’re premiering today. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: NAPALM DEATH — “RESENTMENT IS ALWAYS SEISMIC – A FINAL THROW OF THROES”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Feb 162022

photo by Gobinder Jhitta

(DGR wrote the following review of a new EP by Napalm Death that was released on February 11th by Century Media Records.)

Once again, I find myself at the altar of reviewing a Napalm Death release since it’s one of the things that has commanded much of my listening time. They’re good at hijacking my attention like that.

Considering the scramble that seems to be happening for bands to release ‘something, anything‘ in the last few years as touring continues to take a hit from the ongoing pandemic, EPs have become an increasingly bizarre proposition. They’ve always been fairly nebulous throughout the years, often a collecting pool for stuff that didn’t make an album after recording sessions or previews of whatever bundle of ideas might be currently rattling around in an artist’s head while they try to figure out where to take their project next.

Right now, EPs have expanded that nebulous sensibility to being these increasingly huge catch-alls of anything and everything – which can make for some incredibly all-over-the-map listening sessions thematically. In the case of Napalm Death‘s newest release, Resentment Is Always Seismic – A Final Throw Of Throes, that weird thematic sensibility is just a continuation of what the band have been doing over the past couple of decades, because outside of their obvious ‘pillar of grindcore’ status the band have always been willing to indulge an ambitious and strangely artistic side – so much so that they have added whole eras of ‘weird death metal’ to the hybrid of current industrial dirge and hardcore punk repeatedly beating the shit out of each other that the band currently love to play with when they’re not dishing out their usual genre staples. Continue reading »

ACRANIUS – MERCY DENIED

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 162022

(Andy Synn lays down the gauntlet with the new album from Germany’s Acranius)

Sometimes, to really understand how a band got to where they are, you have to take a close look back at where they came from.

In the case of Germanic brutes Acranius this is particularly revealing, as in hindsight it’s clear that 2017’s Reign of Terror marked a major turning point away from their more Slam-influenced early work towards what’s best described as more of a “Brutal Deathcore” sound.

Sure, there were still several recognisable elements still hanging over from their first two albums – especially the slamtastic snare and the largely unintelligible gurgling monotone of the vocals – but it was clear even then that the band were in the process of becoming something else… something which has finally achieved its final, fearsome form on Mercy Denied.

AN NCS PREMIERE: ET MORIEMUR — “OSHIMA”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Feb 152022

The Czech band Et Moriemur have branded their music “existential doom”. Their label Transcending Obscurity Records uses the phrase “atmospheric doom/black metal”, while Metal-Archives has selected “atmospheric death/doom”. The one thing you can’t call it is “conventional doom”.

Certainly, the subject matter of their records has become increasingly unconventional. Epigrammata, their last album and their best to date, represented an attempt to cope with the dying or death of those they loved, but used lyrics in ancient Greek and also drew upon the Latin mass for the dead, with the album structured to follow the progression of a traditional Requiem.

Now Et Moriemur have ventured again into unusual territory. As its name suggests, their new album Tamashii No Yama (set for release on April 8th) draws inspiration from Japanese history, myth, and culture, and the instrumentation itself includes the shakuhachi as well as cello, harp, violin, and viola. It will also give Epigrammata a serious challenge as the best album these adventurous Czechs have produced to date. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GLEMSEL — “SAVN”

Premieres No Responses »

Feb 152022

In 2020 the Danish black metal band Glemsel released their first two recordings, a 28-minute EP named Unavngivet (which means “untitled”) and a demo that had no title either, both of which we reviewed. Together they gave listeners a 10-song demonstration of the band’s capabilities — which were formidable.

Through those releases Glemsel demonstrated the ability to quickly carry listeners away. Collectively, the songs were persistently dark in their moods but included beguiling twists and turns. Among other things, they married discordant yet seductive melodies with hurtling drums and vicious vocals, and brought into play ominous, otherworldly, chiming guitars and dirge-like marches. They raced and ravaged in displays of ferocious ecstasy and painted panoramic portraits of heart-rending melancholy. All the while, the band embroidered their music with accents that made the experience even more riveting.

Those first steps left no doubt that Glemsel were very good, and left us eager for a full album, which is finally about to arrive. It does have a name (Forfader) and it’s now set for release on March 18th by Vendetta Records. Today we’re very happy to present its first (and only) single, a song named “Savn“. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries