NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD: KHANDRA, BORGNE, ADUANTEN, RORCAL & EARTHFLESH, NONE, GHASTLY

Mar 262021

As you can see, I had enough time to pull together a round-up of new tracks and videos today. It’s the first time I’ve managed to do this during the work-week in ages, usually having to wait until Saturdays before I can pull it off. As I meandered among things I was interested in checking out, the following six items began to cluster together in my head. Other things I enjoyed didn’t fit in this cluster, so I’ll leave them for tomorrow.

What caused these songs to coalesce in my thinking is because all of them seemed made of madness. For sure, they do have their distinctive thrills, but in varying ways they’re almost all a fracturing of sanity in sound.

KHANDRA (Belarus)

The first song I’ve chosen is the first single from a new album by this black metal band from Belarus, whose past music we’ve gratefully premiered and reviewed on two previous occasions. The name of the song gives you fair warning about what’s coming: “Irrigating Lethal Acres with Blood“. Continue reading »

THE BEAST OF NOD – MULTIVERSAL

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Mar 252021

(Andy Synn ventures forth once more into the multiverse of madness to experience the kaleidoscopic thrills and spills of The Beast of Nod, whose new album is out tomorrow in all known dimensions)

One thing I absolutely hate, with the burning passion of a thousand exploding suns, is parody bands.

They’re (almost) never funny, nowhere near as clever as they think they are, and generally just rely on lazy, lowest-common-denominator tropes to get by. Hell, even the best of them barely rise above the level of “children’s entertainers with guitars” a lot of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against bands having fun (as I hope to demonstrate with this review), nor am I ignorant of the fact that, well, Metal (particularly the more OTT and “extreme” forms we all know and love so well) is, frankly… a little bit ridiculous.

I mean, c’mon, a significant number of bands spend most of their time trying out “out-gore” one another with ever more biologically implausible (and borderline indecipherable) lyrics, while another extremely large contingent likes to rant about the evils of organised religion while dressed up like undead wizards!

With that in mind, then, there’s definitely something to be said for bands who, while still taking their craft seriously, are fully aware of the genre’s inherent absurdity (but, then, isn’t all life absurd, really, when you get right down to it?) and don’t try and shy away from it or act like they’re ashamed of it but, instead, choose to openly embrace it in all its shameless, everything-turned-up-to-eleven excess.

And if there was ever a band who exemplified the preposterous potential of Metal, not as a weakness but as a virtue, then it’s those shameless sci-fi Tech-Death troubadours who call themselves The Beast of Nod.

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE PLAGUE — “FESTERING IN SICKNESS”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Mar 252021

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, The Plague erupted from cemetery earth in 2017 with a debut EP appropriately named Mass Genocide, and then honed their grisly blades with live performances in support of such bands as Angelcorpse, Master, Entombed AD, and Ensiferum (among many others). And now the time has almost come for them to reveal their debut album Within Death, which will be released on April 21st by Bitter Loss Records.

The music of this full-length debut does indeed live within death — death metal of the old school to be precise, of a particularly mauling and murderous, gruesome and ghastly variety. Powered by that beloved chainsawing guitar distortion, propelled by bone-smashing drumwork, and elevated into rarified air by truly astonishing vocal madness, The Plague‘s music is electrifying. We have little doubt that (as the advance press claims) it will strongly appeal to fans of classic Dismember and Entombed as well as more recent entrants such as LIK and Entrails.

The band have released a couple of singles from the album already, and today we’re presenting another one — “Festering In Sickness“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FUCKER — “BASTARD LIAR”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres No Responses »

Mar 252021

As historical artifacts go, the forthcoming compilation of music by the Russian band Fucker (entitled Dichlofos) is an un-earthing of sounds that’s unlikely to generate global headlines. It may be immediately meaningful only to a collective of nostalgic Russian fans, but though I knew nothing about Fucker before being introducing to this new comp, I’m still getting my own feelings of nostalgia from the music, and so agreed to make this premiere today.

Fucker’s music is sometimes pretty far off the usual beaten paths at this site. The vocals do get harsh, but mainly consist of singing in the tracks we’re presenting, and those tracks are far more rock ‘n’ roll and old school heavy metal than the kind of extreme stuff we usually spread around. But on the other hand, the songs do pack a visceral punch, and they’re definitely devilish. But before we get to the music, a history lesson is in order, one with its fair share of tragedy. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SHAMBLES

Interviews 1 Response »

Mar 252021

(In this interview Comrade Aleks spoke with Chainarong Meeprasert — bassist, vocalist, and co-founder of the Thai death/doom band Shambles — about the band’s past, present, and future.)

As a tireless doom metal researcher I was surprised when I found that Shambles had been hidden from my radars.

This Bangkok-based gore-thirsty outfit was founded in Thailand back in 1997. The guys tried to express their addiction to Satanism and Darkness through brutal death and black metal, but in the end they chose a path of heavily death-influenced doom metal with huge influences of Incantation and like bands.

After a series of demos and splits Shambles recorded the Realm of Darkness Shrine full-length in 2016. They didn’t stop, and new releases like the Primitive Death Trance EP (2017) and a split with Japanese Anatomia, Abyssal Doom Oriental (2020), followed.

Recently we talked about Shambles’ past, present, and future with one of the band’s founders, Chainarong Meeprasert (bass, vocals). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NUCLEAR WINTER — “THE HARVEST MOON”

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres No Responses »

Mar 242021

The Zimbabwean metal band Nuclear Winter (the solo work of Gary Stautmeister) is following up its last release, the 2020 EP Stormscapes, with a second full-length named Greystone. It’s projected for release via the South African label MMD Records on May 21 of this year. In the lead-up to the album release Nuclear Winter has begun releasing stand-alone singles from the record. The first of those was “Corridor of Shells“, and today we present a second one, “The Harvest Moon“.

Nuclear Winter‘s music has evolved, and as Stautmeister has commented, this new release is “more electronic” than the previous EP and displays improved production values, but still employs an amalgam of industrial and melodic death metal. Continue reading »

NANGA PARBAT – DOWNFALL AND TORMENT

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 242021

(Andy Synn continues to seek out the best new bands and boldly go above and beyond with the new record from Nanga Parbat)

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that discovering, and falling in love with, a brand new band is one of life’s great joys.

This is especially true when that band absolutely knock it out of the park with their first try.

Such is the case with Downfall and Torment, the debut album from Italian Progressive Death maestros Nanga Parbat.

AN NCS PREMIERE: UTBURD — “STORIES OF WORLD WINDS”

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Mar 242021

Story of Frozen Souls is the name of the forthcoming third album by the Russian atmospheric black metal band Utburd. It is a concept album which takes as its historical subject matter the early exploration of Antarctica, encompassing the journeys of James Ross, Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott, seasoned with Edgar Poe’s novel (his only complete novel) about the adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

Anyone who has done any reading about these explorations is aware that they are replete with tales of heroism, foolhardiness, terror, madness, and death, all of them shrouded in bitter cold and oppressive darkness. How has Utburd attempted to capture such sensations in sound? We have an example today in our premiere of the album’s eighth track, “Stories of World Winds“. Continue reading »

KLEXOS – APOCRYPHAL PARABOLAM

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 232021

(Andy Synn takes time out of his busy schedule to catch up with an album he’s been dying to write about for some time, namely the debut album from Disso-Tech upstarts Klexos)

So here’s the thing… originality is overrated.

Don’t get me wrong, when something does come along which truly moves the needle, shifts the paradigm, or [insert zeitgeist-y term here], I’m usually right up there with everyone else, marvelling at how brilliant it is and wondering how no-one thought to do… whatever it is… before.

But originality isn’t, or shouldn’t be, everything – being original doesn’t necessarily make you good, for one thing – and the way it’s often fetishised has led me to encounter some very odd people/statements online over the years (for example, did you know that since Gorguts exist that any band who plays in 4/4 or uses standard song structures no longer counts as “real” Death Metal?).

Let’s face it, we’re all, ultimately, the sum of our experiences, our influences, and our environment. This is especially the case if you’re a musician, because who you are as an artist is largely shaped by the music which inspires you. Not just in the way it colours and dictates your listening preferences, but in how it actively alters how you listen to and understand – and, in turn, create – music.

Which I suppose is a long-winded way of getting to the point and saying that while Apocryphal Parabolam, the debut album from Lexington, Kentucky’s Klexos may not be a wholly original affair, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have a certain spark of something – call it inspiration, call it individuality – which makes it well worth listening to.

AN NCS PREMIERE: HYMNR — “PART III”

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Mar 232021

Providing only a glimpse of its extravagant talents last year, the black metal band Hymnr (a trio of unknown locations) will soon reveal the full flowering of their unearthly wonders through a debut album named (fittingly) Far Beyond Insanity. With a release date of April 23rd through Saturnal Records, the album consists of four long tracks ranging from 8 to 13 minutes in length, and today it’s our great pleasure to premiere the longest of them.

Both the band and the album have a conceptual focus (the tracks on Far Beyond Insanity are identified only as Parts I through IV), though the concept is mysterious (as is the music). We are told only that “the concept of Hymnr is its own tale of the tragic path that has led the world, humanity, and religion down this downwards spiral that this cosmic plane has become.”

Every Part in this tale of how everything ended up here is so fascinating (and disturbing) that the experiences become transfixing — and that is certainly true of Part III, the piece that we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

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