NO CLEAN SINGING

WHITECHAPEL – HYMNS IN DISSONANCE

Mar 032025

(Andy Synn is as shocked as anyone at how good, and how heavy, the new album from Whitechapel is)

As someone who considers themselves a long-time fan of Whitechapel it wasn’t until I picked up the promo for their upcoming ninth(!) album, Hymns in Dissonance, that I realised I’ve been more of a lapsed fan of the band for even longer.

Truth be told, the last time I enjoyed a Whitechapel album front-to-back was their 2012 self-titled record (still my favourite out of everything they’ve done, though I’ll happily entertain any arguments in support of 2010’s absolutely monstrous A New Era of Corruption), and although I’ve given every subsequent release a shot – from the lazy Slipknot-isms of Our Endless War and The Mark of the Blade (arguably the lowest point, creatively speaking, point in the band’s career) to the increasingly popular, but also increasingly generic, sounds of The Valley and Kin – it’s largely felt like the past decade or so has been all about doing whatever it takes to maximise the band’s popularity, at the cost of what originally drew me to them in the first place.

And, look, I get why so many people like the latter two albums – Bozeman has a great singing voice, no doubt, and it’s clear how much effort he’s put into expressing the necessary emotion and processing his trauma on each record – but so much of their recent music has just been so aggressively bland (and, on the occasion where it actually does show some teeth, so blandly aggressive) that I can’t help but feel disappointed in them for continually playing things so safe.

Which is why Hymns in Dissonance is such a revelation – because I don’t think anyone out there expected them to go this hard, or this heavy, ever again.

SHADES OF BLACK: ОБРІЙ (OBRIJ), LHAÄD, FAUSTIAN SPIRIT, KOLDBRANN, TYHJÄ , ANONYMOUS SKULL

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Mar 022025

(written by Islander)

My computer tells me that my introduction to yesterday’s roundup of new music and videos was 1,502 words long. I obviously had too much time on my hands, though I don’t know why I spent it doing all that sharing instead of covering more music. But don’t worry, I won’t do that again today. Today’s introduction is 47 words long:

I’ve alternated today’s selections between complete albums or EPs and individual songs from forthcoming records. Apart from that, there’s no rhyme nor reason in how I organized the choices. I made these choices because, to quote the English poet William Cowper, “Variety’s the very spice of life.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE WEEK THAT WAS, AND MUSIC FROM NINE BANDS

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Mar 012025

Marcus Larson (1825–1864) Ocean at Night with Burning Ship (detail)

(written by Islander)

It has been a week in hell. I don’t mean the stuff you’ve seen every day in the national news reports, including the vile treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House yesterday (I’m addressing the 3 of you who can still bear to read the national news), but hellish events closer to home that impacted our ~~putrid~~ precious site.

Specifically, beginning last Sunday night and carrying into Monday the Puget Sound area of Washington where I live got walloped by lightning storms, heavy rain, and very high winds. Windstorms are fairly common during the winter months here, and the results are predictable: In the heavily forested island where I live, trees fall, limbs break off, and they hammer themselves into the power lines, all of which are strung above ground close to trees. And pop! The power goes out!

Which it did in the early hours of last Monday. And when the power goes out here, so does the internet, because my ISP’s local servers and routing stations apparently don’t have generators or human beings close by to keep them going. And when the internet goes out for everyone in my neighborhood (and this time for nearly all of the 30,000 people who live on the island), the strength of cell phone signals drops to borderline non-existent. I guess because everyone is trying to use their phones in place of the stricken net service. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FUNERAL DANCER — “MANANANGGAL”

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Feb 282025

(written by Islander)

The black ‘n’ roll band Funeral Dancer came together at the end of 2019 in Long Island, New York, rising from the ashes of the blackened death metal band Locus Mortis. Since then they’ve released a pair of demos and a 2023 EP (The Nightmare) and played well-known venues in the New York area (including opening for Devil Master and 200 Stab Wounds at Necrofest at Saint Vitus Bar).

Now Funeral Dancer have signed with the revived Dark Empire Records (the Cleveland-based label started back in the ’90s by Integrity‘s Dwid Hellion) for the April 4 release of a new EP called Fiends of the Outer Wave. As a taste of what’s coming, today we’re bringing you the official lyric video for a song from the EP named “Manananggal“. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 180): GREAT AMERICAN GHOST

THE SYNN REPORT 1 Response »

Feb 282025

Recommended for fans of: Employed to Serve, Fit For An Autopsy, Knocked Loose

Despite their steadily growing profile over the years, this is the first time we’re actually writing about Boston-based bruisers Great American Ghost here at NCS (though their 2022 EP, Torture World did get a small mention in my end of year round-up at the time) so a quick introduction may be necessary before we go any further.

Equally influenced by seminal Hardcore acts like American Nightmare, The Hope Conspiracy, and Vision of Disorder as they are living Metal legends like Meshuggah, Gojira, and Fear Factory, the group’s sound has slowly shifted over the years, moving from the rougher, rawer approach of their debut album, Everyone Leaves, through the increasingly heavier and more metallic sounds explored on Hatred Stems from the Seed and Power Through Terror, to the even bigger and more bombastic tones of their most recent record, Tragedy of the Commons (which was released just last month).

So if any of that sounds appealing (and I’m hoping it does) then get ready to discover your new favourite band!

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AN AXIS OF PERDITION — “I AM ODIUM”

Premieres 1 Response »

Feb 282025

(written by Islander)

We have a rare treat for you today, not just an exceptionally good new song by An Axis of Perdition but also an exceptionally good new video.

Let’s get to the video first. It tells a story, something like a haunting fairy-tale that the Brothers Grimm might have imagined. It was directed by award-winning filmmaker Randal Plunkett. The interior settings and the costumes are beautifully made, the exterior settings well-chosen. It’s also well-acted and meticulously filmed, and the narrative unfolds in a way that’s gripping.

Here’s a comment about the short film by Randal Plunkett himself: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ONIROPHAGUS

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Feb 282025

(In January of this year Personal Records released a powerhouse new album by the Spanish death/doom band Onirophagus. Our Comrade Aleks gives it a very good quick review below, along with his very enjoyable interview with the band’s vocalist, Paingrinder.)

Catalan death-doom band Onirophagus have been through a lineup rotation since the release of their second album Endarkenment (Illumination through Putrefaction) in 2019, and with two new guitarists and a bassist in the lineup, they have recorded 45 minutes of material under the title Revelations from the Void.

Initially, Onirophagus focused on the legacy of the grimmest death-doom bands of the past, those that avoided melodrama and “gothic sentiments”. And how could it be otherwise, if almost all the members either previously performed or still perform in thrash and death bands? Perhaps that is why the new album is so heterogeneous, although sustained in a single style.

In some places, Onirophagus pulls the veins with classic depressive doom, a model of dissonance; in others they deafen with a death metal attack in the name of Incantation; and in others they invite us into the paranoid nightmare of Esoteric. The mixture of these influences serves the purpose of creating the individuality of the band. Even the violin, appearing in “Black Brew”, plays its part in an unexpected schizophrenic style.

I guess, you can hear the rebellion of the bands from the noughties in Onirophagus, those who found the key to depicting madness with the help of new combinations of familiar formulas. These crushing and murderously dark compositions can be majestic and even melodic, and in this contrast lies their aesthetic value. The band almost never returns to the theme played within the track, preferring to move on from plot to plot. After all, Revelations from the Void is a conceptual album and the musical accompaniment of this story is appropriate. Onirophagus did everything right. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HELVITNIR — “DRAUGR”

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Feb 272025

(written by Islander)

The lineup of the Norwegian metal band Helvitnir have resumes that make fans of black metal sit up straight and pay attention. They include three recent former members of Ragnarok, and two of those are also in Myronath. And their drummer is none other than Hellhammer (Jan Axel Blomberg).

In July 2024, following several singles, Helvitnir released their debut EP Helborn on the esteemed Dusktone label, and it proved to be a masterful four-song blend of raw, chilling aggression and majestic, grandiose compositions that both honored the old ways of black metal from the far north and pushed it forward.

That EP did well, and so now Helvitnir and Dusktone have joined forces again for the release of the band’s debut album Wolves of the Underworld on March 14th. What we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video for the album track “Draugr“, and we want to begin our introduction with Helvitnir‘s own description of what it brings us: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GALLOWER — “BUBONIC BREATH”

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Feb 272025

(written by Islander)

About two and a half years ago we gleefully premiered a song named “Claws and Fangs” from a then-forthcoming EP by the Polish black-thrashing maniacs in Gallower. We introduced it with the observation that “Gallower incite a riot of violence that skillfully melds the Teutonic legendry of Destruction, Sodom, Kreator, and Violent Force with the first-wave black magick of Bathory, Hellhammer, Venom, and Japan’s Sabbat.”

And now, with equal devil-horned glee, we’re helping spread the word that Gallower will be returning on March 28th of this year with their second full-length, aptly titled Vengeance & Wrath, in collaboration again with Dying Victims Productions. And again, we’re happily hosting the premiere of one of the Gallower songs off the new record — “Bubonic Breath“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TER ZIELE — “EMBODIMENT OF DEATH”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Feb 272025

(written by Islander)

“When we, as humans, accept subjection to suffering, resignation in life inevitably follows.”

With those words the Dutch band Ter Ziele introduce their debut album Embodiment of Death, which will be released on February 28th by Tartarus Records. The words pack a lot of meaning into a relatively brief sentence. They refer not just to human suffering, but to suffering caused by others or by oneself, hence the word subjection. They suggest that there is a choice among those who suffer about whether to accept the subjection or not. And they point to the consequences of acceptance: the inevitability of resignation in life.

And so the sentence is both an observation of bleak realities that beset the human condition and also (possibly) an argument. What does it matter if acceptance leads to resignation unless people have the ability to reject instead of accept? And what might motivate them to resist or to change?

Of course, the words don’t suggest that resistance or change will be easy. It may not even be possible. In some cases we know it will be futile, that some conditions are so terrible and hopes for relief so barren that despair seems inevitable, even when (and maybe especially when) those conditions are self-inflicted. But again, the words imply that acceptance is not the right answer, because that is the surest recipe for a never-ending cycle of misery. They seem to make an argument, though not a “preachy one,” for resistance.

Obviously, there is a connection between the sentence and what inspired the album’s music, and between the inspiration and the results. And you can draw all those connections today as we premiere the record as a whole. Continue reading »

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