SAR ISATUM: “SAR ISATUM”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 292017
 

 

(Our ally Gorger from Norway, who usually brings us reviews of albums and EPs that have traveled beneath our radar, today brings us music from an album that hasn’t yet appeared. To find more of his discoveries, type “Gorger” in our search bar or visit Gorger’s Metal.)

The more shit you have to do, the more life will find its way of putting a spoke in your eye. Thus, I’m keeping this short. But enough about me.

When I was asked to cover a self-titled single from Colorado based Sar Isatum, I realized it was outside my self-limiting borders of only covering what I deem as actual releases. I see this as more of a preview of something that looms on the horizon, but such a great one that I decided to share it on a more fitting platform. Namely No Clean Singing. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: WOE UNTO ME — “AMONG THE LIGHTENED SKIES THE VOIDNESS FLASHED”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 282017
 

 

When you see that a metal band is releasing a double-album, one thing you know without being told is that they must have had a lot of ideas. When you see that the total length of a double album is almost two hours, you’re inclined to resort to all caps, and at least one exclamation point: A LOT OF IDEAS! But what you won’t know until listening is whether there were enough GOOD IDEAS to justify the risks of such an imposing creation.

Because, let’s face it, in a fast-paced age plagued by famously short attention spans when many (if not most) single albums barely top half an hour, going THIS BIG can be a deterrent to listeners. Will they be as devoted in listening to the music as the band were in creating it?

The Belarusian doom band Woe Unto Me will learn the answer to that question, because they have taken precisely that risk. Their new album, Among The Lightened Skies The Voidness Flashed, will be released tomorrow (September 29th) through Solitude Productions, and we have a full stream for you today. It consists of two records, and together they are nearly two hours long. And they are indeed full of ideas — but they address big, timeless questions too, questions of such intrinsic weight and pervasiveness in the human conscience that you can better understand why they did what they have done. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXIMPERITUSERQETHHZEBIBŠIPTUGAKKATHŠULWELIARZAXUŁUM (EXIMPERITUS) — “DESHRET”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Sep 282017
 

 

Seventeen months ago I posted a track from an album by a band from Minsk, Belarus, named:

Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum

Were it not for the copy/paste function, my hands would have been paralyzed trying to type that. My entire body would have become paralyzed if I had attempted to type the full title of the song, or the album title, which consists of a great volume of words and a seemingly endless string of letters. I had no clue what any of it meant, though a comment on our Facebook page at the time explained:

“The name of the record translates to ‘Projecting the singular emission ov the Doctrine ov Absolute and All-Absorbing Evil through the hexahedral prism ov Sîn-Ahhī-Erība upon the hypersurface ov zodiacal arc ov the cosmotechnical order ov paleocontact founders the utterly ancient hypostases ov pre-axes civilizations actuate the resonance transformer ov temporally similar to the eternity ov the future in the towers ov Nwn-Hu-Kek-Amon’s obcervatory embodying the ashes ov Alulim into the ethereal matter to the west ov exoplanet PSRB 1620-26b'”.

Thankfully, the title of the new release by… let’s just call them Eximperitus… is far briefer, though no less cryptic: W2246-0526. It will be discharged on October 20, and today we’re helping spread the word about a new lyric video for one of the new songs — also far briefer in its title: “Deshret“. Continue reading »

ODIOUS ICON: “PLANET OF IMMENSE DECAY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 282017
 

 

How many killer riffs and tempo changes can be packed into three-and-a-half minutes of extreme music without wrecking its structural integrity as a song or undermining the dominance of its ravenous, slaughtering vibe? It seems that Norway’s Odious Icon decided to put that question to the test when they wrote and recorded the title track to their debut album, Planet of Immense Decay, which we’re premiering in this post. Maybe someone else has achieved a higher score, but this song grades very, very high.

The song’s compact length magnifies its intensity, sort of like venting pressurized water through a narrow opening: The striking force is impressive, especially given that the blast hits you in the face right from the start, in a high-speed torrent of razoring guitar work, machine-gun percussion, and maniacal, blood-thirsty howls. Electrifying stuff… and then the first change happens. Continue reading »

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER: “NIGHTBRINGERS”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 282017
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by The Black Dahlia Murder in advance of its October 6 release by Metal Blade Records.)

It’s extremely fitting that the striking, crimson-hued cover art that you see above has been provided by the legendary Kristian Wåhlin, aka Necrolord, who last worked with The Black Dahlia Murder on the cover for their career-defining Nocturnal, as Nightbringers is without a doubt the band’s best release since their 2007 breakthrough.

That’s not to disparage or denigrate the albums the band have put out in the intervening years (Deflorate in particular remains a personal favourite of mine), but the harsh, bitter, ugly truth of the matter is that, try as they might, the Michigan quintet have never quite managed to fully replicate that strange mix of power and precision, heaviness and hooks, menace and melody, that came together on their third record.

But album number eight definitely comes very, very close. Continue reading »

LOINCLOTH: “PSALM OF THE MORBID WHORE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 282017
 

 

(Todd Manning reviews the new album by the Virginia/North Carolina instrumental metal band Loincloth, which will be released by Southern Lord on September 29.)

During the Death Metal explosion of the early ’90s, there existed an anomaly on Earache’s legendary roster, an incredibly complex and off-kilter Doom Metal act by the name of Confessor. Boasting dramatic, high-pitched vocals and very technical music, Confessor stuck out like a sore thumb in a scene dominated by blast beats and death growls. At the time, most people obsessed over the vocals. But nowadays, the world seems to have come around and considered their debut, Condemned, to be a classic, and in those conversations it’s the music getting equal attention.

After the band broke up for the first time, while in the midst of trying to follow up their debut, bassist Cary Rowells and drummer Steve Shelton went on to form Fly Machine and then subsequently moved on to Loincloth, an instrumental trio in which they are joined by guitarist Tannon Penland. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “UNHALLOWED BLOOD OATH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Sep 272017
 

 

The first press release I saw for the debut album of Australia’s Runespell concluded by describing it as a “mesmerizing maelstrom of alternately grim/gorgeous frequencies”, presenting “flickering refractions of times distant and as yet lived, black metal wielded as weapon, totem, and portal simultaneously”. All those sentiments I’ve quoted are accurate, but the one that rang most true is the characterization of the music as a portal into the past.

In one sense that rings true because the music links arms with the venerated traditions of Scandinavian second-wave black metal, but it’s also true in another sense: The music has a mythic atmosphere, one that casts the mind’s eye back into distant centuries, to times (whether imagined or real) that have spawned sagas of warlike defiance and sacrifice, of bloodshed and bereavement, of heroic striving and irredeemable loss. To make your way through this vividly imagined and beautifully rendered album is to become moved, and enthralled.

And we will now give you a chance to make your own way through the album as we premiere a full stream of Unhallowed Blood Oath in advance of its September 29 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SAINT BARTHELEMY’S TEMPLE — “THE COLD MOUTH OF THE EARTH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 272017
 

 

On the night of 23–24 August 1572 (the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle), the king of France ordered the killing of a group of French Protestants who had gathered in Paris to attend a royal wedding. The assassinations led to a wave of Catholic mob violence that spread throughout the city and into the countryside, resulting in the deaths of thousands.

The French extreme metal band Saint Barthelemy’s Temple have taken this paroxysm of violence and hatred as the inspiration for their name, and their new twenty-minute EP The Cold Mouth of the Earth will soon be released in October by Atavism Records. Today we bring you a full stream of its three powerful tracks — “De Potentia Saturni“, “To the Baneful Oblivion“, and “The Sword of the Victor“. Continue reading »

FOREVER PLAYING CATCH-UP (PART 2): KUUJEOJABENOJUJANOMIASHIKUSHIJA, THE HEADS ARE ZEROS, EMPIRINE

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 272017
 

 

(This is the second part of a multi-part series by Austin Weber focusing on 2017 releases that we haven’t previously reviewed. Part 3 will follow tomorrow, and further installments are expected next week.)

 

In spite of what the naysayers will tell you, I’m of the opinion that there’s an absolutely ridiculous amount of good metal releases coming out all the time, many of them coming from new groups or independent groups that we’re just now catching onto for the first time.

This lengthy round-up has been in the works for awhile, but I kept adding more and more to the list of what I wanted to cover, and that delayed it until now. The focus here is on releases that dropped in 2017 that haven’t been covered at NCS yet. We’ll run through a boatload of harsh and unorthodox black metal, mountains of mathcore, death metal of all stripes, a few technical grindcore acts, a ton of different prog-metal bands, some sick instrumental metal jams, and a whole lot more. Hopefully you will find something new you enjoy in each installment.

KUUJEOJABENOJUJANOMIASHIKUSHIJA – HHEOALLE

If the name wasn’t a dead give-away, Kuujeojabenojujanomiashikushija are a strange fucking group, but thankfully it’s the good kind of weird. Avant-garde and experimental black/death is the name of the game here, and yet Kuujeojabenojujanomiashikushija’s take on the burgeoning style is fresh and uniquely eerie. At times quite minimalist and subtly psychedelic, the music on HHEOALLE has a distinctly smooth feeling in how it unfurls that I really enjoy.  Continue reading »

RED RIVER FAMILY FEST II: A REPORT BY NEILL JAMESON

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 272017
 

 

(Red River Family Fest II took place in Austin, Texas on September 22-23, 2017. The appearance of Krieg on the line-up took Krieg’s frontman Neill Jameson to the event, and he prepared these thoughts about the fest and the bands he saw. Credit for all the great photos accompanying his article goes to NecroBlanca Photography and Design.)

 

If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written or spoken to me you probably have the (correct) opinion that I generally don’t enjoy myself often. It might be the few decades of going to shows and fests or talking to people that have jaded me, but I tend to approach playing a fest as more of a job than a joy. But my experience over the weekend at Red River Family Fest II was surprising enough for me that by the end of the first night I was ready to sit down and write about it, and it wasn’t just the alcohol talking.

This is a recap of everything I experienced over my few days in Austin, Texas. I was able to catch at least a song from most every band with a few exceptions and I really enjoyed what I heard, again with a few exceptions. Continue reading »

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