NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY (TOO MANY NAMES TO PUT IN A POST TITLE)

Aug 062021

Over the last few days my NCS comrades (well, mainly DGR) have been shoveling links at me for new songs and videos, in anticipation that I would put together a round-up by today — which is a Bandcamp Friday. Most of those links were for music by bigger-name bands. The thought was that I could also add more obscure names, and that the allure of the bigger names might help introduce the lesser-knowns to more fans.

The problem is that the pile of links has grown to gargantuan proportions, which has made it tougher for me to insert as many other discoveries as I might want and still write up some thoughts about everything. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow. Here’s the A-to-Z deluge I have for today, in alphabetical order.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

Prepare for relentless high-speed bludgeoning and crazed fretwork mania as a big rabid mastiff barks in your face at equally high speed. Exhilarating! Continue reading »

BURIAL IN THE SKY – THE CONSUMED SELF

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Aug 062021

(Andy Synn goes on a journey with the new album from Burial In The Sky – set for release on August 13 via Rising Nemesis Records – and finds that the band’s path leads to some unexpected places)

I don’t think anyone would deny that, for the last several years (and that’s just a very conservative estimate) the Techy/Proggy end of the Death Metal spectrum has been in rude and ruddy health.

But still… there’s a certain glaring absence, a spiralling void if you will, in the scene that’s been crying out to be filled ever since the most recent album by The Faceless revealed them to be a mere ghost (pun intended) of the band they once were.

Many have tried to step up, of course – often, unfortunately, by simply parroting, or parodying, the exact same sound which made Keene and co. famous – but so far only a few have even come close to being worthy.

However, while previous records from Burial In The Sky may have marked them out as being worthier than most to pick up that particular torch, what really surprised me about The Consumed Self (which is easily the best work of the band’s career) is that, if anything, it suggests that BitS plan on stepping into a very different pair of shoes.

Whose shoes exactly? Well you’ll have to wait just a little while longer to find out, because this review – much like the album which inspired it – is made up of two distinct halves.

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLEEDING MALICE — “THY KINGDOM COME”

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Aug 062021

Thy Kingdom Come is the debut album of Bleeding Malice from Minsk, Belarus, and it’s being released today. In the band’s words, it’s a 9-track tale “about a man with his sins and weaknesses, who for a moment realized that the scales were irrevocably tilted to one side. Memories rush one by one, but the step into emptiness has already been taken….” In telling that tale, the song lyrics use words of disgust, vengeance, and hate, mixed with words of confusion, torment, and despair.

It’s an intense and disturbing narrative, and the music is equally intense and disturbing. The album is also surprising in its amalgam of genre ingredients. You may think, as you begin to move through the album, that you’ve figured out what Bleeding Malice are all about, but they continually defy expectations with unexpected twists that strengthen the desire to continue listening, and to listen again. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REPLICANT — “CHASSIS OF DECEIT”

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Aug 052021

New Jersey’s Replicant seized attention with their 2018 debut album Negative Life, which Steve Schwegler (of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores) beautifully reviewed for us. A couple of impressive splits followed that, along with an EP named Hypochondria of the Machine (reviewed here) that further marked Replicant as a truly distinctive band worth watching very closely.

Yet as attention-grabbing as all those releases were, they still might not have prepared listeners for the wild and often weird extravaganzas encompassed by the band’s forthcoming second full-length, Malignant Reality (set for release by Transcending Obscurity on September 10th). The music is wonderfully head-spinning (as well as savage), and there’s probably not a better example of just how head-spinning it can become than the song we’re premiering today — “Chassis of Deceit“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEAD SOUL ALLIANCE — “PERPETUAL RECYCLED EXISTENCE”

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Aug 052021

We’ve enjoyed watching the relentless forward progress of the Canadian death metal band Dead Soul Alliance, from the first self-titled demo in 2011 to the 2013 EP Proud To Die (reviewed here) and the 2017 EP Slaves to the Apocalypse (reviewed here), and now we have the band’s debut album, Behind the Scenes, which is set for a September 3 release by Bitter Loss Records.

From the beginning, the band has been the creative vehicle for vocalist and multi-instrumentalist W.D. On this new album he’s joined by drummer E.H., and together they’ve created a ravishing experience that revels in both the brutality and the eeriness of old school death metal, while displaying the kind of dynamic songcraft and attention to evocative melody that makes the songs memorable.

We have a great example of these qualities in the track we’re premiering today, a multi-faceted experience that presents an amalgam of rampant ruthlessness, berserker madness, and stirring melody. Continue reading »

NIGHT CROWNED: “HÄDANFÄRD”

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Aug 052021

(This is DGR’s review of the new album by the Swedish band Night Crowned, which is out now on the Noble Demon label.)

It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that we found ourselves checking in with Night Crowned and their first full-length release, Impius Viam. Granted; a large part of that feeling is attributable to us missing the boat on the late-February release and coming around to it eight months later. Yet even considering that, you’d have to admit that returning to the stage a year and a half later with a follow-up release is a pretty quick turnaround time.

That prospect can be terrifying, since albums released year-over-year can be pretty hit-or-miss depending on how prolific the musician is, and on top of that last year was just generally a fucking mess. When given such a massive amount of time to be trapped inside, what else is a musician likely to do other than create, and it seems like that is the path Night Crowned chose.

The group’s second full-length came out via Noble Demon in early July and plays fully into the moodier-sibling aspect that one expects from any growing family. Bearing album art now fully in black and white, lyrics and song titles mostly in Swedish, and a less-packed run time where the only peaceful bit is the title song, Hädanfärd is a ferocious follow-up. It leans much more on the extreme side of things, and save for a few surprising deviations with clean vocal lines, it is the sort of release that never lets up, playing fully into the apocalyptic blastfest one expects from a group veering further into their black-metal inspirations. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NOCTURNAL — “VOID DWELLER”

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Aug 042021

The German black thrashing extremists in Nocturnal should need no introduction. For the last decade-plus, they’ve been scorching eardrums and adrenalizing bloodstreams in ever-more formidable and ferocious fashion, while continuing their quest for the perfect combination of sound and slaughter that best represents their violent and venomous ethos.

On the other hand, Nocturnal don’t pump out albums quickly, and it’s been seven years since their last one, 2014’s Storming Evil, with only one split to fill the space. Thankfully, they’re now ready to release their fourth full-length, Serpent Death, which includes a changed line-up to accompany founding guitarist Avenger.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a blistering track from the new album, one that will jet your energy levels into hyper-drive. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEXENKLAD — “HEATHENHEART”

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Aug 042021

At 13 tracks and an hour of music, Hexenklad’s recently released second album Heathenheart is a substantial body of work, and a wide-ranging one. Although “folk/black metal” or “pagan metal” are genre labels you might see attached to the band, Heathenheart moves among episodes of wintry blackened moodiness, warlike savagery, grand pageantry, acoustic folk tales, and a lot more.

As the band themselves report from Ontario, “From the coldness and rawness found in Black Metal to the uplifting and memorable melodies found in Folk Metal, to the hooks and choruses found in Heavy Metal,” the record is a broad representation of the members’ varied influences and personalities, and it brings to mind bands such as Moonsorrow and Dissection, Primordial and Insomnium.

Among all the varying experiences offered by the album, the title track is one that’s truly moving and inspiring, and it’s the subject of a riveting guitar playthrough video that we’re premiering today, which focuses on the talents of Hexenklad guitarist John Chalmers. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Aug 042021

(Andy Synn draws your attention to four more albums from last month which he feels went overlooked)

Just like the month before, July was absolutely packed with new releases, from bands both new and old, many of which we simply didn’t get around to devoting as much time and attention to as we might have wanted.

As a result, picking just four albums to write about for this article was a serious headache, only slightly alleviated by the fact that the big man himself (Islander, not god, though I’ll forgive you for confusing the two) has written a little something about several of the bands I was considering featuring here – Anatman, Codex Nero, Serpentrance – in the last week or two.

It still wasn’t an easy decision though and so, if I have time, I may end up doing a second one of these columns just to assuage my guilt over not having written about so many new and up-and-coming artists this last month.

In the meantime, however, please enjoy this distinctly blackened edition of “Things You May Have Missed”.

AN NCS PREMIERE: PESTILENTIAL SHADOWS — “TWILIGHT CONGREGATION”

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Aug 032021

With their forthcoming sixth album, Revenant, the formidable and fearsome Australian black metal band Pestilential Shadows immerse themselves in death, while imagining an end that brings no rest. Inspired by the riddle “What is dead that doesn’t die?, “the album offers many sonic/spiritual pathways of death, decay, pestilence, and putrefaction” (so says the PR material accompanying the album, and the music leaves no doubt about its truth), but the album’s title signifies that in the band’s conception, what may follow the swinging scythe of the grim reaper are horrors unbounded.

In other words, the darkness in the new album is pitch-black, and shrouded by the supernatural. But what founding vocalist/guitarist Balam and his bandmates have achieved on Revenant goes beyond sensations of bodily degradation and mental terror. The music is even more powerfully haunting because it so powerfully resonates with the core of what it means to be human — the curse of knowing life and knowing that it won’t last, with all the dread, the fear, and the sorrow that can come with that knowledge.

For example, the song we’re premiering today, “Twilight Congregation“, might be experienced as a channeling of the awful gloom and anger of a soul brought back from the grave to dwell in an endless afterlife of torment. But to the ears of this writer, it can also be received as a manifestation of the kind of shattering heartbreak we have all known or will know. Continue reading »

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