NO CLEAN SINGING

BANDS YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING TO: STONE HEALER

Jan 022017

(TheMadIsraeli wrote this feature about Connecticut-based Stone Healer.)

About a week ago I spent some time digging for older releases by bands people should know about. Stone Healer is such a band and seemed a good choice for this post-holiday feature.

Dave Kaminsky, the mastermind behind Stone Healer, is an interesting character in the super-underground black metal scene just because of his style and overall production aesthetic. We’re talking the real garage tier; you’d have to be looking in the right places to find his obscure projects.

I had stumbled upon his previous band Autolatry, a progressive black metal band that also incorporated elements of post-hardcore into their sound, resulting in music that was abrasive, caustic, yet forlorn and melancholy. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2016 EDITION) — A LIST BY SURGICALBRUTE

LISTMANIA 2016 40 Responses »

Jan 022017

(For the 6th year in a row, I asked our old pal SurgicalBrute to weigh in with his year-end list of favorite albums and EPs. As expected, he names a lot of underground releases that haven’t appeared before in our 2016 Listmania series.)

When I was asked once again to do my year-end list (something I’m growing to suspect, more and more, is a way for Islander to get back at me for being a loudmouth in the comment section the other eleven months of the year), I honestly wasn’t sure if I would have anything to contribute. When I write a list, I don’t want it to be just about which albums I liked, I like for it to be interesting, to hopefully show people a bunch of stuff they either forgot about or haven’t heard before.

Now, for whatever reason, my interests have been all over the place this year, and it seemed to me like I wasn’t giving metal my usual level of attention… until I sat down to really look over the music I discovered this year. At this point I can only conclude that, even distracted, I’m still more metal than 99% of the planet, because the amount of music I ended up wading through was beyond ridiculous. The act of narrowing down this list would have sent the untrve among you running for the nearest door, but fear not… I’m a professional.

So, now that we’ve gotten that rambling bit of egotistical back-patting out of the way… here’s my list of the best metal albums for 2016… enjoy \m/ Continue reading »

PHANTOM WINTER: “SUNDOWN PLEASURES”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Jan 022017

(The first week of 2017 has begun, but we still have a few 2016 releases we want to write about, including the second album by Phantom Winter, which is the subject of this review by Andy Synn.)

You’re probably already aware of this, but the fact is there’s simply too much music released each year for any one man, even one as handsome and debonair as myself, to cover it all. There’s always a gem or two (or ten) that slip through the cracks.

As a result I’m going to be spending the next week or so covering some of the releases which DIDN’T make my end of year lists, simply because I:

a) didn’t have chance to give them a full and proper listen, or
b) fell so hard for them that I wasn’t sure I could trust my initial reactions.

Either way, it’s a good opportunity for me to make up for lost ground, before getting fully into the swing of 2017. Continue reading »

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME (A LIST OF ANTICIPATED 2017 METAL RELEASES)

Metal News 74 Responses »

Jan 012017

Phoenix Rising 2 by Spektyr

Yes indeed, a new year dawns. And while we’re not yet finished with our LISTMANIA 2016 orgy, we’re also looking ahead to what 2017 will bring. I spent some time this weekend perusing record label pages and e-mails, and picking through the detritus of my own memories, in an effort to compile a list of forthcoming releases that have peaked my interest. Those are assembled in a giant list after the jump.

Two things: First, this post is also an invitation for our readers to share in the Comments the albums you’re looking forward to this coming year — so please do that. It will make this post considerably more interesting.

And second, though the following list is a big one, it’s far from comprehensive. It’s focused mainly on the first quarter of the year, and I also ran out of time before snooping on news from all the labels I usually follow — and I’m 100% certain that I’ve overlooked a lot of exciting releases (both self-releases and label offerings) that I know are coming or have seen rumors about. That’s why you’re here… to help do my work for me. Lord knows, I need the help. Continue reading »

OUR LAST POST OF 2016… AND OUR FIRST OF 2017 (PART 2) — WITH NEW MUSIC FROM DEVIL’S FORCE, AURI, PHRENELITH, GRAVECOVEN, NORSE, CURVED BLADE, HOODED MENACE, ALGOMA, SPECTRAL LORE, TEMPLE OF NIHIL, AND GATH ŠMĀNÊ

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Jan 012017

Partied hard, smiling big.

Happy New Year to one and all. I hope you survived whatever you did last night, intact and with only a modicum of blood loss and brain-cell death. I would tell you in detail what I did but I’m not sure you could stand the excitement. Even I was so drained after both putting down the robot uprising and preventing the savagery of the loris horde’s celebration from overflowing their compound, armed with nothing but a few blow darts, that I was asleep by 10:30, stone cold sober and vomit-free.

I’m beginning the new year at NCS the way I ended the old one (here), by assembling a giant batch of the new music I heard in recent days that I thought would be worth your time, plus one older release I came across only recently.

As a trained medical professional (ha!), I’ll warn you that if you did suffer more than a modicum of blood loss or neuronal cell death, you might want to wait another day before exploring what awaits you below. It won’t help your recovery, and it’s no sane person’s idea of a hangover cure. Damned good metal, though.

I’ll also mention that because this post takes the place of my usual Sunday Shades of Black feature, the music is mainly in a blackened vein, though not entirely. Continue reading »

OUR LAST POST OF 2016… AND OUR FIRST OF 2017 (WITH NEW MUSIC FROM MIDNIGHT, THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, MISERIST, MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY, VIELIKAN)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Dec 312016

Yes, of course, it’s just an arbitrary date, one that has no intrinsic meaning. The arrow of time moves inexorably forward, the segmentation of its path into old years and new ones solely our own creation, one more effort to impose some kind of communal order on chaos. The effort fails, but as an occasion for remembering good times and bad, and perhaps kindling hope for a better tomorrow, the clicking of the clock past midnight tonight serves a laudable purpose. Even as simply an excuse for a cathartic blowout, it’s a good thing, if that’s your thing.

The calendar will flip over, but I’ll just keep writing as if nothing is about to change. Why the hell not? I have a lot of new songs and videos I’ve discovered over the last 48 hours. I’ve collected a few of them — the result of hard choices — and will make some of them the subject of this last NCS post of 2016, and the rest the subject of our first post of 2017 tomorrow.

Happy Fucking New Year to all of you from all of us. My resolution, over which I have no control, is to be here with you one year from today, saying the same damned thing. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LA TORTURE DES TÉNÈBRES — “CIVILIZATION IS THE TOMB OF OUR NOBLE GODS”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Dec 312016

This last day of an unusual and unsettling year marks the release of an unusual and unsettling album that it’s our pleasure to premiere for you. The album’s name is Civilization Is the Tomb of Our Noble Gods, and it was created by La Torture Des Ténèbres from Ottawa, Canada.

I’ve tried, but I haven’t succeeded, in stitching together my thoughts about the album in a coherent, organized form. The music defeats such efforts, or at least my own. More likely, I just haven’t yet reassembled the parts of my mind that were fragmented but also left spellbound by what I’ve heard. So I’ll just scatter my impressions before you like leaves that are still swirling in the wind. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM SEB PAINCHAUD (TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

LISTMANIA 2016 5 Responses »

Dec 302016

(2016 was the year when I discovered Montréal’s Tumbleweed Dealer through their very cool new album Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine. The band’s main man Seb Painchaud has very expansive and very eclectic musical tastes, and in this year-end list he pulls us off our usual beaten paths by highlighting favorite releases that are outside the usual metal lists… including a lot of Not-Metal.)

To be honest, I fucking hate Christmas. Yup, that’s how I’m going to start this article. I fucking hate the holidays. I hate the parties, the gift giving and the family gatherings. It’s cold as fuck up here at this time of year and snow isn’t the beautiful white flurries you see in Christmas movies in a big city like Montreal, it’s just grey, wet mush that ends up everywhere, ensuring wet socks from the second you leave the house until the moment you brave the arctic winds once again to make it home.

The one thing I actually enjoy about the holidays: End of year list season.

I love going through every list I can check out and every album I haven’t heard yet, and try to agglomerate everyone else’s discoveries into my own list. That’s why I put out a top 100 list every year. Not 25, 50, or even 75. 100. And I always end up cutting albums to bring it down to 100.

But 100 is a bit much for here and there’s no point in mentioning the same albums as everyone else. So I offered NCS to write a list of albums you won’t find on most metalhead’s lists. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: WIL CIFER’S TOP 10 SLUDGE ALBUMS OF 2016

LISTMANIA 2016 2 Responses »

Dec 302016

(Here’s the fourth and final 2016 list from NCS contributor Wil Cifer. Follow these links to check out his Top 10 lists for black metal, doom, and death metal.)

When it comes to defining sludge, the density is the prime factor, so I find myself throwing in anything that is not dark enough to be doom. Sludge generally holds true to its punk rooks, but projects defined as stoner metal are also being included here. That doesn’t mean there is not legit sludge all over this list, as sludge is the dirty crust punk cousin of doom. Some sludge bands have just grown up and gotten more rock ‘n’ roll over time, so what sludge is has changed some over the years and this year’s crop is certainly evidence of that fact. Some of these bands might even think they are doom or have gotten their start as a doom band, but now have smoked too much pot to keep it that dark. So heaviness is often an organic by-product of the sounds compiled here with the top ten sludge albums of 2016. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END TOP 10 LIST FROM JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

LISTMANIA 2016 No Responses »

Dec 302016

(For the sixth year in a row, I invited my friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus — whose new album Slaves of the Vast Machine will be released in early 2017 by Black Plague Records and Hypnotic Dirge Records — to share with us his year-end list. Once again, he agreed. This list previously appeared on Johan’s own blog.)

As Listmania season is upon us I can only once again conclude that there are many, many albums that I’ve missed. However, this is why series such as these are helpful; without all the other lists I’d never have known what I’d missed. Luckily I didn’t see too many of my picks in the other main lists, so hopefully this list will give you something new to check out. Continue reading »

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