NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: PISSED REGARDLESS — “TRUST NO PULSE”

Jan 232018

The very name Pissed Regardless tells you some of what you need to know about this San Diego band, but there’s also more going on in their music than head-battering expressions of rampant rage and disgust, as you’ll find out when you let “Trust No Pulse” run roughshod through your cranium.

That’s the name of the song we’re helping the band premiere today. It comes from a new 7″ EP named Feed the Birds, which will be released by Oakland-based Creator-Destructor Records. It follows the band’s two full-length releases, 2013’s self-titled album and 2015’s Force Fed Gods. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 10): SATYRICON, WOLFHEART, HAVUKRUUNU

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017 6 Responses »

Jan 232018

Oslo 05072017. Photo: Marius Viken

I guess it’s not a bad time to take stock of where we are in the rollout of this 2017 edition of our Most Infectious Song list, since this is the 10th Part. With the three songs I’m adding today, we’re up to a total of 32 tracks. I had planned to finish the list by the end of this month, so we can finally close the book on last year (or mostly close it) and focus our time more exclusively on the flood of new metal that’s been coming our way in 2018. If I follow through on that plan, it really just means I’ll be calling an arbitrary halt… because I’m still just figuring this out as I go along.

I suppose if I really feel that calling a dead halt on January 31 would leave too many gems behind, I might edge into February, but on the other hand, that could become a very slippery slope. I do have 8 days left in the month, and if I knock out an average of three tracks per day, I can make it to 56 songs… which would be about 20 fewer than usual for this series. We’ll see. Continue reading »

CROW BLACK SKY: “SIDEREAL LIGHT: VOLUME ONE”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Jan 232018

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the new album by Crow Black Sky from Cape Town, South Africa.)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of writing about music (and that’s a big “if”), it’s that you should never completely write a band off, as they can always surprise you.

Such is the case with South African quartet Crow Black Sky, whose debut record, 2010’s Partheion, proved to be a not-unenjoyable slab of highly melodic, keyboard-inflected Black Metal in the vein of Kolossus-era Keep of Kalessin and early Dimmu Borgir which, despite its obvious merits, largely failed to set the music world on fire, and was soon lost in the shuffle.

Eight(!) years later, however, the band have returned with a new sound, a new outlook, and a brand new album which completely blows its predecessor out of the water. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CULTUS PROFANO — “UNDER THE INFERNAL REIGN, OP. 10”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Jan 232018

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that there is a paradox in those musical strains of black metal that have their roots in the sinister, nocturnal emanations spawned in the ’90s. The new Los Angeles band Cultus Profano embraces those traditions with a fierce devotion, conjuring “a pure form of blasphemy that evokes hatred and darkness”, to quote Debemur Morti Productions, who will release this duo’s debut album Sacramentum Obscurus on February 23rd. And yet the song from the album that we’re helping to premiere today — “Under the Infernal Reign, Op. 10” — powerfully evokes other moods.

From the hate-filled scowls of their corpse-painted visages to the Satanic mysticism that inspired their song titles and lyrics, the band fuel their creations with loathing and abhorrence, seemingly guided by visions of fire and plague, and of the ascendency of evil and the triumph of sin. But the mood of the music, at least to these ears, is one of intense sorrow and desolating despair. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 9): KREATOR, HELLRIPPER, CONDOR

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017 4 Responses »

Jan 222018

I had a whirlwind out-of-town trip that consumed this past weekend, which is why I was unable to continue the roll-out of this list on Saturday and Sunday. But I’m back home in the Seattle area now, and ready to pick up where I left off on Friday.

And speaking of whirlwinds, there are three of them in this 9th installment of the list. It won’t take you much time to figure out why I grouped them together.

KREATOR

Because thrash is the core of all three songs I’m adding today, and because all three bands are so good at what they do, all three albums were loaded with hellishly catchy songs I could have picked for the list. That was certainly true of Kreator’s latest full-length, Gods of Violence. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: UNTERVOID — “UNTERVOID”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Jan 222018

Those of you who are familiar with our frequent premieres know that we always accompany the music with our own thoughts about what you will hear. There are times (though not often) when I think it might be a mistake to include a review, both because I fear my words will be pathetically inadequate and because even an adequate description might threaten to spoil a jaw-dropping surprise. This is one of those times.

The self-titled debut EP of Untervoid is in fact a cavalcade of surprises, an almost chaotic but ingenious conglomeration of stylistic ingredients that may in fact defy at least my own meager descriptive powers. And even in making the attempt to convey the sensations of sound and emotion, I might be reducing the impact of what you would experience by simply launching the player without further ado. But, for better, or more likely for worse, I’m forging on anyway. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSAL VACUUM — “MMXVII”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Jan 222018

Abyssal Vacuum’s new EP reveals a distinctive musical vision and “voice”, the three songs offering a conception of atmospheric black metal that manages to be both mesmerizing and strikingly intense. It’s described by the label that’s releasing it as emanations from a deep and cavernous abyss, “like exploring the darkest caves of Earth”, but the experience it creates might also bring to mind the mysteries of the cosmos lurking in a hostile off-world void.

Abyssal Vacuum is the solo project of French creator Sebastien B. (of Dyslumn and Ominous Shrine), and the project’s first release, which was recorded around the end of 2017, is being made available this week, both digitally and on cassette tape, by the French label Solar Asceticists Productions. What we have for you today is the premiere stream of all three tracks that appear on the EP. Continue reading »

TRIBULATION: “DOWN BELOW”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Jan 222018

(Wil Cifer turns in this review of the new album by Tribulation, which will be released by Century Media on January 26th.)

The new album from this Swedish band is labelled by my iTunes as “gothic metal”. This is a bit of a misnomer as it sounds nothing like Type O Negative or My Dying Bride. They have been wearing a bit of make-up for some time now, but that affects their complexion more than their sound. The bells and whistles giving them a layer of atmosphere have multiplied. There are more synths on this album, but it makes it more melodic not darker. But I have a high bar for what I call “goth”. If there are not less than six degrees of separation between a band and The Cure’s Pornography album it’s not “goth”.

What seems to have occurred in the time that has passed since they released The Children of the Night is this band has listened to a ton of classic metal from the ‘70s and ‘80s. While a logical progression for their sound, this makes for a much more streamlined version of their already melodic take on death metal. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 3): NECROPHOBIC, THE ATLAS MOTH, THE ABSENCE, SAMAEL, LONG DISTANCE CALLING

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jan 222018

Necrophobic

(DGR has stepped into the round-up void left by our editor this past week and has produced a three-part collection of recent songs and videos. Parts 1 and 2 are here and here.)

Three weeks into January, and judging by the handful of massive Seen and Heard and Overflowing Streams posts we’ve had to put up, you could say that we’ve managed to the get ourselves into gear as our beloved musical genre has already offloaded numerous news bits upon us in the new year.

I, your ever-faithful servant, have also been doing my best to go along with my ragged fish net and catch everything that might’ve slipped by us — which in the case of this post dates back to last week and then some. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 2): CYNIC, TYRANT OF DEATH, BENIGHTED, IN VAIN, BODY HARVEST

Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Jan 212018

Robert Venosa: “Ayahuasca Dream”

(DGR has stepped into the round-up void left by our editor this past week and has produced a three-part collection of recent songs and videos. Parts 1 is here; Part 3 will be presented on Monday.)

Three weeks into January, and judging by the handful of massive Seen and Heard and Overflowing Streams posts we’ve had to put up, you could say that we’ve managed to the get ourselves into gear as our beloved musical genre has already offloaded numerous news bits upon us in the new year.

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